2 thoughts on “Writing and One Story”

1. Likely some of the many changes to be caused by the Internet are increases in the quantity and quality of content including writing, other forms of art, informational writing, instructional writing, etc. And we are getting much more in both still images and video clips, and the quantity and quality of those two content types also stand to increase.

   Now, in principle, with a powerful home computer, one person could create a movie that could compete with some of the successful movies from Hollywood. The movie, a lot of fun, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a start on such a movie, with several excellent human actors but also with a lot of computer generated backgrounds and animation.

   Exciting times.

   Taking the definition of art as the “communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion”, with, sure, short stories being examples, now young people at a personal computer connected to the Internet have at their finger tips content libraries and library catalogs far beyond even the imagination of the rest of the population when they were young.

   Generally the Internet should result in some massive step up in the quality of education for the young and everyone and much better education and information and much more for both the economy and politics. E.g., in the past, the statements of a politician were, if reported at all, just printed on paper that was thrown away or otherwise later relatively difficult to find — politicians could be sure that very little of what they said or promised would be meaningfully remembered for long. Now we can readily get video clips, video of whole speeches, press releases, Twitter statements, interview transcripts, etc., indexed, searchable, etc. We can, in the words of an old short story, “look it up” easily and check. Or, now citizens can easily hold the feet to the fire of both politicians and newsies.

   E.g., my computer has D. Knuth’s mathematical word processing software TeX that makes anything from the typewriter era look like a wooden stick and a clay tablet, and my computer has a FAX modem that lets me send nice, clear, exact, easy to read, beautifully formatted copies of letters from TeX to Members of Congress.

   Irony: In high school, I was told that knowing how to type would be important in college. So, I took the typing class. That was a spring in Memphis, that is, HOT (no air conditioning). And on too many days, I was wearing an Army ROTC uniform, great for winter in Alaska. Mostly the class was for the girls who wanted to qualify as secretaries.

   Then, on the one hand, for me, competing with the girls was just hopeless: The girls sat there cool, with good posture, happy, nice smiles, often staggeringly pretty, typing nearly flawless copy, quickly and effortlessly. It looked like nearly all the girls already knew how to type; yes, I could suspect that somehow they were born that way! In wild contrast, I was sweating, dripping sweat on the paper, too often putting my fingers between the keys, making mistakes and messes, etc. All semester, it was a disaster, compared with the intended progress, worse week by week. Then it got a lot worse: On the final exam, as I removed my horrible paper from the machine, I tore it in half and had to submit the pieces! We’re talking totally hopeless!

   My grade in the one semester typing class? Sure, flat F. It is what I deserved.

   But I did learn where the A-Z keys are as in touch typing.

   On the other hand, by now I may have done more typing than any of the girls in that typing class, maybe more than any five of those girls. At this point, I’m fine at typing!

   Of course, I did have a decently good excuse: It is just a fact that the boys had much less good manual dexterity than the girls. My manual dexterity has improved as it was supposed to.

   But, sure, net, I did beat the girls in school: In classes in general science, math, and physics, I “beat them like rented mules” effortlessly, as if I had been born knowing plane geometry, trigonometry, solid geometry, calculus, linear algebra, …, right, sigma algebras, Newton’s second law, ordinary differential equations, etc.!

   E.g., some of the girls struggled with freshman calculus. Well, at times I have taught it, applied it, and even published research based on extensions of it. Take it? Actually, no! Never did! No, I wasn’t born with it, but I did teach it to myself and, then, start on sophomore calculus, from the same text used at Harvard, and did fine, easily. So, yes, I was a college math major. As a senior in college, my math GRE score was 800.

   This stuff about boys and girls being the same or much the same is a total hoot — not even close to true. In typing, verbal talent, skills, and accomplishments, understanding literature, memorizing poems, art classes, all the humanities courses, social skills, socialization, etc., the girls instantly, effortlessly, totally knocked me off the field and into the nickel seats. In STEM subjects, I returned the favor plus some. In a word, boys and girls are different. I’ll never be fooled on that point again!

   I still remember 9th grade algebra class: Some of the girls were totally drop dead gorgeous — beyond belief, big changes since grade school! In grade schools, those girls had comparatively made me look like a total fool. And the teachers, all women, were convinced I was a fool (I have some reason to suspect that some of objective aptitude test scores showed a much better story). But in algebra, the course was next to obvious and trivial for me while about half the girls, including some staggeringly pretty ones, sat there struggling, confused, distressed. Big, HUGE difference.

   E.g., my Memphis high school was relatively good: MIT came recruiting. The year before me, three guys went to Princeton and competed with some fourth guy for President of the Freshman Class.

   Then, when I was a high school senior, on the SAT Math test, 1-2-3 were all boys. #1 went to Purdue, #2 went to MIT. I was #2 — we were all within an interval of about 12 points. When the teacher assigned to be guidance counselor, who had also been my sixth grade teacher and, thus, regarded me as a fool, read me my Math SAT score, she was shaken, afraid, said, “There must be some mistake.” Right away I thought but didn’t say, “Right, honey, there has been for 12, long, painful years from you bimbos.” Soon, she recovered a little and confessed “This is very good …” Yup, it was. I hadn’t known what the SAT was, didn’t prepare for it, made no special effort, etc. So, right, my Math SAT score was better than needed for MIT!

   For my college freshman year, to save money for Dad, I went to a college I could walk to; it was mostly a step down from my high school. The school was so slow witted they wouldn’t let freshmen take calculus. So, not to fall behind, I got a good calculus text and taught it to myself.

   For the last three years of college, I went to a small, selective school that happened to have one heck of a good math department — and a lot of very pretty girls who, however, had zero interest in me! I got a copy of the challenging Princeton honors Nickerson, Spencer, and Steenrod (later famous in algebraic topology) Advanced Calculus and dug in. In my last semester, I got a copy of Kelley, General Topology, still respected, taught it to myself, and gave weekly lectures to a prof. My honors paper was on group representation theory, still an important subject. The text for the advanced calculus class I took was Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, still the gold standard, at least at one time used in Harvard’s famous Math 55. For a liberal arts school, it was a darned good math department. There were nearly no girls in any of my college math or physics classes! The girls seemed to like English literature, maybe art history, maybe some psychology.

   But a class that was never offered but which I should have taken was “Girls 101 for Dummies — Boys.” I had to learn that on my own, and I paid “full tuition”!

2. .
   If you like good writing and appreciate a finely crafted short story, One Story may be for you.

   https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/writing-one-story/

   Big Red Car has a short story written by The Boss for your reading pleasure.

   BRC
   https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

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