Mister 136: A Lesson in Humility
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” [1]
– Isaac Newton
Like so many incomparable geniuses, he won his Nobel prize before he was 40. He was the principal or co-discoverer of 10 elements in the periodic table – the transuranium elements, including plutonium. Those two lines of elements at the bottom of the periodic table that you likely never learned or even looked at? They’re called the lanthanide and actinide series, or the light earth metals and heavy earth metals, etc… His idea.
He was a section head on the Manhattan Project. He was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission for ten years, accepting the job in 1960 after a personal phone call from President John F. Kennedy. He has his own entry in Encyclopedia Brittanica.
He has a fucking element in the periodic table named after him!
All of this swirled in my 17 year-old brain while I sat outside his temporary office in the Mayflower Hotel in February of 1987. My knee was bouncing, so I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. Glenn T. Seaborg was the final interview – la grande finale – of the judging in the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the nation’s “oldest and most prestigious” science competition.
He was also about to expose me as the giant intellectual fraud that I knew I was.
I looked down at my attire and I felt like I might break and run – I didn’t even own a legitimate suit. I was wearing an assortment of items cobbled together to make me presentable, which my mom had bought me during my junior year of high school. She insisted that I was getting to a point in my life where “a young man” needed to have such things, so I had acquiesced and we went to the mall. I let the accommodating gay, black man in the store impart as much of his (significant) sartorial wisdom on me as he could, but I was a lost cause. I was starting to fill out in the shoulders and chest, but my father’s height genes couldn’t overcome my mother’s, and so my 28″ inseam and large quads made me an impossible candidate for fine menswear. I looked like someone had decided to hang a cream colored blazer on a fire hydrant… and then as an afterthought added a pair of brown shoes in front of it.
I heard the door open and a woman came out to let me know that the execution had not been stayed.
“Doctor Seaborg will see you now,” she said with the faux-smile that all experienced administrative assistants have. I almost heard the word “through” before “you” and paused for a moment before I walked past her. The whole charade was about to come unraveled.
* * * * * * * * * *
My path to the Westinghouse STS had started almost a year prior, in the summer of 1986, between my junior and senior years of high school. I attended an 8-week program at the University of Georgia for high school students, along with some of my friends from our Queens, NY, high school and some other kids from around the country. Back then, serious high school students with a knack for the hard sciences could apply to these programs. In essence, your parents would pay for room and board and you got to live in the dorms and work as a kind of wannabe-graduate assistant for a professor who needed some help on a variety of research projects. Our teachers in NYC were all gung ho about that summer work getting turned into a paper that could be submitted to a variety of science competitions, including The Big Enchilada – Westinghouse. Coming in the top 300 – ahem, being selected as a semi-finalist – was thought to be a near-guarantee of getting into almost any college you applied to, even the Ivy’s. It had worked for my almost-high school sweetheart; she was a year ahead of me and had gotten into every single one of the Ivy League schools… Being selected as a finalist, one of the top 40 projects out of the 17,000 plus that were submitted? That was a whole ‘nother level of ticket-punching.
…But the truth is that my road in a yellow wood that led to Westinghouse began long before the summer of ’86. If I’m being complete, it probably pre-dated my birth by a generation or two, but I didn’t live that, so it isn’t my story. It was my back-story, however. The expectations of those generations and relatives on both sides of my family who had never even considered higher education lay on me and my older sister both.
We both had the good fortune to be the byproduct of parents who were smart, but in very different ways. My dad was an unusually good card player, particularly with a partner, because he had a great memory: he could recall exactly what card had been played by each player in a four-player game for all 13 rounds. And cards were a competitive endeavor at my grandparents house; my father liked to win. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he hated to lose. Tom Brady and Michael Jordan wouldn’t have lasted one Friday evening playing cards with my old man… or maybe the opposite: maybe they would have been peas in a pod! His lack of patience made him a rough partner because he couldn’t understand that other people simply didn’t have the kind of memory he did.
“Why’d you play the 4 of clubs there?!?” My father would yell, exasperated that his partner – frequently my poor mother – couldn’t see why it was a bad play in light of what cards had been thrown earlier in the round.
My mother didn’t have that kind of capacity… but she could destroy my father in word games. He loathed it.
“That’s not a word!!” he would yell, exasperated for a very different reason. My mother wouldn’t even smile as she crushed him in Boggle, three-letter word after three-letter word after three-letter word. Out would come the dictionary… and he would eventually leave the table. Mom loved languages and crossword puzzles; and she was no slouch in the sciences, either, particularly life sciences, like biology.
I got a healthy dose of both.
* * * * * * * * * *
Like most wild animals, I had more curiosity than sense.
When I was three or four, my mother was (as usual) busy at the sewing-machine mending and patching the burn holes in dad’s work coveralls. The scorch-marks were a necessary part of welding inside the tight spaces of the hulls that would eventually become one of the Navy’s ballistic-missile or fast-attack nuclear submarines. Dad was a welder for Electric Boat at the old SeaBee base out on Quonset Point, just north of Wickford, Rhode Island, proper on Post Road – Route 1. At the end of the day, he would come home and sit on the living room floor with my sister and me, his back against the couch, while my mom sat behind him on the couch to pick the iron slivers out of the back of his neck. It didn’t matter how he tightly he zipped up those coveralls, the arcing and splashing of the molten metal and the odd positions would land steel slivers into the back of his neck. There we would sit to watch the afternoon and evening slate of shows: Best of the West, Star Trek, and maybe Hogan’s Heroes or something similar after dinner. There were only 3 or 4 channels, until my dad finally got a rotary antenna to supplement his prized possession, our console TV with a built-in stereo and record player. I was in awe of it. How could those images get in there? How could those sounds come out of it? I was barely tall enough to see over the top into the wooden cabinet…
I convinced mom to let me play with the jewelry screwdriver set while she mended and cleaned. I knew that would give me enough time to see what made that damn thing tick… The tiny tools were the perfect size for my little hands. When my mom walked into the living room, it was one of the few times in my life I’ve heard her audibly gasp. By then, I was sitting among a small pile of screws. I could have sworn I’d be able to remember which one went where.
We both looked at the guts of the record player strewn on the floor and reached the same conclusion: I was fucked. My father would kill me. Hell, he might kill us both. (He didn’t). I think mom might have figured out how to reassemble it; I have no idea if she ever told him.
Then there was the “fork in the light-socket” incident. I can still hear the pop and sizzle, the arc, that unique smell that goes with electrical fires, and my mother’s scream. That was followed by the knife-in-the-toaster incident; my parents decided that I needed to have some “testing.” I don’t blame them for starting me in school early; I didn’t want to be home either.
* * * * * * * * * *
Sports stadiums change names as often as musicians change chords and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search became the Intel STS became the Regeneron STS for the same reasons: sponsors (or efficiency experts) decide that the money for the naming rights is better spent elsewhere. Regardless of sponsor names, the Society for Science – which founded the whole idea of a national science search for seniors in high school – has amassed a pretty impressive record of pulling a gem or two from “among the rubbish.” [2]
Society Alumni include:
- 13 Nobel Prize winners
- 2 Fields Medal recipients
- 13 National Medal of Science recipients
- 2 Enrico Fermi Award winners
- 26 MacArthur Foundation Fellows
- 3 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award winners
- 6 Breakthrough Prize winners
- 33 National Academy of Engineering inductees
- 120 National Academy of Sciences inductees
- 56 Sloan Research Fellows
Raymond Kurzweil, the famous inventor, author, and futurist, is an STS winner.
I can assure you that you will not find my name among any of those luminary alumni. We all knew I was different from the moment I showed up at the Mayflower in the heart of Washington, D.C., that cold February my senior year of high school. Both Fate and I made sure of it.
My flight had been delayed out of Providence because of the snow and generally crappy weather that pervades in New England in February. And in the pre-cellphone era, it means I missed the ride that was there for when the majority of my fellow finalists had been arranged to be picked up, and I had to get a cab and make my own way to the hotel. And I was rushed checking in and there’s a meeting for you that’s about to start but you’ve got time to go drop your bags off, young sir! I looked down at the schedule they had handed me and it said “business casual” for the next meeting, but I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew what the word “casual” meant (to me), so I threw on some jeans and my (former) girlfriend’s Harvard white tee-shirt, with the Crimson lettering that arced “CLASS OF 90” across the top, and “A NEW DECADENCE” straight below. (Wasn’t I so edgy?).
I came bustling into the packed dining room and noticed instantly that everyone – and I do mean everyone – was wearing suits and ties, dresses and skirts: in that moment I almost tried to pull off some kind of Chevy Chase move from Fletch. I nearly grabbed the busboy’s towel and tray and started clearing dishes and drinks, but I knew everyone had already seen me.
Oh. Fuck.
After I finished slinking into my seat, which wouldn’t you know was near the front and I had to squeeze around everyone to be let in and make a big fucking show? Then it was time for all of the winners to stand up and introduce themselves – loudly.
This can’t be happening. Why, God? Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
After most of the finalists stood up and said their name, their school, and a little about their project, I stood up and said, “I’m ________… and I am terribly underdressed.” And sat down.
My fellow students burst into laughter and thunderous applause. It probably made me seem like the James Dean of STS to the nerds, but I could see that the woman charged with riding herd on us narrowed her eyes and tightened her lips. I could read I’ll be keeping an eye on this one all over her face; I’d seen that look too many times to count.
* * * * * * * * * *
They made me take an IQ test in second grade. I got a 136. There, I finally said it.
It’s not even good enough to break into Mensa, which requires a 140. I tease my wife about it on the odd occasion she asks if I want to go to her Mensa meeting. I look up from my iPad, grunt like an ape, and tell her: “Me no qualify… Not smart ’nuff. You go and bring back brains!” She rolls her eyes and goes back to doing something… smahht, I suppose.
Okay, okay. I know I’m not a moron, but I also know that I’m not a genius, either.
In 6th grade I was spending an inordinate amount of time fucking off and getting into trouble, but inner city public school being inner city public school, I was still getting As… because that was my parents’ minimum standard. For both my sister and me. The teachers spoke to my mom: I wasn’t being challenged, they said. They had no idea what they were talking about. I was being challenged – to fight – on a weekly basis. You think being an undersized nerd in a half-black, half-Italian middle school that fronted the Hartford Projects wasn’t “challenging?”
They made me take another IQ test and so I did the images with the blocks and repeated the numbers backwards and all of that bullshit with some guy who reminds me now of J.K. Simmons in Whiplash, except less swearing.
Same result. Now what?
They convinced my mother I should attend the “gifted program” at Nathaniel Greene Middle School, over past Chalkstone Ave and close to Rhode Island Hospital. Even for those of us who thought we were tough guys from Olneyville and its environs referred to Greene as “a tough place.” I got bussed in with some other white kids, mostly. My school, Oliver Hazard (“Don’t Give Up the Ship!”) Perry sat sandwiched between a blue-collar Italian neighborhood and the Projects, the same ones my mother had grown up in. Vinny Pazienza’s gym sat in what amounted to the DMZ, just a couple of blocks south of Perry on Lauren Hill Avenue and Laban Street/Whittier Ave. I can write all of that without looking at a map because when we played street hockey and my knucklehead friend John would take a slapshot from two feet away from the net – and miss by a country mile – with a good role and no cars barreling down Laurel Hill that orange Mylec ball would almost go into the drain in front of Paz’s gym. Sometimes Angelo would be outside roasting chestnuts and he’d kick it back into the street for us.
But Nathaniel Greene? That wasn’t our ‘hood. And that school was perhaps 10% white; and the rest… not. I begged my mother not to send me, but those fucking educators convinced her to voluntold me and away I went. Now I’d have to start fighting all over again.
It didn’t take me long to figure out I didn’t belong. It wasn’t that I wasn’t the smartest kid anymore or that I didn’t like being the little fish in the big pond, a phrase whose meaning I had already learned intimately whenever I moved “up” a league in ice hockey or baseball or football. I was always small, so right about the time I just got to be average, I had to move up. And my dad had explained the phrase to me in one of my moments of dissatisfaction after spending an hour on the ice getting my ass kicked by kids three years-older and about 50 lb. heavier.
Time to pay your dues, son.
But this wasn’t the same thing.
Imagine being the dumbest kid in Japanese class – and having zero desire to learn Japanese. Or “stage lighting.” Why the fuck we were learning how to to run the lights, anyway? Oh, because no one else can figure out how they work? Oh, Joy. Great.
It’s like being at the poker table and realizing you’re the sucker. These kids were smarter than I would ever be and it didn’t bother my ego. I just didn’t want to be around them because they were a magnet for more beatings… and they didn’t know how or even want to fight back.
My mom said I had to try it for two months. At day 60 I told her I had tried it and was done. Send me back to my old school please. I don’t think anyone was ever so happy to be going to front doors of O.H. Perry, right across from the Hartford Projects, like I was after being at Greene. It was like being transferred from Joliet back to medium security. Ahhhh… this is Club Med, boys!
* * * * * * * * * *
The summer of ’86 at UGA two of us were assigned to the Director of the Physics and Astronomy Department, J. Scott Shaw. We were given a choice between writing a program in Fortran that would move the telescope based upon coordinate inputs from the terminal inside the dome OR doing grunt work on an inexplicable astronomical phenomenon known as the “O’Connell effect,” in which the peaks of the light curves of one specific subset of eclipsing binary stars have differing maxima. Which makes no sense because the light from two eclipsing binary stars orbiting around a common center of gravity – from our perspective should produce the same… Okay, you can probably guess which one I chose.
It largely consisted of running and re-running a computer program called Roche-O (and re-running, and running…), which modeled the light curves of these same star systems using a wide array of inputs. This was also in the early days of computing and the simulation we were running took hours to run. What I did in 1986 would today be done with a few keystrokes in about 15minutes, where you uploaded a set of criteria and had a program keep running combinations of the variables until it achieved a “best fit.” It took me almost 7 weeks, a good chunk of it in transit between our dorms and back to the freezing cold computer lab in the Physics building, which had to be kept near sub-arctic temperatures because of the heat being thrown off by the computers in there. It was grunt work, but I also managed to play in a quad softball league at Reed Hall and spend a fair amount of time ogling co-eds at UGA’s Athens campus, so I don’t want to overstate my plight.
But the real upshot of the whole thing is this: I wasn’t some super-smart savant who…
….had a perfect SAT score;
….or sponsorship from Duracell for my self-built speech-recognition computer;
…or designed and built a model submarine based upon reading “Hunt for Red October” that mimicked the imaginary Russian one and sound-tested it for comparison against U.S. submarines;
…or developed a better polymer coating for computer chips that made them process faster;
And those were the projects of the people who didn’t even come in the Top 10.
The truth of it was that my project hadn’t required superior intellect. It required a shit-ton of elbow grease, however, and just enough knowledge to understand the issue. More importantly, I didn’t get selected as an STS finalist because I was in the category of intellect who deserved to be there – I got selected because I could write a very good scientific paper explaining a someone else’s really complicated issue in layman’s terms.
And I knew that after a single day of speaking with the other finalists. They were amazing – truly brilliant and singular minds – and they were kind, too. But just for comparison’s sake, I think it’s relevant that same summer after Westinghouse, one of my friends from STS called to tell me that she got an internship at NASA’s microgravity lab. And what are you going to do this summer?
I laughed. I got a job as a bouncer at the nightclub down on the beach. I’ll be fighting middle-aged men with too much liquor in them.
That’s not an accident. If I’m being honest with myself, I didn’t want to do research in astronomy anymore. It had never been anything other than a way up and out of the neighborhoods where I grew up. I wanted to work as a bouncer and make money on the weekends and spend my days sleeping off my hangover and training in martial arts, sparring, boxing, trying to convince the girl whose phone number I had in my pocket that she should go out with me.
* * * * * * * * * *
After the judging was over, Dr. Seaborg was on our schedule for a lecture. It turned out to be his black and white slides from the Manhattan Project. And a discussion of being a scientist working on something like that… to an audience that included some not-too-friendly Japanese kids, likely first generation Americans for whom the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not merely theoretical. They asked some tough questions, but the memory that sticks with me is Dr. Seaborg’s explanations of how little that collection of singular minds really knew.
Oppenheimer. Leo Szilard. Bethe. Seaborg. And yes, even the brilliant traitor Klaus Fuchs.
There was a moment when Seaborg threw his hands up in reply to a question and said (and I’m paraphrasing, probably badly): “We didn’t know. Within our own ranks there was disagreement about whether the bomb would produce a runaway reaction that would never stop and consume us all… the whole planet… or simply hit the ground… A dud. There may have been a general, theoretical consensus… but who could really say they knew?”
I don’t remember much of the rest of what Dr. Seaborg said, but I just remember that for a guy who had an element in the periodic table named after him, he was a kindly man, with a love of science, and a genuine and healthy respect for the limits of human knowledge.
…
So maybe I hadn’t been such a fraud after all in the Great Man’s office, not even trying to bullshit him about how little I knew about the nuclear reactions in the core of a star, instead staring at him with my mouth agape for a moment.
Maybe “I have no idea” sometimes is the most knowledgable answer there is.
[1] Attributed to him by Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsay in “Anecdotes, Observations and Characters, of Books and Men” Vol 1 (p. 158), by the historian Joseph Spence (1820).
[2] Jefferson and other Founding Fathers can frequently be found in private, and even public, letters describing public education as nothing more than a filter for the mass of citizenry. Some baseline knowledge and then among that cohort discard those who are not academically inclined and by “this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.”
I have wasted my life.
Well, my working life anyway.
As long as you are more than your job, you should be fine.
Your “working life” has two purposes (in this order).
One, provide some material security for you and yours. I gather you’ve done just fine on that front.
Two, do something you enjoy/gives your purpose/makes a contribution that you can care about.
I’ll never be a SCOTUS Justice, but I wouldn’t say my working life has been wasted, not by a long shot.
I’m with hayek, I think. I have Purpose 1 down. Purpose 2 not at all.
I…I…I…have a special purpose!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXDXLFNUWuY
Ditto. I get nothing out of my job. It’s paper pushing. I’ve been able to find value in some tasks, but I’ve never stayed at work a minute longer than is absolutely necessary*. It’s a job. They have to give me a lot of money to me to make me show up every day.
* not saying I don’t work hard, but there’s not a workaholic bone in my body
A lot of the workaholics I know are just inefficient.
At this point, I’m similar to you. There are times recently where I have put in extra hours, but I kick myself afterwards.
Yep, I’m not allergic to putting in 60+ hour weeks when necessary, but the “necessary” part is a special project or deal with a looming deadline. My work or my department’s work stacking up against an artificial deadline doesn’t meet the “necessary” criterion.
The elephant in the room is that I (and all of my colleagues) could jump to any one of a dozen law firms in the area where I’d be working 50-60 hours per week making double the salary. One of the perks of this job is the constrained working hours. If they had set the department’s target hours at 55 instead of 45 per week, they’d have to replace the whole department in a month’s time.
Yeah. Purpose 2 is the tough one.
/currently getting irritated about Google reminding me about Free Comic Book days from the past with me and my nephews.
My Swiss masters take care of 1.
Soldiering was my 2. Can’t do that anymore.
I’m lucky on 2, and I know it. I have this naive belief that purpose can be found in many jobs, if you look hard enough.
My career is nearly over. I have 3 to 6 years left (that’s what I keep telling my boss).
I occasionally ponder what I have accomplished.
I intended to become a scientist. When I graduated, I took the only job I was offered and became an engineer. It was temporary. After my wife graduated, I could go back to school and get the advance degree I needed to work as a physicist. Thirty-five years later, I guess I’m still temporarily an engineer.
What did I accomplish? I don’t know. I’ve travelled around the globe. I have 45 patents. But the imposter syndrome we talked about in the last thread is still eating away at me. The good news is that I only have to fake if for 3-6 more years.
What did I get? Well, I have a nice house, multiple vehicles, and a shit ton of cool toys. But, really meaningless in the end.
The real way I measure my accomplishments is simple: I have been married to the same woman for 45 years. I have two well-adjusted middle-aged kids. I have four well-adjusted grandkids — two adults, two near-adults.
That’s good enough for me.
That sounds like a win, kinnath.
thanks
Yeah, you are winning at life.
thanks
Yes.
Great story/article/commentary, Ozy.
Thank you, ma’am. Appreciate it.
Hmm. I see no young man wearing a cream colored blazer in that photo.
I have no hesitation saying that (or some variation). I find that it actually enhances credibility.
I didn’t find the picture until after I wrote the article, but apparently I did have one of those cheap suits. Or maybe I borrowed it from my stepfather. I don’t know.
But the cream jacket got pretty used up during this trip. I didn’t wear it for the picture on the Capitol steps.
I’m a few in from the right. First one in the second seated row.
The clothes do take me back. I graduated law school in ’87, and had to stock up on adult clothes (and was spending a lot of time, allofasudden, around other people in adult clothes). It took me a little while to make the bridge from “small town Texas adult clothes” to “white shoe law firm adult clothes”. It was in Richmond, VA, so yes, I had a seersucker suit in my inventory which could be worn unironically in the Richmond summer heat.
Rockin’ the feathered center-part. Nice.
Great article (as usual) Ozy. I think a lot about the weird twists and turns my life has taken.
53 year old Tundra would definitely have some words with 18 year old Tundra.
I would be inclined to beat some sense into 18 y/o Frank. But it would likely not work, the stubborn Iowan is not just a trope from ‘The Music Man’
Not beat some sense into him, just give him some insight on how to make the most money in the least amount of time. How to truly create value and profit from it.
50 *cough* year old R C definitely has a few things 17 year old R C would benefit from knowing, but honestly its the kind of stuff that you have to have beat into you by experience. And by “you”, I mean “me”.
Most of the valuable stuff I learned as an adult related to building confidence and character. That’s not something you teach by saying.
You’re right, but It’s helpful to have parents/mentors/whatever assisting you me making sure you are put in situations that develop those talents.
My son hated retail work but it did wonders for his capacity to deal with all kinds of people – which is obviously so critical for life.
I think every kid should experience the hell of retail. One of the best educations money can’t buy.
Don’t forget the fast food working hell as well.
/spent time in fast food and retail
I think every kid should experience the hell of retail. One of the best educations money can’t buy.
Or any other similar low wage job.
Indeed. I could have told young me to buckle down and do my schoolwork, but it wouldn’t have taken in young me who thought he knew everything.
EVERYONE WAS DOING IT!!! IT WAS THE STYLE!!!!
I could post a pic of me circa 82 rockin’ that same beautiful flow.
But I won’t.
Start growing it out now for September, Big Fella.
/waggles eyebrows
Alas, that train has sailed.
No more flow for this rink rat!
Me and Ozy are apparently the same age with the same hairstyle at the time.
My (hairstyle) brother from another mother!
Class of ’87, yo.
I picked that guy out as the likely OZY. The hair style, the sneer, even before I read the article.
We never know the road another person has traveled. The twists, the turns, the bumps, all those things go into making of the final product.
Seems like you have had a great ride so far and it ain’t over yet.
Every person has a story but it seems like so many of the Glibs have met the challenge and can have a lot of pride in their individual accomplishments. Top o’ the list, OZY. Thanks for the bio…
Mr. 4×20, it was a lesson that I desperately needed at that point in my life: I wasn’t the smartest guy in the room unless it was a small room. Meeting some genuine geniuses helped get my head on straight. I got credit for cleaning up and writing Dr. Shaw’s work.
I learned that I didn’t fit in with those folks and that my life would be going in a different direction.
I’m not convinced I’m not a moron, regardless of what those tests say.
I have met really smart people who never graduated high school. And I have met really dumb people who have multiple Phds.
Phd = piled higher and deeper
With the advent of the post-modernist branches of the academy and their cancerous spread across the academy, a Ph.D. is nearly meaningless to me now. Many of these clowns are completely incapable of generating new knowledge. Which is their effing job. All they seem to have to do is regurgitate buzzwords and make insane, unfalsifiable assertions and cite a bunch of other insane, unfalsifiable, assertions and they get their doctorate. These idiots have reduced the value of Ph. D. to a participation trophy for teeball.
* to that of a participation trophy for tee-ball.
In my field, almost every PhD is someone who is an expert on their small area of concentration and seems almost universally to have forgotten every other aspect of the field that they learned as a Masters.
I can see that as an effect, they just follow the path that they started with their dissertation with blinders on.
Something about ‘if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” works on both ends of the spectrum.
i.e. People who have only learned one thing, and people who have so concentrated on one thing that they try to make everything fit within that frame of reference.
One of my best friends is smart in a lot of ways. He doesn’t have a Phd, but he’s a doctor who graduated in the top 10% of his class at Harvard. He lacks a lot of common sense. He’s also the black sheep of his family because he will never win the Nobel Prize like his brother probably will.
Definitely. It has been my experience that those with the most humility regarding their own and humanity’s knowledge are often the people with the greatest insight. I try to model that in my meager and amateur endeavors into the sciences.
Although that was something of a hindrance in my military career. Sergeant Major doesn’t want to hear that something should be completed at such and such a time and the commander wants definitive answers from intelligence briefings, which is at the best of times is some good information with a great deal of speculation filling in the gaps. My reluctance to speak in definitive terms made both of these tasks difficult for me.
Well done.
I was a nerdy shrimp in the smart school in the ghetto and somehow I managed to avoid almost all violence. Sure, in junior high I got kicked or spit on once or twice but by HS there was none of that any more in my school (same building).
Maybe my power was some sort of spidey-sense to stay away from assholes.
My problem was that I was a nerdy guy with a
quick witbig effing mouth.I have a story cooking about that, too.
Being a nerdy jock musician with a big mouth got me some unpleasant attention.
(Some pleasant attention, too!)
Was?
Oh, Bravo, sir!
I wish I could frame that comment, RC.
We’re moving soon, but I really would like to find a place between us (Phx and Tucson) for a lunch or dinner with drinks before I head out of here if you’re amenable.
I wish I could frame that comment, RC.
Well, it’s your lucky day! I just so happen to have an NFT of that comment that I’ll reluctantly depart with for the princely sum of $69M.
Let’s see if we can come up with something. I’ll ask SP for your email.
Please do.
Go to the forum for that – SP has things on her plate.
Wilco. Thx, Swiss.
I started a topic under Meetups.
First time on the forum. It seems . . . non-linear.
First time on the forum. It seems . . . non-linear.
Much better if you want to geek out about a specific topic (I suggest checking out the range reports thread in the firearms section), but the traffic level isn’t enough that you can hover around for 20 minutes and have a conversation.
Yeah, I was the opposite of “big mouth”.
I was bigger than most of the bullies and I was friends with the punks. The handful of “bullying incidents” were tame and rare. I only had to hit one person, and he wasn’t so much bullying me as harassing me.
Physically I was (and am) big enough to look like I might not be an easy victim and small enough that I wasn’t seen as a threat, so I did not get into very many fights growing up. I am also, by nature, a quiet introvert so I rarely provided cause for people to have a beef with me.
I was in small town Texas, with one junior high and high school. So we had the whole gamut in my schools. I was definitely holding down the tail end of the nerd bell curve (debate team, anyone?), but never really had much trouble with anyone. It probably helped that I actually won most of my debates, and being a winner representing the school helped a lot in Texas at that time.
I’d also help anyone out with their schoolwork, and wasn’t above a little cheating on tests. For some reason, the toughest guy in my class (name of Chano, no kidding) decided I was alright, which probably also deflected some trouble. There was some, well, basically hazing when we first moved to town, but I stood up for myself which always gets some respect.
In hindsight, going to school in that time and place was probably a really good thing for me.
Awesome story.
What a wonderful experience.
^^^^ Cosigned
It was. The other kids there were so kind to me. I was the absolute vagabond of the “science fair” crowd. Most of the other kids had sponsorships for their research and many of them knew each other from other science fairs. Some had different projects they used for different comps.
I showed up with a shoebox with two clock motors inside that had bent coat-hangers with two painted styrofoam balls to illustrate the orbits of two stars in a binary system. When I found out we had to display our “projects” in the Great Hall at the Nat’l Academy of Sciences, I was in despair. Truly, I thought about suicide versus the embarrassment of displaying my shoebox that was painted with moons and stars like it was a 6 year-old’s fucking wizard hat.
A whole crew of those kids turned my ragamuffin shitshow into a tri-fold display with my paper prominently displayed. I can’t tell you how kind those kids were to me.
That’s awesome and a great story.
From London.
Imagine.
Wow. That is fucking awesome.
Stolen.
After all these years, I have mine honed to razor-sharp perfection. I usually reserve it for salesmen who drop by without an appointment and ask for “just a few minutes with the person in charge of _____________,” who, darn the luck, isn’t available right now, but if you’d care to leave any written material, I’ll see that s/he gets it…
(I would like to assure all that the smile pictured in my avatar is my real one – and the one most of you would get if we met in meatspace.)
As a boardroom lawyer, I have to be diplomatic a fair amount of the time. For other times, my go-to is the dead-eyed stare. It helps to imagine whoever is on the receiving end is actually dead, cold meat.
I love the wait em out tactic. When you reach an impasse, just sit there silently and let them babble. More often than not they start negotiating with themselves.
A favorite of mine. People can’t stand the proverbial uncomfortable silence. “Babbling” is exactly what they will often do.
What do you do when they just stare back like the Abyss?
Smile.
Its never happened.
As I understood it from my counter-intelligence colleuges, the use of pregnant pauses is a very useful tool when interviewing a subject. They will as often as not incriminate themselves.
I have used that tactic on my kids numerous times. They almost always tell on themselves.
A very useful tactic, unless you’re dealing with an extreme introvert.
*sits quietly*
Okay, OKAY, UCS! I ADMIT IT!! I KILLED HIM AND THREW HIS BODY OFF OF THE TRAIN BEFORE SHANGHAI!!!
lol
Knew it.
🙂
“most of you would get”
Ok, who doesn’t get that smile? It’s me, isn’t it!!??
Aww, sure you would! ?
::searches in page for specific unnamed screen names:: As of 2:20 EDT, I believe every Glib who has commented here to this point would get the real smile…as long as they don’t subsequently blow it.
Yes!
as long as they don’t subsequently blow it
Dammit!
*checks time*
Dang.
You’re good.
So far.
Whoops, I’m out too.
Crap, I haven’t commented here yet. 🙁
Clarification: Most Glibs who have NOT yet commented on this page would also get my genuine smile. There are only an unlucky (and, IMO, unsavory) few who would not receive it.
Mr. Seaborg lived in my hometown. My mom would always mention it when she saw him around town. Maybe she was a nerd groupie.
Did your dad have a pocket protector?
I didn’t mention this enough, but he was a kindly gentleman. My interview was a complete disaster, but I suspect that all 40 of us felt the same way.
One of the other students I made friends with there (the guy who created a model of the Russian sub from ‘Hunt for Red October’) had one of the best stories about his experience in the natural sciences judging room. (There were 3 “rooms” where we would be questioned by a panel of experts. The “hard sciences” room had a Fields Medal winner, a chemist and a physicist; the “natural sciences” which had a biologist, chemist, and some other expert; and then Dr. Seaborg was the Final Boss.)
My buddy came out of the natural sciences room looking like he’d been molested.
“What happened?!” I asked.
“She asked me – ‘do fish embolize?'”
“Do fish what?”
“Get the bends,” he said blankly. There was a long pause as I considered that question.
“I have no idea,” I responded.
“That’s what I said. And in response, she looked at the other judges and said, ‘he has no idea.’ Like I wasn’t even there…”
I’m laughing now as I think of it. That was a funny experience for certain.
While I don’t know, my hypothesis is no. They don’t have the dissolved gaseous nitrogen in their blood because they’re not breathing air.
My recollection is that they generally don’t because they’re pressure sensitive and stay in their own “regions,” but I have no idea about the internal biology of fish vis a vis the bends. A ridiculous question for a high school student, but the whole thing had a farcical element to it.
Their swim bladder will definitely expand way past anything healthy if you bring them up from deep enough, fast enough.
But that’s a different pressure problem from the bends.
What I’m wondering is if there is other dissolved gasses in their blood that might come out of solution with a drop in pressure.
It would be the same dissolved gasses that are in the water, me thinks. Those dissolved gasses usually increase in concentration near the surface, which may reduce the impact of surfacing from the deep.
Also, there are some whales that descend pretty deep pretty quickly, so there’s something physiologically different compared to land mammals.
I believe the mechanism for bends comes from breathing under continued exposure to high pressures, which increases the saturation levels of the blood, which then boils out when the pressure is decreased.
A whale is going down with the breath he just took, so he’s not increasing his saturation level over an extended period.
Note, one way to avoid the bends is to replace the nitrogen with helium in the air mixture, which doesn’t saturate in the same manner.
I’m laughing and cringing because I’m reminded of an incident in a physics seminar at college. It was a one shot grade. You had to pick a topic and give a lecture on that subject during the semester for all the other students.
Problem was there were students from freshman to graduate level in there, and the graduate students (as well as the prof) took keen pleasure in dismantling the more sophomoric efforts.
This poor lacrosse player signed up for the class thinking it would be a cakewalk. But when he gave his presentation, the professor and his grad students methodically led him down a deadend path with a series of questions over the course of an hour. Each question would lead to the next and the doofus kept answering with certainty even though he obviously had no clue. We just sat there and watched him get massacred, all the while realizing that we were woefully unprepared for our turn at the whipping post.
A good public drubbing is sometimes good for a young man.
Being witness to it was a good enough warning for me.
Some lessons can only be learned the hard way.
I got that a lot in AP Chemistry from my teacher whenever I presented.
I think I was his favorite punching bag.
Oh, Lawd, I feel like I’m dyin’
I look at where I am now, see that I am a happy person with a wonderful wife and son, and then I quickly put the feeling of having squandered my life back in the box. I may have come from a family that has some pretty serious achievements in it, but I also know about some of the issues behind those things, and where they have lead.
I am glad I took a page out of my grandfather’s book and said fuck it.
Oh, and almost forgot to say Excellent piece Ozy, as I have come to expect.
Thank you, zwak.
By the by, the grandfather I wrote about here on Glibs was the greatest man I’ve ever known. He was also the simplest. He wouldn’t understand 90% of our jokes or threads, words or memes, but he was still the most Godly man I’ve ever known who never spoke a word to me about religion or God. Go figure.
My IQ is 170, Mensa, but the older I get, and the more knowledge I obtain, the Less I know, it’s a big. overwhelming World and we can never know more than a small slice of it,
A life is only wasted if you choose to do so, Fuck that!
Great article Ozy! thank you for the inspiration!
/Raises glass
I want to say mine is 145, but that was a lot of psychoactive substances ago.
Same. They told me I would probably be a writer as my verbal skills and imagination were rocking along at that age.
LOL
Mine was a meager 125-130.
Fortunately, that kept me out of law school.
😉
You mean the place where all of the med students who couldn’t pass organic chem went?
?
My son was very unhappy he only got a B+ in organic chem; I told him to shut up, there were pre-med students who would kill for that grade.
The pre-meds at Hopkins would steal textbooks a couple of days before the final exam from people who could blow the curve in the required courses (namely engineers).
Killing was probably also on their list of tactics that they at least considered.
My oldest had that experience her freshman year. She wanted to be a veterinarian, and then she ran into the buzzsaw that was a, “keep up or fail” biology course given in a giant lecture hall. She ended up getting her BS in Nursing instead.
Fortunately, that kept me out of law school.
So you were smart enough to avoid it?
Some of my best friends are lawyers.
Yeow!
I don’t think I’ve taken one of those tests since college? I mean, according to it, I’m a smart guy, but hitched to my general laziness and lack of ambition, what does that matter?
I like to think I am on the right-hand side of the IQ bell curve but I have no idea how far, I was smart enough to get into a job in the Army where I got paid to think. I am done worrying about it now, I just want to sit on my patio and watch my palm trees grow.
“A frog in a well never knows the vast ocean.”
Thanks Ozy
I have sort-of fond memories of attempting to build a miniature wind chamber using smoke to illustrate turbulence around a plane wing for a science fair.
As per usual, my ideas exceeded my mechanical grasp and it turned into a massive clusterfuck of brass pipes and fans. I, of course, had the brilliant idea to try to use an incendiary in a can to produce the smoke (aka a smoke bomb). Someone stole one of my bombs and set it off in the boys’ bathroom, an act for which I received a long rant from the headmaster.
Now THAT is a great science fair story.
Hey, I built one and made that presentation in grade school! But I neglected to write any explanatory parts and so I failed. I mean, I knew what was going on just from looking at the damn thing, so why couldn’t the teacher…
Didn’t this ‘tard used to be a Reason staffer?
Really? Holy shit. No wonder that place collapsed.
What I can’t get my head around is how some people are surprised that Woke = Racist.
They’re just slowly coming to realize the above equality by the sheer public idiocy of these sub-literates.
how some people are surprised that Woke = Racist.
Because they’ve been taught that racists were all irredeemables filled with nothing but hate. They’re woke out of love and concern and thus couldn’t possibly be racist.
Free minds…
Sometimes there’s a reason they’re free.
You get what you pay for.
…and I have feelings.
Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
And speaking of the appropriate response to talk of feelings, KDW takes a full swing at this one and rips a screamer down the rightfield line.
I really hate the right doing anything like what the left does, even if we concede it works for the left. The ends do not justify the means.
CWAA
It’s really not possible to reach the end of a KDW article without him assholing in some way.
KDW can always be counted upon to fortify the received narrative.
Yes, we would never want the right to do something so essential to modern politics that the left has done, like win.
I don’t mind winning – I mind how the win happens. I don’t mind Biden winning if it was an honest win – that kind of thing is going to happen in any system where the people, the very fickle people, have a vote. I mind the way Biden DID win – because I don’t like questions about election integrity.
I’m not going to give Trump much benefit of the doubt. He sowed in ’16 what he reaped in ’20.
So, Trump sowed HRC screeching for four years how she had been robbed? Did he sow four years of the media lying? Did he sow the completely poisonous reaction from the bureaucracy?
He talked up the whole rigged election story – in the expectation he would lose to HRC. Do you seriously not remember all of that?
Maybe this will jog a memory.
He’s got a point. This illustrates the pernicious thing about post-modernism – it reduces everything, by everybody, to subjectivity. And does so by using words that used to mean objectivity, like “truth”. It would be accurate and unobjectionable to say “You’ve got your beliefs, I’ve got my beliefs”. And that leaves room for discussion. But no, the redefinition of “truth” as “belief” has, as Woods points out, permeated society as the rotten effluent from our higher education system crests higher and higher.
The current “my truth” formulation brooks no dissent, no disagreement. It hitches a ride on the old meaning of “truth” to make a person’s beliefs unassailable. I believe the election was rotten with security flaws that were exploited mainly by the Dems. Is that the “truth”? I don’t know. And the instant division of society into competing narratives of “truth” means there is no good way to find out, no real mechanism to engage in investigation, discussion, back-and-forth testing and refinement of ideas.
Yes. She was the web person not a writer as I recall.
I thought she was just an acquaintance/colleague of make-me-a-sammich girl. But I don’t pay that much attention.
Thanks for the article Ozy (I always start humming Crazy Train for some reason when I see your posts/comments). Very interesting read.
*Bass kick in*
I, I, I….
*more bass*
Speaking of which, PM, I may need a ruling from the non-hetero Glibs: does the fact that most of my memories of “Crazy Train” revolve around roller-skating to it make me gay or no? Or just honorary?
*hits vibra slap*
“Speaking of which, PM, I may need a ruling from the non-hetero Glibs”
HEY NOW! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPLY?!?!? MY HAND ONLY ACCIDENTALLY BRUSHED HIS ASS! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!
My memories of Crazy Train are considerably more smoky and hazy. Having grown up in the same era, I do remember the roller rink craze, but was too much of an introvert to participate much. But my recollection is all the cool kids went with lecherous intentions. So I think you’re mostly safe on the hetero issue. Not that non-hetero wouldn’t be safe or anything, I didn’t mean anything by it! Ah hell, nevermind.
Depends did you wear knee-high rainbow socks and short shorts with suspenders?
Somewhere in Illinois there is a 30-something woman who possesses a picture of me in a pineapple pizza t-shirt and blue snowpants with rainbow suspenders.
Well, there was the Mork and Mindy era. I’ll allow it.
Tight, tight silk-looking pants that presaged parachute pants by about a year.
Ahh, the era of NBA nut huggers and knee socks.
No, it makes you a child of the early eighties.
Predates sammich chick, if I remember. She left and did the social media/small boutique platform thing on libertine libertarianism, like sammich. And like sammich, wasn’t all that big on freedoms except on sex issues.
Aha. Fair enough.
How is it May 3, 2021 and this is the first time she’s seen The Boondocks?
She does have an OnlyFans though…
Worst only fans ever.
Because she lives in a house on the hill, that’s the side she was born in, and it doesn’t fit her society.
Yeah, I had to double-check the date and reassure myself it wasn’t fifteen years ago.
The first three seasons of the show was great. The R.Kelly and the Color Rukus episodes were two of my favorites.
She describes exactly the kind of discomfort a decent person would feel when somebody who is . . mentally slow . . . does something unintentionally funny.
Basically, she just indicated that she thinks black people are retarded.
Yes, she was a reason staffer. I’m not sure if she is still there.
She sent me a linkedin request once. I looked at it, and said, “How do I know you? I don’t.” I ignored it.
Ozy that was simply awesome. And so for that matter has been the commentary. This is what makes this place special.
Thank you so much, JI! But I agree – I come here for the comments. It’s why I noticed the exodus at Reason and eventually found out where all the cool kids had gone.
I love this place.
Insha’allah, I’ll keep contributing here for as long as TPTB and this community can stand it.
Good article.
Thanks. It was a fun stroll down memory lane writing it.
According to VAERS, 3410 Americans died after getting vaccinated against COVID. 95% of them were at least 47 years old. So, either the vaccines are deadly mostly to the old just like the virus or younger people haven’t had a chance to get vaccinated yet.
Let’s see…
*pulls out HP calculator and starts doing probabilities*
So, the vaccine’s adverse reaction rate is about the same as the disease’s fatality rate?
*rechecks calculator*
Oh, wait, no, I didn’t carry a zero. If you’re not as old as Methuselah or OMWC, then the vaccine is riskier to you than the actual disease.
Carry On, MORONS!
That article from the morning links talking about the spike protein causing trouble in arterial cells confirms the hell out of my biases.
I didn’t read it but your summary gave me pause. And another excuse to use at work.
I’ve been trying to parse out the following from that article (the actual journal article):
“This conclusion suggests that vaccination-generated antibody and/or exogenous antibody against S protein not only protects the host from SARS-CoV-2 infectivity but also inhibits S protein-imposed endothelial injury.”
Which seem to imply the authors claim that the vaccine protects against spike protein damage… which doesn’t seem to mesh with the rest of the paper. But I haven’t fully digested it yet. It may be that they are claiming the vaccine induced protection will limit spike protein damage if you get covid-19. i.e. a vaccinated person will have a mitigation of the endothelial damage IFF they actually get covid-19. So the vaccine would still cause ‘un-necessary’ spike protein damage relative to an unvaccinated person, but mitigate the damage if a vaccinated person gets covid-19 vs an unvaccinated person who gets covid-19.
I’ve been chewing on something I saw in a different article that stated that the full spike protein wasn’t what was being produced in reaction to the vaccines. That would explain why there may be a difference.
It’s probably the top half of the spike protein. The protein has two sections, one which attaches to the ACE receptors, and the other, below the furin cleavage site which opens the cell membrane for the virus to enter and start replication.
Now it may be that the top half merely bonds and causes less damage than the full protein which bonds and damages the cell membrane. But given that people dying from the vaccine almost uniformly die from clotting, it would suggest that the top half of the protein is doing something deleterious.
I thought we had failed to establish that the vaccine had a real correlation, let alone causation, of blood clots. That in fact it was a hysterical reaction to pause the J&J because of what had been reported to date.
The reality is that there are more reports of clots from the mRNA vaccines but the CDC has not said one word about it. I know of one such case personally.
The earliest people to get the vaccine were the “essential workers”. So lots of middle-aged, healthy people. Few deaths amongst these people were reported.
The next cohort to get vaccine were the weakest of the weak — seniors in nursing home. The reaction to the vaccine was enough to kill quite a few of those people. They were basically too week already to handle the fever and stress from the expected reaction to the vaccine.
And then the next cohort were the elderly 65+ with comorbidities. I don’t recall there being a lot of deaths reported in this cohort.
Finally the vaccine was provide to most people. There were then deaths from unexpected reactions like the blood clotting.
At this point, the people who have been vaccinated will skew towards older people or people with comorbidities. And we are talking 3500 out of 40M to 50M people.
Oh, I get all of that, Mr. Winner of Life. ?
I’m just riffing off of the fact that the vaccine carries roughly the same risk as the disease it’s supposed to be protecting against.
And those 3500 people represent only the ones that had someone who went to VAERS to fill that out. Vaccine adverse reactions are always massively under-reported.
Then there’s that whole Nuremburg Code that requires the informed consent of subjects…?
*Sigh*
I just get depressed because (1) practicing public health on individuals is on a par with war crimes (at least); and (2) it’s possible only when you have an innumerate and illiterate population, which we do.
So every time I see something about the vaccines I weep a little more inside. But consider who’s speaking – a guy who spent a big chunk of his life fighting against forced vaccinations of the military… and who saw the govt’s plan for vaccinating the public 20 years ago.
Mr. Winner of Life.
I will admit, there was a lot of drama getting to what finally appears to be a clear win. It was not always certain.
But I am happy to be here now.
3410 Americans died after getting vaccinated against COVID
the people who have been vaccinated will skew towards older people or people with comorbidities
It doesn’t say they died of vax side effects, just that they died after getting the jab. I’m willing to bet that a non-zero number would have died anyway.
Yeah, what they actually died of is key. Considering millions got it and they tend to be older this could just be typical numbers of people kicking the bucket.
So… you’re saying they were killed due to the DC Insurgency riots?
I have been watching for news reports of deaths resulting from the vaccine since the beginning. So that was my summary of what I have seen.
The two big questions are 1) how many people died because of the vaccine and 2) how many people died of covid after they were vaccinated.
For the first question, the vaccine killed a bunch of seniors in nursing homes. These people had one foot in the grave and the totally expected reaction to the vaccine put them over the edge. The rest of the deaths due to the vaccine appear to be allergic reaction and/or blood clotting. Once they got up to about 50M vaccines with only a few thousand deaths, I decided it was OK to get the shot.
As for the second question, the powers that be seem to be withholding that information. So I expect it runs against the narrative that the vaccine is “100%” effective at preventing death from covid.
At any rate, there is very, very little useful information in the public domain to determine how good or bad this vaccine is.
I would not recommend any young or middle-aged person of reasonably good health to take it.
I would not recommend any young or middle-aged person of reasonably good health to take it.
This is where I have landed on it. Encouraged my parents to get it but drew a hardline for myself and the kids.
There hasn’t been nearly enough time to determine the long-term risks of the vaccine. None of the prior benchtop work done is worth anything in determining long term risks. Vioxx killed the equivalent of two fully loaded jumbo jets crashing into the ground every week and it took years to realize that was happening. And that was with intense FDA scrutiny instead of essentially the blanket FDA approval and peer review interference being run for the Covid vax.
At any rate, there is very, very little useful information in the public domain to determine how good or bad this vaccine is.
This is it. I can’t make a fucking decision with the clown show that we call public health.
So for now my decision is no.
So I expect it runs against the narrative that the vaccine is “100%” effective at preventing death from covid.
The actual clinical trials say the vaccines are, at best, 95% effective in preventing death. That’s what the “vaccine effectiveness” numbers mean – by the time we got to 100 ‘Vid deaths in our control group, we had only five in the vaccinated group.
I have read many times in the “popular media” that we should all get the vaccine because you may still get COVID, but it is “100% effective at preventing death from COVID”.
As with the late, great Richard Nixon, when they are talking about of both sides of their mouths, they are lying out of both sides of their mouths.
Cases, not deaths.
I was going by memory. I thought it was deaths, but a quick Bing shows its cases. Huh.
Is it 95% effective on death? I think the relative risk reduction is 95% (absolute of ~1+%) for getting the disease, but haven’t seen the numbers on actual death in the trials (though admittedly haven’t looked too hard). Given the small numbers of patients that actually got covid-19 in both arms though, I’d be surprised if there was enough deaths in the trials to derive statistically significant death numbers.
Here’s the data:
https://www.fda.gov/media/146217/download
7 deaths out of 20,000 cases in the Placebo arm.
0 deaths out of 20,000 cases in the Vaccine arm.
Statistical difference for the sample, but no meaningful difference at the individual level.
Only 8 people out of 20,000 unvaccinated people required Covid-related medical intervention.
Reply to Semi-Spartan; I guess after some nesting level, I don’t get a reply button anymore!
That doesn’t seem to be statistically significant though given the number of infections in each arm. If we take the death rate implied by the numbers in the placebo arm and assume that’s the background rate of covid-19 deaths given infection, then one would expect 0 deaths in the vaccine arm given the case rate. So there’s a statistically significant reduction in cases, but insufficient data to infer any reduction in death rate given the overall small numbers of infections and deaths in both arms.
Great article Ozy!
For some reason I thought you were older than I, but I can confirm that haircut was on point at the time 🙂
You’re like a more accomplished version of me (braggart, with your 28″ inseam); so much of what you wrote resonates, albeit on a smaller scale.
Glad you like it, sb. I’m pretty sure my older sister helped me learn how to “feathah my heah.”
My hair was more of a standard issue hair helmet, but my older brother had his nicely feathered.
I really should scan in some old photos next time I’m down at my mom’s and share them with my nieces and nephews.
Do it. We have a bunch of old photo albums and my kids and their friends absolutely loved to see the pics of me and Mrs. T in the 80’s.
…I can’t hold it in any longer:
This far in and not a single comment on my article title “Trinity Edition” ref of Seaborg and Los Alamos.
I AM DISAPPOINT, GLIBS!
Not a single pun or riff on it.
*nukes Ozy*
/joke from yesterday’s morning thread
Yeah, TNT’s rant justified the nuclear option.
Didn’t want to get caught tickling the dragon’s tail.
I’m just your average fat man, I don’t understand all these fancy references.
I was a thin man but it failed to get a reaction out of me.
*psst, OBJ. The other bomb was “Little Boy”.
The competing program was called ‘thin man’ instead of implosion it used a cannon or some sort of linear ignition, if memory serves, to create the fissile reaction. It failed or at least was inferior enough to not be chosen as the final design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_(nuclear_bomb)
Everything’s coming up Hammett today!
We’re going to reach critical mass here if we’re not careful.
I think everyone here is prone to messing with the demon core once in a while.
Dang it, my lights went out I may have to change the fuse son of a…
Confirmed. Glibs is home to Arianists.
Ha, as if that was the only heterodox belief around here.
You misspelled autists.
I have no earthly idea what that means.
https://www.lanl.gov/trinity/
Ah, gotcha.
Another Trinity.
Trinity?
I remember playing that game. I didn’t get far with it.
Trinity
Oh yeah. I definitely had a crush on her for a bit.
Well I noticed it. Just didn’t de-lurk to say it.
Good job, by the way. I can’t tell you the number of times I showed up in similar (but not nearly-as-prestigious context) circumstances, with a project or something that was utterly out-of-scale with everybody else’s, and wondered “how did everybody except me know this was what the expectation was?” And then “why on earth did the organizers let me in?”
The Groucho Marx line always pops into my head.
Huh, didn’t even think of it as puny. Just seemed perfectly au naturel…
What was done there… ?
I might have, but I could only think of the one.
I like the story.
So maybe I hadn’t been such a fraud after all in the Great Man’s office
Yep, you’re not a fraud at all. You’ve done well in your life.
My 17-year-old wiseass self felt very differently at that moment sitting in front of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
And when he opened with a question about what elements were involved inside the core of a sun, and what reactions were going on, I felt as exposed as I ever have intellectually. It was just… I don’t know how to describe it properly. I was there thinking I was hot shit and then ran into – well, everyone I ran into was smarter than I, but Seaborg in particular… was someone who helped build out the periodic table.
Then he started with the most basic questions and I was utterly clueless. Naked on a desert island of stupidity, surrounded by an ocean of knowledge.
I would have been horrible in that situation even if I had known the answers.
When I was 17 or 18 I was interviewed for a small scholarship sponsored by a group whose goal, among other things, is to “educate the public about matters of interest to American citizens of German descent and their families”.
Among all the platitudes I managed to get out, I neglected to mention that I had just returned from a year spent in Germany as an exchange student. I got a small chunk of change but I didn’t win the big prize.
My mom was like “why didn’t you talk about that?” — “I dunno.”
yeah, there are those moments when your mouth opens, nothing comes out, and then the brain vapor-locks, and now the panic begins.
When that has happened to me, I always have the thought, “this is what a cornered animal feels like.”
That describes almost the entirety of my adolescent life. And early adulthood.
Let’s call it “any time before 30 years old or so”.
A natural salesman I am not.
It is painful to watch that happen too. On the NCO promotion boards that I sat on at least one kid, usually going for Buck Sergeant, would just completely freeze. It was pretty awful to watch, like listening to a transmission that just keeps revving up but never goes into gear, uncomfortable.
Been there man. It sucks.
I was the unprepared victim of a Soviet engineering professor who decided to take me to task on quantum effects in semiconductors in the middle of class.
It’s the height of intellectual bullying, really; worse (to my mind) then just getting a physical beating.
My moment with Seaborg wasn’t that, though. He was genuinely kind, just asking questions.
…But my level of ignorance was truly like an ocean between us. He was a good man.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is a great goddamn political ad.
What a world!
May you live in interesting times.
Damn. Nice.
It’s took me a while to guess who was narrating it, LOL. (I’ve never heard xer speak before.)
I was trying to figure out which “old man” was pitching into to help with the ad.
Makeup only gets you so far.
Pretty bare-knuckled. I like.
I’d forge a few thousand votes for that campaign.
/just kidding, preet
*preet looks up and hides a stack of ballots premarked for Biden behind his back*
I actually have no idea if the guy is partisan or just a garden variety sociopathic megalomaniac
You only say that because you don’t live in CA.
Least-worst is a valid voting strategy.
That was pretty impressive. Hit all the right notes.
Ahhnald won so, it is possible. Especially with as many candidates as there are. I just wish the late Gary Coleman could run again.
I just wish the late Gary Coleman could run again.
As I said about Jenner, Californians can and probably will do worse.
I have his tag line in my head, “What chu talkin’ about Gavin?” *Looks around the room expectantly… only hears crickets*
Top YouTube comment: “Takes balls to do this. Go on Caitlin”
(It is a bit incongruous to see that voice coming out of that person!)