This week’s news is all about things that are, hopefully, done with or haven’t started yet. Just this morning (Aug. 5, to you), there was a tantalizing news story about the mayor of Fairfax City, Virginia, being charged with trying to buy group sex with methamphetamines.
So tempting. The mayor has been known for promoting “quality of life” issues, so the story is rich with irony. I’d like to push some quality of life also, but not that kind. Perhaps I’ll get back to quality of life issues later.
First, I want to whine at length about an incredibly minor peeve.
Such a peeve of mine comes with the sentence that contains “because you’re a mathematician” and “I’d expect you’d like [insert something the speaker thinks is more mathematical than Lewis Carroll’s nightmares.]”
If a plumber, Frank, told you he liked lasagna, I doubt you’d say, “Frank, as a plumber, I’d expect you’d prefer elbow macaroni.” That’s right, Frank, the plumber, must love plumbing so much he wants to eat food that looks like little pipes. He wants to smoke a pipe, because it says “pipe” in its name. Cigarettes are like pipes clogged with leaves, but “cigarette” doesn’t say pipe.
This happened: A guy found out I listened to classical music a lot. (This was back before I found bargain-bin cassette tapes of what I call Romanian goat-herders’ music, my absolute favorite, four for a dollar.) So he says, “Who’s your favorite composer?” I didn’t have one, so I said “Bach.” I like conversational improv. So he says, “I’m surprised Mozart isn’t your favorite. His music is way more mathematical than Bach’s.” I said, “Yes, and …?”
Later the same guy found out I was specializing in geometry. He actually said I should go into Probability Theory instead. Because it’s more mathematical.
I was in a chess club briefly in the ’90s. I don’t know why. But I mentioned it in passing to a friend, so he said, “Chess? Seriously? I’d have thought you’d be into Go, it’s way more mathematical.”
The two cars I have owned both had manual transmissions. I have been told that manual transmissions would be more to my liking because they’re more mathematical. One of the people who said so offered Schoenberg as superior to Mozart because of his use of the 12-tone scale. Twelve has more math than eight.
I get this sort of thing enough that I like to imagine other ways the theme could play out. I could mention I was flying to Tokyo for a couple of weeks’ vacation. I’d be lying, because I could never afford such a trip, but still, there’d have to be that guy who believes it, and says, “I’d have thought a mathematician like you would sail across the ocean in a one-man sailboat, navigating with a chronometer and a sextant, because, numbers and geometry.”
“You like to cook? Really, Wes? You know what’s more mathematical than cooking? Origami.”
“You have a cat? You know, Wes, earthworms are more mathematical than cats, owing to their greater symmetry. You should give the cat away and adopt an earthworm.”
I should not see the new “Star Trek” movie. The only movies I should see are “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “The Number 23,” and “Pi.”
The most mathematical thing I can think of doing is thinking how I could maximize the mathematicality of everything I do. You’ve got your optimization theory there, you’ve got your metatheory, you’ve got your life-delaying endless recursive possibilities, bam.
I would complain more except for the facts that A) these things rarely come to violence, and B) I have to admit I get one big benefit out of it all. Since I know that people can persist in such silliness, I get a valuable insight into the way stupidity works.
If people are so silly as to think that I would prefer Mozart to Bach because his music is more mathematical, it’s no wonder that stereotypes of all kinds don’t die.
The flip side is the same phenomenon. Why would a mayor be into such non-mayoral activities? He favors quality of life. A mayor who likes quality of life should like wholesome things like singing in a choir and horseback riding.