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by Joseph Stanovsky
2012 by J S PETITFOGGER A visit to a bookstore or library can act on your mind like a carpenters plane does cutting thin strips from a burled plank of wood. But the smoothing attributes of books only work if you buy or borrow a book, and you read it from beginning to end, and then only if you read the words the way the author meant them, and not what you think they mean. You should choose and read good stuff. Reading books that you agree with is of little or no value. If you think your life or ideas resemble that of a character in a book choose something else to read. Elmer Gantry is a book worth reading. Try it. But if you think you dont have the time it takes to read a Sinclair Lewis book, there are many wonderful short stories too, by a variety of authors. Consider O. Henrys stories. If not O. Henry, then read the five or six stirring and informative pages written by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) in his salute to Voltaire on the centenary of Voltaires death. A reader ought not miss the Tales from the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375). That book has gone missing from many libraries but copies are available from booksellers at modest prices. The Decameron contains many short stories, each exquisitely told, and many end sweetly. One story about the Count of Antwerp tells of his struggles as a beggar after he was stripped of his wealth and how he was later restored to his estates after it was proven he had been falsely accused. You might find a story or two about the clergy, some flattering and some not, but there is no harm to anyone if you read them. If you have a list of books to read, good on you. But if you answer you have no list and no books you want to read, there is little or no help for you. You are not trying to help yourself. If you are between 18 and 25 years age and you havent read a book in the previous four years, you have little or no academic future. You gave it up! HEY YOU! This article is not addressed to individuals who are happy with their preparation, work, hobby, or occupation. But it is addressed those who are unhappy and who might ask what differences can be discovered between musicians and scientists, artists and actors, engineers and mathematicians, and if there are gender differences between men and women and differences by age? Why is it that few high school pupils attempt analytic geometry or calculus, while most seem interested only in the minimum course requirements. One must also wonder why high schools even offer alternative courses (to make the very ordinary shine). If you choose courses that are the minimum for graduation, your choice is irreversible. It excludes you from all future academic opportunities (Erik Hofer was a self taught San Francisco writer and thus an extra ordinary individual). A good reader can be a radio announcer, but a poor reader can not, even if he or she has a great, burning desire to become a radio announcer. A scientist can be a musician, but not the other way around. Two musicians come to mind, both scientists. First is the Russian pianist, composer and chemist Aleksandr Porfirevich Borodin (1833-1887) and second is American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) a teacher, researcher, musician and winner of a 1965 Physics Nobel Prize (quantum electrodynamics) along with Julian Schwinger and Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga. Obviously, a scientist can be a musician. An imaginative person can be a scientist or an artist, but an imaginative artist can only rarely be a scientist. -1-

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It is unlikely you can learn biology, chemistry or physics without good reading skills, even if you are taught to perform experiments using the so called hands-on method. The first time you perform an experiment occurs when you read about it. A second reading usually occurs as you perform the experiment in a laboratory. The phrase hands-on is just a buzz word with little meaning (very probably none). If you have avoided classes in mathematics in junior high or high school, you have created the conditions for which you can never succeed as a student in a significant and ideologically inert college. If you dont prepare, you cant be anything you want to be! Only work works, dreams dont. You can never say that you were not taught. Teachers, at all levels, in all of the schools you have ever attended, in any country, in any state or city you have ever lived in have all faithfully tried to teach you. If you have not learned it is because you arent interested, lazy, or possibly you are unwilling or unable to learn. Your mantra as you exit high school with a minimal education should be: I gave up on biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. I do not and can not blame my teachers. An employers mantra to a minimumers interview for employment: GO AWAY! RIDING HORNS OF AN OXYMORON It is unfortunate and sad that some well intentioned theists meddle with what is taught in school and how important ideas are presented. If, for example, a teacher tells you about an event that took place near the site of a two billion year old rock, one happy meddler might become abrasive and bellicose. He or she may miss a flaw in a teachers story, but will find a problem with the age of the rock (it cant be that old!). Theists may whine and wimper about religious details (dogma) like a soldier might after having been run through by a pike (` a partir de la barbe a ` la queue). What theists crave is not precisely known or if known by some these items may not be acceptable to normal people. What is theistically desired seems to lead back to the dark ages, to a time of shared ignorance, a life without the influence of Charles Darwin, and an Earth that takes its form and shape on 21 October 4004 B.C.E. The Christian Mundane Era was devised in 1647 by John Lightfoot (1602- 1675) who used the old testament generations of the begats to go backwards at about the time of Cromwells invasion into Ireland (1650). Lightfoots idea was promoted by Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) of Armagh, Ireland. Today, Ussher is better known for promoting the Mundane era than is Lightfoot. It would be interesting to know if Ussher credited Lightfoots contribution, or if Ussher simply plagiarized Lightfoot? The list of generations Lightfoot used is not part of nor of interest to most religions or philosophies, or even to a simple majority of the people on Earth. It is likely that Ussher and Lightfoot were serious about the chronology, in the same way theists are today, but a writers enthusiasm will not free a document of errors when misused. Consider these impediments to any scientific inquiry into Lightfoots chronology: (1) there is no accepted estimate for the time it takes one generation to begat the next, (2) nor is it known if only one time interval should apply to all generations (consider tree rings for example, they vary in thickness), (3) Lightfoots calculations have not been checked or confirmed, and (4) it is most unlikely that a scientist could be found who could or would be willing to review the calculations, and finally (5) there are no corroborative sources for the list of generations. Not one impediment, but five and probably many, many more. The common source of Lightfoots begats is the Torah. Unfortunately, the stories in the Torah are not in the same order as in the Old Testament, and chapter names are not always the same. Setting aside this problem, the stories in Genesis (a Greek word) are similar to those in the Old Testament. What is so sad is that if the twenty-two lines

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had never been written, or at the least not interpreted as fact, there would be no reason for creation science to exist. Creation science is an oxymoron. The ideas expressed in those twenty-two lines of poetry exist no where else. Lightfoots ideas still sting, and hurt both young and old. Words should be used with love and kindness. That isnt always the case. For a modern example, read on.
A MISADVENTURE CAUSED BY THE CHRISTIAN MUNDANE ERA Many years have passed since a seventh grader was expelled from a sunday school class taught by Mrs. Red. His dismissal begins almost immediately after Mrs. Red declares there is no Earth (or moon) before 4004 b.c.e. After that was said this seventh grade boy smiles, laughs and giggles. Mrs. Red asks the seventh grader what are you smirking about? The boy politely replies that he had a million year old rock at home. As soon as he finishes speaking Mrs. Red sends him out of the class. Where? Just out. Unfortunately, this dismissal lasted for more than six months because the Methodist church Elder (Preacher) would not allow resolution or mediation until the boy accepts the mundane era as fact and apologizes to Red (unlikely). During a preliminary investigation it was revealed that the rock was not a million years old, that it was from the St. Francis Mountains of Missouri (south of St Louis near the Mississippi River). The rock the seventh grader had at home had been dated as 4.2 billion years old. When this became known the boy shouts victoriously; a million or a billion, whats the difference? How long must lies that hurt, or myths and untruths go on, and on? And hurt.

Even a Hostile reader of criticism of Genesis must agree that there are two creation stories. In one story plants and animals are created before man and woman. In the second story, man comes first (probably a delight to some men), and after man come the plants and animals, and finally at the very end a woman. If the two creation stories are installed as written and taught as science (truth), one of the two versions must be wrong because story details conflict. Since it is not possible to know which of the two stories is wrong, it is likely that both statements are flawed. In addition to double stories in which both stories cannot be true, there is one place where the information presented is completely wrong and mathematically useless. It is in the story of the ratio of the circumference of a cauldron to its diameter; = 3. The Babylonians used 3+1/8 = 3.125 before 2000 b.c.e. By the 6th century i.c.e. the Chinese used the fraction 355/113 =3.14159 (thus {(355/113)}= 2.667 107) . Today, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is defined by the Greek letter (a symbol suggested by Paul Leonhard Euler). Archimedes invented a rational method for calculating the irrational and trancendental number . Mathematicians in the East (China, Japan and Korea) may have a solution too but if they have one its existence is unknown in the West ( = 3.14159 26535 89793 ..... & etc... etc... ). Jean Astruc (1684-1766)[1], physician to Louis XV and founder of Old Testament criticism was first to suggest that the writer of the Pentateuch had two sources. Modern scholars have since argued that instead of two sources the Pentateuch was compiled from four sources and was not written by Moses. Some traditionalists might be startled by the fact that Moses was not the author of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch was written after the death of Moses because it describes the death of Moses. It may be of interest to read the story of Gilgamesh and compare it to the Moses story. Because the pentateuch is a religious document, its value will surely diminish if it is used as a history or as a theory in science because similar events are described more than once, usually with significant differences. Often contradictions occur within a story in such a way as to point to more than one source or to a previous record. There are other duplicate stories in the Pentateuch, and just as argued before, if one is true the other can not be. In the stories of the flood, for example, the text says in one place that one pair of each kind of animal is to be put into the ark, but in another place it is seven pairs of clean beast and one pair of unclean beasts. -3-

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The duration of the flood is also in doubt; in one place in the text it lasts one year, but in another place it is forty days (not plus forty nights) plus three seven day intervals for a total of sixty-one days. Over the years there must have been many readers who had difficulty reading about the flood, the size of the ark, and the number of animals, both clean and unclean beasts. The doubts of an early explorer might be typical of those who had difficulty in putting so many snakes, birds and animals into an ark. Amerigo Vespucci [2], the first to sail south to the Rio de la Plata, writing after his second voyage to the New World says: What should I tell of the multitude of wild animals, the abundance of pumas, of panthers, of wild cats, not like those of Spain, but of antipodes (exact opposites); of so many wolves, red deer, monkeys, and felines, marmosets of many kinds, and many large snakes? We saw so many other animals that I believe so many species could not have entered Noahs ark. We saw many wild hogs, wild goats, stags and does, hares, and rabbits, but of our domestic animals, not one. Vespucci continued with a description of the naked people he encountered; some of what he says is a wonderment about religious doctrine that parallels his doubts about the ark, the number of animals, and its size. Having no laws and no religious faith, they live according to nature. They understand nothing of the immortality of the soul. There is no possession of private property among them, for everything is in common. They have no boundaries of kingdom or province, have no king, nor do they obey anyone. Each one is his own master. South, Central and North America takes its name after a small spelling change of Vespuccis first name --- Amerigo. In order to conserve its function as a religious document, and to preserve the poetic images in the Pentateuch, it is necessary that that material not be used in history or in science. If a clement reader can understand why this is so, perhaps a happy meddler will also understand. If the creation stories are excluded from the teaching of science, then there is no reason to construct creation science (which is an oxymoron). With creation science eliminated there would be no contentious arguments between pupils, theists or citizens. If, on the other hand, theists continue to disagree with how science is taught, and will not read Andersons book [3], or one like it, then prudent citizens ought to separate from the happy meddler?. A prudent citizen can do this by sweetly paraphrasing what Orlando says to Jacque in Shakespeares As You Like it: We prudent citizens desire the happy meddler be to us as a perfect stranger! MARTIAL ARTS This essay is about breaking boards in public demonstrations. Persons skilled in the martial arts often break small boards using their hand and arm. Breaking a board is a dramatic event. The boards are made of wood with wide, parallel growth rings that are perpendicular to the support structure. The growth rings are oriented in such a way that many possible fracture surfaces exist.
Plan view THE break board view

Force

Force

All No break boards A break board Two wood cell arrangements are shown above for a no break and a break board.

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The difference is just a 90 rotation. The plan view of a No break board is a plan view of The Break board cells rotated 90. Martial artist can break boards but not if their demonstration boards are rotated 90. Martial artists can break boards, but only if setups are rigged to their advantage. The No break board uses multiple high strength growth rings. The stress at failure is much lower in the fast growing wood cells (the open spaces of the break board) than it is in the growth rings. NEW RULES FOR BASEBALL Playing the game is best. Watching it must then be second best, or without rank for many. Watching children play is great fun, fun for the children and happy and pleasant times for parents and for old folks too. When watching adults play baseball you have to pay an admission fee. This, by itself is not bad provided the entrance fee is low and you can bring your own food, candy, drink, and other refreshments. There is another feature peculiar to a baseball game; the game is unusually slow, and for long periods of time it is not interesting to most visitors (women and children). The uninteresting part of a game is occasionally interrupted by shouts of excitement, but this doesnt last long. Shouting usually occurs after something (?) happens. The fixed features of baseball are shown in Fig. 1. The start line in plan (a) marks the place where a pitcher begins his throw to a batter. This view shows home plate, the pitchers mound and a typical trajectory for a thrown ball. Note, the path of a ball is thrown slightly diagonally. The elevation in (b) shows two paths of a ball; one marked S and the other F. Much of what is shown is advantageous to a pitcher.

Boundary of mound Start line b a

x
P

Home plate

v*

Release point

z
L

(a) y P s
r h a S F Q f

x
L

(b)
Figure 1: The plan view of the pitching mound is shown in (a) together with home plate and shows the trajectory of a ball thrown by pitcher to catcher. The elevation in (b) shows the mound raised h inches above a level playing field (not a standard measurement), and trajectory of two differently pitched balls; the slow ball is (S) and the fast ball pitch is (F).

BASEBALL IS A GAME Here is a plan intended to make the watching of a game more interesting. It helps a -5-

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batter and will hopefully produce action, two events that may turn an ordinary baseball game into a watchers game. Figure 2 describes the necessary changes and details of how this new game is played. Is it a game or a business? Either way it should be interesting, inexpensive to attend and fun to watch! I watch Little League games, but I have only attended one major league game (San Francisco Giants at the Houston Colts). I wouldnt attend a major league game today if an owner offered to drive me to a game in a limousine. For the record, I dont watch any televised baseball games. Eventually, only a few will watch televised baseball games and those that do probably wont satisfy advertisers wants.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. A typical baseball diamond (a) with the pitchers rubber (start line) at the center of the pitchers mound. Both the diameter of the mound and the height of the mound vary from venue to venue. In (b), two stop lines are shown, lines that a pitcher can not advance beyond, with the distance from home plate to the stop line the same as the distance from home plate to the start line currently in use. The new game requires all of this plus a level playing field (no raised mounds). At any time during the game a batter can direct the pitcher to the second location. It is hoped that a baseball game with these features will be more interesting. Note that a batter can clearly see the pitching lane and doesnt have to look up at a pitcher on a mound. Hopefully there will be less visible aggression by a pitcher towards a batter. It is ... just a game!

THOMAS SUTHERLAND Tom was a remarkable professor of English and my good friend. Tom graduated from a Mexican University so he was as proficient in reading and writing Spanish as in English. At lunch one day he said that chinaco and chicano are related or have the same meaning. The second word (chicano) is a metasthesis of the first. REFERENCES 1. J. Astruc: Conjectures sur les m emoires originols dont il parois que Moysi sest servil pour composer le livre de la Gen` ese (Conjectures on the original Memoirs Used by Moses in Composing the Book of the Pentateuch), 1753. 2. A. Vespucci: Amerigo Vespucci Reports on South America, The Faber Book of Reportage, January-February 1502, Great Britain. A more recent version is in Eyewitness to History, Edited by John Care, Avon Books, a division of Hearst Corp., 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y., 10019, June 1990. 3. G.W. Anderson: A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament, G. Duckworth & Co., 3 Henrietta Street, London, W.C.2, 1959, pps. 10-56.

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BLACKBERRY JAM [Lagniappe] In the days before the Wars, homemakers and cooks made home made jams with the seeds of fruit strained out. Today, some black berry jams are marketed as home made, a phrase with little or no meaning. Commercial products marked home made means the seeds are likely not strained out. DANTES AGES OF MAN [Lagniappe] Dante got at least one thing right. He says that adolescence begins at birth and ends at age 25. Maturity starts at age 25 and ends at 50. The age of wisdom begins at 50, and continues until death. THE TACOMA NARROWS SUSPENSION BRIDGE [Lagniappe] This suspension bridge had motion problems very early on. This bridge collapsed, and thus it is often described as an engineering failure. It was not. The failure was caused by the County or State organization that authorized and supervised the building of this bridge. The budget was established by this organization, but it was too little to build a bridge with novel features (they likely meddled in the design process too). If the design engineers had been free to design the bridge and then determine how much money would be necessary, the bridge would not have failed. Provided, of course, that the organization authorized the money required and stayed out of the design process. The great depression probably chilled any comments the engineers may have wanted to present to the organization. The engineers produced a remarkable structure, especially when compared to the small budget allocated. THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO OAKLAND [Lagniappe] Because of the span, two suspension bridges were required. Originally, the designers of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge considered two suspension spans in series. However, the calculations showed that when the two connected spans were loaded to produce maximum deflection, one span would deflect more than 100 feet. This extremely large deflection was eliminated by making the two suspension spans independent. Next time you visit San Francisco, or view a photograph of the bridge, notice the hugh plinth that separates and isolates the two suspension spans. It is this massive concrete abutment that makes the two suspension bridges independent of each other. THE WORST IDEA EVER CONCEIVED [Lagniappe] At the end of the Civil War, General Grant was elected President of the United States, and General Lee became President of Washington College (later renamed Washington and Lee, a change that linked general Washington and General Lee). Neither was hanged nor was Lee charged with Treason. A similar result occurred 60 years later, at the end of the battle at Waterloo. No one was hanged, or charged with Treason. Napoleons brothers arranged to move house for themselves and their wealth to a small town in New Jersey on the south bank of the Trenton River. Before departing France the brothers invited Napoleon to travel with them. Napoleon (1764-1821) declined their offer. Napoleon was in a prison (1815-1821) on a small British island in the south Atlantic where few ships call. After his death, Napoleon was buried at Saint Helena. In 1840 Napoleons body was returned to Paris aboard the Belle-Poule and there interred into a carved, red stone sarcophagus. Napoleons burial cript is now prominently displayed in the great hall of Les Invalides. Horse Marengo is on display there too. No generals or politicians were hanged at the end of the war between Great Britain and Germany (1914-1918). However, after that political war attitudes changed. Soon a second war erupted. At its end (1945), all losing politicians and losing military officers were charged with war crimes, the worst idea ever invented. The second worst idea was the unconditional surrender. The losers were arraigned and tried in a court in Nueremberg Germany, a court that had no jurisdiction (except that set down by war winners flexing their power together with an arbitrary rule that denied the losers any reasonable pleas). Ordinarily, no plea is required (a war should just end), but since the trial was for winners, losers were not even permitted to plea a common fact of war: "we were ordered to do all you accuse us of." It is known that soldiers on both sides of any conflict are ordered to do what they do, and every soldier knows that by refusing an order a soldier is killed, without a courts martial. A War Crime attitude says all losers of a war must either be killed in battle or be killed in a trial for not disobeying orders (revenge intended). In either case, the losing participants in a war are dead even though most public and personal records clearly show that both sides behaved brutishly. Soldiers win or lose wars, lawyers neither contribute to a win or mediate a loss.