Assembly Language

By Bobby Neal Winters

I almost began this piece by staying, “Humans run stories like computers run programs.” It gets toward my point, but it falls into some dangerous territory. Please allow me to explain.

It’s fashionable to say that “human bodies are machines” or “human brains are computers.” The truth is that humans created machines; humans created computers. One might, and I mean might, truthfully say that there is an abstract concept of which both human bodies and machines are instances of; and one might say a similar thing about brains and computers; but don’t actually know that. And--even if it’s found out to be true--statements such as these lead us toward treating humans like objects.

Because of this, I will begin instead by saying that language, stories, and narratives are very important to human well being.

These thoughts come at a time when I am simultaneously putting together a Bible study on the book of Genesis and learning assembly language for a microprocessor.

There is a common thread between these two: Interpretation. 

Before we get too far into the weeds, there are people who say that Genesis doesn’t have to be interpreted. It’s just there.  Read it; it’s a historical account; that’s the way it happened.  The devil tempted Eve with the apple and she made Adam eat it.

Well, it doesn’t say “devil.” It says “serpent.” You’ve just done some interpretation.

The whole story of the Fall, for example, is just loaded with ambiguity. From just reading the text, you can’t tell whether Adam is standing right by Eve when the Serpent is encouraging her to take the apple.  We assume Eve is alone with the Serpent because that’s the way it feels, but it’s an assumption. We interpret it that way because of our experience of the way operators like the Serpent do things.

But it’s an interpretation.

Okay, so let’s now go to connect this with assembly language.  I won’t get technical.  However technical what follows seems, trust me, I am sparing you extraneous details.  

Really.

To make it simple, let me say that your computer, down in its heart, has memory (which humans chose to name that way) and a processor.  I like to think of the memory as a stack of rows of pigeon holes.  Some of that memory--some of those pigeon holes--are special.  We call them “registers.” Think of a register as a row of pigeon holes.

Each pigeon hole in a register will either contain a one or a zero.  In reality, it is either voltage written HIGH or voltage written LOW.  For the sake of simplicity of language, we say one and zero.

Programming in assembly language consists of writing programs that copy the contents of one register to another and modify the contents in various imaginative ways. (Do not ask me to unpack that last clause unless you are ready to take a course.) 

I was careful not to refer to the contents of a register as a number.  Doing that is an interpretation.

A register can be a number; it can be a collection of logical units; it can be a letter of the alphabet or other alphanumeric character.

In the course of programming, it can be useful to make one of these interpretations or another, but for the most part, it’s just easier to think about moving the contents of pigeon holes around.

I am writing functions in assembly language that I then access from a higher level language (for you geeks out there it’s C).  That higher level language needs to know what to expect.  It needs to know the type of information coming out so it knows which and how many registers to look at for the answer.

The higher level language needs to interpret the registers to know what their contents mean.

The preacher, the teacher, the reader must interpret the words of the story to know what they mean.  Whatever interpretation given is going to depend a lot on the inner life of whoever is doing the interpretation.  Their personal experience will color it.

This is why we need to be guided by the thoughts of others, by the wisdom of the Saints, and, dare I say, by the Holy Spirit.

Just as the human body is not a machine; the human brain is not a computer; the stories in the Bible are more than just words written one after another. They are the path to meaning.

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. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Bubba and Taylor Swift

By Bobby Neal Winters

I got a call last week from my old friend Bubba from back home.  He’s the one that lives just the other side of Wapanucka.  We passed and repassed but, almost inevitably, the subject of politics came up.

Being quite forward, he asked, “So who are you for?”

“None of them,” I said. “Neither of the presumptive nominees is very attractive.”  I thought he was going to ding me for using the word “presumptive,”  but he let it go.  Instead, he came back sounding cheerful.

“Well, if you just stick with what the system brings you, you are bound to be disappointed. I’ve got someone better.  Someone who can lead the country into the future.”

“Oh, pray tell, who? Don’t keep me in suspense.” 

I am afraid I sounded a little grumpy.

His answer was not grumpy.

“Taylor Swift.”

There was a longish moment of silence.  This was quite unusual because Bubba tends to fill all the silence.  But after a moment, I responded as intelligently as I could.

“Wha-a-at?”

“Not what, who,” he said. “Taylor Swift.”

“Okay, who not what, but why?” I asked.  I ended on a pronounced upward inflection because I was incredibly confused.

“Well,” he said evenly, “look at the two main candidates and why people are for them or against them, and then look at Taylor.

“Taylor is a billionaire. She did it on her own. She’s not bought and paid for on day one.”

“Okay,” I was nodding even though he couldn’t see me. “I’ll grant you that.  Go on.”

“She’s a tough negotiator.  She’s gone head to head with the music industry. She’s got the rules changed.  She did it in such a way as to help her fellow artists as well.”

“Okay,” I couldn’t deny that.

“She’s got moxie,” he continued. “When she didn’t have the rights to her own albums, she recorded them and told her fans to buy the new ones.  It was Kelly Clarkson’s idea, and she always gives Kelly credit for it.”

I was about to acknowledge that, when he continued.

“While I am at it, let me say that Taylor always takes care of her own.  It’s not one minute a person is the best in the world and the next minute they are a loser.  She doesn’t throw her friends under the bus.”

“O...,” I began, but before I could get out my “kay” he pushed on.

“And she’s not as old as Methusalah.” 

“Certainly not,” I said, but then a question quickly presented itself to me. “But is she even old enough to be president.  There is a limit to how young you can be.”

It had been a while since I’d taken civics, but I remembered that.

“Well,” Bubba drawled, “I am ahead of you there.  I googled it.  You have to be 35 years old to be President of the United States.  Taylor is 34 now, and she will turn 35 in December of this year.  She would be 34 on election day, but she would be 35 when she took the oath of office in January.  She would be in under the wire by a little over a month.

“Some might say that’s a-cuttin’ it a little close, but to me that looks like a sign from God.”

By this time my mind was confused, and I started grasping for reasons.

“But she’s had a number of boyfriends that she’s had very public breakups with. Wouldn’t that be a problem?”

“The democrats haven’t cared about a candidate’s love life since the late 1990s and the republicans stopped caring in 2016.  And none of them even wrote songs about it.”

I was worried.  I was worried because in the context of what people seem to care about when voting for president I couldn’t find a counter argument.

Finally I asked, “Anything else?”

“Sure,” he said, “One more thing.”

I waited.

“She looks better in a miniskirt than any of the rest of them.”

“Goodbye, Bubba,” I said and hung up the phone.

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. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Percy Jackson and Stephen Fry

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been watching the series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” on Disney Plus with my family.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Percy Jackson, he is a creation of the author Richard Riordan who has written a series of Percy Jackson books in addition to other books which are based on the Greek myths, Roman myths, and Egyptian myths.

He may have explored other mythologies as well, but I’ve got a day job and I just can’t keep up.

If you’ve seen the movie and not been impressed, don’t let that dissuade you from this series.  It takes its time and follows the books more closely.

The principal characters are the half-blood children of the gods born mainly to human mothers.  They are modern teenagers who are trying to make sense of their lives in the modern world.

Not so long ago, I listened to a book called “Mythos” by the English actor and entertainer Stephen Fry. You may be familiar with Fry from “Blackadder” and “Jeeves and Wooster.” The audiobook is read by the author, and it’s worth it for the accent alone.  He also provided his voice for the audio versions of the “Harry Potter” books.

As one might guess, “Mythos” is Fry’s exposition of the Greek myths from Ouranos and Gaia on down.  I look at that word “exposition” and have my doubts.  I might want to say “interpretation” but that almost goes without saying. There are multiple versions of many of the stories that have been interpreted by various authors over the millenia. 

Fry has combed through these on his own--and I get the impression on the original languages. If so, wow. Regardless, he’s picked out his own path and created a harmonization of these stories as near as possible.

The Greek myths have never really gone out of fashion entirely, and you might very well be familiar with some that you read in grade school or in high school, if that was your last exposure, but be warned that the versions you read may have been cleaned up a bit.

They probably left out that Zeus, the king of the gods, was extremely libidinous and went after anything in a skirt--or trousers for that matter--that tickled his fancy.  His having affairs and his wife Hera wreaking vengeance on those with whom he had affairs--and any progeny that resulted from those affairs--is a recurring theme.

Each of the gods/goddesses has their realm of influence; each their personality; each their set of shifting alliances. While each is the personification/idealization of some realm of human experience, e.g. erotic love, art, music, mechanical arts, and represents some sort of perfection within that realm, each is also deeply, deeply flawed.

They are powerful, magical entities, but for someone who comes up through the Judeo-Christian tradition, they are really not God-like at all.  They are more like comic book superheroes than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

All of that having been said, there are certain points of similarity among the stories of Greek mythology and the Bible.  For example, according to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman.  She was given a jar which--unknown to her--contained all the troubles of the world.  She was told not to open it, but her curiosity made her open it.

Compare this with Eve who ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil after having been told not to.  

Now, the similarity is there.(You can check out an article “Eve, Pandora and Plato: How Greek Myth Shaped the First Christian Woman” by Katie Brown on thecollector.com.) But Pandora was created by the gods as a punishment for man while Eve was created by God for Adam as a helper.  In the story of Eve, her part in the Fall is much subtler. I would say that Adam bears the blame rather than Eve.

While it is no surprise that I come down on the side of the Bible, the Greek myths are a treasure as well. Without these in combination, we wouldn’t have western literature.  The whole world would be poorer.

Our literature is important.  It is an important part of the glue that holds us together as a civilization. Whether we get it through novels and poems; comic books and country songs; or scripture and psalms: it is our roadmap for living. 

That being said, we need to be familiar with our roadmap.

Last night while watching “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” I noticed that the half-blood children judge their divine parents through a modern lens. The image that lens gives is not flattering.  It occurred to me this critique of the Greek gods is a Judeo-Christian perspective, one literature interpreting the other.

I can recommend “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” to people of all ages and “Mythos” to the mature. Great stories all around.

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. Search for him by name on YouTube.

 Save a Few for Lefty Too

By Bobby Neal Winters

We always pray for the victim. It’s easy.  They are sympathetic.  They’ve got tears rolling down their faces and snot coming out of their noses--or blood coming out of their noses. Or, there’s no crying, no sound at all and they are lying on the floor in a pool of their own blood.

Prayers aplenty, then.

But what about the villain? The bully? The traitor? Do we pray for them?

“Pancho and Lefty” is a song written by Townes Van Zandt.  It tells a story, and while others might differ in their interpretation--and that’s the wonderful thing about poetry, lots of room for interpretation--Pancho was an outlaw whom Lefty either assassinated or betrayed for payment.  I base this on the line “The dust that Pancho bit down south ended up in Lefty’s mouth.” (That could also mean Lefty was a song writer and wrote about it. You can be both a song writer and an assassin, but I digress.)

It continues to say, “The day they laid poor Pancho low /Lefty split for Ohio / Where he got the bread to go / There ain't nobody knows.”

We the reader are meant to infer some sort of causal connection here. The infamous Pancho, who is romantic and exciting, is dead and that shifty-looking Lefty just disappeared.

Lefty is either a killer or a fingerman.  He’s not dashing.  He’s not romantic.  He is not a hero or an anti-hero. He does his business and then runs from Mexico to Cleveland with his thirty pieces of silver.  

Cleveland for heaven’s sake.

Given all this, Van Zandt (through Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in the most famous cover of the song) implores us to pray: “Pancho needs your prayers, it's true /Save a few for Lefty too / He just did what he had to do /And now he's growing old.”

Here, within a cowboy ballad, sung by a pair of country music’s outlaws, we find a seed of the gospel.

While Jesus was being crucified between a pair of thieves like Pancho, He called out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  

I think we can assume Jesus was asking for forgiveness even of Judas.  

We can take Christ’s example and see Van Zandt applying it here between sinners.  Sinners like us.

I was once told that everything happens for a reason. I’ve meditated on that for at least ten years.  It has power.  

People have their reasons.

“[Lefty] only did what he had to do.” He had to because he needed the money.  It was either him or Pancho.  Pancho was going to die anyway. He was a bandit.  He deserved it.

So traitors have their reasons.

Bullies also have their reasons.  I’ve dealt with a few.  If you open up their heads, they have a justification for their actions.  Indeed, if you look deeply enough, they believe themselves to be the victim.

Humans are messy.

It is captured nicely in a song that Jelly Roll sings, ”'Cause I'm only one drink away from the devil /I'm only one call away from home /Yeah, I'm somewherе in the middle /I guess I'm just a littlе right and wrong.”

This all having been said, let’s not go too far.  In a lot of situations, there is clearly one party that has been wronged more than the other. Often they are the ones that I described in the first paragraph with tears rolling down their faces and blood coming out of their noses.

And this is where Van Zandt’s poetry gets it right.  They need our prayers, because they have been wronged, but the person who did it is also one of God’s children.  They need a few prayers to help with whatever made them do this.

And in the toughest situations, prayer is the only thing we have.

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. Search for him by name on YouTube.