Smells Like Winning to Me

or How I learned to Love Cherry Pies, Again

I'm enamoured with the great bit in Apocalypse Now when Robert Duvall, playing a seriously deranged unit commander named Kilgore, turns, stares at the sky and says,

“Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.
[kneels]
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like -
[sniffing, pondering] Victory.

I had just the same experience the other day, simply by accident. I was reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Lots of really interesting stuff – if you are into esoterica.

I particularly liked the section where Hawking explains that the mathematical ideas involved in his speculations on Space/Time are so complex that only a very few specialists in the field could (or do) actually understand them. Great, sounds like the kind of maths I love!

To be more precise, it sounds like the kind of maths which got us into the present economic difficulties – for which the bankers are forever being blamed. They deserve it: that's true. But, perversely; the mathematicians, who provided the foundations for their folly, seemingly get off scot free.

Why? Because the bankers, if you care to believe them, protest that they were just following the mathematical models that they were given. The mathematicians, wisely, keep shtum. Good move!

But, I digress – back to Hawking. The idea that floored me is on page 149. Hawking is explaining some special numbers, called imaginary. Let him do it: “If we take any ordinary (or real) number and multiply it by itself, the result is a positive number. (For example, 2 times 2 is four, but so is -2 times -2) There are, however, special numbers (called imaginary) that give negative numbers when multiplied by themselves. (The one called i, when multiplied by itself, gives -1, 2i multiplied by itself gives -4 and so on.)”

Stephen, you are a genius. (This is not news – most folks accept this) You are now, in addition to all your other accolades the real founder of Cherry Pie Maths! (And I always thought it was me!!)

What he is saying, philosophically, is that if you require a particular system in order to produce a particular mathematical answer – go for it! So, if you can get a Hawking system to produce negative numbers when multiplied by itself – it's a short step to “imagining” numbers that produce positive sequences in the same scenario.

Thanks Stevie – I've been arguing this point for years! In my system, as you all know, when you multiply ½ times ½ you get one. If Steve says you can use imaginary numbers, then it's ok by me. Call it what you want.

I'm sticking to my system.

Just don't pull out some pseudo-math crapola – pick up the phone and call Steve.

Not my problem!

He's on my team!!

Least Favourite Meals

Schools make a dog's dinner.

Some philosophers are born, some are made and some just happen. I may have just made that up – though it is, of course, a paraphrase of a famous diktat.

My old mate and part-time philosopher, The Chef, had his Unified Theory of the Least Favourite Meal to fall back on when either the time or the meat was ripe. It goes something like this.

If you ask any group of school children what is their least favourite school dinner and remove that meal from the menu, all that happens is the next least favourite meal simply “moves up” to take its place. Eventually you'd be having fish fingers and chips every day until the kids were thoroughly sick of them!

Simple. Logical. Works. But, not from the Jamie Oliver School of Nutritious School Dinners.

It occurs to me that this insightful dictum can be applied to all sorts of things – things far more important than little Johnnie's lunch-time nosh. How about Johnnie's school for instance?

This is what was happening on BBC Question Time last evening. The Unified Theory of the Least Favourite Meal had morphed into the General Theory of the Least Favourite School.

The debate focused on the advantages, real or perceived, of faith schools and the dastardly tricks some parents will go to in order to obtain places for their children at these”good” schools.

Parents take the view that faith schools are better than non-faith. In individual cases, this may be correct. As a generalisation: it's a generalisation.

What was most interesting was the methods some parents use in order to place their children in a faith school – even though they are, strictly speaking, not of that faith. I suppose this does do some good in swelling the pews on a Sunday morning, but I'd be surprised if these phoney attempts to convince the local vicar you are a devout Christian really work.

An example. I started school as a bright-eyed five year old at a Catholic School on the south-side of Chicago. In those days, all white children went to the Catholic school because there were black children in the local maintained school. Therefore, about 25% of my school was Catholic and at least the same number were Jewish. This made for interesting education!

Even as a five year old I can distinctly remember the nuns being very angry on Jewish holidays! Al the Jewish kids stayed home!

While this anecdote may say more about race relations in Chicago in the 50's than it does about faith schools, it does resonate with the parents of today who think that their children should get an advantage (more perceived than real I would argue) simply by pretending to qualify for state-aided religious education.

The summing up was from the Labour Party spokesman who blithely informed the audience that, in any event, it would be impossible to do anything about faith schools – or independent schools for that matter – because the European Court would surely strike down any attempt to limit their existence as impinging on the parents rights to choose education for their children.

What we need are smarter parents

Until that happens, we're stuck with the least favourite meal. Bon apetit!

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