2AM--Just a Hick from Pontotoc County

By Bobby Neal Winters

My 35th Wedding Anniversary is the first week of the New Year.

I woke at two o’clock this morning thinking about Rev Tevye. I identify with him.  Both of us have a robust interior dialog. Both of us have a lot of daughters.

There is a duet that Rev Tevye sings with his wife called “Do you love me?” Within it he asks his wife that question, and she replies, “You’re a fool!”  To which he answers, “I know, but do you love me?”

Ultimately, she discovers that she loves him, which takes a little time because it’s not something she’s ever asked herself, but the part I like is the exchange: “You’re a fool”--”I know.”  This is where I identify with Rev Tevye the most. I know that I am a fool.

That was one of the things I was wrestling with at 2AM.  I am a fool; I have been a fool. 

I was thinking particularly about my time in grad school. I started working on my master’s degree when I was twenty years old. I was pure, 100 percent hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma.  The only contact with the outside world I’d had was through TV.  I was meeting twenty-somethings from middle class families for the first time. Though I was smart as heck--you could’ve just asked me--I was entirely ignorant of the world I was going into.  And, as I said, I didn’t know it.

Here’s the thing though.  Many of the people I met were teachers, and most of them--at least enough of them--knew where they were.  They knew what I was.  They did their job.

In a movie, I would’ve been given a Cinderella-like transformation.  As it was, they actually did better.  They gave me the means for going to the next step so that I could work on transforming myself.  

Life has been like that for me.  At every stage, I’ve found myself surrounded by my betters.  There has always been someone smarter; someone kinder; someone more graceful; someone more educated.  

Like a blind chicken, I picked up a grain now and then, and at some point I had my revelation that I am a fool.

But I am a fool who knows it.  I will cling to that nugget as the one thing that I do have.  I can carry that around in my rucksack like a piece of booty from Dungeons and Dragons.

The best thing I got from my time at graduate school wasn’t my education (eventually a PhD)--or even the introduction to a larger world: It was finding my wife and the mother of my children.

She has been more patient a teacher with me than anyone I ever met in the classroom.  Though I am a fool, I do know that.

I am also beginning to think--fool that I am--that while I did need, and do need, to learn a few things, being a hick from Pontotoc County, Oklahoma might be the best part of me.  

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

How I wish you were here

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

--Pink Floyd

By Bobby Neal Winters

I hear them say, I will be glad when this is over.

The year 2020 is about over.  This is something that has been looked forward to for many months now.  We’ve fantasized about the coming of the New Year as if the coming of 2021 would magically sweep all of our troubles away, as if it would sweep COVID away.  

But it hasn’t, and it won’t.

There are still lots of new cases.  There are still people dying.  It is still not over.

They do have a vaccine or two or three.  Those who want to get vaccinated will get vaccinated, me among them, and that is a good thing.

But if somebody could wave a magic wand and it were all over--if it were all wiped from our minds so that we were ignorant that those five letters could be put together in any meaningful way--it would still be something else.

Because that is the nature of life and living. 

There is always something going on somewhere.  There is always something happening.  There is always something we feel put upon because of.

Now it is COVID.

We’ve lost people to COVID this year. She has been capricious, our little COVID.  She has put me in mind of what Jesus said about the Coming of the Son of Man: “Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.”

There have been families where one was asymptomatic and the other has died. No rhyme, no reason; no trial, no jury. 

In this way, COVID is the perfect manifestation of our old enemy. You can do your best; you can wash your hands; you can wear your mask; you can avoid crowds and keep your distance.  It all helps. But there is no guarantee. 

I’m thinking about people I know who’ve died within the last few years, not of COVID. That eight track tape player in my head starts up with Pink Floyd: “How I wish, how I wish you were here.”

I lost Dad three decades ago;  I lost Mom ten years ago this coming New Year’s Day.  I’ve lost some of my dear cousins.  I’ve lost friends.  They are gone from me now everywhere but memory.

I would give anything for half an hour with any of them.

What I am trying to say is that I want to stop wishing things were over and to embrace the now.  I want to enjoy the people I have while I still have them.  The optimist says this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true; the realist knows that this is what we’ve got.  You’ve got to love each day as God’s gift.

I wish you all a joyous New Year.  

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas

By Bobby Neal Winters

The days have been getting shorter since late June.  At first we didn’t notice; then only a little bit;  then a little more.  By Halloween it was just about as short as it was going to be.  These days when I take my walk after work, I am welcomed back home by the stars if the night is clear.

One generation passes away, and another generation comes; /
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, /
And [hastens to the place where it arose.

But the earth abides forever. /

And Christmas is once again upon us.   This year we have the so-called Christmas Star.  What they mean when they say that is that Jupiter and Saturn are getting closer in the sky.  When I took my walk last night and got home, I put my hand up in front of me and covered them both up with my thumb.  They have been getting closer together in the sky for a while, and they have been setting earlier each day too, but if you go out to look--weather permitting--it’s a nice sight.  Jupiter and Saturn also came close in the night sky back in 7 BC and Johannes Kepler, who laid a lot of the groundwork for Isaac Newton’s theories of planetary motion, thought they might’ve been the Star of Bethlehem. 

Jupiter and Saturn were associated with the Greek mythological figures Zeus and Cronus.  Zeus was the king of the gods and Cronus was the father of the gods.  Zeus had overthrown Cronus as Cronus had overthrown his father, Uranus.  Given that, it makes a kind of sense that Zeus and Cronus would witness the birth of the One who would displace them from that part of the world.

And now they are looking down on us again.  Best not think about that too much.

We are going through times of change.  Things are always changing, sometimes more, sometimes less, but changing.  But things stay the same too, as the Preacher from the Book of Ecclesiastes observed. Man is still the same animal he was 2000 years ago, 6000 years ago, 30 thousand year ago, but we’ve been building something else within us.  To put it in techie terms, the hardware is the same, but the software is being updated.

Our software has become so sophisticated that we can delude ourselves that we aren’t animals anymore.  We’ve got a lot of knowledge, and we think we are superior, but we forget whatever we know was purchased by others with blood, sweat, toil, and tears.

At Christmas, on Christmas morning, we can get a reminder of what we’ve learned and what we’ve lost.  When our children or grandchildren toddle out of there beds to see what Santa has brought them, they *believe*.  Santa is as real to them as the stars in the sky are real to you and me.  

I view this quality in them with joy and sadness.  The innocence is to be treasured, but you don’t want them believing in Santa when they are thirty.  (I will leave a pause here for Republicans to make their own personal joke about Democrats.)  They need to learn the world is full of greedy, self-centered people. (Here is equal time for the Democrats to jab the Republicans.) 

We are stretched far from our natural state. The innocence of that state is attractive, but there is no going back.  We cry when they learn to ride the bike Santa brought them; we cry when they stop believing in Santa.  As did our parents for us, and theirs before them.  Around and around the sun we go.

Things do change. But they stay the same too.  I still look at the stars with wonder.  What I know they are has changed, but the wonder remains.

Regardless of all the changes, the wonder is still there.

Merry Christmas.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. 

That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

 That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here

By Bobby Neal Winters

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is my favorite Advent song.  Growing up, I didn’t know what Advent and had absolutely no idea there was such a thing as an Advent song.  They were all just Christmas songs to me.  Now every year I wait with great anticipation until I can hear those beautiful strains:

O come, O come, Emmanuel, /
And ransom captive Israel, /
That mourns in lonely exile here, /
Until the Son of God appear. /
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel /
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Israel was in Exile, has been in Exile, for longer than it existed, has existed, as a state. Indeed, the Children of Israel were in Exile in their captivity in Egypt.  Then they wandered in the Wilderness.  They had a Kingdom for a while and then they endured exile under a series of empires and continued to do so until this very day.

As Christians, we consider ourselves a part of that.  We are a people in Exile.  Our kingdom is not of this world.

This state of Exile is a hard thing to understand--or maybe not. This year with lockdowns and social distancing we might have some small idea of how that feels.

We are cutoff.  We are excluded. We are alone.  In so many cases, our connection to others is filtered through a computer screen.  While having that screen, that connection, is better than nothing, it is not the same.

We await a Savior.

Some thought it to be the President; some thought it to be his medical advisors.  Some said it would be Science; some are still saying that.

But if science gives us a solution that requires us to do something--and that is the only type that is being offered--and if we don’t do it, then we will not be saved.

It is as in the Days of Noah:  If the only way out of the way of the Flood is on the Ark and you don’t get on it, then you will be lost.

Science is now our Savior.

Emmanuel is God with Us.  As Christians we believe, Jesus was God with us, but God is also with us in terms of Wisdom.  It can’t be said often enough that Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge gives me the means of making bombs in my basement; Wisdom tells me not to.

O come, O Wisdom from on high, /
who ordered all things mightily; /
to us the path of knowledge show /
and teach us in its ways to go. /

We are in this coldest, darkest, loneliest part of the year, and we await a Savior.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

 YouTube, Nihilism, Existentialism, and Uncle Bob

By Bobby Neal Winters

Life is complicated.

I looked at that sentence and said it deserved to be its own paragraph.  I figured it could also be an essay or a book, but let’s spend a few more words on it.

I woke up very early last Sunday morning.  I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want my tossing and turning to keep my wife awake, so I got up and moved through my daily routine which put me in front of my computer where I started watching and listening to YouTube.  I am surrounded by friends who were educated in philosophy while I am not, and I try to pick up a little here and a little there so that I am not totally lost when they start rolling.  As a result of this, the YouTube algorithm brings me videos on philosophy.

Last Sunday morning, the Algorithm brought me videos on Nihilism and Existentialism.  Somehow the Algorithm has figured out that folks who get up at 4am on Sunday morning might be in the mood for a little Nihilism. (You might not think that’s funny, but the philosophical types are rolling.)

It was 4am and I was in my sweatpants, so I wasn’t taking notes, but one of the Existentialists (it was either Camus or Sartre) was quoted as writing about the “terror of freedom.”  At that point, something clicked in my brain and I thought that I needed to write about it.  

So I am.

The human race has been changing for quite some time.  We’ve been moving toward individuality.  There is both good and bad with this. On one hand, I don’t have to be mad at you for something one of your group did to me if he did it as an individual.  On the other hand, I am on my own a lot more.  I have to make more decisions. Life gets more complicated.

There are a terrifying number of alternatives at every instance.  Do I get married? Do I have children?  Do I get a job?  Do I become a criminal?  If I think of myself as part of a tradition, these thousands of basic decisions are made for me.  I get married; when I get married, I don’t write my own vows, I let the preacher do the same thing he does for everyone else. I have kids if they come, and I get a job instead of going to prison. 

Any old tradition will have a decision tree that has more alternatives than what I’ve just described, but you get the picture: I can save my thinking for the important stuff that is peculiar to me.  

The rub is that when we yield ourselves to a tradition, we “give up our freedom.”

The YouTube Algorithm (maybe I need to genuflect when I write that down; my tradition doesn’t say) also brings me computer programming videos.  Some of my favorites are by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. One of his videos is about the trend in computer languages.  I am condensing it quite a bit, but he said that the first computer programs were written by flipping switches on and off. You could flip the switches in any direction that you wanted to.  

You had perfect freedom.

But this freedom was too much.  It was easier to do things that were destructive to the machine.  It was easier to write programs that just didn’t do anything.  And in spite of the ease of doing destructive,useless things, writing good programs was difficult.

Because of this, more advanced computer languages were invented that took away a lot of that random freedom.  These languages provided structure in which certain random, potentially harmful things were more difficult to do.  But this loss of freedom provided a means for more useful, long lasting programs to be written.

A religion, if you embrace it, can provide you the structure that will keep you from doing useless, destructive things.  While one can mourn the loss of freedom that comes from embracing a religion (e.g. I can’t have sex without being married, I can’t drink alcohol, I can’t have electricity in the house), the return--for most--is stability.

I put “for most” in there on purpose.  There are always the ones who struggle.  Always.  But sometimes the ones who struggle within the structure are the ones we remember; many of them are remembered saints.

Anyway, I had to write this.  I’ve got more to say, but I’ve imposed on you long enough already.

 Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Fresnel Lenses and Grandpas

 Fresnel Lenses and Grandpas

By Bobby Neal Winters

For preachers, light is a metaphor for wisdom.  For scientists it is a phenomenon of physics made up of photons which are sometimes waves and sometimes particles, depending on what needs to be explained at the time.  I am fascinated by it.

I have a fresnel (it’s pronounced fre-nel, those darned Frenchmen) lens the size of a sheet of copy paper.  It focuses light down to a fine point like a magnifying glass.  I got it because I wanted to show  my grandchildren cool stuff.  Like most such things, my grandchildren liked it for 30 seconds or so and I am still playing with it.

I burned down the bulk of a stump with it one day.  This is to say, I used it to catch a stump on fire and the stump burned over the course of the day.  It’s not a death ray--at least not this one.

I was playing with it yesterday.  I am trying to make a frame for it that will hold it steady so I won’t go blind while staring at a focused image of the sun.  While doing this, I noticed--it was hard not to notice--that even at noon the sun is almost hugging the southern horizon. I say hugging the horizon, it is just over 30 degrees above the horizon. 

It is that time of year. The rays of the sun don’t get a very straight angle on us and what they do get doesn’t last very long.  

Anyhow, as the angle of the sun changes throughout the year, I got to thinking I need to make a frame for my fresnel lens that will adjust as well.

When I was a boy, I didn’t know about fresnel lenses.  We had magnifying glasses and I was never able to start a fire with one of those.  I burnt holes in leaves and pieces of paper; I put black spots on wood; I sent any number of pillbugs to their heavenly reward; but I never actually caught anything on fire.

So this fresnel lens represents progress.

My grandchildren are really still too young for this, and they live in a different world.  They are being raised by gentler people than I was, people who won’t tolerate insect abuse.  Because of this, it will take them longer to get into the arena of burning up stuff.  When they do, they will find their grandpa has some tools made.

As I write this, I look back at the paragraph and worry.  Are they being protected too much by their parents?  Are they having too many hills made smooth by their grandparents?  The young need the struggle.  I believe that is true.

But I think it is also true that we seek out and find the struggle.  If I smooth out a hill, that means they will simply find the next, higher hill that much more quickly.  We need struggle, and life gladly provides it.

Those of us who are grandparents, are lenses for our grandchildren.  We gather the light of our lifetime and focus it into a bright spot for them.  The trick, it seems to me, is to get the focus right on the right spot.  

But then it occurs to me, is that my decision to make?  I am the lens, but only they will know where they need the light.  With that being the case, my best choice is to offer them as much of myself as I can, so they can take from me what they need.  Being an old man who plays with children’s toys with childlike joy, might be something they need some day.

 Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

The End of the World

 The End of the World 

By Bobby Neal Winters

Advent is that Season of the Church when we prepare for the coming of Jesus as the Infant, but also as The King.  I learned all of this as an adult.

I grew up in a dispensationalist church. “Dispensationalist” is a long word and you might not know what it means even if you are one.  What it boils down to is that when the world ends, the faithful will be raptured away before the time of trial, the Great Tribulation.  

I remember we had one preacher--he was a young man at the time--where the world ended twice every Sunday and eight times a week during revivals.  I was waiting for the Last Trump to blow, and sometimes when one of the local bulls was feeling frisky, I heard it.

My thinking along these lines has changed over the years.  You think about things differently when you are fifty-eight than you do when you are eight, or even eighteen.  I am in a Zoom Bible Study, and we are going through Matthew.  Last week we did Matthew, Chapter 3, which is John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus.

John the Baptist was preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and the clear implication in that chapter was that Jesus would usher that Kingdom in.

My thoughts when I was a boy weren’t very well developed, but my expectations were very concrete.  I expected the End of the World to be, well, the End.  Everything would be over, and and we’d all be in Heaven.  I can’t say that is what the preacher preached, but that is what I walked away with.  Having preached myself and having heard some interpretations get back to me, let’s just say that every sermon is a Rorschach Test. 

But my thinking has changed since I was eight, since I was eighteen, since I was forty-eight.  I believe the Bible, I believe in the Word, but I’ve learned of the limitation of “words.”  Transmitting a message is difficult when not everyone has the same lexicon. The way an itinerant preacher might convey a message is going to be different than the way an electrical engineer would.

There will come a day when it will all be over.  In the meanwhile, there are times when, for lack of a more precise phrase, the human race presses the reset button.  When the old way of doing things stops, and a new way of doing things starts.  As a more modern prophet with the unlikely name of Bob put it,

“Come writers and critics /
Who prophesize with your pen /
And keep your eyes wide /
The chance won't come again /
And don't speak too soon /
For the wheel's still in spin /
And there's no tellin' who /
That it's namin' /
For the loser now /
Will be later to win /
For the times they are a-changin' ..”

In a way, we can think of these changing times as an “end of the world.”  An old way of doing things passes away, and a new way starts.  Our lives are filtered by fire.  The things that we do, the ways that we think that can survive the flame make it through and the rest are burned away: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  

John’s way of putting this carries a lot more rhetorical impact that my milquetoast way of putting it.  

We are being winnowed by this Pandemic, not so much in terms of lost lives but in terms of how things are done. We’ve learned new ways of doing. Things will change.  Hold close to you the things that you want to survive.  There will be another side to this, but all will be changed. 

Let us prepare.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

 How to use a shovel

By Bobby Neal Winters

My dad could use a shovel, and he taught me how to use one too.  He’d started work in the oilfield when he was a boy, when they were first starting oilfield production in Oklahoma. They used horses and mules before trucks and bulldozers came in.

Dad and his twin brother Dave worked as a pair.  A man with an ax chopped down the brush; Dad and Dave dragged it away.  They were still boys and hadn’t yet worked their way up the ladder to be allowed to use an ax.  

There is a hierarchy.

Once the brush is cleared, you start digging ditches.  You breach the ground and dig down.  Once you are deep enough, you need someone in the ditch to shovel the “crumbs” out.  There are different shovels that one uses to dig-down and to crumb-out.  Neither looked like the standard shovel we use in the garden, except in the way all shovels look alike.

There is a hierarchy here too, about who digs down and who crumbs out.  I am not sure which direction it goes, but I do know it is considered bad form to shovel into the ditch more than you have to.  You don’t want to make unnecessary work for the fellow who is crumbing.

Dad was a master.  I wouldn’t call him an artist, but he did care about the craft.  Would “artesan” be the right word? 

Our house had been built in an area subject to water run-off.  He spent his leisure time with a shovel, sculpting the land to direct the water away from our house.

He taught me (and my brother) this fine art by what the education theorists call “the Discovery Method.”  In his case, it was implemented as follows: “Boys, the sewer ditch has filled up.  Clean it out.”

It was June; it was Oklahoma; it was humid; we were in the sewer.  It wasn’t the nastiest thing I’ve ever had to do but I won’t say more.

This summer and fall I’ve thought about Dad and the shovel many times during my “Summer Stay-cation.”

As you know with the Pandemic and all, there has been much less travel.  I’d wanted to go to Paraguay; I’d wanted to go to Scotland.  Well, no.

But there is only so much sitting on my backside, watching Netflix that even I can stand.  Our beloved dog Charlie passed-away and I (against standing advice from my personal physician) buried him.  In doing so, I remembered I knew how to use a shovel.

After that, I found a paver sidewalk in my backyard that only went about as third as far as it needed to.  I redid it and redid it right while I was at it.  

It was at that point the trips to Home Despot started.  I started buying pavers, gravel, weed cloth, and sand to haul them home in the back of my CRV.  Jean, my better half, was there with me to do anything that required bending and to call 911 if necessary.

Then I finished it.  And like God did after he made the Seas, I looked at what I’d done and saw that it was good.

Having done that, Jean and I made a fire pit and had a Halloween weenie-roast with the grandkids.

Dad, I never thought I’d say this, and I am sure you never thought you’d hear it, but thanks for teaching me how to use a shovel.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Against the Grain

 Against the Grain

By Bobby Neal Winters

I am someone who actually cares about the Bible.  I like Genesis, in particular.  Genesis does a lot of things for us, but one of those is to offer us a lense on history from those who were living through it, or living a lot closer to it, at least.

They lived differently than we do.

Abram--before he’d earned the name Abraham--was from Ur of the Chaldeans, which was an ancient Sumerian city in Mesopotamia.  This was the cradle of civilization. God told Abram to leave his country, leave his extended family, and leave his daddy’s house and to go someplace else.  God promised he would show it to him.

I’ve been thinking about this recently because I’ve finished an audiobook called “Against the Grain.”  It is by a fellow named James C. Scott.

Scott is interested in how states formed, and he’s not talking about Kansas and Missouri.  He’s talking about the ancient civilizations. Sumer, Egypt, and all of the other ancient civilizations. The idea is that at one time we all lived “in the wild” making a living by hunting, fishing, and gathering like the indigenous tribes in America were when the Europeans arrived, but at some point things changed and we started having to pay taxes.

How did that happen?  Was it a good thing?

Scott takes the point of view that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  He points out that the change from hunting and gathering to farming didn’t bring individuals a lot of benefits.  Early hunter gatherers were healthier than early farmers.  (Here I have to think of how the offering Abel, the hunter-gatherer, made to God was accepted but Cain’s was not.)  

Scott notes that a lot of the wars fought in those ancient days were not to capture land, but to capture people to use as slaves.  This was because a lot of people chose to leave the ancient city-states when given a chance.  People didn’t like paying taxes anymore back then than they do today.  They had to be forced into giving up their mobility to become a part of a nation state.

Here I think of the Bible again, but this time it is Joshua, Judges, and the Book of 1 Samuel.  Israel didn’t exist as a kingdom at first.  They lived as a group of tribes connected by kinship wherein disputes were settled by charismatic individuals known as Judges.  “There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was good in his own eyes.”

But the people wanted Samuel to give them a king.  Samuel warned them that a king would do all sorts of nasty things to them, but they wanted one anyway. In the end, they got what they asked for.

Ultimately, the kingdom they founded was conquered by a succession of empires.  It always makes me think of a picture of a queue of fish, each poised to be eaten by a bigger one.

The Bible does not picture these empires as fish.  In the Book of Daniel and other places, the word “Beast” is used.  They never felt they got as much out of being in a state as they put into it, and being part of a bigger state wasn’t necessarily better for them.

This hadn’t changed by the time of the New Testament.  They didn’t want to pay taxes to Caesar.

Jesus said to give to Caesar what was Caesar but to God what was God’s.  That was a nice way to not get caught in a pickle, but it also offers some practical advice.  We give to Caesar (the State, the Beast) through taxes. We give to God by helping his children: “to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”

So you don’t like the way things are going?  It has never, NEVER, been any different.  But there is something you can do.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Pluto: A Planet or Not

Pluto: A Planet or Not

By Bobby Neal Winters

Is Pluto really a planet or not?  We are going to discuss that, but first a tangent.

I think I was in about the 5th grade--certainly no older--when my teacher started a discussion in my class about whether school buses were yellow or orange.  I don’t know if there was an educational point she was trying to make or whether she was just bored, but we argued over the question like hungry dogs fighting over the body of a squirrel.

At the time, we had neither the linguistic skills nor the intellectual framework to discuss the matter which is kind of complicated.  First is to say that the perception of color is subjective.  We perceive color through structures in our eyes called cones.  There are different types of cones that give different singles to the visual cortex of our brains.  There is a certain amount of variation in the relative number of cones everybody has, so there is variation in what we perceive.

In addition to this, I can’t see through your eyes and you can’t see through mine, so when we see orange we might be--and I would say probably are--having completely different experiences.  I point at something and say “orange” and you nod in agreement we’ve created a word in the common language between us.  This agreement is pretty solid on the color of pumpkins, but it gets wobbly when we get to 5th graders discussing school busses. 

Let me stop before I start talking about wavelengths of photons and how Chickasaw and Scotts Gaelic will use a single for green and blue.  How boring I can be is unbounded below.

Because I am here to talk about whether Pluto is a planet. 

First off, this isn’t really a scientific question.  It is a fight over nomenclature where science speech meets the world of popular speech.

We get the word “planet” itself from the Greeks.  With TV thousands of years in the future, they sat staring at the sky and looking at the stars.  Most of the stars stayed put in relation to each other from night to night, but they noticed that some of them moved slowly with respect to the others.  They called these “wanderers,” but because they were Greek they used their own language and called them “planetes.”  The Greeks named the following as planets in this sense: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  

This definition of planet worked for a long time.  Then the telescope was invented and over the course of time astronomers discovered Uranus, Neptune, bunches and bunches of asteroids, and our little friend, Pluto.

We can start talking about composition, shape, whether an object has “swept out its orbit,’ and so on, but before we do, let us make note of the fact we have gone a huge distance from the Greeks.  They were looking at the skies with their bare eyes and noticed something.  We’ve brought in lenses, mirrors, radar, and robotic spacecraft.  

We’ve seen the things the Greeks called planets and can talk with much more nuance about what they are.  Mercury and Mars are balls of rock almost devoid of atmosphere, relative to earth.  Venus is a bigger ball of rock with a hellish atmosphere.  Jupiter and Saturn are huge balls of gas that have balls of rock circling them; some of the things circling Jupiter and Saturn wouldn’t be out of place in a line up with Mars and Mercury. 

Of the stuff we’ve found and catalogued since the Greeks, Uranus and Neptune are like Jupiter and Saturn, and the rest of it is just rocks of various sizes.  Earth is the biggest of these rocks (we’ve started thinking of our home as just another astronomical object!) and the rocks go down in size to specks of dust.  

The argument wound down to where do you draw a line between Earth and a grain of sand on the beach to planets on one side and non planets on the other.

Some of us are sad that Pluto wound up on the wrong side of the line.  This is because Pluto was discovered by an American and that makes it special to us. But, you know what, it can still be special to us regardless of what name is slapped on it.  We’ve sent the New Horizons probe by it and took some awesome pictures in 2015. It’s quite a place.

Whatever it is called.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

The Battle of Evermore

 The Battle of Evermore

By Bobby Neal Winters

Queen of Light took her bow

And then she turned to go,

The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom

And walked the night alone.

--Led Zeppelin

Today, as you read this in the paper, it is Election Day.

If you’ve been living in a cave you might’ve missed that.

This Election Day has the hopes and fears of all the years--to coin a phrase--pinned on it. The fate of the Whole World, Existence of the Earth its very self, hangs in the balance.

Well, not really.  

Not that you shouldn’t vote--I sure am--but the fact of the matter is that whoever is President of the United States isn’t going to make as much difference as you might think.  

The Apostle Paul said: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Led Zeppelin said: “The Skies are filled with good and bad, and mortals never know.”

What I am saying, in my probably over-dramatic way, is that the truth of what is done by our leaders is far beyond our reach. What is the Truth? What’s a Cover-up?

I just don’t know.

I worried about it a lot.  I’ve cared about it a lot.  But I’ve gotten tired of being angry all the time.  It’s time for me to quit worrying about saving the world and begin working on saving my soul.

That’s probably over-dramatic too.

What can I do?

As I cannot save the world, I can become a better person.  And this is not limited to me, it is something anybody can do.  The great thing about this is that the worse you are now, the more opportunity you have to improve yourself.

When I was a boy, it was normal for people to throw trash out of the window of the car as we went driving down the road.  That is unthinkable to me now.  However, I still see trash along the side of the road.

If you are doing that and you want to really improve the world, you can stop doing that.  It’s a small thing, but it’s a thing you can do.

Another thing, which isn’t so small, actually, is to get to know yourself. Think about what you do and why you do it.  Have a talk with yourself about it or have a trusted friend you can talk about it with.  Figure out what you are feeling and why you are feeling it.  Just knowing can sometimes help.

Once you get a measure of control over yourself, it can open up a new world about making yourself a better person.  If you make yourself a better person, guess what, you’ve made a better world because you are part of the world.  

Maybe others will see your example and follow it.  Maybe they won’t, but at least you will have done something.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

The Door Frame

 The Door Frame

By Bobby Neal Winters

Some of my more dedicated readers may recall that in October of 2017 I wrote an account of a mysterious document I found which had been written by a former member of the faculty to whom I referred to as “The Librarian.”

The Librarian had come to our university from Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts.  He was a refined man of much learning with interests ranging throughout the arts and sciences.    What I hadn’t realized at that time was that there were a group of faculty on campus who’d migrated here from that very same university around the same time as he had.  They were an important part of a circle on campus who met for study and fellowship.

One of the group was a scientist of some renown.  In my research on this, I’ve not been able to discern whether he was a biologist, chemist, or a physicist.  The documents that have come into my hands suggest that he was all three, much like the scientists one finds in a certain type of literature.

In going through his papers, I came upon a reference to a device of his construction.  He referred to it as a “chronoport.”  It had been originally in a building on campus that had been demolished before my time.  The purpose of the device wasn’t clear, but it was very expensive.  I know this because among his papers this man--let’s call him “The Scientist”--had kept the receipts for its components.  I converted the dollars from his age to ours to account for inflation and came up with a ridiculous number.  He somehow had access to a lot of money.  A lot.

I was about to go on to other matters, when I came upon one of his old notebooks.  He dated the entries in it as one does in a journal.  It was from exactly one hundred years ago.  One entry read as follows: “Saturday, October 16, 1920.  Work on the chronoport is finished.  Tested it on a cat this morning.  It went through with no ill effects.  Had to use a can of tuna to lure it back through because I didn’t want to follow without knowing it was possible to return. Being satisfied that it is safe, I will try it on myself.”

The next entry is rather more mysterious and confusing.  It reads: “Saturday, October 17, 2020.  I’ve gone through the chronoport and I find myself in a different place.  It is rather disorienting.  I am in a cluttered room on an upper floor of what appears to be an entirely different building.  While I can see the street, there is very little traffic; I attribute this to the day of the week.  Looking across at the football stadium, I see it is larger than the one I am used to.  I would like to go exploring, but all of the doors are locked.  I am afraid that if I propped the doors open behind me, they would be closed by an alert custodian.”

The date on the entry was ridiculous.  I might’ve taken it to be a typo, but it was hand written in a very clear, steady hand.  The paper in the notebook was old so as to be consistent with the 1920s.  I did a google search and found out that October 16 did fall on Saturday in 1920.

The October 17 entry goes on at length to describe landmarks he can see through the window.  By his description, I was able to discern approximately where on campus the room he had to be.  By luck I have keys to the building, so I decided to have a look, but not before I read the next entry.

“Monday, October 18, 1920.  I will wait until tomorrow to use the chronoport again.  If I did today, I would be there on Sunday and find all of the doors locked as they were before, so I wouldn’t be able to explore.”

Needless to say, I was very curious.  I found time on Monday, October 19 to go to the building I believed the Scientist described and made my way to the 4th floor which is out of the way during the best of times and completely deserted now.  But it wasn’t then.  That day when I came out of the elevator on the 4th floor, I saw a man with a beard and a tweed jacket come out of one the rooms we use to store old scientific equipment.  He then disappeared down the stairs.  

I went into the lab whence he had emerged and found a door frame there that was glowing.  I reached out to touch it.  This was a mistake because I received a shock from it.  It caused me to reflexively jerk and knock a piece off, which fell to the floor and shattered.

After that, the door frame went dark with a smell of ozone in the air.

I returned to my office to examine the Scientist’s notebook and saw that the entry for October 18 had been his last.

So if you see a man with a beard and a tweed jacket who appears to be lost--and I know this doesn’t narrow it down much--you might direct him my way.  We need to talk.

Happy Halloween.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Grasshopper Metamorphosis

 Grasshopper Metamorphosis

By Bobby Neal Winters

In one of the last conversations I had with my mother while her mind was still lucid she told me, “You’ve probably figured out that we go through phases in our life.”

Not long thereafter, she passed into a phase where she no longer recognized me.  She’ll have been gone a decade this coming New Year.

This is a time of year at my home when we are constantly thinking of metamorphosis.  My wife is a butterfly lady.  By this I mean she raises butterflies.  She encourages milkweed in the yard upon which Monarch Butterflies lay eggs.  She then finds the eggs or even the caterpillars and feeds them until they grow up and form a chrysalis. They change--metamorphose--in the chrysalis and emerge as butterflies.  

It is quite a dramatic change and has been used as a metaphor for the Resurrection.

Like butterflies and moths, grasshoppers also undergo metamorphosis, but it isn’t so dramatic.  They start as an egg and then are born as a nymph.  The nymph will begin growing until it becomes too big for its exoskeleton. At this point, it will shed its exoskeleton. Its new exoskeleton becomes hard and it will start growing again.  

They go through this process several times before they finally emerge as an adult that can fly and reproduce.  Only about half make it, the rest become food for those higher on the food chain.

I love the butterfly metamorphosis metaphor, and there are certainly places where it fits, but I’ve been more of a grasshopper in my life.  Maybe most people are.

Like my mother said, we go through phases.

Like the grasshopper, we have a shell around us, for all the world looking like we are done.  We feel safe in our shell.

But inside, we are changing.  We grow until we find our shell is too confining, so we push it off and face the world with new skin.

And a lot of us become bird food along the way.

Those who are lucky enough will eventually get their wings.

I’d best not press the metaphor too far, because it is in the adult stage that, under certain conditions, the adult grasshoppers can form groups and become locusts, denuding the countryside of its foliage.

We humans go through our stages: learning to walk; learning to talk; learning to ride a bike; learning to read; falling in love; having children; having grandchildren; getting sciatica; getting a CPAP machine.

I’ve gone through these stages myself, but I’ve yet to learn to fly.

My mother went through all the changes of a grasshopper--the phases she told me about--but in the end she was a butterfly.  She wrapped herself in a chrysalis at the end, and then went to sleep to meet her Lord.

One day she will emerge with a new body...and meet her son, the grasshopper.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

Red Dirt Boy

 Red Dirt Boy

By Bobby Neal Winters

She said, "There's not much hope for a red dirt girl
Somewhere out there is a great big world
That's where I'm bound
And the stars might fall on Alabama
But one of these days I'm going to swing my hammer down
Away from this red dirt town
I'm going to make a joyful sound"
--Emmylou

My brother reminded me yesterday of the birthday of a mutual friend that was coming up.  It was his friend really, because he is my big brother and the friend was in his class, but I got to share him from time to time.

He was a musician.  And music keeps talking to me about him from time to time. In the song “Good ol’ Boys Like Me,” (written by Bob McDill) there is a couplet: “When I was in school I ran with a kid down the street/ But I watched him burn himself up on bourbon and speed.” Emmylou Harris’s song “Red Dirt Girl” expands on a similar situation with a finer focus.

Neither of these discuss my friend's situation exactly, but in the realm of poetry they are about him.  That is very fitting because it was in that realm that his story belongs.

He was cursed with being an artist, a musician.  He was cursed in being in a place just a little too far for him to connect with a community of people some of whom would have been able to understand him.  

He was like a butterfly being born in a jar when there was no one around to take the lid off.

Artists are the ones who truly come closest to being prophets in the Old Testament sense.  Prophets are like people who are tuned into a radio station no one else can hear. It is often speaking a language they cannot quite understand, and they do their best to translate.

Some of them are able to do this in a way they are able to connect with those of us who do not bear this curse.  To the luckiest ones, this provides a balm.

Many--most?--are not.

The signal keeps coming in and no one listens.

Some of them are raving lunatics; they turn their frustration outward and it eats up their connection with society.

Some of them, however, turn it inward.  They protect those around them as much as they can, but it still comes at a cost.  It doesn’t eat up their connection with society; it eats up themselves.  Saying “their selves” is more accurate, but not good grammar. 

Artists brighten our existence with beauty in music, painting, poetry, and literature.  They also make our existence more meaningful by portraying our pain--with their pain.  

“Red Dirt Girl” and “Good Ol’ Boys Like Me” ease my pain.  Did they ease Emmylou’s and Bob McDill’s?  What about Lillian and the boy down the street? 

My soul medicine was bought at a price: “One thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got em / You keep on fallin’ cause there ain't no bottom / There ain't no end. / At least not for Lillian.”

I am crying as I write this.  You need to know that.  I’m not crying for my brother’s friend--for my friend.  I am crying for us.  We lose too many of these folks way too early.  They have to suffer too much.

But now the suffering is over.

We miss you.

Happy birthday.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

It’s all about the braise

It’s all about the braise

By Bobby Neal Winters

I don’t talk about sports.  This is a handicap of mine.  Everybody needs something that you can talk about that at the end of the day there is not going to be blood lost over.  We rule out politics and religion as topics for polite conversation in broad groups.  This leaves sports.  You can talk about sports if you are a genius or if you are not a genius. I have listened in on these conversations when both ends of the spectrum were represented and neither end had an advantage over the other.  It is democratic.

I have developed a couple of areas that I can go to if I am forced to talk to people:  Netflix and Barbecue.  As not everybody has Netflix, I wind up talking about Barbecue a lot.

Those of you who are broadly traveled will realize this is not as safe as it might sound.  There are schools of barbecue, and, while I do not have an exhaustive knowledge of these schools, I am aware that there is quite a bit of passion associated with some of them.

Full disclosure: my favorite kind of barbecue is whatever is in front of me.  After we’ve talked a little longer, I will give you a more direct answer, but we need to lay a framework first.

Speaking broadly, I am familiar with Southern-style barbeque, Texas-style barbecue, Brazilian barbecue, and Kansas City barbecue.  These are listed in order of familiarity.  Of these types, I have only run into fanatics among proponents the first three. By “fanatic” I mean someone who will say “Only my barbecue is really barbecue.”  And those who say it say it in the same tone a religious fanatic will say “You people are all going to Hell!”

If you have ever been part of one of these conversations, you know that what I say is true.

For the people who take this attitude about southern barbecue, it is all about the meat.  In their metaphysics, one cannot barbecue beef.  Barbecued beef is simply something that does not exist. Barbecue is about pork and chicken.

Texans, by way of contrast, do recognize beef as a barbecue-able meat.  They have some things to say about the sauce and some things to say about the sides. However, in my humble opinion, it is because it is Texas-style that makes it best and they would defend eating human-flesh if that were the Texas-style.

Some Brazilians will dig their heels in about the sauce. “Good meat does not have to have sauce,” they will say. They don’t seem to appreciate that no meat is so good that a good sauce won’t make it better. (That having been said I have eaten some Brazilan picanha that was so good that it made me want to kiss the cow, the only sauce being its own warm blood.)

There are those among the Texan and Southern camp that are militantly against any sweetness in the sauce.

Now I said earlier that my favorite barbecue is whatever is in front of me.  This raises the question, what if there isn’t any barbecue in front of me?

Kansas City.

If Kansas ever has a war with Missouri, it should be to secure all of Kansas City within our borders so that we can claim Kansas City Barbecue as our own.  Burnt ends, in particular, would be worth the bloodshed.  Kansas City-style barbecue is ecumenical enough to embrace all of the other styles I have mentioned.

Within that Kansas City style, I favor Rosedale Barbecue if I am by myself or just with the missus and we are just running in and out. I like either Jack’s Stacks or Smokehouse Barbecue if I am with a group. Jack’s Stacks coleslaw is life-changing. Life-changing.  Formerly Oklahoma now Kansas City Joes is good, but it’s not as good with the standing in line part factored in.  Gates is quite good.  Arthur Bryants is the most overrated but it is still wonderful.  And then there is Q39....

The best thing about people who like Kansas City Barbecue is that the ones I’ve met don’t feel obligated to disparage anyone else’s favorite.  We all worship in our own way: Some with burnt ends and some with pulled pork.

Come to think about it, maybe politics and religion is safer.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

This really isn’t about math I promise

 This really isn’t about math I promise

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been buying books lately by a man named Donald Knuth.  Before you go out and buy any of these yourself, you might ought to talk to me.  The books are a series of books called the Art of Computer Programming.  They aren’t about art.  Some might argue they aren’t about computer programming.  I look at them and think the title is perfect.  They are art..of a kind.  They are computer programming...from 30 thousand feet.  They are math.

Donald Knuth is an artist if that word has any broader meaning beyond “a painter of canvases.” He’s done much that has shaped computing and through it the modern world we live in.  When he first wrote The Art of Computer Programming, he wrote it out on yellow pads.  When he got the typeset version, he didn’t like the way it looked so he designed an entire new way of typesetting mathematics.  We still use it.

In my life, I’ve been undisciplined.  This is my biggest fault, my biggest sin, my tragic flaw. Two years from now--just a tic and a toc--I will be 60 years old.  They don’t give you black balloons on your sixtieth birthday.  At three-score, you are just a bit too close to the three-score and ten for that.  No, they start telling you--hey, you’re looking good.

Yes, medicine is getting better, and yes we’ve got people in the university who keep working into their seventies.  But that’s not the point.

I’ve been learning the value of discipline.  I look back over my columns.  If was first an occasional drip; then more than occasional.  Now it seems that it is turning into a steady shower: I am preaching on the virtues of discipline. 

Lately this comes from getting serious about computer programming.  I started programming when I was in high school.  McLish public school bought a TRS-80 microcomputer even though it couldn’t be used for sports in any conceivable way.  No one knew how to use one.  Then Mr. Sloan, my math teacher, came to me with the manual for it in his hand and said, “Learn how to do this.”  

And I did.

I’ve only ever had one class, but I’ve returned to programming every few years since. Always in the same spirit: It was something to be learned on one’s own.

I want you to know that I do think the ability to do this is one of my strengths.  I am not afraid to knock things together and figure them out.  Indeed, if no one’s done it before, they don’t know that I’m doing it wrong.

But I guess that in getting closer to 60, creeping closer to that age when my time will be etched unchanging on marble, I’ve realized that I can’t always just figure it out by myself.

And I am looking at my grandchildren, my grandsons though maybe someday there will be granddaughters too.  I got my strength of figuring it out on my own because there wasn’t anyone in the family who knew any differently. When my daughters were growing up, I was still figuring this out. (Something self-referential there.)  

But now with the grandchildren.  Can they be taught it?  What is the best way for them to learn it?

One has to be careful.  Much of the destruction that came from the Sixties was from young people who were rejecting what I consider to be the most wonderful discovery of my...uh... middle age.  Children of men who had learned the value of discipline in WWII, they rejected institutions, threw away discipline, and began hammering on the pillars of the earth.

No.  It is something they will have to choose. 

I am now segueing into my grandfatherly role.  I repair my grandchildren’s tows.  I have projects in the yard that I plan and carry out in stages.

And I buy books.  Books that I will try read but I will never finish.  They will be there when I am gone if my grandchildren want to look at them.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

The Length of the Hypotenuse

 The Length of the Hypotenuse

By Bobby Neal Winters

It is all about language.

And I guess I ought to expand that “it” a little to better make my point.  “It” is “what we know” and “how we think.”  It is all about getting the right words and the right share experiences to go with those words.

This may sound strange coming from a mathematician, but mathematics is just language.  It is a peculiar language with very strange words.  Some of these words we refer to as numbers.

This revelation hit me about the time my oldest grandson was learning to count.  The counting numbers were words that all just came out in the same order: one, two, three, four, and so on.  Whenever grandson stopped counting, it wasn’t because he didn’t understand the math; it is because he didn’t know the next word.  For some it comes after 29 and for others after 999,999,999,999. 

Language has pressure on it to become more nuanced as our experience of the world gets greater.  One can count out pies as one, two, three, but when it comes to dividing the pie, the world gets a little more complicated.  If you have one pie to go among 5 people, what do you do?  Well, you could cut it into fifths--if you are that good with a knife.  More likely you will cut it into eight pieces so that there will be three pieces left over you can sneak back after later in the evening.  But I digress.  You have to invent fractions.

At that point, we have a subtle shift of our mental context.  We shift from looking outward in an unbounded way to looking inward in an unbounded way.  You can cut a pie in half; you can cut the halve in half to get quarters; you can cut the quarters in half to get the eighths I was talking about.  While in practice you will soon get pieces too small for a hungry stomach to work about, in principle this can go on forever.

The Greeks shifted from thinking about pies (or maybe moussaka) to line segments. They were big on geometry as you recall.  They did--in a way a bit different from us--associate numbers to geometry.  To put it in a modern way, they thought about the lengths of lines.

Then one day they started thinking about the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle whose legs had length one.  They used the mathematical language differently than we do, but when you translate it, they discovered that you cannot express the length of that hypotenuse as a fraction of whole numbers.  New words had to be invented.

The Greeks and the rest of the world for most of human history suffered under the handicap of not having a good way to write numbers.  It was embarrassingly late that the decimal way of denoting numbers turned up in the West.  The change for math was like when we changed from writing words as hieroglyphs to writing them in the letters of an alphabet.

When we refer to our number as the square root of two, it is not only precise, it is exact, but it is not very useful in many contexts.  We can say 1.4, but that is about 2 one hundredths too small; we can say 1.4142136 that is just a tiny bit too big.  But either of these ways of presenting the number will be more useful in a particular context than just saying the square root of two.

Ultimately the most honest way we can present a number like the square root of two is at an estimate plus or minus a margin of error with the margin of error as small as we can get it.  For example, the square root of two is 1.4142 plus or minus 0.00002,  

It is not exact, but it is true in the sense we are letter people know we are off by a little bit.  We are using our language to point at the truth as precisely as we can while letting the world know where we are uncertain and by how much.

This system of language was created by human beings struggling with Nature in order to determine Truth.  It relies not only on ever more precise words but honesty not only to others but most importantly to oneself.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

The Algorithm

The Algorithm

By Bobby Neal Winters

They call it the Algorithm.  By "they" I mean those who watch YouTube and by the Algorithm I mean the computerized way YouTube decides what videos it suggests that you watch.  I have to say it does a fairly good job of picking out stuff for me to watch.

I like to watch videos about science, math, and computers.  This is pretty much what it brings me; those along with some videos on film criticism.  (Please don’t judge.)  But occasionally, the Algorithm will take a notion that I need to watch videos about the Flat Earth.  These aren’t videos about people trying to convince you the world is flat: These are videos about people who spend their time criticizing the Flat Earthers.

And it is my own fault.  I’ve sat through quite a few of these.  I am quite frankly curious about why the Flat Earthers think the way they do.  I’ve tried listening to the Flat Earthers themselves and they are really long-winded.  They truly love the sounds of their own voices and it takes them forever to get to the point.  Those who choose to critique the Flat Earthers condense it down to the point the Flat Earthers are trying to get at.

It makes an interesting study on the limitations of argument in making a point, because...here’s the thing: We’ve been to space; we’ve looked at the Earth; we’ve taken pictures of it.  

It is a ball.

If you are going to ignore the pictures from space; if you are going to ignore the fact that all of the other planets are balls; if you are going to ignore that the moon is a ball; the sun is a ball; then you are not going to pay attention to my arguments at all.  And I am not going to argue with you.  As Tracy Chapman says, “...I'm too old to go chasing you around / Wasting my precious energy.”

I find it peculiar that there are those who do choose to spend their precious energy on the argument.  One could think they were just trying to provide some educational service, to save some brands from the burning.  But often there seems to be a bit of pleasure taken in showing someone to be stupid.   

I guess I have to admit to the fact that I recognize this because I’ve done it myself.  I’ve attempted to show myself superior by showing someone else to be stupid. I suppose I could also reflect now whether I am trying to show myself superior to those who critique the Flat Earthers by writing this.

I will have to think about that.

Thirty years ago when I arrived in town there were debates on The Theory of Evolution still.  Maybe there still are but they are going on out of ear-shot.  In any case, at that time I met a man, a physicist.  He was more actually: He was a musician, a historian of science, a Renaissance Man.  Those who know me will know who I am talking about.

He was burdened by the fact that, after more than a century, the Battle for Evolution had yet to be won.

He’s gone now and has been for many years, but that thought he planted in my mind remains.

It’s more than the Battle for Evolution or the Battle of the Round Earth.  It is the Battle for Handwashing; it is the Battle for Not Throwing Trash on the Street; it is the Battle for Being Faithful; it is the Battle for Being Kind.

These all have to be fought with every generation.  We have to teach our children; we have to teach our students; we have to teach those who watch our behavior rather than listen to our words.

Our Algorithm as humans is to find the True and the Good and take it forward to the next generation.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

C plus plus programming and other negative effects of the pandemic

 C plus plus programming and other negative effects of the pandemic

By  Bobby Neal Winters

They say that Isaac Newton invented calculus and put together his theory of gravity during a pandemic.  I learned another computer language and beat the peg puzzle.  Here is how that goes.

You might have seen the peg puzzle at a pizza place or a bar.  It is typically a small piece of wood that is an equilateral triangle if you ignore its thickness.  It has holes drilled in it and the holes are arranged in rows.  In the top row there is on hole; in the second two; this goes on down to the fifth row which contains five holes.  All together, there are 15 holes.

Into these holes, you put 14 pegs.  Usually you fill every hole but the middle hole in the third row.   The idea is that you jump pegs and remove them and you try to get to as few pegs possible.  If you only have one peg, you win.

I’ve got one that was given to me by my father-in-law.  I’ve got it sitting on my computer to my right as I write this.  I don’t remember how long ago he gave it to me, but I do know he’s been dead for 13 years.  I suspect he gave it to me with the expectation that since I am a math guy, I would solve it.  

Well, I have but that has been more than a decade in the making.

The story goes like this.  I cleaned out my garage this summer as a part of my COVID cleaning.  Not being able to go anywhere led to me having a bit of pent up energy.  Couple this with the fact that I decided to get a freezer for my garage to put a beef in (whenever the local butchers catch up that is!) and the garage got cleaned more deeply than it had for a long, long time.  

In my cleaning and rearranging, I found the puzzle.  There it was, unconquered. It had a decade worth of dust and spiderwebs on it.  But it made me remember.

What happens next might not be what you expect.  I put it on the back porch to let it get rained on for a while, and I came into the house and started the process of writing a computer program to solve it.

I’ve been learning C++.  There aren’t many of you out there who really care about computer programming, so I will speak in metaphors.  Have any of you seen the old PBS show “The Wheelwright’s Shop”?  The guy makes furniture, and when he is going to make a chair, his first step is to take an iron fencepost to the forge and make a tool with it that he will eventually use to shape an old log he found in the woods.  

That is what programming in C++ is like: You have to make the tools before you make the pieces, and then you put it together.

This is what I began the process of doing.  For those of you who are interested, I modeled the game with a 15 bit binary number.  There are only certain ways you can move between the numbers.  You program the computer to make the moves and then you stop when you can’t move anymore.  Then you check how many pegs are left.  If there is only one, you win; otherwise, backup and do it again, keeping track of the ways that didn’t work.

For those of you who are interested, there are 89 different ways that the game can end.  There is exactly one of those where a single peg is left.  Moreover, there are a lot of different ways to get to each of the 88 ways that are losers: more than 130 thousand.  

So what I could do would be to memorize the 13 jumps it takes to win, but that doesn’t seem right.   I suppose the best way would be to learn strategy.

That might have to wait for another pandemic.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

September Song

September Song

By Bobby Neal Winters

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December

But the days grow short when you reach September

--Maxwell Anderson

I am a watcher of the sky, a follower of the Sun.  Were I not a Christian, I would no doubt be a follower of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun.  I keep track of when it rises in the morning and sets in the evening.  While the days have been getting shorter since June 21, we’ve only been able to notice it much more recently.

This is only going to get worse.

About the 20th of September the nights will be longer than the days and we will keep losing light until just before Christmas, but by Halloween it will be just about as dark as it's going to get.

But we are now in a period where we know the darkness is coming, but there is still enough light to work.  We can’t put in crops; that has already been done--or better have been.  But if we are going to do anything more, waiting is not going to help.

This reminds me of my stage of life.

I’ve got a birthday coming up in a couple of months, but it’s not a big one with a zero on the end or anything, but most of the people in my life are already beyond 60.  Many of them well beyond.  Even when age comes gracefully things happen.

There is the energy thing.

When I am at my energy peak, I am sharper than I ever was.  This is because I’ve done a lot of stuff and thought about a lot of stuff just because I’ve had longer to do it than I ever have before.  That sort of goes without saying, but I think there are some folks who might need to hear it.

The problem comes when I am off my energy peak.  When the batteries are charged, I can learn Spanish and Russian, Python and C++; I can think about the best examples to talk about algorithms and finite state machines.  When the batteries go down, don’t even ask me to do arithmetic.

The brain is still there along with everything that is stored in it, but sometimes I don’t have the amps to light up the little leds.

I notice that among some of my longtime friends.  Some of them have become good stewards of their energy.  They work and study and think, but are careful not to run the battery all the way out.  They take care of the physical so that the mental will stay as sharp as it can for as long as it can.

My mother had Alzheimer’s.  Her world became smaller and smaller.  She spoke with fewer and fewer people until she only spoke to her ancestors.  I don’t know that she ever could’ve done anything any differently.  That is one of the facts of life: No matter what you do there are no guarantees.

But a little exercise ain’t a-gonna kill ya.  Take a walk to keep your blood flowing to your brain; do Sudoku; learn Spanish. Love your neighbor as yourself.

The days grow short when you reach September.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )

  

A Quintessence of Dust

 

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

--Hamlett, Act II, Scene II 

There is a story in the Bible about a mighty General Naaman who was a leper.  He was directed to the Prophet Elisha for a cure.  Elisha directed him to bath himself in the River Jordan seven times to rid himself of the disease.  Naaman was indignant, replying more or less, “Aren’t the rivers around here better than the stinky old Jordan?”  To which his servant replied, “You know, Boss, if he’d asked you to do something hard, you would’ve done it.”

A pair of tightly woven but seemingly contradictory truths emerge from the current crisis.  A paradox, if you will. 

Truth number one: People want to be taken care of by their government, by each other, by Big Brother, or by someone else besides themselves doesn’t matter who.  

Truth number two: People don’t like being told what to do and by and large won’t do it.

One might argue that there are two different groups within the population with one typifying one attitude and one the other, but I’ve been paying pretty close attention.  There are two groups, but the overlap within the two groups is quite high.  I believe it is a majority.

Let’s talk about the mask thing.  Maybe they work, maybe they don’t.  I’ve not seen the numbers; I’ve not read the studies. Since I try to cover my nose and my mouth with a handkerchief when I sneeze or I cough, having what is essentially a handkerchief strapped in place seems like a reasonable solution; it keeps me from being caught unaware.  

I think that I might keep the practice of wearing a mask whenever I have a cold from this point on out; it strikes me as being a considerate thing to do, now that I think about it.

But wearing one makes my glasses fog up.  My glasses are not optional; I’ve got a card in my pocket from the state of Kansas that says so.  So it is annoying to wear the mask. Sometimes I forget and suffer the terror of having a finger wagged at me.  The horror.

But wearing one is not a big deal.  I will put it on top of the stack of all of the other things I do because I am trying to be a good citizen: putting gum wrappers in my pocket; not throwing fast food sacks out the car window; not passing gas in the elevator.

However, I am not shocked that people don’t want to go along with this.  Religion--not only Christianity, any religion that has been good enough to survive for generations--has offered a set of principles about behavior.  They are largely in agreement, shockingly so.

Yet the phrase “You can’t legislate morality” comes quickly to the lips and trippingly on the tongue.  The fact is you can legislate morality; we do it all the time.  Sometimes it’s simply the devil to enforce.

I am about to tell a disturbing story; gentle souls might want to  tune out for a paragraph.  Jeffry Dahmer captured men.  He killed them and had sex with their corpses and then ate them, storing body parts in the refrigerator. He always wore a condom. (As one stand-up comic opined, “Somehow THAT message got through.”)

The point of that story is that people are more keyed-in to taking care of themselves than they are to taking care of others, though this is an extreme case.

In the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin and Jason Robards, Robards’ character had a ne’er do well son (played by Tom Hulce) who had gotten into trouble with the mob.  Robards’ character had put together a plan that would have saved his son’s life, but would’ve required his son to change, to live life in a way other than the way he planned to live it.  The son replied, “That’s a great plan, but let me put a twist on that ...”  

The twist was not to do the plan.

As a species we don’t like being told what to do, but the Nazi’s still managed to convince the soldiers in the camps to six million Jews.  

We are a paradox, I tell you.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )