(whispers to flight attendant): "I don't want to upset anyone, but I think the man in 15C is modeling credit default swaps".
— matt blaze (@mattblaze) May 7, 2016
Catherine Rampell, at the Washington Post, salutes this week’s True Amurkin Terrorized, massively delaying her flight for gut-wrenching fear of… MATH:
… On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.
Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought.
The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance” – but something about him didn’t seem right to her…
… The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.
That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.
The curly-haired man laughed.
He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.
Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact…
Deadbeat Donald Trump salutes you, Flip-Flopped Blond Woman. Math — it’s a terrorist tool!
***********
Apart from the many & various Tools available, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the weekend?
JMG
People wearing flip-flops in an airport shouldn’t be allowed on planes. Unless they’re on the beach, strike the last two words of the first sentence. Find this loser, which should be easy to do, and put her on the no-fly list.
WaterGirl
The mind boggles.
NotMax
Beware algebra.
Little Miss Nosy Parker deserves to be sued.
redshirt
Math is hard.
dedc79
Highly Suspicious indeed.
NotMax
@JMG
Standard everyday footwear throughout Hawaii.
Slippahs, locally.
MattF
@NotMax: And algorithms.
aimai
Oh fuck her. I mean FFS. That’s all I’ve got.
A Ghost To Most
He wuz using Arabic numerals, ociffer.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: *Obviously* one of these dreaded Al Gebrans we’ve been hearing so much about!
(*clunk* as head hits desk).
Major Major Major Major
What does an economist do when he sees a hundred dollar bill on the ground?
LAO
I really hate us Americans. So stupid and so scared, a terrible combination.
Major Major Major Major
@MattF: Maybe she’d been drinking alcohol.
JMG
@NotMax: Hawaii is entitled to call itself all beach.
Misterpuff
The equation was E = mc squared, so obviously a weapon of mass destruction…….
Math Destruction.
Germy
If you say something, see something.
LAO
I’d don’t know what it says about me, but the mobile ad on the site is the NY Department of health “I have syphillis” ad. I feel like the universe maybe sending me a message.
Baud
He said d/dt, not TNT.
Miss Bianca
@LAO: Speaking of scared, if not stupid – or perhaps “scared stupid” – Season two of “The Fall”, aaagh! Those first two episodes are amazing!
LAO
@Germy: lol. I has part of a criminal trial, where the detective in charge of the case was part of the “see something, say something unit” of the nypd. During cross-examination, he was asked if anyone saw anything? Answer, No. Or said anything? Answer, No. It was super funny.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: enjoy the ride. It’s disturbing.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is pathology. It’s funny as hell, but it’s also pathology.
#BothSidesDuit
The Republicans ran McCain and Sarah Palin in the 2008 Presidential election and lost. The Democrats however ran a candidate in the 2008 Presidential election also. So both sides do it.
scav
@Misterpuff: E = mc squared?! Worser and worser! Clearly demonstrates a tie between that BLM Hippity Hop Music, their relationship to equality and power, especially as wielded against those they deem squares, that is to say, real (white) ‘merkans!
MikeBoyScout
Fear coupled with ignorance is a dangerous combination.
Help break the cycle. Register folks to vote this November.
If we all do our small bit we’ll make the change you believe in.
Yes.We.Can.
sinnedbackwards
Semi-on-topic, dudes and dudettes when unlimitedcorporatecashrigttofailwhateveritistoday chimes in, IGNORE it.
You starve the troll by not responding, capisce?
(And if I’ve missed his shift, remember for the next one.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
i guess it’s a fool’s errand to even ask what the hell Fournier is talkign about, but does he mean, when the American people realize their own pull? then they’ll embrace the Jim vande HEi scheme for normal Americans?
schrodinger's cat
Were the differential equations, partial?
NotMax
@JMG
We’ve got nearly every ecosystem of the planet except Arctic here. Closest to that in Hawaii is sub-arctic. Yes, there are even desert areas in Hawaii.
Trivia: No footwear is required for public school students until 6th grade.
gf120581
@Bill E Pilgrim: Like many on the right, Fournier is having something of a slow motion breakdown over Trump’s ascension.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: He was practicing Economics on an airplane, isn’t that enough a reason to toss him? (Looks at diploma on the wall…I think I might have a problem flying.)
Yutsano
OT: I’ll take things that will shock no one for $2000 Alex
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Best I could guess/translate would be that Fournier subscribes to the myth that Trump as nominee represents “the people” just rising up out of nowhere and telling the GOP that they want Trump, having nothing at all to do with the fact that the GOP has been feeding them racism and Southern strategy and barely encoded dog whistles for decades, including making Sarah Palin, at least as loopy and bigoted as Trump, their official VP nominee eight years ago, all of which led in a straight line to Trump.
So if it just hit them like a ton of bricks out of nowhere, through no doing of their own, in his mind, then heck, could happen to the Democratic Party any moment also.
Best guess, as I say, who the hell knows really.
Kathleen
I heard about this on National RePublicAn Radio this evening. After the passenger reported her concern, departure was delayed because the pilot took the plane back to the terminal. The passenger in question said he was modeling scenarios to determine at what point decisions should be made based on availability of facts and evidence. His response to the incident was that security processes needed to change because the pilot’s decision to turn back was made before said pilot had facts and evidence.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Last time that happened, the economy blew up.
henqiguai
@Yutsano (#32):
Did I miss something in that CBS story? ‘Cause it seems to be dated 2014.
Mnemosyne
I think I went on a coffee date with that guy years ago — I made a trip to the ladies room and came back to find him doodling equations. There wasn’t enough chemistry, though, so we never made a second date. He was a physics grad student at UCLA.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Well of course there wasn’t enough chemistry, he was a physicist, for God’s sake! (don’t throw anything at me!)
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Small world! Too funny.
Mnemosyne
@Germy:
We have a “See something? Say something!” policy at my job, but it’s more about theft than terrorism since it’s not unheard of for people to sneak into various offices to steal laptops and other equipment.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Did you throw your drink in his face? He totally deserved it IMO.
BTW I have solved the Math GRE for fun on a flight to SF from Hartford. I can’t read on a plane, too noisy.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Sorry, I forgot to say my tongue was slightly in cheek — it was not actually the same guy. But the equation doodling reminded me of that long-ago coffee date.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: Especially, physical chemistry. As physics major that’s the only kind of chemistry I like.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
What else was he supposed to do while I was in the bathroom? It was pre-iPhone days.
It was also pre-9/11, so a brown guy doodling math was not quite as threatening.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Also the reason I say it was so funny in this particular case is that Fournier has spent years claiming that whatever extremist, nutzoid thing Republicans did, Democrats did the same thing in mirror image, e.g. the GOP has been taken over by right-wing extremists, but well the Democrats have been taken over by left -wing extremists like Obama, or whatever it was.
In this case, clearly only one of the parties is actually cracking up, so he resorts to “Both sides will do it!”.
It reminds me of a chapter in the Red Dwarf books where you could get convicted of crimes you were going to commit in the future.
Hey, he evolves as needed.
Ryan
jesus, can’t wait for the olds to die off with stories like this. Although I suspect I’m older than the woman wearing “flip flops” (and yes, those are air quotes).
sharl
I’ve been occasionally ranting on twitter about the problems with the dangerously ambiguous, ill-defined “If you see something, say something” slogan. This came up in LibyaLiberty’s twitter feed yesterday as well, where she posted a DHS link which actually tries to address the criteria that should be applied when acting on this slogan. The recommendations are less than satisfactory, but points given for effort, and pity offered to the DHS staffers who were tossed a bag of dogshit and told to hammer and mold it into something coherent and actionable.
I don’t watch TV or cable; has this DHS website gotten any advertising attention? Hend’s tweet was the first I’d seen of it on Twitter.
There will be many more incidents like this, not to mention local incidents, e.g., darkly hued guy getting a flat tire in front of house of Fox-traumatized old racist white person, making that ‘911’ call. Of course, that was happening before 9/11; this just makes it worse.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: That is less funny. The Asperger’s must be extra strong today… I suppose I did just finish four hours of Kerbal Space Program.
Mary G
I feel a little bad for her that her ignorance, racism, paranoia or whatever motivation, has been exposed to the entire world. When I was helping my mom move, she gave me a box of stuff from my college years. I found my notebook for “Physics for Biology Majors,” which I remember as a super-easy class. I didn’t understand 80% of it – all the symbols and equations might as well have been in Sanskrit. If it hadn’t been in my handwriting, I would have been sure it belonged to someone else.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: IANAL, but I seem to remember one of Dubya’s “PATRIOT” laws specifically exempted transportation companies from all liability for false profiling — after the post-9/11 shutdown, they more or less demanded their share of protectionism.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
You guys think I’m some kind of Number One Fan, but I can’t even start to compete with the person who color-coded and annotated her copy of Chernow’s book with questions for LMM.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Not his homework assignment, that’s for sure. I have dated physics guys even married one but none of them tried to do their homework on a date.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Mnemosyne: Fermat’s last date.
Iowa Old Lady
@Ryan:
Present company excepted, one assumes.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Cosined.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
It wasn’t his homework, just something he started doodling out on a napkin while he was waiting. IIRC, he was a PhD candidate. He told me what kind of physics it was, but all I can remember is that it was NOT theoretical.
I was also briefly friends with a PhD biology student at Caltech, but she and her husband moved to Massachusetts so he could take a tenure track job at MIT.
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
I know that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, but that’s not exactly a glowing second date testimonial.
schrodinger's cat
@Mary G: Did you take Physics for Poets? Because Algebra based Intro Physics was a hard class that most life sciences majors would postpone until they were seniors and then live to regret it. If you found it easy, you must have been pretty good at physics.
* Doing physics without calculus makes it unnecessarily hard, IMO.
Baud
I wish I were good enough at math to be into math.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: Showoff! Good you gave him a brush-off.
ETA: Or probably studying for his qualifying exams!
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: And trolling. DougJ is a God!
different-church-lady
“Alright, everybody stay in your seats! I am going to bring down this aircraft through the terrifying power of WRITING THINGS ON THIS PAD OF PAPER!!!”
scav
@Baud: you.
different-church-lady
@Baud: See, that’s why you don’t have any delegates: you can’t count them.
Baud
@different-church-lady: By that logic, I could also have a ton of delegates.
different-church-lady
@Baud: The nomination goes by quantity, not weight.
PPCLI
@schrodinger’s cat: And were they non-linear? Some of those things are pretty terrifying.
Aleta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
AkaDad
Allah Algebra!
different-church-lady
@NotMax:
She deserves worse than that: she deserves to have the equations explained to her.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Kerbals blow up real good.
Mnemosyne
@different-church-lady:
Hello, how do you think magic spells work? Duh!
Baud
@different-church-lady: I thought the superdelegates were the heavy ones.
Heliopause
It takes an infantile level of tribalism to blame Donald Trump for a policy that precedes him by many years and is happily perpetuated by Barack Obama.
Lamh36
Mothers Day in NOLA…it’s Crawfish time…
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/729452988050219008
Schlemazel Khan
DON’T BE FOOLED PEOPLE!!! HE IS AN AGENT OF AN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS TERRORIZED AMERICANS FOR YEARS: AL-GEBRA!
NorthLeft12
I mean, what the hell is the pilot’s problem? Could he not have gone back and just spoke to the guy himself and used his own judgement on whether he was actually a credible threat?
Thanks for supplying me with another reason never to fly into US air space.
Baud
@Heliopause:
Lol. It takes a special type of ODS to blame Obama for one person’s irrational perspective on what’s suspicious.
MomSense
Diffy Qs are terrorism! They made my life unbearable in high school. I was afraid to go to school!
different-church-lady
@Baud: Only before they go critical.
Frankensteinbeck
@Heliopause:
What is being mocked here is not the airline’s policy. It is the ‘everything brown that I don’t understand must be Muslim, and everything Muslim must be terrorist’ bigoted paranoia that Trump fans so enthusiastically.
Prescott Cactus
They should have throw the cuffs on him after the words “simple elegance” rolled out of his mathematical mouth.
SiubhanDuinne
@different-church-lady
You’re like the dictionary definition of “harsh.”
JanieM
@Ryan:
Mindless stereotyping in response to a story about mindless stereotyping… Here’s what the article linked in the OP says about the woman who was terrified of equations:
PurpleGirl
A Partial Differential Equation?… was it an Ordinary Differential Equation or a Pseudo Differential Equation… There are different types of Differential Equations… I used to type them on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
Aleta
@schrodinger’s cat: He ended up solving the equations of motion for a plane influenced by the force of paranoia.
Schlemazel Khan
@AkaDad:
Just to be pedantic, it should be ‘Algebra Akbar’
dmsilev
@NotMax: I’ve roasted my fair share of Kerbals. Re-entry can be hard to get right…
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: you’re telling me.
schrodinger's cat
@PPCLI: Down right chaotic!
Baud
@Aleta:
And the answer is 0 meters.
Schlemazel Khan
@JanieM:
Let me fix that for him then:
Jesus I can’t wait for the youngs to die off!
Frankensteinbeck
@Schlemazel Khan:
THIS EQUATION PROVES IT’S A TRAP!
different-church-lady
@PurpleGirl:
On an airplane? Now that’s suspicious!
dmsilev
@Frankensteinbeck: With a name like ‘Akbar’, not to mention his brown skin (hide? scales?), I’m pretty sure the Admiral got profiled whenever he tried to fly.
Schlemazel Khan
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, I know he would not bend over to pick it up! Why bother to pick it up? it has to counterfeit. Markets are efficient, so if it were a real $100 bill someone would have come by and picked it up already.
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: You need a *really* long extension cord.
jl
Clearly the guy was using DiffyQ to calculate a last minute check on the blast wave his bomb would make. Clearly suspicious. She did the right ting.
lollipopguild
I cannot wait for the day that a plane returns to the terminal because someone on the flight was picking their nose or farted or sneezed or “coughed in a threatening manner”
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
The Sarah Palin word salad shooter in action:
It’s like she’s a Navajo code talker.
Prescott Cactus
@JanieM: Perhaps Ryan is 12 years old. Then being 30 would make her an old.
I would be an ancient.
dmsilev
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: ‘Picked Sarah Palin as running mate’ should be carved on John McCain’s tombstone.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@dmsilev: Wouldn’t you? Take one look at him and you know something fishy is going on.
different-church-lady
OT: what do I have to do to get the youngs to stop using text as the only way they communicate with me?
They just don’t seem to have any distinction between quick and time sensitive (text) and thorough and non-time sensitive (email). And they seem to think they’re obligated to put every phrase in a separate text, thus making your phone vibrate five times when once will do.
I can hardly wait for them to die off.
Gravenstone
@schrodinger’s cat: Physical chemistry is the realm of the devil. Boring, as. fuck. Not that being taught p-chem by a prof who himself hated p-chem did anything to color my view of the discipline.
scav
Just thought of another threat. 2B or not 2B. A double form of IS IS. So, we can’t trust English Majors either. Damn furriners: too stuck-up to speak merkan the way the Founding Fathers did. Clearly, all this Shakespeare 400 stuff is some sort of long-planned, coordinated cover for a threat. And he’s got all those cross-dressing boys into girls into boys too! Defend the Restrooms!!!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@dmsilev: Be kind of cool if Admiral McRaven had a framed autographed photo of Admiral Akbar on his wall.
Mike J
@LAO:
Feel the burn
Mary G
@schrodinger’s cat: No, definitely Physics for Bio. I had already done first year calculus and had a great 8th grade teacher who was really great at giving us demos and hands-on stuff like rolling little wooden cars down ramps for momentum and velocity, so I had a bit of a head start. Also, too, I was suffering and flailing through Organic Chemistry at the same time, which was HELL, so everything else seemed easy by comparison.
Aleta
@lollipopguild: Or the day when “see something shoot something” moves from the street to the flight path.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
Heh. I also used to type dissertations on my IBM Selectric typewriter — I seem to recall that the different balls cost about $20 each — but I needed foreign language accent marks and such. My instructors, all ABD for their DMus or PhD in Music, were writing about things like Spanish 16th-century guitar tablatures, or Rhythmic Variances in Dodecaphonic Composition of the 1920s. Typing dissertations brought in some nice spending money, and educated me in areas I had never thought to explore, but doing so also persuaded me not to pursue advanced degrees.
Prescott Cactus
@dmsilev: ‘Picked Sarah Palin as running mate’ should be
carvedtattooed on John McCain’stombstoneforehead.FTFY
Schlemazel Khan
@Prescott Cactus:
I got dragged to some really dreadful movie in the late 60s the premise of which was that the twenty-somethings took control of the country. I was not nearly high enough to enjoy the turkey but the thing that sticks in my head was at the end when things were not going as planned some 12 year old kid in the movie says something like, “It will all be better when we get rid of those old guys & we take over.” I may have wet myself from laughing so hard because it was supposed to be serious.
Punchy
Yes, but there was something different about his equations. He admitted as much. Hell, its in the name of the equation! Suspicion was warranted.
In an almost certainly related matter, where do I place my $100,000 wager that this ameteur aviation gumshoe is a regular purveyor of Fawks News?
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: nope. Sorry. We do that.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: nothing you can do.
Eric U.
@Bill E Pilgrim: I have often thought that when the Republican party breaks up, the Democratic party may also break up. But since the republicans have pretty much shed anyone with any sense, I’m not so sure
@Gravenstone: I liked p-chem, but as a mechanical engineer, we spent a week on it at most. So that probably doesn’t count
Aleta
@Baud: from t=0 to t=120 minutes
Prescott Cactus
@LAO: Get a Z-Pac. Maybe a couple.
lollipopguild
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: The code talkers could actually speak english, unlike sarah.
different-church-lady
I remember being on Boston’s Red Line a couple of years after Sept. 11, and the PA annoucement was saying, “If something doesn’t look right, please tell an MBTA employee immediately…”
And I thought, “I’m on the subway. NOTHING looks right! I mean, look at that guy at the end of the platform with wearing a batting helmet and singing Led Zepplin tunes, for example…“
Davis X. Machina
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Ron’s working on The Dialectic for Dummies.
Gelfling 545
@Miss Bianca: obviously carrying weapons of math instruction!
Miss Bianca
@scav: steady there, sport.
@Gelfling 545: D’oh!
dmsilev
@different-church-lady: I see what you mean. You have to be on the Green Line to get to Fenway.
AkaDad
@Schlemazel Khan: Sorry, I only speak Murican.
Gravenstone
@Heliopause: News flash, Einstein. It ain’t the policy, it’s the paranoia and fear of all things “Muslim” that lead to the moron and her pants pissing overreaction. Hence the Trump call out.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady: My God, IKR? Yeah, what is this Al-Gebran supposed to be doing, anyway? “By sheer force of will – and this here equation – I will BRING THIS BIRD DOWN, YEAH!”
schrodinger's cat
@Gravenstone: Not as boring as organic chemistry, though. Although I did like the lab.
Prescott Cactus
@Schlemazel Khan: Yes, the Hippies and the Yippies were going to inherit and run the world, listening to the Beatles and the Stones. That was my fathers fear, seriously.
Didn’t really work out the way he planned.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: These are young people who give me money.
I can still hardly wait for them to die off.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: these things have an off button?
dmsilev
@schrodinger’s cat: I hated orgo in college. I remember walking out of the final and one of my classmates commenting “it was as if he drew a bunch of random lines and called it a molecule”. And that’s about all I remember of the course.
Schlemazel Khan
@AkaDad:
inshallah
JPL
@dmsilev: Today McCain defended her on one of the talk shows, because she excited the base. Someone needs to tell McCain that he’s absolutely correct, but she excited the democratic base and that’s why he lost.
I was insulted that he thinks Trump needs to apologize to Vets. Trump needs to apologize to more than veterans.
sharl
@Gravenstone: Your experience with p-chem sounds similar to mine. I did well enough in those courses to make it through undergrad and grad school, but all the while I was going through the motions of doing partial differentials (this was thermo; I liked/understood kinetics a bit better), I was asking “what is the POINT of all this? What does it DO…for anyone?”
I cannot prove it , but I think more competent teaching might have helped those of us lacking a natural knack for the topic. I used the hell out of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation in undergrad and grad research; otherwise, bah!
scav
@Miss Bianca: And with all this math instruction going about, I’m really not comfortable with any furriner in black mumbling about using a 2B pencil or not, especially if its also code for rumination about a death wish with an additional code layered on top about whether or not one should be a member of a known specific group of overwhelming immanent death.
ETA: And pencils are sharp! Dangerously pointed!
Patricia Kayden
@Germy: lol! And don’t report someone for doing something you don’t understand, like math.
Schlemazel Khan
@Prescott Cactus:
Sadly it did work out that way, it is my generation that is running the world. What we didn’t realize was they were not about peace, love and understanding, they were about not going to Viet Nam, getting laid and getting high (AKA – all about me, me and more me). That meant they saw Reagan’s “you can have all of this at no cost & no effort” as right up their ally.
Miss Bianca
@scav: I think Mnem twigged it…it’s obviously MAGICK SPELLS at work. And since Harry Potter does magick, and is obvs in league with the Devil, then *equally obvs* ipso facto hey presto then MOOSLIM THREAT. Al-Gebrans in our face, in our planes, partially equalizing us with their scary EQUATIONS.
And shit.
Patricia Kayden
@dmsilev: And on his forehead.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel Khan: Pretty much. The 20th was an interesting century. Almost the last one, too!
Gravenstone
@schrodinger’s cat: As an organic chemist, all I can say to you is Pbbbbbtttttttttt!!
eta: actually, it was my own enjoyment of organic labs that eventually lead me off the misguided path of an engineering major.
chromeagnomen
@Schlemazel Khan: so there was something wrong with all of those things? hunh!
Major Major Major Major
This book I’m reading is frustrating. It’s clear that the author has something spectacular inside him, but this ain’t it. You know the kind?
scav
@Miss Bianca: Magic wands have Chameleon Circuits? That’s not a single 2B it’s a 2DIS? There could be deranged battalions in there. of some very large m!
Schlemazel Khan
(@PaulMMCooper):
(passes note to flight attendant): ‘the man beside me appears to be writing a novella in the second person present tense’
Prescott Cactus
@Major Major Major Major:
Thanks MMMM for the KSP mention. Going to turn my Dad on to this.
P.S. Hope you are doing awesome!
amk
bin laden won
Tom
@dmsilev: Tattooed on his forehead would be better and just might serve as an object lesson to his colleagues.
sharl
@dmsilev:
Meghan McCain recently tweeted out a criticism of Trump, and in return she received many responses along these lines. The three tweets leading off here – the first by Ms. McCain, the following two by a Mr. Patrick Monahan – were among my favorites.
Ms. McCain did a whole lot of blocking and complaining as a result of that; poor thing…
Miss Bianca
@scav: Something deranged is going on, at any rate… ; )
@Major Major Major Major: Dunno about that, but I do know that I had to give up on a book lately that got mass raves and lots of attention and made into a movie and all. All I could think was, “It takes a really good author to make you care about a main character who’s a complete and utter shit. Sadly, this is *not* that author.”
Amir Khalid
How come, in all these stories, the person making the frivolous report never winds up getting arrested for wasting the authorities’ time?
Major Major Major Major
@Prescott Cactus: hope your dad likes it?
Thanks! Right back atcha
divF
@PurpleGirl: Did you type up any of the Courant Institute Lecture Notes ? I have some of the old ones – Friedrichs’ Pseudodifferential Operators, Duistermaat’s Fourier Integral Operators.
Even though you gave a different explanation, my first reaction to your nym when you mentioned your connection to Courant here was the obvious NYU connection.
ETA: I do this kind of stuff on airplanes all the time – write math scribbles, then transcribe them on the computer. It looks like I could end up at some black rendition site.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: I started a really amazing book last year that I never finished. “Wolf In White Van” by John Darnielle. One of those books where after some of the chapters you just set it down for a while, blown away. Sometimes I would go days before picking it back up.
It isn’t even that long, it just got shuffled around in the move so I’m only now getting back to it. Tomorrow maybe.
Punchy
@different-church-lady: You got something against Led Zepplin?
/shakes fist in menacing manner
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
What’s all this I keep hearing about Fred MacMurray is on fire? Why would Canada set him on fire? Was “My Three Sons” that bad? Even it was, that’s no excuse.
JPL
Spoiler… The Good Wife... sorta
I thought the episode was okay, except for the last scene. At first I said what.. and then I laughed. Did anyone see that?
Miss Bianca
@Amir Khalid: I dunno, I’ve wondered about that one, myself. Because it might have a chilling effect on other D-U-M dumb “patriots”? We could only wish…
@Major Major Major Major: Funny how books with “wolf” in them can be like that…took me weeks to get thru’ “The Wolf Border”, by Sarah Hall, even tho’ it was a really well-written book. Sometimes books are like that – they’re like plum puddings, not Twinkies, so you can’t gulp them down, they’re too rich, you have to take them a bite or two at a time…I’ll have to look for “Wolf in a White Van”!
Chris T.
@Major Major Major Major:
Ignore it, of course. If it were real, someone else would have snatched it up first.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: what was that book? ?
Face
@sharl: It’s all Henderson-Hasselhoff, my amigo. Used to calc the proper buffer zone needed to avoid a Baywatch crew member.
Schlemazel Khan
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I thought Jose Ferrer lit him up really well at the end of “Caine”. Maybe he just smoldered for 52 years
? Martin
@Major Major Major Major: Playing right now after a 6 month hiatus – was waiting for 1.1 to drop. Working up through career again.
divF
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Fred sold everyone up there fire insurance, then helped to plan the arson. Made it look like an accident, so they could collect double indemnity.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: “The Kite Runner”. What was yours?
Major Major Major Major
A friend just sent along a petition for David Attenborough to change his name to Boaty McBoatface.
different-church-lady
@Punchy: No, I’m good with them. It just that nobody but Robert Plant should try to sing like Robert Plant. Everyone else just sounds like a pig being strangled.
Face
@efgoldman: “Black rendition site” = Def Jam recording studio?
PurpleGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Hey, colleague. For mathematics, there was a typing ball with the Greek symbols and foreign accents marks for the regular Selectric machine. But there was also a Selectric machine that could be used for typesetting and for that one IBM had a ball with a bunch of other symbols on it. But it was in a smaller font size. So I used 3 balls for mathematics. I typed the mathematics as if I was typing graphics. A number of the professors I worked for were convinced I understood the mathematics because I made it look so good. Ha Ha!!
divF
@efgoldman:
Are you swarthy? Half Italian, so as swarthy as the guy they picked up.
Big hooked nose? Not really – Mom’s English / Irish.
Four days growth of beard? I am one-two days a week.
Carrying a scimitar? I keep it in my checked luggage.
Uncle Cosmo
@Miss Bianca:
Sinatra, 1958. For your ears only….
jonas
It was a second hand anecdote, but I was talking to a colleague in the fall of 01, who related the story of a musician from Germany travelling to the US a few months after 9/11 who was detained and questioned at JFK for several hours for having a musical score in his briefcase that a customs officer thought “looked like Middle Eastern writing.” He’s probably been on a terror watch list ever since.
Aleta
I just watched Team Foxcatcher (netflx). By the middle, when people who were benefitting would not or could not act on John du Pont’s insanity, I kept hearing “trump-da-dum-dum-DUMMM.”
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo: Ah, lovely! I love it when snark manages to yield true treasures…
@Aleta: “Come, they told me, a TRUMP-a-dump, dum…the newborn King to see, a TRUMP-a-dump-dum…”
cmorenc
The lady was LEGITIMATELY concerned that her seatmate had weapons of math instruction.
gogol's wife
@Schlemazel Khan:
Wild in the Streets?
My husband and I just made a failed attempt to watch Mommie Dearest. Faye Dunaway is hilarious but it’s unwatchable nonetheless. Steve Forrest keeps trying to act as if it’s a real movie.
sharl
@efgoldman:
That’s a fair point. But following Millennials on twitter as much as I do, this response to her was not a surprise. While the young’uns offer up plenty of bile for us Boomers and the GenXers who follow us, they seem to get particularly riled at others in (or near) their own generation on stuff like this. At least young and privileged-by-birth Meghan wasn’t lecturing her fellow Youngs on something or another; those young and preachy trustafarian types get the most hostile responses.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Excuse me. There is no need to insult any Navajo here, and especially code talkers. I won’t even bother with my usual, “counsel for… would like a word,” because that’s comical, and I’m not feeling like being comical right now. I’m offended.
Your comment isn’t humorous; it’s simply offensive. And that’s quite surprising from you – you’re usually funny.
SiubhanDuinne
@PurpleGirl:
Exactly! I was an older student, by about a decade, so actually a lot closer in age to many of my instructors than to my own cohort. Life experience and the inestimable value of typing the dissertations* allowed me to approach them as equals.
*i also learned-by-doing a whole lot of shit about style guides and academic conceits. Helped me a whole lot when I got around to writing my own senior thesis.
different-church-lady
@sharl:
I can hardly wait for them to die off.
sharl
@Major Major Major Major:
Hahaha! I hope he appreciates humor like that (unlike, e.g., the humor-challenged Richard Dawkins).
I just saw that he turned 90 today or yesterday. Here’s an interview with him in the (UK) Independent. He comes across there as still being pretty sharp for the most part.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amir Khalid: That would make too much sense?
PurpleGirl
@divF: Yes, I did mathematical typing at the Courant. I typed one Lecture Notes — Some Mathematical Topics in Seismology by Robert Burridge. During the years I worked at the Courant, the Lecture Notes were typed on a stencil with a carbon copy and the professor-author would proof read that, add changes or corrections and we would use correction fluid and then retyped the change on the stencil. I was particularly good at realigning the stencil.
Schlemazel Khan
@gogol’s wife:
That might have been it. I honestly have tried to never think of it but that one stupid line is stuck there
Sadly, now that I have brought it up I seem to remember the line was something about the 10 year olds getting the vote.
sharl
@different-church-lady: Heh, from this and previous comments of yours, I hope you are staying away from Millennial Twitter, for the sake of your own health if nothing else. Like a scene out of Jurassic Park or a family Thanksgiving sit-down dinner, if an exchange starts out calm – whether or not it involves a disagreement – it sometimes (often?) doesn’t end up that way.
Democracy in the 140-character marketplace of “ideas” is not at all a pretty thing.
different-church-lady
@sharl: Twitter is the most efficient way mankind has yet to invent to make a smart person stupid.
Aleta
@Miss Bianca: I wrote some verses to that awhile back !
Belafon
Miss Bianca
@Aleta: I think that might just be the song I hate most in the world…no aspersion on your verses, I’m sure they’re lovely! Or artistic, at least. ; )
sharl
@different-church-lady:
It often sure seems that way. But rather than repeating to themselves, “It’s OK to remain silent, my input won’t make a difference to the world,” justice MUST be served when someone is wrong in the internet!
DivF
@PurpleGirl: Burridge notes – good stuff.
I wrote my Ph.D thesis in 1979, just before the widespread availability of computer typesetting. I couldn’t find anyone who was willing to hire on to do the technical typing so I ended up going with plan b: typewritten words and equations handwritten in India ink. Madame divF did the typing part, a matter that she reminds me of from time to time.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
@PurpleGirl:
The IBM Selectric was the all-time greatest typewriter. It’s the only thing that makes me miss the pre-computer days.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Strictly entre nous, where does one find those? Willing to travel.
Still not willing ever to own a cell phone, though.
;)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Don’t be mad. I wasn’t making fun of the Navajo, I was making fun of palin for speaking in unintentional unbreakable encryption. That’s the point of satire. Ya know when Mel Brooks made Blazing Saddles he wasn’t making fun of blacks, he was making fun of whites.
ps thank you for the compliment on my sense of humor. it’s my role to add comic relief.
Mnemosyne
@Aleta:
I’m still kind of pissed that Foxcatcher, which its writer and director admitted was fiction but got billed as “based on a true story,” got several Oscar nominations while Selma got snubbed the same year for purportedly not being nice enough to LBJ.
Mike J
Mike J
@Mnemosyne: Hey, Bryan Cranston is playing LBJ in an HBO movie about the civil rights act. That will get an award. It won a Tony.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: When I decided to go back to school and do typing at home to support myself, I bought a dual-pitch, self-correcting Selectric. The self-correcting feature only added $50 to the cost; what really added to the cost was the 54 prong roller which I needed to do superscripts and subscripts. After ordering the 54-prong roller (something like $200), it made sense to get the self-correcting feature.
@DivF: There was a computer/typewriter computer which claimned to have developed a computerized typewriter. IIRC, it was Lanier. Anyway two of us at the Courant were trained for it and one person got to use it. Well, the administrators should have asked me after the training what I thought of it — I could have saved the the 6-month rental. First you used computer monitor to see the owrk. It had typing wheels, not IBM-like balls. You had type the text first and save and print it out. Then you went in math mode, change the print wheel and start typing the math, But the math wasn’t wysiwyg, it also showed you the coding for the math. Then you had to reinsert the page, realign it at the top and print the mathematics text. It was a mess.
Also to change the print wheels, you had turn the machine off, pull back the component that held the print wheel, push it back up-right and turn the machine back on. So another of our typists got to use it for a test and everything took a lot longer than on the Selectric.
I don’t think the problem was software the problem but the type of printer that was common. After all there was computer typesetting at the time but those machines used commercial printers.
Omnes Omnibus
@PurpleGirl: Why couldn’t I find competent typists when I was in college. Don’t blame my handwriting!
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
It’s more that I think people were coming up with excuses not to nominate the work of a Black female director who didn’t even go to film school, or at least not the right one.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: you mean, you didn’t do what I did? Erasable bond paper, correction ribbon, and hours o’ sweat and cursing? But then, you were a boy…of course you would be looking for a typist! ; )
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Oh, hell, yes. I paid someone to do it. Typewriters and I never got along.
ETA: I typed my law review article, but that was on a computer. OTOH, I hand wrote it first and edited as I typed. Still my preferred way of writing.
Linnaeus
The real danger facing America is, of course, liberal intolerance at colleges and universities.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Why didn’t I think of that? Lack of disposable income? Oh, no, that’s right…because I wrote my papers at the typewriter the night before they were due. Procrastination, thy name was MB…
Omnes Omnibus
Oh yeah, happy Mothers Day to all mom’s here.
PurpleGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Part of the problem was probably the emphasis people put on speed instead of accuracy. I’ve never broken 40-odd wpm but I was accurate. It’s how typists are trained to only read the text and not look at the keyboard. For some fairly obscure medical reason I can’t keep my eyes on the text without zoning out. (In high school typing class on one test, I zoned out and when I came back a few moments later, I’d skipped 17 words. At 5 points per skipped word, I failed the test.) Also for some time now, the people who would be competent didn’t learn typing because they didn’t want to be secretaries. I kind of knew I would have to have some typing skills if I wanted to get a job.
ETA: When typing math I counted 2 pages per hour. And that was good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I hand wrote mine two nights before they were do so that I could get them typed.
BruceFromOhio
OK, I feel sorry for whoever this woman is … here she was feeling whatever the hell it was she was feeling (obviously something unpleasant), and now she gets to walk around utterly ridiculed, still with the baggage of feeling whatever the hell it was she was feeling. Who do you tell? Who do confide in? To say anything to anyone is start the whole cycle all over again.
And if I ran the airline, I would definitely be busting her for false reporting, delay of flight, whatever it is that happens when you deliberately report something false. No wonder they didn’t let her back on the plane, they probably got her luggage and threw out of the place.
So here is this person who was afraid, then humiliated, then likely humiliated further, and is now carrying that around forever with little hope of forgiveness or redemption. Of course, she brought on herself, gets what she deserved, blah blah blah, yeah, I get it. It’s still got to suck, and I feel sorry for her ignorance and fear, because both are avoidable.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, if I could have mustered just 24 hours’ worth of foresight, I could have done this myself, and saved myself at least one sleepless night out of two! Altho’ I only ever pulled one real honest-to-God all-nighter as an undergrad…different story as a grad student, but at least they had all-night computer labs at NU by then. Much faster/more accurate typist now than I was back in the day, strangely…
Miss Bianca
@BruceFromOhio: you are obviously a much nicer person than I am…
Mike J
Mnemosyne
@Linnaeus:
Nick Kristof. I should have guessed.
BruceFromOhio
Wrote my first college papers on a portable Adler. No fancy self-correcting or wheels or balls. Ones and zeroes were L’s and O’s. The first time I sat down in a computer lab, I was flying on happy until one of the other students complained about how hard I was banging on the keys. I was so accustomed to mashing the keys on the old Adler, it took awhile to learn how to go easy on the computer keyboard.
amk
@BruceFromOhio: she could try unlearning her bigotry and stop watching pox news.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: “due” not “do.” FFS!
divF
@PurpleGirl: I remember the Laniers. There was a similar system, made by Wang, that my first tech report at my postdoc job was typed on.
You’re right, though, the technology for computer typesetting had been around for a while. However, the combination of Kernighan’s version of troff (ditroff), and relatively inexpensive and capable printers (Varian?) that could be driven off a VAX 11/780, allowed a lot of us to be doing our own technical typing by the early 1980s.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, he’s pretty much the epitome of the liberal who won’t take his/her own side in an argument.
BruceFromOhio
@Miss Bianca: Perhaps, perhaps not. I’ve just spent enough time around damaged, traumatized people to know that the ones who bring it on themselves (and know it!) can be really damaged by it. That it could have just as easily been avoided makes it even more painful.
Who knows, maybe this ignorant and fearful person had it coming, and got what she deserved. Surely we will never know. Better to be held up as a lesson to others than be an object of ridicule? YMMV.
Dog Dawg Damn
Where is the GoT thread! Waaahhhhhhhh
Davebo
@BruceFromOhio: Well for now she’s anonymous.
The person I feel bad for is the one(s) who will be wrongfully accused of being this woman by the internet hordes. For the accuser, while I’m glad the airline wouldn’t release her name I have no sympathy at all for her. The only think she’ll have to live with is the fact that she made an ass of herself.
Mai.naem.mobile
I am sorry but I don’t see how somebody can think math equations look like Arabic. Stupid.
BruceFromOhio
@divF: .. and thus another vi versus EMACS discussion was spawned, Gaia help us.
@amk: If that was the cause, no doubt about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mai.naem.mobile:
I would go with bigoted.
Elie
@efgoldman:
Cuz they have been given “please of please don’t sue us” incentives — in amounts enough to make a difference?
divF
@Mai.naem.mobile: Someone who can’t tell the difference between Arabic and Greek. In geek handwriting, which looks like gibberish anyway.
sharl
@Face:
Just returned to this…hahaha, excellent!
I’ll have to add the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation to the list of useful things I’ve used from the realm of chemical thermodynamics. And honestly, if I took the time to look harder, I’m sure I would find more.
Had the show been around way back when, I suspect the authors of my beloved edition of Morrison & Boyd’s organic chemistry textbook would have been tempted to work in a reference to Baywatch along these lines, just like they did an image from a Donald Duck cartoon ‘illustrating evidence for early research on methylene’ (cartoon dialog contained references to CH(sub)2 and speckled fog, IIRC…).
benw
@BruceFromOhio: oh, emacs all the way. vi… ugh. Bring it.
divF
@BruceFromOhio: Not me – I use both.
Mnemosyne
Sometimes I realize while reading history books that there are people I will never understand. I was reading a small bit about Elizabeth, the Duchess of Rutland, in the early 1800s who was apparently happily married for about 20 years before starting a passionate affair with the Duke of York (the king’s brother).
So, that part is pretty normal. The part that seems weird to me is that apparently her loving husband of 20 years was perfectly happy to share her with her new lover, and when she unexpectedly died of appendicitis, the Duke of York rushed from Brighton to Belvoir Castle to comfort the bereaved husband. York also laid the first stone of Elizabeth’s mausoleum. I guess it’s the ménage a trois thing that’s totally foreign to me.
Mike J
@BruceFromOhio: vi is useful if you need to edit any configuration files to allow a new computer to download emacs.
BruceFromOhio
@Davebo: The only think she’ll have to live with is the fact that she made an ass of herself.
Agreed. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with “[a] security protocol that is too rigid–in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks–and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless.”
Good thing for both of them her fellow passenger wasn’t playing loud music in a parking lot or something equally blatant.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: One should note that the English aristocracy more or less arranged marriages and the duty of the married couple was to produce ” an heir and a spare.” After that few questions were asked.
catclub
@Gravenstone: This guy makes some bits pretty interesting.
Things I won’t Work With blog
And explosively amusing.
BruceFromOhio
@Mike J: *sigh* Using the letter of the law to defeat the spirit of the law.
To be fair, EMACS has all the bells and whistles; vi is the 4-spd manual shift. Since all I was writing was C and assembler, I didn’t need all the fancy-shmancy, and so never bothered to learn it. At the time, vi was all muscle memory, and I could be flying on no sleep and a caffeine overdose and still crank it out. The proliferation of EMACS cheat-sheets was either a testimony to how many different things you had to remember to be able to use it, or how popular it was. Or both.
From the old Adler to the glory days of VAX to pecking away on a tablet, it’s quite a journey.
Omnes Omnibus
@BruceFromOhio: I have no idea what you kids are talking about.
Aaron
The dangers of Super Science are not a laughing matter.
BruceFromOhio
@catclub:
That’s just hilarious, thank you for sharing this.
BruceFromOhio
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s a geek thing. Just don’t tell the flight attendant!
Anne Laurie
@BruceFromOhio:
To be honest, if they’d named the blond woman, I probably wouldn’t have posted this, because shame-mobbing makes me queasy. But as the story stands, she’ll only ever be identified if she decides to “out” herself — and she really does sound like the avatar of a Trump voter, assuming she bothers to vote!
divF
@Omnes Omnibus: Omnes, these are not kids. This is ripe onion-on-the-belt old-fart stuff, computer nerd division.
PurpleGirl
@Mai.naem.mobile: Especially since the symbols are Greek letters and other symbols made up for mathematical uses.
sharl
@catclub: I just KNEW that had to be Derek Lowe. His libertarianish politics are annoying, but he’s an excellent and eloquent chemist.
Omnes Omnibus
@divF: I would have better off saying “I have no idea what you bastards are talking about?”
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
Look at it this way: Humans being human, various forms of polyamory have always been more common than “history” would like us to believe.
It’s mostly shocking when you don’t know the individuals involved — those who did had a much more dimensional image. For instance, the men in question presumably knew & liked each other, as well as the lady. Also too, she may have been the high-maintenance kind who’s easiest to appreciate when one is not solely responsible for serving as their support system…
PurpleGirl
@sharl:
Morrison & Boyd’s organic chemistry textbook
I remember the Morrison & Boyd textbook. I don’t remember when I used it — maybe the AP Chemistry course I took in high school or did Professor Vance use it in his Quantitative Analysis course in college. But I remember I liked the way it was written.
divF
@Omnes Omnibus: Probably.
Matt McIrvin
@Eric U.: If the Republicans were completely eliminated as a credible national party, the Democrats might fracture in two. But I’m not sure exactly how.
Over on LGM I speculated that there might be some break between an economic left-radical faction downplaying cultural/sexual/racial issues, and a more economically centrist faction concentrating on feminism and minority rights, but various people pointed out that these goals aren’t really in tension except among a tiny bunch of Internet whiners and the personal specifics of the 2016 Democratic primary race.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: I still say that the cultural convention was to not ask too many questions about the actual parentage of the children after the first two boys in any British family with an entailed estate.
Matt McIrvin
@BruceFromOhio: These days I do most of my coding in an IDE, and I always preferred emacs to vi. But I find myself using vi a lot anyway, because I deal frequently with stripped-down virtual machines and physical devices that have a deliberately bare-bones Unix-like OS on them, and shouldn’t have new stuff installed on them willy-nilly. So if any configuration file or something needs to be edited on that box, it’s vi time. Vi is always there.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Nope — these two had married for love and had had something like 10 children together by the time she started her affair.
Now, what seems to have happened is that the husband casually cheated for years (which was totally accepted at the time) so when his wife fell in love with someone else, he may have decided it was only fair to let her have her time. And it probably didn’t hurt that York was a longtime friend.
It’s the amiability that just seems so weird to me. Maybe people were more mature back then.
sharl
@PurpleGirl: Morrison and Boyd was very oriented toward chemical synthesis, although as I recall there was a fair amount on qualitative/identification analysis (very little on quantitative analysis).
I too liked the way it was written. I guess enough others like it too, since it’s up to its sixth edition now (I was using either the 2nd or 3rd edition back in 1975-6).
One thing I saw back then – and still see today (including this thread) – is that people who like organic chemistry tend not to like physical chemistry, and vice versa. M&B was really an organic chem textbook for people who liked organic; I suspect a physical chemistry partisan would have a very different opinion of that text.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: It still follows from my logic. As long as the succession to the title and/or estate is secured, people were free to find their own happiness – within the social rules, of course.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
And yet the husband and wife remained close and worked together to rebuild Belvoir Castle after it was nearly destroyed in a fire. There’s part of a letter quoted in the book where she writes to a third party:
And she seems to have been continuing to have sex with her husband while carrying on the affair with York, and both men knew it. So, yeah, ménage a trois.
PurpleGirl
@sharl: I started college as a Chemistry major, I dropped out of the department before I got to take Organic. (I really wanted to take Organic.) But the year I was a freshman at NYU there were all sorts of problems with the teaching staff and the Chem majors got the short end of the stick. So before the second semester started, they rearranged the course work for us — we had the lectures from a Physical Chemistry professor and the lab work from Professor Vance in Quantitative Analysis. With my bad background in mathematics, I had to drop out of calculus. So my freshman year was really messed up. (I later did a transfer to Political Science.) I was failing the P-Chem lectures but passing Professor Vance’s Quant labs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne:
From my comment.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Also, I don’t feel like retyping it now, but there’s a letter from the husband to that same third party where he basically says he and his wife are having great sex together now that she’s also sleeping with York. So, um, yeah.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: but *is* it a menage a trois unless all three parties..? No, wait…that’s something else. Never mind.
Bottom line is, things were apparently lot more free-wheeling back in the Regency period than we give them credit for. Usually. If you were part of the Upper Ten Thousand, that is.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I, as has been indicated in several comments, haven’t said she would stop having sex with her husband, but merely that she had to wait to have sex with someone else until the succession was assured.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
An aristocratic husband openly keeping a mistress and even moving her into the marital home and expecting his wife to accept her was pretty common. The husband accepting his wife’s lover, not nearly as much.
@Miss Bianca:
The Regency and Georgian periods were pretty free-wheeling when it came to sex, even for women. It was the Victorian era where things got super-oppressive in reaction to that.
The author has a few lines in the last chapter about modern people making a false assumption that there must have been a linear progression in women’s freedoms and thinking that of course things must have been even worse prior to the Victorian Era, but it’s just not true. I think one of the reasons the Regency is so popular with modern readers is that it offers a lot more freedom for characters than they would have in that later era, strangely enough.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
It was the, Wow, we’re having great sex now that she’s also sleeping with my buddy! that I found startling. YMMV, of course.
sharl
@PurpleGirl: Aww hell, that sounds awful. I often think that if the alumni development offices at universities were willing and able to correlate alumni donation levels with alumni who graduated (dis)satisfied with teaching quality, the results would likely motivate them to immediately straighten out the kind of crap you experienced. (I dunno, maybe a lot of universities have already done those studies. If so, I suppose it wouldn’t be wise for a lot of them to publicize the results.)
Whatever flaws they may have had (*ahem*, guy who taught thermo p-chem), the chem faculty at U. of Dayton was quite good, and I’ll always remember them fondly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: There are serious doubts that Winston Churchill’s younger brother Jack was Randolph’s child. No one gave a shit. It wouldn’t affect a title. Also, doubt has be thrown at Prince Harry’s parentage. Again, no shits have been given.
If I am the Earl of X and I am sleeping with the Duchess of Y and I know that the Marquess of N is sleeping with Lady G, I should not really be surprised if Lord G is sleeping with the Countess of X. As an aristo of that era, my main concern that would be that the line of succession was secure.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: People are people
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thank you, but I’ve been reading about this historical era for 30 years, so I am familiar with the fact that infidelity by both partners was the norm. It’s the fact that the husband is saying that he’s having great sex with his wife now that she’s taken a lover that I find startling, because frankly it’s pretty rare even today to find a man who’s that open-minded. Sorry, but dudes tend to be a lot more on the jealous side when it comes to stuff like that, at least in my experience.
ETA: And, really, you’ve never heard of the double standard? Like, ever?
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hell, I remember a very serious article about the “mystery” as to how many known-to-be-infertile and/or gay men of the Empire-to-Victorian era managed to produce male heirs. “Everybody” knows that women in such relationships may resort to extramarital methods, but then it wasn’t always an unpleasant surprise to the young heir’s legal sire…
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
It was sometimes more complicated than that. If the husband was willing to look the other way when a cuckoo came into the nest, that was one thing, but the Duchess of Devonshire had a couple of children fathered by someone other than the Duke who were raised by others, because he wasn’t willing to pretend to be the father of children who weren’t his. Of course, he also demanded that she accept his bastards being raised in the same house as his legitimate children, because he was a pretty major asshole.
There’s a reason their oldest son lived to a ripe old age without every marrying. The poor guy was set a very bad example by pretty much every adult in his household.
ETA: Including his father’s live-in mistress — also his mother’s (former) best friend, who IIRC was technically still married to yet another aristocrat.
Librarian
@Mnemosyne: Actually, extramarital sex among royalty and the aristocracy was pretty common during the Victorian age too. Ever heard of Mrs. Keppel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Keppel
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: May I ask a question? What do you think that I have been saying?
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne: Some people just don’t get jealous. Who knows; maybe it helped that she was involved with someone he knew and liked instead of some random person, or someone not of their class.
Mnemosyne
@Librarian:
It’s hard to really draw a firm line between Late Victorian and early Edwardian, though. You could get away with stuff in the 1880s or 1890s that wasn’t acceptable while Victoria was active at court.
Though of course “Mrs. Brown” may have had her own (post-widowhood) adventure that was kept very discreet by her embarrassed family.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: It’s easier within a “closed” social circle, where every individual has multiple ties to other individuals. Even in what would be considered a fairly unsophisticated group — a modern conservative church congregation or a batch of particularly dedicated hobbyists, for instance. Barring extreme circumstances, it’s too personally expensive for any one individual to demand that all fellow villagers choose them or their now-spurned partner… and there’s far less risk of ‘free riders’ getting away with multiple betrayals. In your Regency example, everybody in the Duke of York’s circle really did know which men would hump anything with milk glands, and which women were susceptible to such men; but apart from that, ‘everybody’ — especially the three people involved — had more to gain from continued (improved!) cooperation than from a messy divorce.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think you’ve been saying that it was common for an aristocratic woman in the early 1800s to be simultaneously sleeping with her husband and a lover, and for the husband to have no problem with that at all. I’m saying that, based on my reading, that particular combination was NOT very common, and that husbands often held themselves to one standard of fidelity and their wives to quite another, even after the requisite heirs were born.
@Darkrose:
It’s relatively uncommon to find, even among the aristocracy, though. The double standard was a real and harsh thing, and many an aristocratic husband punished his wife for doing the same things he did.
Major Major Major Major
Ooh, how racy it is downstairs here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: No, I am saying that after the “heir and spare” were born that British aristos didn’t care all that much who did whom.
eemom
@Major Major Major Major:
Indeed. One idly clicks in before bed just to see what’s going on, and finds oneself in a heated debate amongst historians of royal polyamory.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Dear god. Don’t come in… Nothing good could happen. Trust me.
Mnemosyne
All right, I can see that this jaded crowd is going to demand the exact quote before I will be believed that it actually is unusual to find in a letter from 1822, so here it is. This is from the husband to a third party, referring to his wife as “Venus”:
Yes, I know there are guys who get turned on when their wives sleep with other men, but I really don’t think it’s nearly as common as y’all seem to think.
Major Major Major Major
I for one hate it when my wife sleeps with other guys.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, ok, if you advise against it. I do have some thoughts on the subject…
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
And I’m pointing out, based on many years of reading, that you are basing that on a very shallow reading of history. It was common for aristocratic partners who had little to hold them together other than their marriage to agree to move on to other partners once the succession was secured. It was also common for men to have mistresses while also sleeping with their wives. It was not all that common for husbands to continue to sleep with their wives even after those wives started taking lovers.
eemom
@Major Major Major Major:
I thought you were a gay man?
Major Major Major Major
@eemom: Don’t try to box me in! I can be whatever I want to be!
(Yes. Yes, I am a gay man, and so’s my wife)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: You are applying today’s moral standards. What if you grew up in a society that said that you had to marry person X and makes sure you had two boys with that person (no matter how many attempts) and after that, society didn’t really care what you did.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Society =/= one’s spouse. Some aristocratic men were cool with it. Some of them were assholes about it. And some of them — but not nearly as many as you seem to think — were turned on by it and reported having great sex with their wives when their wife started fucking someone else after 20 years of marriage.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
It’s relatively uncommon that it was publicly discussed, even among the aristocracy. Husbands had more legal expedients than wives to ‘punish’ infidelity, and women were raised to believe that “chastity” was the highest female virtue; also, the genuine physical peril of any pregnancy, extramarital or otherwise, presumably discouraged female infidelity under ordinary circumstances. But even though “child abuse” or “workplace sexual harassment” were not terms used until quite recently, the records indicate that children have been abused and women (especially) have been sexually harassed since forever. Regency aristocrats were ‘unfaithful’ to their wives, as was the convention; Regency wives were also ‘unfaithful’ to their husbands, with or without the awareness/compliance of said husbands. Sometimes the men in question weren’t paying attention; sometimes they were too embarrassed to complain in public; sometimes they were relieved that a voracious or extravagant spouse had found a secondary source of support; sometimes they were genuinely happy that the woman they loved was happy, even if it was with another person, or *especially* if it was with a man they liked too. None of these arrangements were liable to be publicly discussed or written down, except obliquely or in code. Sometimes historians can trace the emotions when they search hard enough, like the letters that surprised you; presumably more than one historian read those letters and didn’t draw public conclusions, either because the obvious inference didn’t occur to them or because it was ‘just salacious gossip’.
That’s the real difference between the Regency Era and our own — we tend to think anything that hasn’t been talked about hasn’t happened. But barring improvements in technology (including modern medicine), I have yet to read about a sexual or emotional predicament that wasn’t invented a loooong time ago.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: What did I say that was wrong? You say you are an expert in Georgian through Victorian extra-curricular play. Where was I wrong?
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
You would, you polyamorous prude!
(/snark, if needed).
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are oversimplifying and being dismissive.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
It’s more that it’s unusual for something that (relatively) blatant to have survived the family archivists. Usually stuff like that would have been burned.
I dunno, maybe a majority of men get really turned on when their wife or girlfriend sleeps with someone else and I’m just naive.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Go back through this thread. Read the actual words that I wrote.
ETA: This is what I wrote: You are applying today’s moral standards. What if you grew up in a society that said that you had to marry person X and makes sure you had two boys with that person (no matter how many attempts) and after that, society didn’t really care what you did.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: I am vast, I contain multitudes.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, some guys told their good friends how pleased they were that said friend had made their wife (even more) sexually uninhibited through their ‘infidelity’. More guys wouldn’t have been quite on those terms with the friend who was also having sex with their wife, or would have been too busy with his own affairs to bother noticing the difference, or would have been grateful to have the sexual burden of a demanding spouse lightened/lifted. Some of them would have been too embarrased to admit what was going on, even to themselves. And some of them, probably the majority, were members of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” club still so popular among us moderns.
Men who had a strong enough grievance with their “cheating” wives had a widely known legal avenue to register their displeasure. But there are many, many more reasons for men *not* to register whatever grievance they may have felt. That’s why there are so many different narratives, because “people” are the same but “persons” react individually!
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure:
Example that’s totally different than my specific one of two men concurrently sleeping with the same woman, presented as an explanation of why my example was totally common and not anything to be surprised at reading.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
Which is totally different than Big whoop, everybody cheated with everybody, which is the first reaction I was getting.
But, again, I don’t think that a husband being pleased and turned on that his wife is fucking someone else is a very common reaction, even back in those free-wheeling days.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: As the Earl of X, do you think that I am not having sex with my wife? Nor that any of the others ain’t doing the same? The first two boys mattered and the rest…. It really didn’t matter all that much. So! A woman was expected not to stray until two boys had been born. After that, one simply needed to be discreet and have sex with her husband often enough that a new child was plausible.
eemom
This is very interesting.
I think AL is correct to point out
That is very true. There is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes)
AL is also right that the written records that survive are unlikely to be completely reliable indicia of what was really going on.
What’s most interesting, though, is the argument between Mnem and OO, because it seems to have come full circle. OO started out saying that the standards of the past were such that fucking around on one’s spouse was condoned as long as the heirs had been produced, and that’s different from modern standards. Mnem said that was true of MEN fucking around in the past, but not women. Then, she seems to be arguing a more general proposition that men are NOT okay with their wives fucking around, without limitation as to past or present.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
It seems like you’ve shifted the goalposts. I said I wasn’t surprised it happened, that such thing did happen, more often than was publicly ‘known’. You reply “maybe a majority of men” feel that way “and I’m just naive”.
That’s not good storytelling technique, though it’s pretty good debate-club tactics. Maybe law school would’ve been a better natural fit?
eemom
I would argue that shifting the goalposts is the opposite of good debate club tactics, but I do agree it seems to have happened here.
Are we talking about a certain period of history, or are we talking about human behavior in general? That is the point that’s gotten confused here.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was a little startled that the husband seemed to have been so very pleased by the situation. Infidelity was very common, but that specific reaction was not as common, at least in what I’ve read. Uncommon reactions to a common situation are interesting to me.
@Anne Laurie:
I get annoyed when people imply that I’m a prude making moral judgements when I say I’ve run across an uncommon situation in a history book that startled and amused me.
If said situation is, in fact, far more common than I thought and most guys actually find it a turn-on when their partner sleeps with another guy, I feel like somebody needs to let me know, because that has not been my experience at all.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne: Sure, it’s uncommon; that’s why it’s noteworthy. But there’s a joke that Frankenstein was written because Mary Shelly wanted an excuse not to have yet another threesome with Lord Byron. Kinky Regency aristocrats were not unheard of; the relative prudishness of the Victorian era was in large part a reaction to the Regency era.
Mnemosyne
@eemom:
I think — but I’m not sure — that we’re brushing up against a polyamory thing. I thought it was unusual for a guy to be turned on when his partner sleeps with another guy, but now I’m feeling like I may be behind the times on that and now it’s considered totally normal? I’m a little confused at this point and probably need to go to sleep.
Mnemosyne
@Darkrose:
I’m so confused now that I probably just need to go to bed. I’ll see if there’s some kind of consensus in the morning. I thought it was a funny anecdote, but apparently sex is no longer a laughing matter these days.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: It’s not particularly normal, if you were curious.
akryan
The one thing I’d like to say on this thread is that I don’t like Hillary’s strategy right now. She hasn’t put away Bernie and she’s already moved on to the general. I understand the thinking. Ignore him and he gets no coverage. I am still worried about the strategy. If he keeps overperforming, that coverage is going to come back. The narrative that she can’t put him away will come back. So, even though I understand what she’s doing, I don’t know that it’s smart.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t speak of “most guys”. I can speak of what I’ve read, and of my personal experience. Within a restricted social circle, everybody’s Langdon chart will be larger than almost any individual will predict (or admit), even among a group (in my case, sf fanzine fans of the 1970s/80s) composed mostly of publicly “geeky” individuals of low emotional sophistication (like the fictional main cast of Big Bang Theory, only with less professional scriptwriters).
And in my personal experience, while sexual intimacy is certainly important, it’s the other social attachments or disagreements that tie a group together or lead to its dissolution… even though those social disagreements frequently end up publicly framed as “DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT COMMIT SEXUAL MISCONDUCT YOU HORRIBLE PERSON?!?” The horribleness of any particular sexual misconduct is important mostly as a framing for other betrayals, real or imagined. Ergo, finding out that your dear friend is having sex with your wife is only a relationship-breaker if you feel one or the other or both of them are taking advantage of you, weakening their attachment to you.
People can love more than one sexual partner, and yes, people can even love people who are having sex with their partner but not them. We have words for it now, but we didn’t invent the concept.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne: You seem to be making two different arguments here, which is confusing me.
Some people simply aren’t wired for jealousy. Some people find watching or knowing their partner’s having sex with someone else to be a turn-on. What’s unusual in the case you’re referring to is that the husband was fine with his wife having an affair and being willing to acknowledge that at a time when that acknowledgement would have been unusual.
different-church-lady
@NotMax:
That’s a good quality when you work in the film and video biz.
Oh, so close! Impossible to work in this biz without one, because everyone is so chaotic and last minute. Mostly because cell phones allow them the illusion that doing everything chaotically and at the last minute is an okay way to approach things.
The first thing I’m doing when I hit the lottery is flinging my cell phone into the ocean.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe the context is lacking, but I don’t see how that quote proves anything about the author sharing his wife with another man. It sounds like he’s just talking about his relationship with her.
different-church-lady
@Darkrose: Reading end-to-top, I’m thinking, “Well, this thread took an interesting turn.”
different-church-lady
@divF:
“Alright, everybody stay in your seats! I am going to bring down this
aircraftnational economy through the terrifying power of WRITING THINGS ON THIS PAD OF PAPER!!!”different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
Speaking of differential equations…
scav
don’t forget were also talking about period where marriage is transitioning (which it actually seems to do a lot) from more business related allegiences and emotional ones, and there was a lot of variation especially by class (another thing I think the Victorians put the squeeze to no small degree, with an unloosening again with Edward). There may have been a lot more importance attached to not losing face by the spouses wandering (play by the rules, after the heirs are provided for, the chimney sweep is right out, etc) lthough the lose of face (both sexual and social) really only mattered for men and they could get fussy (the Harleian Miscellany. being a known exception, although obviously it didn’t pass without comment). But while gossiped about, and tutted about, it certainly didn’t seem to slow (some) people down the way it did later. A fair number of divorces and remarriages. I get the impression of an age with a lot of variance and even nearly experimentation or personal takes on what the marriage bond meant practically speaking. They also tended to be franker about discussing things than the Victorians that followed. (Victorians had their own kinks but everything seemed to be on the down low).
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major:
And now we’re bringing set theory into this?
Miss Bianca
Damn…I obviously picked the wrong night to retire early to bed…
Grumpy Code Monkey
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
More like crystal meth. I mean…Jesus…
Mnemosyne
@Darkrose:
Thank you! That’s the part where I started to feel like I was going insane, or that I had missed out on some huge revolution everyone else had gone through and jealousy somehow wasn’t a thing anymore.
Like I said, I’ve done a lot of reading about the period and am pretty familiar with the common patterns of infidelity, but that was a new one for me. BTW, the lover in question was Frederick, the Duke of York & Albany, who was second in line to the British throne at the time but predeceased his brother George IV, so the next brother in line (William IV) inherited. After him, Victoria.
@scav:
This, too. The Duke and Duchess of Rutland had actually married for love in 1799, but those were the days when male infidelity was a given, so apparently once Elizabeth fell in love with York, Charles (her husband) felt like it was only fair for her to be able to have an affair, too. They were by all accounts very devoted as a married couple and Charles stayed by her bedside literally until she breathed her last. He never remarried, though obviously as a Duke he had plenty of chances.
@Steeplejack
I didn’t include the full context because I would have to retype the entire page from the book, but the book is called Mistress of the House: Great Ladies and Grand Houses by Rosemary Baird and it’s from the chapter about Elizabeth, Duchess of Rutland. It is definitely a letter from the husband about how he’s having better sex with his wife now that he’s sharing her with York.
Mnemosyne
Last bit for the curious: a reprint of her obituary and a couple of other brief contemporary articles.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Ran across this pdf on Jane Austen and Adultery when I was googling to verify exactly who’s miscellany it was. Some of the local details were more than fun and reminded me once again to separate Austen herself from any simple reading of her books.
Mnemosyne
@Anne Laurie:
Forgot to say, this part makes sense. It’s also noteworthy that having your higher-status longtime friend the royal Duke, heir to the throne, express interest in your wife usually doesn’t end very well for the wife in these aristocratic stories if she’s at all reluctant, but the whole romance seems in large part to have been driven by the wife’s emotions, which may be another reason why it turned out all right for everyone concerned (at least until she died of appendicitis three years in).
There’s a bit from another letter in the book that was written by the Duke of Welington’s (married) mistress where she makes a catty comment about a grandmother and an elderly man starting up a romance. Elizabeth was in her mid-40s at this point and, like most women of her class, had several grandchildren while simultaneously still having children herself even before the romance with York started.