Frankenstein Unwound

Lately, I have been giving a lot of thought to the story of Frankenstein (can’t imagine why).  If you don’t know, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel penned by Romantic Period writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in 1818. Even if you have never heard of Shelley you are probably aware of the characters from her book as they are indelible cultural icons.  I’ve read the book, twice; most probably because it is such a tedious tome that I’d forgotten most of the detail and in an act of cerebral self-flagellation submitted myself to the punishment once again.

Lore has it (well, it’s probably not so much lore as bragging by the author as she states it as fact in her own preface) that she and her Lake Geneva companions, poets Percy Shelley (husband) and Lord Byron were sitting around one day desperately trying to break the boredom of being God’s gifts to literature when one of them threw out the challenge that they should each write a horror story. The quality of said product is proof enough that writing should never be the object of competitive challenge.

Now most of you will be passing familiar with the general theme of Frankenstein as dozens of movies and countless other cultural references have featured at least the veneer if not the substance of Shelley’s novel.  I was raised on the Universal Studios production released in 1931 starring Colin Clive as Dr. Henry Frankenstein and launching the career of Boris Karloff (credited as “?”) as the monster.  It is an enjoyable movie on two levels: the first being an engaging science fiction/horror thriller, the second for the camp value intrinsic in early film craft.  Basically, a scientist obsessed with returning life to the dead creates a monstrous creature, recognizes his folly, unleashes said monster on Swiss population, things go badly for all involved.  The book is much deeper and devotes many, many pages to both Dr. Frankenstein and the Monster contemplating their respective places in creation and blah, blah, blah. Thank God the movie left out the endless soul searching and focused on creepy makeup and torch bearing villagers.

If you consider yourself an aficionado of English Romantic literature (by the way, Romantic here refers to a European literary movement that spanned the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, not the genre of heaving-bosom fiction featuring Fabio in the cover art… some books should be read, others should be used to start bon fires) you should read Shelley’s Frankenstein.  Then rent or buy the movies Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935-again, Universal Studios) and Son of Frankenstein (1939-still, Universal Studios …work that franchise baby!!!) and have a few good laughs. And if you’re old enough to remember Moona Lisa, bask in the glow of Saturday afternoon nostalgia.  Then, if your hunger for things Frankenstein has yet to be sated, get hold of a copy of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974-Twentieth Century Fox… should have held onto those movie rights, Universal) and be prepared to laugh your ass off!

I trust it is obvious from this missive that I love old movies, particularly from the golden age of Hollywood.  And I hope, that on the occasional week when I just can’t think of anything funny or thoughtful to report about my own life (had you figured that one out yet?), you won’t mind too much if I fill the space with recommendations from the library in my head. “Is that a bookshelf sticking out of his ear?”

How to Plan a Road Trip

For those of you who’ve had the pleasure of reading my travel logs, you know that I am a road trip maven.  It’s been a while (too long a while) since my last trip but having just completed one I thought I would offer those of you un-christened the benefit of my vast experience.

First point of order: A camping trip is not a road trip.  One may camp during the evolution of a road trip, but camping is a discipline of its own.  Preparations for the two disparate journeys are completely different.  I have camped while on road trips; chiefly because camping is somewhat cheaper than a motel stay but also because there have been occasions when day’s end sprang at me with nary a lodging facility in sight.  Yes, there have been the odd occasions when the kind Deputy Sheriffs have informed me and my fellow travelers that sleeping in the town’s central square was not considered polite behavior. More about such experiences in future blog postings.

While I have engaged in road trips with minimum planning and maximum spontaneity, experience and wisdom taught me the value of thinking through destinations and routes.  Don’t get me wrong; I am a proponent of the no reservation, lax timetable approach to highway travel.  But it is very beneficial to the success and enjoyment of a road trip to have at least an inkling of the highways available to reach the chosen destinations. This is particularly crucial when travelling with companions… even more so with female companions.

The most valuable tools in prepping for a road trip are books and maps.  The books are useful in identifying locations of historical events and scientific phenomena; example, the Grand Canyon. If one was just cruising along Interstate Highway 40 without fore knowledge of its existence and approximate location, one would never know they had passed it by.  It is the biggest geologic feature in the Continental United States, and they hid it, well!

Don’t be disheartened thinking a successful road tripper need spend all their time poring over science and history tomes.  Some schmuck has done that for you then written a book easily found in the travel section of Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.  They have clever little titles like, New Mexico, Off the Beaten Path. When people have asked me, “Dale, how do you find these obscure treasures to visit and write about?” I respond, “I read books!”

Maps and atlases (a collection of bound maps, usually related in some way by proximity or subject matter… also available at your local book store) are essential to navigation.  But they are extremely useful for planning as well.  Don’t learn simply how to read a map… learn how to study a map.  Perhaps in some future missive I will conduct a map study primmer, but there is not room enough here.  Let me emphasize, if you know how to study a map and are proficient in internet searching, the world opens up as it never has before.

Navigation frustrates many, especially novice road trippers.  There are five necessities for successful land navigation:

·         Knowledge of where you are.

·         Knowledge of where you want to be.

·         Knowledge of  where both of those locations are on a map

·         Familiarity with true north (if you don’t understand the difference between true north and magnetic north, you are going to spend a lot of time retracing your routes).

·         A watch.

If you don’t recognize the value of each of these, send me an e-mail and I will elucidate.

One can always reduce the risk of getting lost by using a Garmin or other such device.  I use one.  But I use it only as a route tracking tool.  I design my own route (my Garmin came with software that lets me do this on my PC then upload to the mobile device) to ensure I see what I want to see, go where I want to go.  Your GPS device will know where you are.  It will most likely be able to locate and plot your destination.  But letting it build the route based solely on information contained in its database will put you on a concrete ribbon where the most interesting sites are truck stops.  If you study your maps, you will be able find the old roads… and that is your ultimate navigation goal.  It’s where all the interesting things happened.  It’s where all of the interesting cantinas are to be found.

A word or two about comestibles (look it up!): A common rookie mistake is to overload your vehicle with food.  Remember, this is not a camping trip. First: In the modern world of transportation infrastructure, you will encounter very few stretches of roadway that do not offer some sort of convenience store/gas station every thirty to sixty minutes of travel time.  This is important because they generally offer restrooms and your traveling companion(s) will have need of these (especially the women folk… and guys once they get past the age of fifty).  It is customary and an unwritten law in the code of the road tripper to buy something if you are using these otherwise free facilities.  If you need gas, that is good enough.  But someone in your party will inevitably need to pee out of cycle with you petrol purchase rotation.  Unless you are collecting exceedingly badly constructed baseball caps with rude comments, you will buy snacks; no need to load up before you leave home.

Second: One of the major tenants of road tripping is the belief that the best chicken-fried steak (or hamburger, or burrito… name your own poison) is just around the next bend.  So when you make that fateful turn, you don’t want to be full on Slim-Jims.  Also, eschew chain restaurants.  You can eat all the Applebee’s you want when you get home.  Look for the locally owned and operated hash houses and greasy spoons.  Breakfasts are the best opportunity for discovering some epicurean delight of regional origin but all meals should be taken at the most rustic establishment you can find.

Time is your friend.  This next piece of advice is born of many years’ experience.  Do not pack too many miles in a day.  You can beat the land speed record next time you are travelling to Aunt Effie’s house for Thanksgiving.  A road trip is about the journey, not the destination. Along the route, you encounter opportunities for fun and learning that were not indicated in your original trip plan.  Considering the plethora of roads you have to travel in your lifetime, never assume you will pass this way again.  Take the opportunity to bathe in the glow of kitsch tourist traps.  Read the billboards along the way, searching out “The Thing?” or “Singing Caverns”.

To make the journey more relaxing, stop every two hours or so (believe me, if you are traveling with a female it’s gonna happen anyway) and spend five or ten minutes walking around to limber up those legs… toes need blood too.  This is a matter of individual preference, but I like to get started early each day.  There is something peaceful about the long shadows of the morning.  And as your travel companions will likely be droned into sleep by the motion of the car you can take advantage of the quiet time to ponder the question, “Why did I bring these jerks along anyway?”

·         Best afternoon pick-me-up: A&W Root Beer float (or freeze)

·         Best hard candy: Coffee Nips

·         Best state for scenery: Utah

·         Best state for history: New Mexico

·         Best white knuckle highways: Colorado

·         Most unpleasant Border Patrol Agents: Texas

Enjoy your next (or first) trip… and remember, if you need a first-class navigator, I am generally available.

 

The Yellow Dilemma

No, I am not writing about the Maoist movement.  That is the “Red Menace”, not the Yellow Dilemma.  If you indeed thought I was writing about Chinese Communism, you might be just a little bit racist.

The yellow dilemma to which I refer is a question of physics and you know from previous posts that generally I make stuff up as I go along.  If that is your assumption for this offering, you are dead on.  Now, to set the stage:

We all learned back in the third grade that there are three primary colors; blue, yellow and red.  All other colors are the result of these three mixed together in some way, or are shades of the primary colors achieved by adding white (to lighten) or black (to darken).  This was presented in art class as a matter of dogma and no further discussion was deemed necessary.  Applied physics, the academic discipline that truly defines color, was considered too advanced for eight-year olds.

These statements are easy enough to test.  Using any color medium that can be blended (I would recommend liquid food coloring) try this experiment.  Put a few drops of blue food coloring into a glass of water and the result is blue water.  Add in the same number of drops of yellow and the result is green (green is a secondary color).  Food coloring is manufactured in green, but as you can see it is for convenience only as the color can easily be produced using blue and yellow.  The same holds true for orange, which is a combination of yellow and red.  If you doubt this, try any combination of colors and see if you can produce blue, yellow or red.  It is impossible because of their primary nature.

You might ask, at this point, “Dale, why is this so?”  To which I would respond, “You weren’t paying attention to the Aug. 22^nd post, (How or Why?) were you?”  We know that this is not a why question but a how question. “How does the physical nature of light result in one’s perception of color?”  Well, I don’t know… it has something to do with the wavelength of the energy of the source of the photons to which our optic nerve responds.  It is way over my head, but I digress.

Now, to the dilemma:  My dad was an avid amateur electronics buff.  Spare time would find him out in the garage tinkering with some radio or television set abandoned by some previous owner as un-repairable.  His first “new” television purchase didn’t occur until I was thirteen.  While I did not share his talent or passion, I did stand at his shoulder asking why a lot (we now know this was the wrong question) because it was more (marginally) interesting than the homework I was avoiding.  Amid the countless facts I have not retained that he shared with me, one that I did internalize is that a color television produces a picture by illuminating the screen in response to the electronic transmission in combinations of three colors; red, blue and green.

Whoa, Nelly!  Red, blue and green?  That must be a misstatement.  “Dad, you said red, blue and green.  Certainly you meant red, blue and yellow.”

“No son, I know what I said and I know what I meant.  There are three electron guns inside the picture tube (take my word for it youngsters, back in the day televisions operated by streaming electrons at a phosphorous coated screen inside a huge vacuum tube, there were no plasma or LCD TVs) and each gun fires electrons at phosphors that are red, blue or green.  The combination of those excited phosphors creates the colors you see on the screen.”

 At this point you are feeling one of three ways; excited because you sense a challenging mystery, confused beyond belief, or on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness from boredom.  If you are in group three, just let yourself go, this isn’t going to get any more exciting.  You can go on believing what you see when you watch Real Wives of Beverly Hills are the lives of little people who live in your television.

For the thinkers among you, you are probably feeling the stirrings of conundrum.  Let’s pursue this rabbit down the hole and see what kind of cake is on the table.

“If blue and yellow make green, and the television makes only blue, red and green dots (the aforementioned phosphors) how does the television create yellow?” If that is your question, you are a thinker. If your question was, “What time is True Blood on?” you should have taken the nap option. If your question was, “Why does the television make yellow?” I give up.  The answer to that question is between you and your god.

Now, if you expect to find the answer to the question residing in this paragraph, then you don’t really understand the definition of the word, “dilemma”.  I don’t know the answer, and I have presented this query to many people far smarter than I without success, which is why I am writing this in the first place.  So, dear followers (those of you still awake), if you know HOW a television makes yellow with only red, blue and green in its color quiver, I do hope you will write and explain it to me.  If you do, and I can understand it, I will share the seemingly miraculous details with my readers and assign all credit for superior understanding to you.

***

This week’s punch line: “Why the long face?”

 

 

Retro-spective

This Saturday (Aug. 31) I will celebrate (?) the fifty-ninth year of my birth.  As such, I thought, embarking on my sixtieth year would be an excellent time to ruminate (No, I am not chewing cud… look to the second definition) on what I have witnessed.  I will respect your time by promising to ramble no longer than two type-written pages.  You’re welcome!  Also, I will make a concerted effort to avoid inserting my tongue into the folds of my wrinkled cheek as I normally do.  I apologize.

Where to begin?  I suppose the obvious answer is at the beginning.  Truth be told, I have no clear recollection of the beginning but I suppose it is safe to make some assumptions based on available evidence.  Now as I believe that human life begins at conception, I have to assume that the very start of my life began with my parents engaging in sex.  Okay, then… we have just proved that one should not consider the absolute beginning of one’s own existence.

So what then of the second milestone; birth?  Well, I have no real memory of that either.  Any time I questioned my mother about her maternity experience; she would slap my face and run out of the room crying.  This continued until I learned to avoid the issue somewhere around my fortieth birthday.  It wasn’t that I had lost interest but the dentist suggested if the beatings continued I would develop TMJ.

Ah, the sweet innocence of childhood in the golden age of America when Communists were scary and Nazis were funny.  I remember some neighbors added fallout shelters to their backyard landscape design.  I guess when you count your age in single digits, global political threats to survival are difficult to assimilate into one’s world model.  But oh what fun we had playing in the dark where are parents couldn’t find us; although, I don’t remember them looking for us all that diligently.  There seems to be consensus that those times were much simpler and children could frolic safely through the neighborhood.  But perhaps the reality is, our parents knew we were easily replaced (I refer you to paragraph 2).

The summer of love: My teen years were spent in the halcyon days of the flower generation.  Hair grew longer and toleration shorter.  It seemed that everybody was angry at someone over some thing.  I was angry because I couldn’t find anything to be unhappy about, except that NBC cancelled the Man from Uncle.  And they wouldn’t answer my letters of protest.  I do blame Laugh-in for my recently detected brain damage.  The most pressing issue requiring rigorous debate was, “Genie or Samantha?”

“All Hail to Monte Vista…”  Oh, the sweet memories of high school.  I have often heard that the teen years are fraught with emotional danger; pitfalls of discovering one’s true identity.  Many of my friends have related tales of woe because they did not fit in.  I had no trouble in that regard.  If there wasn’t enough room, I’d just shoved the guy next me over until there was ample space.  If the dork on the end of the bench wound up on the floor that was his problem, he should have spent less time in the library and more time in the weight room like me.

College: The foundry that forges us into the productive adults we are destined to become.  Well, as I graduated from high school in 1972 and the date on my college diploma reads 1981, and I promised to keep this missive at two pages or less, there is not enough room to go into detail.  Suffice it to say that there was a false start or two.

I heard the call of public service.  It was a wrong number.  It’s not that I don’t hold the highest respect for those who commit their lives to the betterment of society, but they will have to proceed in their vocations without me.  Police officers, fire fighters, teachers, Cal-trans workers are all irreplaceable cogs in the machinery of civilized society.  But my contribution will be limited to the egregious taxes I paid en route to financial independence.  I sure hope those government pensions hold up against the Obamanization of the economy, boys.

On to my career in business: Well, if you saw the wisdom of limiting my comments on college, you’re going to be ecstatic over my self-restraint on this topic.  To summarize: Everything I needed to know to be an effective leader in business could be found in the Boy Scout Handbook.  It really is a shame I never cracked it open. Well, I did read their essay on masturbation.  The Boy Scouts of America are okay with it, as long you’re fantasizing about someone of the opposite sex.

And now that I’m retired (have been for nearly ten years-nyuck, nyuck, nyuck), what do I think of life?  Well, it sure seems better than the alternative!

***

This week’s punch line:

“Would I! Would I!”

“Hair Lip! Hair Lip!”

 

 

 

 

 

How or Why ?

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t” – Robert Benchley

WAIT!  This is not a summer rerun.  But you are correct; you have read this quote in an earlier post.  That’s because one of the simplest styles of analysis is compare and contrast.  And we all agree, I am nothing if not simple.

While the concepts here are not nearly as globally important as the dissertation on “cat people” vis-à-vis “dog people”, I will be treading into territory rife with metaphorical land mines.  Today’s cerebral wanderings concern construction and causality.  So I proffer, there are two kinds of people, those who ask “How?” and those who ask “Why?”

I do not speak specifically of any individual among my readers.  I suppose that is unusual in this case as I normally type people I know.  You needn’t admonish me, I am aware that stereotyping or profiling is currently considered bad form, but every breathing (and some perhaps who are not) human being has behavior tendencies and it is essential for effective communication that a writer or speaker recognize those personality definers.  It is equally important that would-be communicators know their own personality definers as they shade the message and may make it unacceptable to the targeted audience.  But I digress.

We have, I am sure, experienced the interposition of the two questions and perhaps have even committed this error ourselves.  “How could this happen?” and “Why does a lead to b?” both mean the opposite of the definition of the operative words.  How indicates a desire to understand an association, operation or evolution of some phenomenon.  Why assigns a philosophical quality to an observed event.

“How?” is the realm of engineers and scientists.  They spend their labors investigating the chain of causality and applying the truths uncovered toward the development of technologies targeting humanities challenges from hunger to electronic social networking.  If they can quantify it, apply it, predict it and document it they are happy.  They don’t care why it works… as long as it works within acceptable ranges of statistical predictability.

“Why?” then is the fairy land of dreamers.  It was my good luck to have worked for an employer which recognized the value of continual professional development.  As a result I participated in countless critical thinking and analytic tools seminars.  Among the plethora of techniques to which I was exposed was the Five Levels of Why.  To describe it simply, the technique purports that attacking any problem (unacceptable error rate, in geek speak) by asking and answering “why?” five times, the investigator will uncover the true root cause.  The technique has its merits and I have used it successfully on several occasions.  The problem with this technique is that it is misnamed.  We are not really searching for “why?” the error occurs, rather “how?” does the system produce the unwanted result. Why it happens is of no consequence to the solution.

At this juncture you may be thinking, “Dale, you effete snob. You are simply parsing words!”  To which I reply, “You don’t understand the meaning of the word effete!” To prove my point, let me take you through a mental exercise.

The earth orbits the Sun.  Do we all agree this is simple statement of fact borne out by observation of the evidence available?  Good!  If not, please go to Google! and look up Nicolaus Copernicus.  Go ahead, we’ll wait here.

Ah, you’re back. As I was saying, the evidence at hand demonstrates that our test statement is true (meaning factual, not morally correct… now, that is parsing words, in case you were confused a bit earlier) and any parent, god-parent, au pair, or teen-age babysitter for a three-year old can tell you the next question is, “Why?”  And you would reply, “Gravity!”

Now you are thinking, “But Dale, you are hoist on your own petard!  You have given us the very ammunition we need to blow up your thesis.”  To which I ask you to advance the conversation to the level of a five-year old, “What is gravity?”  Okay, hot shot, give that one a tumble.  Aha, you can’t!  Because nobody knows what Gravity is.  You might say, “That’s silly, everyone knows that gravity is a bending of space-time by the presence of matter.”  And you would be correct. If you are of a scientific bent, you would most probably be able to apply the calculus tools necessary to predict the behavior of orbiting bodies (and no, I cannot).  But application of said tools would merely demonstrate how gravity works.  I challenge you, answer this question: why does it work?  Go ahead and think on it a bit, I’ve got a good twenty-five years, give or take, left.  I’ll be glad to entertain any theory on why gravity works.

Now, back to the purpose of “Why?”  At some point in the discussion of any physical system (or process) we come to the technological limit of current knowledge.  This is the parking lot where we leave our “How?” tractor behind and change to the “Why?” star ship because continuing this journey is going to take us into the realm of fantasy and myth.  Whether you believe God set the universe into motion or Tinkerbelle sprinkled fairy dust on it; whatever the subject at hand, when you drill down into why deep enough, you come up with the same answer… because!  And from that point on, it is all conjecture based on faith, no matter what faith you have chosen.

The answer to the question posed by this missive doesn’t really matter except that it clarifies how one sees one’s self.  When handed a poser do you ask, “How?” or “Why?” 

***

This week’s punch line: “This morning they were all in the bed of the truck and one of ‘em was in the cab honkin’ the horn!”

 

  

 

Superfulous Dictum

For those of you who have a passion for writing, you will most probably in very short order recognize this missive as an exercise in narcissism if you have not already.  The topic of this week’s self-indulgence is writing; or more specifically, why I write.

Do you remember in your days of youth (not so long ago for some of you, eh Swee’pea) the pain you associated with written assignments; book reports, themes, essays?  Are you still the victim of psychosomatic hand cramps and migraines delivered of minimum page counts?

Well, I was like you at one time.  My parents could drive me to a desk with whip and chair.  They could super glue a Bic pen to my hand.  They even threatened to confine me to my bedroom during the Thursday televising of Batman (always the sucker for a good cliff hanger, I am).  But they could not compel me put words to paper.

“What changed?’ you ask.

Hmm, I don’t know.  But I do remember that I was not a reader either. In the days of my elementary school studies, I would never read the assigned text book passages.  I would go to the end of the chapter and see how much of the material tested in the study questions there I could answer without benefit of the prescribed lesson. If I was successful at conjuring up reasonable answers to say seventy percent of the questions, I considered myself well versed in the topic and therefore in no need of further edification.  On the other hand, if my life experience proved a bit lacking, I would scan the assigned reading material for key words mined from the study questions and commit a few passages to memory.  That was me, the “C” student par excellence.

The same pattern seemed to work through most of high school.  I was compelled to read a few books though.  It seems I remember A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens, I recommend it) and The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare… skip right over this one and go to Hamlet… just as much carnage and way more humor, in a sick and twisted way); I was able to successfully avoid Great Expectations (Dickens again… too many pages) and Les Miserable’s (Hugo… more pages than GE, and way more depressing). To this day I cannot differentiate the Greek Gods from the Roman Gods and have no idea how Thor is related to Aphrodite.  But for the quirky ability to remember key phrases from the teachers’ classroom dissertations and regurgitate them during the appropriate test, I would not have graduated High School.  My 3.0 GPA was purely a gift of the Criminology vocational program in which I spent my Senior year.

My first tour of Community College was a snap as I didn’t encounter any knowledge not previously mastered.  Achieving an Associate’s Degree with honors proved not that difficult and lulled me into a false sense of my own academic prowess as I transferred to San Diego State University.  I flunked out in two semesters. Can you imagine, those professors actually expected written demonstration of assimilation of concepts and original thinking to boot?  I was mortified too!

Once it became clear that I was not suited to a life-long career in Law Enforcement, I felt compelled to return to academia and secure a degree with some market potential.  I used a very scientific method to determine which career path offered the greatest opportunity for gainful and continued employment.  I perused the San Diego Union help wanted ads.  Now for you youngsters (yes, you Swee’Pea), back in the days before personal computers and the World Wide Web (yes, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth), the prescribed method for recruiting workforce talent was to place and ad in the local newspaper.  During this time, solicitations for accounting positions consistently comprised an average of one-third of the job offerings.  I therefore surmised that the best course of action was to obtain a degree in accounting.  I mean, how hard can it be to count money?

Well, I quickly learned that business school is not like any other academic program I had previously defeated by use of the above listed techniques.  For the first time I was compelled to read, study, produce.  Unlike history, literature or the behavioral sciences (snicker, snicker), business professors actually assign homework… especially for accounting classes.  And I dutifully put every effort into this iteration of my academic career even while working full time and supporting myself.  “What,” you may ask, “Precipitated this change?”  Did business foster some previously untapped scholastic passion?  Was the spirit of personal achievement suddenly awakened in my breast?  Could the proximity to attractive coeds fuel my efforts to excel?

No to all of these!  I was scared; scared that this was my last chance to avoid a life of menial, low-paying, unrewarding jobs. So I embraced the challenge and chewed my way through the curriculum, twelve units per semester, three semesters per year (yes, I attended summer school… I wanted this chapter of my life to close as quickly as possible).  This self-induced stress was unbelievable. I was so addicted to constant cerebral activity I found I could not relax my brain during the semester breaks.  To fill the vacuum, I began to revisit the literary tomes I had avoided earlier.  I wanted to read something that would soften the edge of business school.  And as I worked my way through Dickens and Scott and Dumas, and yes even Mallory, I found that it wasn’t just the story, but the language they used to tell it.  I fell in love with words.

I am sad to say, I have no talent for fiction.  I have tried. But I find I bore myself because everything I write feels like something I’ve read. Why not?  George Polti (French writer, 1867-1946) identified thirty-six dramatic situations as the limit for story plots. But as you have witnessed, I have no lack of energy (I’m not sure it qualifies for talent… you decide) for recounting stories of my life and sharing my observations on societal behavior and the current state of human knowledge.  And I do it all for you.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  I do it to show off by using big words and elegant phrasing.   Like the title of this missive promises: Superfluous dictum.

***

This week’s punch line: “…be a shame to eat him all at once!”  

Darwinism Debunked!

I can foresee that even the title of this offering will cause some readers to get their hackles up.  Stop thinking! Take a deep breath.  If you take a moment to consider the authorship you will most probably realize that the content herein is unlikely to offend any reader, much less offer a cogent debate of what some consider the definitive question of our very existence.  However, to consider the hypothesis offered here, we must first explore the current state of scientific thought on the matter.

We all know of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), his voyage on HMS Beagle (1831-1836) and his dissertation that turned the world of biological theory on its head, On the Origin of Species (published November 24, 1859).  The meat of the matter is the role natural selection plays in the diversity of life witnessed on this planet.  In a nutshell: Every species reproduces as a rate faster than the food supply can support.  Therefore, in any reproductive generation, those individuals best equipped with natural attributes suited to their environment will live to reproductive age passing on their genetic tendencies while those less adapted will perish before reaching sexual maturity, causing their inferior characteristics to be lost.  Other than technical advances in understanding the actual biochemical mechanics (i.e., DNA mapping, et al) facilitating said reproductive operations, the theory stands as the hallmark and can be expressed in the aphorism, only the strong survive.  While concise, convenient and comfortable, this statement is belied by even your most casual observation of those humanoid creatures encountered during your last trip to the mall!

Human failings aside, Darwin’s work is a rather complete thesis on how we got to where we are now, unless you happen to be standing on a platform awaiting the arrival of a public transportation vehicle. Then it is my sad duty to inform you, dear reader, that you belong in the lower half of the evolutionary population and should just return home, crawl into bed and wait for starvation to consume you before you procreate.  I bought my first car at the age of seventeen and I was a late bloomer.  But I digress.

Darwin’s postulate rests heavily on the presumption that any species must compete for survival.  Yet as one can deduce from a trip to the mall or a glance at the bus stop as we cruise by in our privately owned motor vehicle, for humans this is not the case.  We have achieved the ability and formulated the philosophy to bring every one along, regardless of their attributes or relative contribution to the advancement of society as a whole.

As with most of my ideas, this one was born while engaged in an activity not remotely related to the subject at hand.  I was eating.  And it occurred to me the assumption of scarce food supplies was the petard that Darwin would be hoist upon.  We do not compete for food.  Our superior development of agricultural technology has resulted in an ability to feed the world’s human population many times over.  The reason people starve to death in the modern world is that we cannot efficiently transport the sustenance needed from where it is produced to where the starving people are.  At this point you probably expect me to deliver a treatise on how to solve this logistics dilemma.  If so, you will be disappointed.  Those knowing me well realize that my intellectual capacity falls far short of that challenge.  And then there is the more important reason that frankly, I don’t care.  I am more interested in demonstrating where Darwin got it wrong.

In the dawn of humanity, Homo sapiens sapiens were foragers.  They lived off the land by means of nomadic wanderings shoving into their mouths essentially anything that didn’t eat them first; raw meat, insects, low hanging fruit.  Then, on one glorious day some obscure band leaving no written record of the event stumbled upon a piece of animal flesh that was being charred by fire, most probably the result of a lightning strike.  It was the serendipitous discovery of this unlucky eland (I’m guessing, it might have been a kangaroo rat for all I know) that launched modern man onto his trajectory into gastro-epicurean sophistication.  If man truly had followed the Darwinian path, his development would have been staid in that moment.  For he had discovered the perfect cuisine, Bar-b-que!

Imagine the idyllic existence we would enjoy if our day was devoted to nothing but hunting meat then smoking it to perfection over the coals of our communal fire: No salad, no lumpy oatmeal, no Brussels sprouts.    

But as we know from the anthropological and archeological record, the ancient bipeds did not stop here.  Cooking, allowing them to eat more and preserve surplus meat, lead to substantial intellectual advancement.  And from there they progressed to fixed site agriculture and the milling of grains; bread.  While I like a good Bar-b-que brisket sandwich as much as anyone, we are learning that the gluten in wheat products is likely the cause for our current obesity epidemic.  Have you ever seen a fat caveman displayed in a natural science museum exhibit?

So, if Darwin’s conclusions had been based on sound science, man would have stopped evolving when fire charred animal flesh made its way onto our menu.  And there would be no Souplantations, just Dave’s Famous B-B-Q… unless you felt compelled to stand in line.  Then you would go to Phil’s.

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This week’s punch line: “Sorry partner, the doctor said you’re gonna die!”