From: bob@netxcom.netx.com (Robert Thralls)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: () -- ARITHMETIC
Date: 28 Sep 92 15:27:54 GMT
Organization: NetExpress Inc., Vienna, VA, USA


>Gosh, Robert, are you having a bad day, or what?  What's the matter?  Did 
>the computer eat your girlfriend?  Take a deep breath and calm down.  Just
>keep repeating to yourself:  numbers don't tell lies, politicians tell lies.

I don't have a girlfriend, haven't had one in a very, very, very long time.
"Did the computer eat your girlfriend?" -- Now that is an interesting remark.
Does one think that one could simply create a device, /dev/mouth or /dev/bugger.
In the same way one dreams that this person will be gone in the morning.
A computer can only do as you tell it. And one can only tell it to something
by eventually using numbers - long streams of 0's and 1's.

>And try to remember that you can lie with words and actions as well as with
>numbers.

Precisely.

>
>Also, stay away from generalizations like "numbers are cold" and "dads talk
>in numbers, moms talk in harsh tones".  Such remarks are worse than useless.

Actually, I was being quite specific; I don't understand the spectator sport
of football, I enjoy playing, though. I don't understand the arguments, the
long hours of watching, nor the amount won on the point spread. I can
understand those harsh tones aimed at passive individuals playing with numbers
when he could have been playing with the kids, cutting the grass, and chopping
enough wood for later when the children have gone to bed, and chilling the wine,
like he used to do. Some watch football and speak in estranged toungs, others
play on computers, still others while away with conversations of prices, 
points, and rates - numbers, numbers, numbers. And the war stories, so many
units 338th, 99th, 397th - so many millimeters 9, 70, 122, and calibers of 
mulitudes .223, .38, .45, .5, .6- the men, so many men. Numbers all of them,
393-47-9257 - and each as expendable as the next, "We took 12 percent 
casualties...." - just what the hell is that supposed to mean to the loved 
ones of 12 percent? And what of mom's tones? The specific frequency at which
she nags, is always ignored, selective hearing, tune her out. Hear not the
harmonics of her messages to be understood at various levels.

>
>By the way:  it does too matter how many deer are in the forest;  if there
>are too many, they will all starve, and if there are too few, they will 
>become extinct.  Speaking of which, I will re-post my deer poem below.

Yes, this is what I meant, The entirity must be considered the only unit.
But noone really has to count them. The have survived here long before
deer tags were issued. People should know that death is not nice, and
to make sport of it is disgusting.

>Numbers always matter -- if you doubt this, try counting how many people 
>are in bed with you every night.  

USEFUL. Ever notice how monogamy is binary (until you have children and there
is a thunderstorm).

>And next time you have a chat with Merlin, ask him about grammar.

I know, I know, but I just don't understand the rules of the game....

>Marie Coffin

thanx Marie, nice poem, too.

----------------------------------
>>>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense<<<

>To: Ms. Arnica Montana

Interesting, did one assume the gender? I too have been guilty of such
assumptions....

>Subject: Arithmetic
>
>What hysterical drivel! So u think Arithmetic is almost evil? That it is
>cold? That numbers divide people?

No, not really.

>Yet u couldn't be more wrong. Numbers have beauty and magic and power.
>Power to do good as well as evil. But they r not the doer. That is us.
>Yes, the wonderful, sentimental, cruel us that use numbers for good or
>evil.

Yes, it is the use that I disagree with. Almost every use, actually.

>Numbers are a way to name the world around us. What greater honor could
>we do to this world in which we live? To want to name, to know, to
>understand, surely that is the finest and noblest impulse known to
>life.

Not my impulse, I can recognize uniqueness without having to define it,
or even test it.

>Some of the greatest mathematicians were the warmest creatures u could
>find. They wept and laughed and lusted and hated and loved as much as (if
>not more) than other humans. Abel. Galois. Gauss. Noether. 

I hope so, they are people, ya know. These are not the people that I spoke
of, they have added to the quality of life, in their own way. I speak of the 
cold ones that use the theories of great thinkers in ways that they were not 
intended. And take them for granted, blindly going through life using tools
for benefit, but never using a tool to create a new "good" tool.

"but doing arithmetic is as mindless as pushing buttons- anybody can do
their arithmetic and still not add anything to the quality of life."

>It is satisfying perhaps and no doubt fashionable, to think of knowledge
>as cleaved into two worlds, that of the heart and that of the mind. Such
>was a division was clearly stated for the first time by a mathematician, Ms.
>Montana. Descartes. It is ironic that this 18th century mothball should
>be so actively supported by so called speakers-from-the-heart.

No, this is not what I meant at all. Far from it. I drew a line between numbers
and morals, not between intuition and reason. I drew a line to show imbalance,
and when things are not in balance and harmony, the end result is not truth.
And I am not speaking only of the equation of mathematics, but of that which
mathematics cannot explain - It must always be in balance.

"Great numbers are not everything, so when you deal with numbers, remember 
what is important; especially what is important to you."

>Governments have been cruel and indifferent in times past, when
>arithmetic was a crude scratches-in-the-mud science. It uses the tools
>of power like any other organism.

People run governments, people, people, people. "We have seen the enemy and
they are us." For if governments were not the people, what use would they serve?
no other organism, but our own can be blamed for such usage.

>If u took the trouble to study the field that u so heartily condemn, perhaps
>as Macarthy said, there would be less drivel.
>--A. Menon.

As I recall from school, they always teach one to utilize arithmetic to his
advantage. Never teaching the morals of math. Not even to their own children.
And isn't that where morals have to be taught, at home, not in front of the
television reciting runs, hits, errors, and averages, but out on the ball field
with dad on the mound encouraging the youth as they learn the bases, learn 
the rules of life and how they should apply to each of us. Dad needs to make
sure that the children don't steal second, just because they can. When they
are out in left field, their screems need to be heard. And it is up to dad,
to ensure that the kids 'touch base' every now and then.


Arnica Montana