Ramen, Theoretical Math

07/28/2015 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

If you want to understand the nature of elegance, you could do worse than having coffee with a theoretical mathematician.

I asked my friend, Ramin, to explain the idea of “beauty” in mathematics. Simplicity is a big part of it, he said. An expression is elegant when not a single element can be added or removed without screwing up its functionality.

But that’s no enough. To be truly breathtaking an expression needs to be unexpected. It has to knock our heads together and change how we see things. The works of Isaac Newton, Watson and Crick, and George Carlin come to mind. Carlin wasn’t a STEM guy but the same principles apply to comedy, music and do-it-yourself plumbing projects.

By the sixth grade Ramin had his sights set on chemistry but thanks to his success in math competitions in Iran, his future was hijacked. He won a Silver Medal in the International Mathematical Olympiad in Moscow in 1992 and later was admitted to John Hopkins. He went to do postdoctoral training at Princeton.

Ramin believes calculus is one of the great conceptual leaps of mankind. As a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he teaches from the same textbook he used as an adolescent and that pleases him. He warns we shouldn’t be lulled in complacency about calculus — its integrity is being reduced to a “bag of tricks.”

Ramin revealed his age as 40.999999999999999999 on a recent Facebook post but he’s seems at least .999999999 younger than that in person.

BB guns

07/24/2015 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

The rampage began just past noon on a Christmas Day. It was warmer than it should have been, so blame it on the weather.

One of the two shooters had been given a bb gun that morning. It was a pump instead of the Red Ryder cocking model his friend had.

Their first victim was a robin, age and gender unknown. It survived. The second was an 11-year-old kid riding a new Christmas bike — almost certainly a Huffy — the police report didn’t say.

They were imitating a scene where Davy Crockett targets a Cree through the sight of his flintlock. The boys were stunned that their bbs could travel across two lawns and actually hit the injun from Woodbine Avenue.

Nothing serious, a swollen eyelid, five minutes in the emergency room and out. The victim looked forward to playing with his assailants at school after the holidays. The boys had been lucky.

Police officers arrived just when their families were sitting down to Christmas dinners and collected the bb guns. There would be no charges — those were more forgiving times for children.

What the police and the parents didn’t know is that there had been a shooting a few weeks earlier. A new kid named Chucky ended up with a swollen lip. He was savvy enough not to tell that two boys had shot him — he needed to fit in.

Over the next summers one of the shooters would fire twenty-twos bolted to a booth at his father’s union picnics. Later he would train with an M1 on the firing ranges of Fort Knox He qualified as a marksman. They gave him a badge.

Later still the shooter spent years championing the Bill of Rights and could recite the Second Amendment word for word but he chose not to keep firearms. He figured he had had more than his share of luck.

Brian Grieve reads books

07/18/2015 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

They weren’t old enough buy beer but they could get cigarettes out of the machine. It was a pool hall with perfectly balanced tables but an afternoon there was cheaper than miniature golf.

There was nothing special about the four young men. They weren’t jocks or brains — not exceptionally handsome. What they did have was each other.

They all knew Brian Greve. They liked Brian Greve. Brian Greve was a neat guy. They looked up to him because even though he wasn’t popular enough to hang around the varsity crowd, he was more popular than they were. They watched guys like him, hoping to pick up a few pointers

It was on a Saturday afternoon in late March when one of the guys said he had heard something new about Brian Greve. The place was crowded so the others had to lean in to listen.

“Brian Greve” he said, “reads books.”

Pope Climate Change

07/09/2015 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

Nobody imagined that a Jesuit from South American would be elected pope or that he would cop the name of a twelfth century environmentalist.

Many religious fundamentalists preach that only God has the power to affect the heavens and the earth, and that man-made climate change is a hoax. Last month Pope Francis pulled the pin and threw a grenade into that raging debate.

He challenged the gospel according to Exxon, Chevron, Phillips and BP by citing peer-reviewed warnings from ninety percent, or more, of the world’s leading environmental scientists.

In his encyclical, “Laudito Si*,” Francis teaches that: “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption…”

He goes on to quote Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Roman Orthodox Church: “…to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”

Religion and science have long had their doubts about each other. But the pope and Galileo were seen having coffee the other day. “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” Frank said to the astronomer, as he picked up the check.

* “Praise be to you, my Lord”

Private Detective #2

07/01/2015 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

The old fool’s back at his keyboard again. This guy couldn’t realize a living, breathing fictional character if his Social Security checks depended on it.

You may recall that I’m trapped in the laptop of an old man trying to create a private detective story. I’m like his main character. Somebody shoot me.

He’s all “noir” these days. He thinks because he drives an internally rusting 10-year-old Toyota beater he understands anti-heroes. What does he know from lurking in the shadows? He eats English muffins — for God’s sake!

He keeps telling me if we’re going to sell our property to Hollywood, we (we?) got to cast a statuesque dame (his exact words). I told him they don’t make “dames” no more and if he don’t want to blow an endorsement from Oprah, he’s got to be careful about how he refers to babes. He promised to stay away from rapper words.

“What actress you got in mind as my romantic interest?” I asked.

“I’m thinking Julie Christie.” he said.

“A fine artist,” I replied, “but she ain’t the box office she used to.”

“Okay, Tuesday Weld then.”

“She dead.” I told him. He took that kinda hard.

“Well, who do you got in mind, Bulldog?” he asked me sardonically (for a private dick I got a vocabulary, am I right?).

So I says, “Scarlett Johannson.”

“You think we can get her?” he asked.

“By the time you finish this novel/treatment/screenplay — whatever the #?%$ you call it — she’ll be working dinner-theater. Maybe then you got a chance.”

His laptop’s got this built-in camera so I could see his face twist up. I knew right away I ticked him off. I watched his keystrokes with despair as he navigated over to Yahoo’s search engine and entered: k – a – t – h – y – b – a – t – e – s.