text:
CHEN CHING-PO (born 1 October 1931) is a Taiwanese professional golfer. He represented Chinese Taipei in 11 successive Canada Cup tournaments from 1956 to 1966 and won the Japan Open Golf Championship in 1959.

He was described as the “Ben Hogan of Asia” by Gene Sarazen due to the similarities between their swings.[1]

Professional wins (16)

Asia Golf Circuit wins (1)

-   1968 Yomiuri International

Other wins (11)

-   1959 Japan Open Golf Championship
-   1960 White Bear Cup
-   1962 Kanto Open, White Bear Cup
-   1964 Kanto Pro Championship, Golf Nippon Series, Champions Tournament
-   1965 Champions Tournament
-   1966 Grand Monarch, Champions Tournament
-   1967 Narashino Million

Senior wins (4)

-   1981 Japan PGA Senior Championship
-   1982 Kanto PGA Senior Championship
-   1983 Kanto PGA Senior Championship
-   1985 Kanto PGA Senior Championship

Results in major championships

  Tournament              1956   1957   1958   1959   1960   1961   1962   1963   1964   1965   1966   1967   1968
  ----------------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------
  Masters Tournament                                                       T15    T44    T39    T22    T46    T35
  The Open Championship   T33

“T” indicates a tie for a place
_Note: Chen only played in the Masters Tournament and The Open Championship._

Team appearances

-   Canada Cup (representing Chinese Taipei): 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966

[1]

title: Chen Ching-Po

question: How old is Chen Ching-Po?

answer: He is 90 years old.

question: Why was Chen Ching-Po described as Ben Hogan of Asia?

answer: Because the similarities between their swings.

question: List three Chen Ching-Po's wins.

answer: 1959 Japan Open Golf Championship, 1960 White Bear Cup, 1962 Kanto Open, White Bear Cup.

question: How many times did Chen Ching-Po represent Chinese Taipei in Canada Cup tournaments?

answer: 11 times.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Chen Ching-Po (born in 1931) is a Taiwanese professional golfer who represented Chinese Taipei in 11 successive Canada Cup tournaments from 1956 to 1966. He won the Japan Open Golf Championship in 1959. He was described as the “Ben Hogan of Asia” because of the similarities between their swings.


split: train

text:
JOHN T. YUDICHAK (born May 1, 1970) is an American politician from Pennsylvania currently serving as an Independent member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for 14th District since 2011. The district includes parts of Carbon, Luzerne, and Monroe Counties.[1] He previously served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 119th district from 1999 to 2010.[2]

Early life and education

John Yudichak was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Sarah Yudichak.[3] He graduated from Nanticoke Area High School in 1988, and attended Wyoming Seminary for one year before transferring to the Pennsylvania State University.[4] He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1993 and a Master of Arts degree in American Studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2004.[5]

Career

Yudichak worked as an intern for U.S. Representative Paul E. Kanjorski before serving as director of development at the Osterhout Free Library in Wilkes-Barre.[6] In 1996, he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Stanley Jarolin for the Democratic nomination for the 119th District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, losing by 600 votes.[7] However, he ran for the nomination again in 1998, and defeated Jarolin by more than 800 votes.[8] In the general election, he defeated Republican Jean Sepling.

Yudichak was elected to the State Senate in 2010. He easily won the Democratic nomination for the 14th District seat (being vacated by Democratic incumbent Ray Musto) when he defeated Wilkes-Barre mayor Tom Leighton by a 2 to 1 margin in the May 18, 2010 primary. Yudichak won the general election on November 2, 2010, defeating Luzerne County Commissioner Stephen Urban.

On November 19, 2019, Yudichak changed his voter registration from Democrat to Independent, and ceased to caucus with the Democrats, caucusing instead with the Republican majority.[9][10]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

title: John Yudichak

question: Who is John Yudichak?

answer: He is an American politician from Pennsylvania currently serving as an Independent member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 14th District since 2011.

question: Summarize everything relating to Yudichak's education.

answer: He graduated from Nanticoke Area High School in 1988 and attended Wyoming Seminary for one year before transferring to the Pennsylvania State University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1993, and a Master of Arts degree in American Studies in 2004.

question: Yudichak worked as an intern for which U.S. Representative?

answer: Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski

question: When did Yudichak switch from Democrat to Independent?

answer: November 19, 2019

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: John Yudichak is an American politician from Pennsylvania currently serving as an Independent member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 14th District since 2011. He previously served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 119th district from 1999 to 2010.


text:
_"He is Piero Joplin. Even now he visualizes the next invention - astonishing. I wish you could see it too."_
—The Heart[2]

PIERO JOPLIN is a natural philosopher, an inventor (whose creations include an anti-plague potion known as Piero's Spiritual Remedy, Corvo's Mask, and later, an advanced Arc Pylon) and a member of the Loyalist Conspiracy who resides above the workshop at the Hound Pits Pub. Throughout _Dishonored_, Piero supplies Corvo Attano with ammunition and equipment upgrades, provided Corvo has the required coin to purchase them. He also designs and constructs Corvo's mask, which he gives to Corvo upon their introduction.

-   1 Biography
-   2 Trivia
-   3 Gallery
-   4 References

Biography

Piero is the youngest person ever to graduate from the Academy of Natural Philosophy, which irritated the Head of the Academy, Anton Sokolov. At an indeterminate time prior to the events of _Dishonored_, Sokolov played a part in expelling Piero from the Academy, creating a fierce rivalry between the two. Piero believes that if it weren't for Sokolov, he would be a Senior Fellow at the Academy. He also suggests that Sokolov stole several of his inventions, including his elixir formula.

Before creating Corvo's mask, Piero was visited by dreams of a boy dying. The dreams distracted him, making his work impossible. He then began dreaming of the Void, where he encountered what he believed to be death. Inspired by his dream of the Outsider, he began work on the mask that would later be presented to Corvo. Before completing the mask, Piero also created Corvo's crossbow and sword, which Corvo acquires in the sewers.

According to the Heart, the Outsider continues to visit Piero at night, giving him ideas for new creations in his dreams.[3] An audiograph found on Piero's desk suggests that the Heart itself is one of these creations.

Piero and Sokolov ultimately reconcile their differences while under siege from Farley Havelock's men. In the low chaos ending of _Dishonored_, the two combine their efforts and develop a cure for the rat plague.

Trivia

-   Piero is voiced by Brad Dourif.[4]
-   Piero provides Corvo's primary source of income, selling items that Corvo collects during his missions. In terms of gameplay, this is expressed by Corvo's funds increasing when he collects loot.
    -   According to this note, it is possible for Piero to use some of the items that Corvo collects, such as copper wire.
-   Piero can be found spying on Callista Curnow in the bath, and has done so many times, according to the Heart.[5]
    -   If Piero is caught spying on Callista by Corvo, he will attempt to excuse himself, saying that he was working on a "Snowflake Lock".
    -   Piero can also be overheard attempting to flirt with Callista by mentioning "devices" he designed for the Golden Cat. She responds with disgust.
-   At one point, Cecelia expresses an interest in marrying Piero.
-   Piero suffers from "brain fevers" that even his own elixir cannot cure.[6]
    -   The term "brain fevers" refers to an outdated medical term that was used to describe symptoms of encephalitis and/or meningitis.
-   Early promotional materials for the game show Wallace Higgins working in Piero's workshop; Harvey Smith confirmed in a tweet that Piero and Wallace's head models were switched at some point between the making of the promotional materials and the release of the game._[citation needed]_
    -   The concept art featured in the gallery below shows Piero wearing Wallace's clothes.
-   If Corvo kills or does not rescue Piero and Sokolov during a low chaos playthrough, the ending will show their abandoned laboratory being overrun by the plague, even though the Outsider's narration still states that the plague was cured.
-   During his time at the Academy, Piero once settled an argument with William Trimble by winning a coin toss.[7]
-   According to Harvey Smith on Piero's life after _Dishonored_, "[I] always assume [P]iero is perpetually bitter and alone, self sabotaging"._[citation needed]_
-   Piero joined back the Academy of Natural Philosophy in his later years to teach alongside Sokolov. Alexandria Hypatia was one of his students.[8]
-   Ultimately, sometime between 1837 and 1852, Piero produced a new health elixir with Anton Sokolov, known as the S&J Health Elixir, before passing away._[citation needed]_

Gallery

References

1.

    ↑ Developer Commentary – _Dishonored_ ages masterpost
2.

    ↑ _"He is Piero Joplin. Even now he visualizes the next invention - astonishing. I wish you could see it too."_
3.

    ↑ _"Each and every night the black-eyed Outsider visits upon Piero's dreams."_
4.

    ↑ _Dishonored_ Credits § Voice and Music
5.

    ↑ _"He has spied upon Callista as she bathes. More than once."_
6.

    ↑ _"Poor Piero. His elixirs have cured so much for many. But they cannot cure his brain fevers."_
7.

    ↑ Trimble's Coin
8.

    ↑ _"Hypatia studied at the Academy of Natural Philosophy under Piero Joplin and Anton Sokolov."_

v • d • e

Characters in _Dishonored_

PROTAGONIST
Corvo Attano

LOYALISTS
Callista Curnow • Cecelia • Farley Havelock • Lydia Brooklaine • PIERO JOPLIN • Samuel Beechworth • Teague Martin • Treavor Pendleton • Wallace Higgins

ASSASSINATION TARGETS
Custis Pendleton • Daud • Hiram Burrows • Lady Boyle • Morgan Pendleton • Thaddeus Campbell

OTHERS
Anton Sokolov • Emily Kaldwin • Geoff Curnow • Granny Rags • Griff • Jessamine Kaldwin • Madame Prudence • Propaganda Officer • Royal Interrogator • Slackjaw • The Outsider

MINOR CHARACTERS (MALE)
Alec • Blake • Boo • Bunting • Byron Alderdice • Captain Ren • Craxton • Crowley • Dunstan • Earl • General Tobias • Grayson • Hackworth • Harold • Jeffrey • Jelly • Lord Brisby • Lord Shaw • Mace Brimsley • Mad Survivor • Magnus • Overseer Archer • Overseer Berthold • Overseer Franklin • Overseer Gerard • Overseer Jasper • Overseer Sturgess • Pratchett • Ramsey • Rodney • Sergeant Heyburn • Stu • Tom • Watch Officer Thorpe

MINOR CHARACTERS (FEMALE)
Alfa • Betty • Ella Triss • Elsa • Jane Blair • Loulia • Mattie • Ms. Benton • Miss White • Test Subject 312 • Violetta

CLASSES
Aristocrats • Bottle Street Gang • City Watch • Courtesans • Overseers • Servants • Survivors • Weepers • Whalers

ANIMALS
Fish • Rats • River Krusts • Whales • Wolfhounds

question: Who is Piero Joplin?

answer: A natural philosopher and an inventor.

question: What is Piero Joplin a member of?

answer: The Loyalist Conspiracy.

question: What does Piero provide Corvo?

answer: Ammunition and equipment upgrades, as well as Corvo's mask.

question: What academy did Piero graduate from?

answer: The Academy of Natural Philosophy

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: Piero Joplin is a natural philosopher and an inventor. He makes ammunition and equipment upgrades for Corvo, as well as providing him with a mask. He has a checkered history with the Academy of Natural Philosophy, having a feud with its head Anton Sokolov. Ultimately Piero and Sokelov resolve their differences unfer siege from Farley Havelock's men.


text:
A HERO OF WAR
The bright shimmering moon illuminated my bedside table,” The book of war” my little red diary lay in the centre surrounded by other personal mementos. Its obvious disorder was a source of comfort but that book had an enchanting ability to transport me into a world of heroism and adventure. I held an insatiable appetite for that stuff. Memories have faded I can’t recall everything…”Pazzck!” The loud bang of lightning, a cloud of bombs pitter pattered outside. Wait this isn’t home? The melting brown sludge slid off the walls of our trench our knee high boots filled with a toxic concoction of our own filth. The panic Intensified “Get Down!”. An enemy sniper was perched on the enemies crows nest; we were awaiting the inevitability of death by our own stupidity.

	The faint screams of missiles soared over us “Bang!” A dense green hazy fog fell from the sky dimming our precious sun light.” Gas!?...Gas! Gas! Quick boys!” An unsure struggle of fumbling to put on the on the intricate mask. Yet a man was still screaming from the deep bellows of his lungs. Wheezing for air he coughed rapidly, each time worse than the last, coughing so much the boy gagged. He looked me straight in the eyes; his red blood shot eyes filled with an ocean of water, his eyelids have redden with irritation, like an internal wound. I stole an awkward look at his face as he stumbled towards me, arms outstretched and crying in pure sorrow. The boy fell to the ground landing on my feet almost as though he was commanding me to mark his last few agonising moments. I was paralysed to the spot and fixed my petrified eyes on him as he twitched frantically. Still alive and the deep murky red water surrounded his semi-submerged face.

	We tossed his still warm body out of the trench into No Mans land. We ran still dazed by the blast and a horrific sight, a spinning trench with no left or right just a twisting labyrinth of death. Why was I so stupid? A hero of war is what wanted to be and after they’ll see and when I come home my country will be proud of me is what I thought tricked by the worm tongued men in suits. Their golden lies like sweet nectar. Continuing on in our escape of the trenches I climbed into a truck and we drove away never to return to that murderous maze.

	Why wasn’t it me? We danced with death and lived to tell the tale. Who died in the poisoned gas? Every single time I close my eyes I see his face pleading for mercy, even when I blink I am reminded of his last lunge, his last attempt for air. For a brief second I thought of home in this stalemate, a awkward silence of war .No hope to get out I held tightly on to the picture of home knowing my return will be soon.  A snowflake gently fell from the sky; I was dazed by this phenomenon of a dancing snowflake. Catching the cold dead snowflake, I peered down at my dirty black hands; it quickly melted like a broken memory.

	Looking up from my hands the biome around me changed a cold fortress of death lay in front of my allies wearing their white camouflaged Coats. We were not suited out for this pointless quest. The harsh icy winds cut like swords covered in salt, leaving a deep frozen scar making us venerable to the harsh cold I Do not fear our enemy. I hate my hate my country, I returned home after our stalemate in the cold to see that their was no welcome home, no glory for what we have done .But what have we done to receive glory to my family all they see me is a hero of war just medals and scar and so proud of, But that is all that family sees the rest of the country couldn’t care less of my well being .I questioned why I even lived or why I continue to live with this broken shell shocked mind. Every bang a bomb, every person an enemy. What has my life become?

title: A Hero Of War(first attempt at a short story)

question: What events lead the narrator to have PTSD?

answer: His experiences during the war. The tragic events include sniper fire and chemical weapons. During the latter attack, he witnesses a fellow soldier die a horrible death. His platoon experiences the blight of being under-equipped in wintertime. The praise of being a war hero upon his return without a real concern for his wellbeing drives him over the edge.

question: What does the story say about trench warfare?


text:
"It's time to begin! This is it..." The lyrics pounded in my head as I stuck my head out the window feeling the wind in my hair. I breathed in smelling the world around me. I feel amazing. Brilliant, infinite, every word in the book. This is where I belong, traveling around, seeing the world. I have grabbed my two best friends, Jr and Katie and have set off for adventure. Don't ask me why, I'm still trying to figure that out myself. Jr seems content with doing this, he's always said that he wanted to see what's outside of this town and Katie...well Katie will take any excuse to get out of her hell of a home. Parents arguing, little sisters being manics, the minute I proposed this idea, she was on bored. This was our time. We were ready. And holy shit, we were scared.
It's four weeks after we have left and we have had some major highs and lows. At of this time, we have brought Katie's cousin, Ty along with us. He said he's coming to "protect us," but I know that he just wants out. He's quite the mystery. We started out in California and we're are still in California. It's talking longer than we thought. We have just entered San Fransisco and I'm in Heaven. I love it here. The smell, the sounds, the sights. I knew that going on this trip wasn't a mistake. We were stopping at every thing that seemed interesting and there was a lot. Pier 39, curvy streets, and spy shops. Yes. Spy shops.  Katie and Ty are having the time of their lives. I've never seem Katie hold a smile for that long and Ty just looks like a new person. This really is changing us
Seven weeks in and we're in Colorado. This is when shit really started going down. Jr got sick and couldn't drive so Ty had to take the wheel and Katie started to bicker with Ty and I had to help Jr not puke. (We're in a trailer home.) We were in some random town that I don't even know the name and everyone was feeling the heat. Katie was laying down and Ty came up and started to scream her down for not telling her.
"I can't fucking believe that you didn't tell me! I had to call your mom! How could you keep this from me? Is that why you were so aggravated with me?"
"Ty. Drop it. It's nothing." She responded, with her voice shaking.
"What's nothing?" I said, fearing the answer.
"Katie is doing drugs-"
"I was doing drugs, dumbass!" Katie interrupted him.
"Oh! And she's having withdraw! Isn't that just fucking great!?" Katie looked ashamed and I was just shocked. Katie was such a innocent girl. Always flinching at the word of anything dirty or illegal but here she is doing drugs.
"Um..Umm.." I was stuttering so bad, "We'll deal with it later. We need to get to New York."
"Okay." They both agreed, Katie seeming relieved while Ty still seemed furious. In the back of the trailer I heard Jr yell, "CAN YOU SOME OF BITCHES SHUT UP?" I wasn't sure if he was being serious or just trying to break the tension
Weeks and weeks past. The times we ran out of gas: Too many to count. Times Jr puked: 7. Times I had to pull Ty and Katie apart before they got into a full brawl: 3. But here it was. New York. Throughout all four of our lives, we have wanted to see this city and we were...amazed. Everyone seemed so busy, so important. We seemed so small compared to the skyscrapers. I started to have this anxious feeling in my stomach and I couldn't help but marvel at the crowds of people. It was all so huge. We rolled in and we blasted the music, we pulled our windows down and started to blast, "We are Young" by Fun. We felt amazing. We felt alive. We felt infinite. This was our time and we would fucking make it.

title: Hiya c: Here's a story. I like stories :D

question: How would this story turn out if the narrator's to best friends weren't along for the adventure?

answer: Most likely, the adventure would not having created so many issues and would not have been as exciting for the narrator if their best friends had not come along.

question: What can you say the trip taught the three friends?

answer: The narrator taught the three friends to be able to solve a lot of issues together and to navigate tough circumstances because there would always be something better in the end.


text:
GEORGE FREDERICK CHARLES, MARGRAVE OF BRANDENBURG-BAYREUTH (19 June 1688 at Obersulzbürg Castle, near Mühlhausen – 17 May 1735 in Bayreuth), was a German prince, member of the House of Hohenzollern, nominal Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach (1708–35) and Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1726–35).

Family

He was the eldest of the fourteen children born to Margrave Christian Heinrich of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach by his wife, Countess Sophie Christiane of Wolfstein. Besides him, only six of his siblings survived childhood: Albrecht Wolfgang, killed in battle in 1734; Dorothea Charlotte, Countess of Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, who died in 1712 after only seven months of marriage; Sophie Magdalene, Queen of Denmark; Frederick Ernst; Sophie Caroline, Princess of Ostfriesland; and Frederick Christian, who later inherited the margraviate of Bayreuth.

Life

During his early years, George Frederick Charles was instructed by his very religious mother, and later received a careful formal education in Bielefeld. From 1700 to 1704 he travelled to western Europe as part of a traditional educational journey (Grand Tour), and visited, among other countries, Denmark, France and the Dutch Republic. Later, he studied four years at the University of Utrecht. After the death of his father in 1708 he returned with his family, who had lived since 1704 in the Schloss Weferlingen near Magdeburg, and assumed the nominal title of _Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach_.

Schloss Weferlingen had been assigned to his family as an appanage by King Frederick I of Prussia, after George Frederick Charles's heavily indebted father had renounced his succession rights to the Franconian Hohenzollern estates of Bayreuth and Ansbach in favour of Prussia in the Contract of Schönberg. George Frederick Charles nonetheless tried to recover his rights after the death of his father and sought the abolition of this contract. He was able to secure the support of the Franconian states, who feared being merged into the Franconian Circle by Prussia. George Frederick Charles could also rely on the decisive assistance of the Archbishop of Mainz and Prince-Bishop of Bamberger Lothar Franz von Schönborn and his nephew, the Imperial Vice-Chancellor (German: _Reichsvizekanzler_) Frederick Karl von Schönborn, who supported the abolition of the Contract of Schönberg. His efforts finally succeeded only in 1722 after long and difficult discussions and the payment of a substantial indemnity to Prussia.

When the Margrave Georg Wilhelm died in 1726 without surviving male issue, George Frederick Charles assumed the principality of Bayreuth without further difficulties.

After his accession, George Frederick Charles put great value on the improvement of the ruined finances of his territories and made local government his highest priority. In contrast to many of his contemporary rulers, he had no political or military ambitions. Instead he was very pious and intensely supported August Hermann Francke in inculcating the importance of religious life for his subjects. He was remarkable for his support of orphanages.

He was uninterested in court life, and in his last years built up Schloss Himmelkron, a former monastery, probably with plans to retire there.

In the memoirs of his daughter-in-law Wilhelmine of Prussia, George Frederick Charles is described as a thin, bandy-legged, egotistical, wrong-headed, jealous person. The antipathy was mutual. The margrave harassed his daughter-in-law in much the same way that her parents had done. When Wilhelmine gave birth to a daughter, it destroyed George Frederick Karl's hopes to take charge of his grandchild's upbringing, since he was allowed to supervise the education of his son Frederick's child only if it were a boy, according to the marriage contract signed with Wilhelmine. Frederick supported his wife and the drunk margrave hit him with his stick without injuring him.

Marriage and issue

In Reinfeld on 17 April 1709 George Frederick Charles married Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck. They had five children:

1.  Sophie Christiane Luise (b. Weferlingen, 4 January 1710 – d. Brussels, 13 June 1739), married on 11 April 1731 to Alexander Ferdinand, 3rd Prince of Thurn and Taxis.
2.  Frederick (b. Weferlingen, 10 May 1711 – d. Bayreuth, 26 February 1763), successor of his father as Margrave of Bayreuth.
3.  Wilhelm Ernst (b. Weferlingen, 26 July 1712 – d. Mantua, 7 November 1733).
4.  Sophie Charlotte Albertine (b. Weferlingen, 27 July 1713 – d. Ilmenau, 2 March 1747), married on 7 April 1734 to Duke Ernst August I of Saxe-Weimar.
5.  Sophie Wilhelmine (b. Weferlingen, 8 July 1714 – d. Aurich, 7 September 1749), married on 25 May 1734 to Prince Charles Edzard of East Frisia.

After seven years of unhappy marriage, George Frederick Charles and Dorothea separated in 1716. Eight years later (1724), their marriage was formally dissolved. Dorothea later emigrated to Sweden, where she died in 1761, twenty years after her former husband. Neither of them remarried.

Ancestry

title: George Frederick Charles, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth

question: Summarize everything relating to the deaths of Charles's family members.

answer: Only six of his siblings survived childhood. Of those who survived, Albrecht was killed in battle in 1734 and Dorothea died in 1712. His father died in 1708. After the death of his heavily indebted father, Charles tried to recover his rights and sought the abolition of his contract. Dorothea, his ex-wife, died in 1761, twenty years after her former husband.

question: What does the article say about the type of person George Frederick Charles was?

answer: He had no political or military ambitions, and was instead very pious. He also supported orphanages. His daughter-in-law described him as a thin, bandy-legged, egotistical, wrong-headed, jealous person. He harrassed his daughter-in-law in the same way her parents had done. He had an unhappy marriage with his wife, Dorothea.

question: What does the article say about Charles's life during the first decade of the 1700s?

answer: From 1700 to 1704 he travelled to western Europe as part of a traditional educational journey. His father died in 1708 and he returned with his family, who had lived in the Schloss Weferlingen since 1704, and assumed the nominal title of Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth-Kulmbach. He married Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck in 1709.

question: What does the article say about Charles's relationship with his son-in-law?


text:
>Everything is silent but the wind. An empty bus stop is across the street. The faded green metal of the shelter is rusted, and the glass has long since been graffitied. Trash is overflowing a nearby wastebin. A young man, thinly built sporting a tattered leather jacket, red beanie, and jeans comes into view. He is smoking a cigarette.

>Cut to close up view on his grey eyes - you see them flick upwards, you can see he is vigilant and aware of his surroundings at all times. He blinks.

>The sun is bright overhead. He solemnly approaches the bench and stands in the shade, leaning with his back against the shelter. Hands in his pockets, he glances left.

>A lone stranger is staggering down the sidewalk across the street. His movements suggest psychosis. Jagged hand movements and reactions to imaginary surroundings, he is clearly under the influence of reality altering chemicals.

>A bird chips in a nearby tree. the branch sways in the breeze.

>Cut back to main character, light smoke curls around his face as he exhales. his eyes are trailing the stranger, face completely blank. He blinks.

>The bus driver is clearly frustrated. His face is screwed up in brewing emotion. Eyes watery, face red and bushy eyebrows angrily clenched down. In the back of a bus a baby is crying, cell phones are going off, noise is building up. One of the passengers is becoming aggressive and is about to cause a commotion with another. The driver is glancing in his mirror.

>The staggering stranger, is reacting violently to nothing. His movements are erratic. He steps into the street. There is froth at his mouth, eyes dilated. Incapable of forming words, he moans and blurts incoherently.

>The main character glances right.

>A young adult female is driving her car. She is listening to loud pop music, her hair is in her face as she dances in her seat. She glances down at her radio console, which has a glare coming off it from the sun's reflection.

>Close up of her gas gauge, it is rising. She is still looking at her radio, changing the channel. Her elbow bumps her coffee and it spills. She gasps and makes a desperate attempt at saving her drink.

>Cut to main character. He glances left. The bus is approaching. He starts to finish his cigarette.

>The bus driver yells at the passenger. Threatening to kick him off the bus at the next stop. The passenger raises his voice. The baby is wailing.

>The young woman reaches for the cup, hot liquid pouring all over the interior of her car. She is looking down at the mess. Her music is is still blaring loud.

>The raving madman is seen for a fraction of a second in her windshield. The music volume, combined with her speedy distracted driving, she hits him hard.

>The bird takes flight.

>From main character's point of view, time is in slow motion. The stranger impacts the car and his limbs splay out at an inhuman angle. His flesh ricochets off the metal car. This bag of fleeting mortality lands in the path of the bus. About 6 feet in front of and to the left of the main character. His face is a bloody mess and the left leg is shattered in many places. A bloody pool forming around his mangled body.

>The bus driver has his head turned. Attention towards the back of his bus. He hits the brakes a little harder than he usually would to spite the standing passenger that was making his day shit and yells at him to get off the bus.

>As stranger gurgles blood in the road, the bus drives over his head. Brains splatter on the driver's side wheel. The bus barely feels a bump as it rolls to a stop. The door to the bus opens and a man storms off in the same direction the bus was heading without looking back.

>Main character takes one last puff of his cigarette, flicks it then steps onto the bus.

>Cut to black.

title: flicks his cigarette, and steps into the bus.

question: Summarize the primary source of tension in the story.

answer: A man, looking in a mess of distress, wanders into a traffic center. The story branches out to include the palette of characters who will come to be affected by his presence. The main character is a man who witnesses the panorama in its entirety, as the man in question is hit by a vehicle, and this impact has a sort of domino effect on other drivers, including a bus driver. Everyone plays a role in the scene-even a wailing baby.

question: Summarize the feelings of the main character, who watches the entire scene play out.


text:
I guess that I've become known, to some degree, for my "tribute" blends, like BlackHouse and Fusilier's Ration. But there was one blend that was so venerable that, even though I wanted to, I resisted from trying to make a clone of it. That blend is Balkan Sobranie Original Smoking Mixture.  Of course, one concern is that there's a current incarnation of the blend, and like almost all tobaccos, it changes somewhat over time. The new version doesn't seem all that similar to what I smoked in the seventies, so when I finally felt that I missed the old version enough that I wanted to try to match it, the seventies version was my target

When I released Hearth & Home Marquee WhiteKnight, the customer feedback was very positive, so I feel that the effort was worth it. WhiteKnight utilizes the same types of tobaccos that went into B.S.O.S.M. - bright Virginias, magnificent Orientals, especially the "Queen of Tobaccos", Yenidje, and rich, smoky Latakia. There's an incense-like aroma to WhiteKnight that immediately recalls my old favorite, and there's a crispness to the flavor that's unlike most Latakia blends. It also has a short, clean finish that makes it a good choice to pair up with your favorite beverage.

Russ

question: What are the "tribute" blends Russ is talking about?

answer: BlackHouse and Fusilier's Ration

question: What is the one blend Russ finds venerable?

answer: Balkan Sobranie Original Smoking Mixture

question: How did customers react when Russ released Hearth & Home Marquee WhiteKnight?

answer: Customer feedback was very positive.

question: What tobacco types are present in WhiteKnight?

answer: Virginias, Orientals, Yenidje, and Latakia.

question: Write a ~5 sentence summary.

answer: The post's author, Russ, talks about the "tribute" blends he's known for, such as BlackHouse and Fusilier's Ration. He says Balkan Sobranie Original Smoking Mixture (BSOSM) is his most venerable blend and he resisted the urge to clone it. Russ is concerned about the current incarnation of the blend because it doesn't taste like the one he smoked in the seventies. Russ then tries to match the old BSOSM by releasing Hearth & Home Marquee WhiteKnight that contains Virginias, Orientals, Yenidje, and Latakia. Customer feedback was very positive.


text:
Labour MPs, Mohammad Yasin, Rupa Huq, Afzal Khan and Rushanara Ali received ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letters (Photo: CC)

Hamed Chapman

Police forces across the UK are investigating an unprecedented coordinated hate campaign against Muslims nationwide, including suspicious packages sent to several Muslim MPs and encouraging a so-called ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ in April.

At least four Muslim Labour MPs, Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton), Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow), Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) and Afzal Khan (Manchester Gorton), were in receipt of anonymous ‘Punish a Muslim Day’ letters containing sticky substances, which police described as “low level noxious” and resulted in staff being taken to hospital as a precaution. There were conflicting reports whether one was also sent to Local Communities Secretary Sajid Javid as his office did not acknowledge to _The Muslim News_ whether he had received the letter or not.

“If the cowards that perpetrated this think that this will stop me standing against hatred they are sorely mistaken. In the House, I highlighted the culture of anti-Muslim sentiment which has sadly become inherent in some of the right-wing press. It’s time for some of our media to recognise the responsibility they have not to inflame tensions and inspire hatred,” Dr Huq said in a statement to _The Muslim News._

Greater Manchester Police were among forces to have issued warning guidelines to anyone in receipt of the threatening letters that were also reported to have also been sent to Muslims in West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Birmingham as well as London, while Counter Terrorism Policing North East were said to be providing national coordination for the investigation.

Scotland Yard further revealed that the malicious hate crime letter was also being circulated online and copies were also being received through Whatsapp. It incited people to carry out violent acts against Muslims, including verbal abuse, removing a woman’s hijab or head-scarf, physical assault, using acid as a weapon and attacking mosques. “Butcher a Muslim using gun, knife, vehicle or otherwise,” and “burn or bomb a mosque,” and even “Nuke Mecca”, it said.

“I am sure that the whole House (of Commons) will join me in condemning this unacceptable and abhorrent behaviour, which has no place in our society,” Prime Minister, Theresa May, said when questioned in Parliament. “An investigation is underway and steps are being taken to bring the perpetrators to justice,” she added.

Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said that the “disgusting hate-filled letters sent to Muslim fellow citizens and colleagues in Parliament are utterly contemptible.” Labour is committed to tackling Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime and those that seek to divide us will find that our country is “united in mutual respect, proud of our diversity and ready to protect our shared future. Today we stand together with those facing this vile Islamophobia, to show them support, care and solidarity.”

In response to an urgent question put forward by Yasmin Qureshi in Parliament asking what the Government will do in the face of this threat, junior Home Office Minister, Victoria Atkins, repeated the Government line that it takes hate crime and Islamophobia “extremely seriously and the UK has a robust legislative framework to respond to it.”

“Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, and equal rights define us as a society. The Government is determined to promote these values actively working in partnership and alongside with the Muslim and indeed all faith communities,” Atkins added. “To demonstrate what we have in common is the best defence against extremists who would seek to divide us.”

question: What is the name of the coordinated hate campaign against the UK Muslim MPs?

answer: It is called "Punish A Muslim Day".

question: How many Muslim MPs were targeted?

answer: At least four.

question: What was the UK government response to this hate campaign?

answer: The Prime Minister, Theresa May issued a strong statement condemning the campaign and promises that the police will bring those responsible to justice.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer:
There is a coordinated hate campaign (online ad offline) waged against UK Muslim MPs. A number of them received anonymous packages with sticky substances.

The UK Prime Minister condemned the actions of the hate campaigners and promised to bring them to justice.


text:
MILL CROOK is a 5.9 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Towcester in Northamptonshire.[1][2] MILL CROOK AND GRAFTON REGIS MEADOW are a 7.9 hectare nature reserve managed by the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.[3]

Signs of medieval ridge and furrow still survive on these traditionally managed hay meadows in Mill Crook on the bank of the River Tove. It has diverse flora, with grasses such as meadow foxtail and sweet vernal-grass, and herbs including great burnet and ribwort plantain.[4][5]

Visitors are advised to contact the Northamptonshire office of the Wildlife Trust for advice on access.[6]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

title: Mill Crook

question: What is Mill Crook?

answer: It is a 5.9 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Towcester in Northamptonshire.

question: What country is Mill Crook in?

answer: Based off the areas mentioned in the article, it is located in England.

question: What are the features of Mill Crook?

answer: It has signs of medieval ridge and furrow on the traditionally managed hay meadows in Mill Crook on the bank of the River Tove. It has diverse flora, as well.

question: How do you access Mill Crook?

answer: That information isn't provided specifically in the article, but the article suggest those who want advice on access should contact the Northamptonshire office of the Wildlife Trust.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: This article discusses Mill Crook, a 5.9 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Towcester in Northamptonshire.


text:
[Federal Court Orders DOJ To Release Fast And Furious Information]

Federal Court Orders DOJ To Release Fast And Furious Information
The Obama administration lost a crucial legal battle on July 18 when a federal court ordered the White House to release previously withheld information on Operation Fast and Furious to the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

According to a press released issued Thursday, the court case stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit (that originally began as a FOIA request) filed by Judicial Watch in 2012 to obtain all documents that the president has withheld from Congress under claims of executive privilege.

The decision, issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, would require the Department of Justice to turn over a “Vaughn Index” to Judicial Watch for the documents the group requested.

A Vaughn Index, according to the Office of Government Information Services, must: “1) identify each document withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia’s decision comes after a 16-month delay on the lawsuit due to a request by the Department of Justice for an almost indefinite hold on the case. The DOJ claimed that Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit interferes with its legal case with the House Oversight committee over the same documents relating to the botched Fast and Furious operation.

District Court Judge John D. Bates, who authored the court’s decision in favor of the government watchdog, dismissed the claim that releasing a Vaughn Index for the requested materials would interfere with the litigation with the House Oversight committee.

“Because many of the issues to be resolved in this case do not overlap with the House committee, and because resolving those issues will not risk upsetting the delicate balance of powers in subpoena disputes between the political branches, the Court will require DOJ to produce a Vaughn index here,” reads Judge Bates’ July 18 decision.

The judge also noted how unusual the circumstances were surrounding the White House’s refusal to even issue a Vaughn Index on the documents in question.

“To the extent DOJ argues that the mere production of the _Vaughn_ index—not involving the release of any documents in dispute—would alter the historical balance of powers between the branches, any unbalancing would result from FOIA itself, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, and which this Court cannot ignore forever,” Bates’ wrote.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, declared this ruling a “great victory” for the American public Thursday.

“It’s a great victory, and in many ways it may solve the dispute between Congress and the Obama administration, and more importantly, it advances the public interest,” Fitton told The Daily Caller.

The Judicial Watch president explained why his group filed a FOIA request and how it would’ve resulted in the public knowing important details on documents that Obama has refused to release and give any information about.

“We knew — as a result of filing the request and that if we had to file a lawsuit –that we would at least get a listing of what documents were an issue and details about those documents that would provide information that the public did not have and that Congress was specifically seeking,” he said.

Fast and Furious refers to a joint DOJ and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation that allowed guns to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Some of the weapons associated with the operation were later implicated in the murder of a border patrol agent.

The White House has until October 1 to issue a Vaughn Index of the documents Judicial Watch has requested.

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question: Summarize all the information relating to Operation Fast and Furious.

answer: A federal court ordered the White House to release previously withheld information on Operation Fast and Furious to the government watchdog group Judicial Watch. The president withheld the documents from Congress under claims of executive privilege. Fast and Furious refers to a joint DOJ and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation that allowed guns to get into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Some of the weapons associated with the operation were later implicated in the murder of a border patrol agent.

question: What is the purpose of the Vaughan Index?

answer: The Vaughan Index must identify each withheld document, state the statutory exemption claimed and explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. This will maintain the confidentiality of the documents but still give the judicial watchdog an indication of what happened.

question: How will the release of documents affect the balance of power between political branches?

answer: District Court Judge John D. Bates dismissed the claim that releasing the Vaughan Index for the requested materials would interfere with the litigation with the House Oversight committee because it does not overlap.

question: Is it unusual for the White House to refuse issuing a Vaughan Index?

answer: Yes, it is unusual.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Federal court orders DOJ to release information on Operation Fast and Furious in the form of a Vaughan Index. The DOJ wants to protect the information due to a legal case with the House Oversight committee. The White House claimed executive privilege and is hesitant to provide the Vaughan Index.


text:
Could it be that the most peaceful place is the one that’s far away?

I've been gazing for quite a moment now at a wall hanging between ledges from our rooftop not too distant from me.  I've been gazing upon it because I saw something – I saw something beautiful.

I saw the afternoon’s warm natural color bathing its radiant light to the walls cream painted color. I saw the mystic cloud dances its shapeless form around the fluorescent blue sky behind it. I saw nature; simple and beautiful nature.

The more I looked at it, I asked the question.

The more I looked at it, I made a thought: I could die right now.

It became quite sardonic as I dwell more into my own thoughts to think such relationship between natural beauty and wishful death.

I dwell deeper.

As I dwell, I became scared.

Is this vivid beauty imitating the crawling sensation of death?

Then I blinked.

I stopped staring. I've been away from myself too long.I stood up from my seat, grabbed my notebook and pen, and walked away towards the rooftop’s door, away from what I saw, away from that deathly beautiful scenery.

As I walked back to my floor, my heart pumped furiously as if it pumps for the first time. I started breathing hard and heavily.But the weird thing is I do not sense fear haunting me. I did not feel scared, not anymore, not at all.

I was feeling alive.

I felt being reborn.

title: The Most Peaceful Place

question: What was on the wall hanging?

answer: The information is not found. We will never know.

question: Was the narrator looking at an artful wall hanging or at a literal piece of wall that was hanging?

answer: It is not further clarified.

question: What was the narrator writing in the notebook?

answer: The information is not found.

question: Why did the narrator become scared?

answer: She became scared at the thought of the vivid beauty of nature imitating the crawling sensation of death.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator feels more alive after she has an epiphany on the rooftop.


text:
_September 19, 2013_

KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Keith Devlin sees mathematical equations like sonnets. They are reflections, he says, of the inner worlds of our minds. But what most of learn in school doesn’t begin to convey this. And that’s not just because some of us — like me — seem congenitally bad at math. Our brains are not primarily logical, but analogical. And what we’ve asked everyday math to do up to now can be better done by computers.Keith Devlin is also a leader on the frontier of MOOCs, massively open online courses. And he believes that on-line teaching is helping us finally learn how we learn. To be with this mathematician is to glimpse the beauty of “mathematical thinking” – illuminating what it means to be human in unexpected ways.

  MR. KEITH DEVLIN: Just as a trained musician who can read music can look at a musical score and in their head — in their mind — they can hear that music playing. For a mathematician, the same thing is true. Providing it’s in a part of mathematics you’re familiar with, you can look at those symbols and in your mind, this mathematical world is created. And you can see the flow and ebb of ideas; you can see it going on. It comes to life in your mind.

MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is _On Being_._[Announcements]_

MS. TIPPETT: Keith Devlin co-founded and directs H-STAR at Stanford University, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute. He’s also a senior researcher at Stanford’s Center for the Study of Language and Information. He grew up in England, in Kingston upon Hull.

  MS. TIPPETT: Were you born, bred, raised in Yorkshire? Is that right?

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. I was born in Hull, in what apparently was the worst snowstorm of the decade, in 1947. So I had a very exciting, melodramatic entry into the world.

  MS. TIPPETT: Which you don’t recall.

  MR. DEVLIN: I don’t recall, no. But my mother, who is long passed away now, she told me of the difficulty getting a midwife in and the doctor and anything. The lady next door actually delivered me because nobody could get out. There were snow drifts outside the house of several feet deep, apparently.

  MS. TIPPETT: And were you drawn to math, mathematics, pretty early in your life?

  MR. DEVLIN: Uh, no. Not at all. I used to like playing soccer and rugby and rough-and-tumble things. It was sort of a classic, working-class childhood. The mathematics came much later. The only role model I had in the family of anyone who sort of had a degree and a professional career was an uncle by marriage, and he was a chemist. His house was full of books, he would travel around, he had an extensive collection of jazz records, and he lived the life of an intellectual.

  So my first introduction to anything to do with science or technology or learning in general was to chemistry. But that was pushed sideways a little bit. Just when I was about to or just when I started at high school, Sputnik went up. So I sort of began to sort of think in terms of physics. Once I decided I was going to go into physics, then of course I realized that I needed to be good at mathematics because that was the key to physics.

  MS. TIPPETT: I want to ask you this: There’s such a contrast between the way, not just the way you speak about mathematics, but the way you, define it. And there’s such a contrast between that and the — well, I’d say, the understanding and even the experience of mathematics that so many people have right at that age of school, and then maybe never have another experience.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah, that’s right. If the last experience you have of mathematics is what you learned certainly up to the middle level of high school, and to a large extent even right through the end of high school the way it’s taught, you’ve basically never seen mathematics. And so most people in the world haven’t a clue what mathematics is.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right. So let’s talk about some of the ways that you — just reading you, your imagination is — starting with one definition is the science of patterns.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. I was actually one of the people who really pushed that in the 1980s. I mean, psychology is the science of patterns of the mind; sociology is the science of patterns of social interaction. So you could call anything the science of patterns. What makes it mathematics is the kind of patterns you study and the methodology you use.

  But the reason I pushed it was to very much get away from this idea that it was about calculation and computation. It’s nonsensical, but it needed to be done; it needed to establish itself as different. More recently, I’ve actually started using the phrase “mathematical thinking.” I’m giving one of these Massive Online Courses from Stanford — I’m about to give it the third time.

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah, I want to talk about that in a little while.

  MR. DEVLIN: We’ll come back to that, but the thing to note is, I don’t call it the Introduction to Mathematics; I call it the Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, to say this that isn’t about computation and calculation and solving equations. It’s about thinking about the world in a certain way that we have learned over the centuries is extremely powerful. Not the only way, not the best way, a valuable way.

  MS. TIPPETT: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, here’s another definition that you use variations of a lot: that mathematics is a “vast and beautiful mental landscape that generations of human beings have created over 3,000 years.” A mental landscape.

  MR. DEVLIN: And that’s what stumbled — that’s when I became a mathematician; that’s what I stumbled on at age 15 or 16 when here I was learning all this mathematics because I needed it. I had a utilitarian view of mathematics. I was learning it because I needed to solve the equations because I was going to be solving them in physics. And then, at the age of about 16 or 17, it all fit because it all came together in my mind. It was no longer this disjointed collection of techniques you could use to solve problems. It all fell into the place, into this wonderful landscape. It was as if I’d been stumbling around in a forest, and suddenly I’ve climbed to the top of a tree and looked out and thought, this is the most beautiful place in the world. You can’t tell it when you’re down in the trees, which I had been, but the moment you reach an elevation where it all falls into place and you can see the whole topographic display in front of you, then the beauty is incredible. And the moment I discovered it, I said, um, I want to study mathematics. And I’ve been studying it ever since.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right. This idea that also what you saw, what you work in, is not just about the physical world or about abstract equations but the inner worlds of our mind? And that, in fact, that numbers — and this is such an interesting point you make — that numbers are abstractions, that they only exist in our mind than what we do with them.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. There’s a strong feeling that you have when you do mathematics that it’s actually a sort of an objective reality, that the numbers — it’s known as the platonic realm. It sort of goes back to Plato’s writings and ideas — that you’re discovering things that are in this sort of ethereal world out there. And in a sense, that’s the case. But when you start to dig deeper, you realize that that ethereal world itself has been created by generations of human beings.

  And so mathematics exists as a psychological and a social construct. Which means that when you’re doing mathematics, you’re actually — even if you’re doing mathematics about quarks or electrons or whatever it is, superstrings — if you’re doing mathematics about physics or something in the world, in some sense, yes, what you’re doing is learning more about the world. But in a deeper sense, when you’re doing mathematics, what you’re really learning about is how the human mind encounters and makes sense of the world. It’s really a mirror. So mathematics in some sense is a lens through which you look at the world. But in a deeper sense, it’s a mirror through which you look at yourself in a very abstract and penetrating way.

  MS. TIPPETT: And I know this is frustrating to you, because when you describe it that way, it feels so essential to who we are as a species, right? That somehow, each of us should have some sense of that, even if we’re not professional mathematicians. Or, you know, this line of Galileo that you also evoke often, that language is — sorry, that mathematics is the language in which nature was written, which the universe was written. And then there is the great question about why we don’t really — most of us don’t walk around knowing this.

  MR. DEVLIN: Because no one’s told us. And it’s hard to see it unless someone opens the door for you. I was lucky. I discovered mathematics in spite of my education, as most of us, I think do. Occasionally, you come up against a really great math teacher that can open your eyes. In my case, I didn’t have bad math teachers, but their view of mathematics was the same as everybody else’s. It was a utilitarian subject that you need to know. But they prepared the groundwork, helped prepare the groundwork for me to make that discovery.

_[music]_

  MS. TIPPETT: You know, I have no — I’m one of these people who gave up on myself mathematically a long time ago. But I interview a lot of scientists, a lot of physicists and astronomers. I have to say, I’m not sure if I’ve interviewed many pure mathematicians, but I’ve interviewed people who use mathematics.

  And so what I’ve come to, and I think also my listeners come to, is an appreciation, you know, I think it may be too late for many of us to actually grapple directly with mathematics, but to start to understand the importance of this as part of who we are and as part of the universe. I mean, I think one of the ways you talk about this and have worked with it that does help to bring it down to earth a little bit is some of the connection you’ve made between language and mathematics. Could you talk a little bit about that?

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. You know, people get turned off mathematics in various ways. If you teach it as sort of just stuff you need to know to balance your checkbook — which is nonsense because none of us balance our checkbooks; computers do that for us. On the other hand, because language is so important to us as living creatures, everyone is interested in language one way or another, be we language mavens or just interested in listening to the radio or reading or novels. You know, language is a fundamental part of what we ask.

  In fact, in a book I wrote in 2000, called _The Math Gene_, I actually made a case based on sort of rational reconstruction of human evolutionary development, I made the case that actually mathematics and language are actually two sides of the same coin in terms of evolutionary development. Human beings, when we developed the capacity for language — and nobody knows when that was; it might be as recent as 50,000 years ago — but when our ancestors developed language capacity, at that moment they developed the capacity for mathematics. It’s the same capacity. It just plays out in different ways.

  MS. TIPPETT: Hmm-mm. Hmm-mm. I’m just thinking, in my own family, I had a grandfather who had a second-grade education, but he had this prodigious capacity to do things with numbers in his head. You know, it was completely mysterious.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: Completely mysterious. Not taught. I don’t think he had any clue why he could do it. And then, I have a son, now, I’ll say, who’s 14 — he’s doing well in everything but math — and he said, “My brain just doesn’t work that way.” You know? And I think he’s not the only kid who says that. I think I probably said that at some point.

  So then, in the context of that, I’m reading you and this sense that there’s something innate in us. And then why does that not make itself manifest?

  MR. DEVLIN: It’s true. Everyone is on a spectrum, with physical abilities, mental abilities. We’re all on a spectrum. But a lot of the problem in mathematics is that an awful lot of what goes on in the school system is basically trying to train the mind to do what a $10 calculator can do: follow rules and algorithms and procedures. And one thing that we do know is, that the human brain does not find that natural. The human brain is analogical, not logical. And so, when we try to force it to be procedural and exact, the brain simply doesn’t like it.

  It was important for many thousands of years to be able to do computation and calculation because that was the basis of commerce and trade and buying and selling. And you had to do it in your head or with an abacus board or something. So for hundreds of years, it was actually important to train the mind to follow rules to do computations and get the right answer. Well, now we’ve automated that. And we carry around devices in our pockets that can do that. Which means that we can spend more time letting the brain do things that the brain is really well suited for that computers can’t do very well: making value judgments, making analogical leaps.

  The trouble is, the education system is at least 50 years behind the changes in technology in society.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right. That takes me back to you saying in the beginning that you don’t talk about mathematics but about mathematical thinking. And what we learn in school is that old-fashioned, narrow idea of mathematics. But you’re saying — that that’s not natural to learn, as you say, to come up with the right answers. But how interesting that could be if, even at a young age, we were offered the invitation to do mathematical thinking.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. It’s as if you went along and you said, I want to be an architect. And you go to architecture school and the first five years they teach you how to lay bricks accurately, in nice straight lines. You know, taking advantage of being an architect does depend on the fact that people can lay bricks.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right.

  MR. DEVLIN: Bricklaying and architecture are not the same thing. And mathematics is the architecture, it’s the creative stuff you can do with these bricks. And it’s no longer necessary for people to be able to lay bricks themselves because we now have machines that handle the bricklaying for us.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right. Right. Right.

  MR. DEVLIN: Actually, so do builders.

_[music]_

MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett and this is _On Being_. Today with mathematician Keith Devlin.

  MS. TIPPETT: I want to talk to you about something else, another connection that you shine a light on an interesting way that’s always been very intriguing to me, which is the connection between mathematics and music, right? Like we all know that that connection is there, but I’ve never really been able to comprehend it. I’m not sure I can comprehend it now, but, again, I feel like you open this up in an interesting way. One place you said, the most beautiful equations are like sonnets.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: And you said that mathematics and music are both captured in dry symbols, but they both come alive when interpreted by the human mind.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. Certainly in the days when the only way to store and distribute music — before recording devices — was to write it down in symbolic notation. Then, of course, if you couldn’t master that notation, you couldn’t get to the music. Mathematics is still largely still like that. And maybe always will still be like that. It is still a hurdle that you have to master mathematical notation to get to the mathematics that it encodes. But just as a trained musician who can read music can look at a musical score and in their head — in their mind — they can hear that music playing.

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

  MR. DEVLIN: For a mathematician, the same thing is true. Providing it’s in a part of mathematics you’re familiar with, you can look at those symbols and in your mind, this mathematical world is created. And you can see the flow of the ebb of ideas; you can see it going on. It comes to life in your mind.

  MS. TIPPETT: And take in the beauty of it, which is a word that you and a lot of mathematicians use constantly.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. And so you see through the symbols to what they’re about. Just — the interesting thing is, I don’t read music. So to me, music is just [inaudible]. I can really resonate with people who can’t get mathematics from looking at a book, because I can’t look at a musical score and hear the music.

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

  MR. DEVLIN: Someone has to interpret it for me, to play it.

  MS. TIPPETT: So, you know, you did this interesting project a couple of years ago, called “Harmonious Equations,” which I had so much fun discovering.

  MR. DEVLIN: That was a hoot, yeah.

_[music: “Euler’s Identity”_

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. And I think we’d like to layer some of that music into this production.

  MR. DEVLIN: Oh, please do. Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: So let’s just talk about a few of those. So there’s this “Euler’s” — is that how they say it? — “Euler’s Identity.” You know, again, it’s very intriguing language at the supreme level of abstraction, “seemingly different concepts sometimes turn out to have surprisingly intimate connections.”

  And then, as you narrate, the numbers that are part of that equation, you know, what becomes clear to me — even though I don’t understand this — is there is kind of a world within each of these numbers.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: And then you talk about them becoming a perfect mathematical composition.

  MR. DEVLIN: Right. Right. Absolutely.

  MS. TIPPETT: Say a little bit about what “Euler’s Identity” is for someone who doesn’t know.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah, because I do work for the media and things, I always get asked the question: what is your favorite equation? What is your most beautiful equation? So even though, in a sense, the scientist in me says I don’t have a favorite, I love them all — that’s like saying you love all your children, that kind of thing.

  MS. TIPPETT: That’s right.

  MR. DEVLIN: I actually always give an answer and my answer is always “Euler’s Identity.” And that’s certainly a justifiable one, from my point of view.

_[music: “Euler’s Identity”]_

  MR. DEVLIN: There were very few basic constants in mathematics. So you’ve got these five most fundamental constants: zero, which has to do with addition; one, which has to do with multiplication; π, to do with geometry of circles; e, to do with natural logarithms; and the square root of negative one, which is to do with algebra. And given that they’re coming from different parts of mathematics, or so it seems, there should be no reason why these things connect together. But it turns out, there’s the most beautiful, elegant identity that connects them together, which says that e raised to the power i times π, plus one, equals zero.

_[music: “Euler’s Identity”]_

  MR. DEVLIN: You’ve got an equation — each one is mentioned once, all it involves is a plus sign, an equal sign, and an exponentiation sign and multiplication sign for the i and π, and you’ve got this identity. There’s no reason on the face of it why that should be the case.

  I remember when I first met that, as a teenager, I was completely blown away. I mean, if anything could have come close to convincing me that there was this thing called God out there, that was surely it.

_[music: “Euler’s Identity”]_

  MR. DEVLIN: “Euler’s Identity” is an instantiation of the fact that what we thought previously were separate things actually always were, within the realm of mathematics, part of the same whole. As with good art, not only does it reveal — not only does the beauty, the intrinsic beauty of the equation itself — in this case, not the beauty of the symbols but of the logical connections between them, the elegance of the connection between them. So it’s beautiful on that sort of technical level, but it’s also beautiful because it tells us — it’s a great insight into the world. You know, just like the Mona Lisa’s smile captures an awful lot about being a human. And you can — I mean, people discuss endlessly what was going on in her mind, assuming it was a she that was the model, what was going on in that person’s mind when that painting was done and what did the painter capture.

  Well, it’s the same with “Euler’s Identity.” It tells you an awful lot about the mathematical world that we’re exploring.

  MS. TIPPETT: Mmm.

  MR. DEVLIN: It’s an absolutely beautiful piece of art as well as a beautiful piece of mathematics.

  MS. TIPPETT: Mmm. That’s wonderful. Thank you. And then in the “Pythagoras’ Theorem” — this is another piece that you commissioned with these musicians.

  I just want to ask you about this statement that you made. Pythagoras said that “number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons.”

_[music: “Pythagoras’ Theorem”]_

  MS. TIPPETT: And you took that phrase as the theme for the song. So what did he mean by that? What do you understand in that statement by Pythagoras?

  MR. DEVLIN: _[laughs]_ Uh, well we’ve got to go back and put ourselves in the mind of Pythagoras. It was sort of mystical; it was a secret society. There was also sort of a cult element to it. One of these things about mathematics — this comes up when people talk about things like the golden ratio and all this kind of stuff — is that even people who don’t have professional mathematical ability, there’s a sort of fascination with number.

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

  MR. DEVLIN: I’ve written many times about the golden ratio, because people say that the golden ratio has also all sorts of wonderful properties, most of which are completely false and bogus and have nothing to do with the path. It’s not the dimensions of the most perfect rectangle — it’s all complete nonsense.

  So you ask yourself, why do people get so passionately involved with number? And they do. And the only answer to that I can come up with is that deep in our psyches, we know that the world we now live in, the lives we lead, depend in a fundamental way on the discovery and the invention of numbers, just as they do on language. Most people don’t publicly acknowledge that number is part of what we are. But I think deep down in their psyche, they know we were.

  MS. TIPPETT: But there’s some mystery to it. The fact that we don’t understand it makes it mysterious — makes that intuition mysterious.

  MR. DEVLIN: That adds to it. Absolutely that adds to it. But we all sort of know that they are important. And I think that goes back to what Pythagoras was saying. Even back then in the days when it was sort of more cultish, folded in with religious beliefs and all kinds of things, even back then, people realized that numbers were a big, big deal. And I think that’s what Pythagoras’ quote was referring to.

_[music: “Pythagoras’ Theorem”]_

MS. TIPPETT: You can listen again or share this show with Keith Devlin at onbeing.org. There we also have links to more of his favorite equations set to music with the choral group Zambra. There are musical odes to Leibniz’s series for pi and Einstein’s energy equation.

_[music: “Pythagoras’ Theorem”]_

MS. TIPPETT: Coming up…how teaching thousands of students online can be more intimate than a classroom.I’m Krista Tippett. _On Being_ continues in a moment.

_[Announcements]_

MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett and this is _On Being_. Today: with mathematician Keith Devlin. We’ve been exploring his view that what most of us learned as math in school doesn’t convey the beauty and purpose of this endeavor. We’re catching some of his delight in mathematical thinking – as something that reflects the inner world of the human mind and can help us navigate the outer world in unexpected ways. Keith Devlin leads Stanford University’s H-STAR: the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute.

  MS. TIPPETT: I’d like to talk a little bit about this, the H-STAR project at Stanford that you’re involved in. It’s interesting the different kinds of things that you’ve gotten involved with, even at Stanford alone: the study of languages — the Center for the Study of Language and Information, now this H-STAR project, which focuses on, as I understand it, the human applications and ramifications of technology. And I’m finding that this is a subject everyone wants to talk about now, kind of the enormity of the role of technology in our lives is settling in. The reality of that and our understanding of that. And then people are saying, you know, what do we do with this? I mean, how do we make sense of it and how do we make it purposeful and livable?

  I mean one of the things that you — really surprised me that you mentioned this, in terms of mathematics, is that computers have only really affected mathematics around the edges. That, in fact, mathematics still needs free-form scribbling to survive, which is so interesting.

  MR. DEVLIN: I mean, mathematics takes place in the human mind, or increasingly, when human minds interact together. We still have this nice romantic image of the lone mathematician working in the attic late at night. And those people still exist. But if you sort of look at mathematics as a whole enterprise, it’s a huge enterprise, then an awful lot of mathematics these days, like everything else, is done collaboratively in teams that communicate both by physically co-locating themselves at conferences and seminars and workshops, and collaborating over the Internet.

  But it’s still about people talking to and with people. And the technology — other than the fact that we use email and things like that, video conferencing — the technology is still not really affecting the product itself. It’s just around the edges.

  MS. TIPPETT: And I really do think that you have your finger on a pulse of this, this disconnect — let me just say it this way: that, you know, on the one hand, as you and I have been discussing, many of us, I think most of us are illiterate in the language of mathematics. And then there is the increasing reality that the indispensable tools of our everyday lives, you know, starting with our mobile phones, as you say, rely on masses of abstract math.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: So we’re living with these things, we need these things, we can’t begin to grasp what’s behind them.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. The scale of that has gotten huge, but actually, that began with the very beginnings of mathematics because arguably mathematics began — and I would say this is when it began — with the invention of numbers. And we think that took place in Sumeria about maybe 8,000 years ago. And numbers were introduced essentially to provide as a form of money. Numbers were things that mediated trading goods. The moment that we invented numbers, we did it to introduce into interpersonal reactions into society, to introduce abstractions that could mediate. Because numbers are pure abstraction, money is an abstraction. I mean, a $10 bill is just a physical manifestation of the number 10. I mean, that’s all it is. You’ve just got a physical token of 10, and you’ve got a mental token of 10. And nowadays, we have bits on discs in banks. I mean, we don’t even need the $10 bill. It’s just a configuration of bits on a computer.

  So we are mediated in terms of the kind of life we lead, the length of our lives — almost everything about our lives is mediated by money. And money is just numbers and numbers are abstractions. And all that has happened recently is the scale has gotten much bigger and the rate of change has been faster. But our lives became irrevocably changed and bound up with numbers the moment we invented numbers and money, about 8,000 years ago.

  MS. TIPPETT: Hmm.

  MR. DEVLIN: And we’ve gotten used to that. And people actually don’t think of money as abstract.

  MS. TIPPETT: No they don’t. They don’t.

  MR. DEVLIN: I’m old enough to remember when credit cards came along, and I do remember that initially there was a lot of unwillingness to go to a credit card because people wanted dollar bills. In my case, it was pounds and coins …

  MS. TIPPETT: It wasn’t real money.

  MR. DEVLIN: … and so, but now we’ve gotten used to that. And then, of course, when you start having mobile phone transactions and things, you don’t even need the credit card anymore. You know, you just go in and you wave your mobile phone in front of a scanner. So, and the rate of change has gone up dramatically, and the extent has gone up, but it’s actually not a new phenomenon. We are more aware of it because we are living through the latest transition.

  MS. TIPPETT: You know, this is — this is kind of tangential to that, but it feels a little bit related. One of the interesting ways you talk about how mathematics has evolved is that across history, there’s abstract math going on, which has no conceivable application at the time in which it’s being done. But, for example, you talked about how encryption systems that now run the Internet followed on work with prime numbers a couple of centuries ago, at which time it was outlandish to imagine that these things would ever have practical applications. And now, fundamental aspects of our reality depend on them.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. In fact, one of the leading people, G.H. Hardy in Cambridge, actually went on record in a book and said — he was quite — because someone had challenged him about the fact that you can use these things for practical uses in mathematics. And he said — he went on record as saying, nothing he had done in his professional career could ever find practical application. And by golly, within a hundred years, this is the basis for the Internet in modern society and security.

  MS. TIPPETT: _[laughs]_

  MR. DEVLIN: So, if there’s one thing history tells us, it’s never, ever look at something and say this will never be used because in the case of mathematics, time and time again things come around and get used. I’m actually of two minds about this. I’m always surprised and I think, ‘Wow, this is what Eugene Wigner described as “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.’”

  We develop mathematics to be useful in the first place, and so at first it is obviously going to be of use. But then we sort of follow our intuitions, we go off on these tangents, we pursue these abstract ideas, and we end up producing something that just looks like a pure art form, just having no connection with reality, to whatever. We’ve let our imaginations run free, subject to the constraints of mathematical logic. And we produce these new theories and their beautiful and their entirely coherent and they don’t seem to have any application. And then, a hundred years later, maybe longer, someone comes along and finds a really important application.

  So part of me says, that is absolutely surprising. On the other hand, if you go back to the point I made earlier, that mathematics is just really looking at the way the human mind encounters its environment, then if that’s what we’re doing, you should expect that things we develop — even though we can’t understand how it’s going to be relevant now — will eventually be relevant. Because what it really tells us is, at the time we’ve done that mathematics, we haven’t developed as a society or individuals to the point where we can appreciate what we’ve just seen.

  MS. TIPPETT: Mmm. We have to catch up with our own …

  MR. DEVLIN: We have to catch up with it.

  MS. TIPPETT: Interesting.

  MR. DEVLIN: And so, in a sense, it’s not a mystery; it’s just part of what mathematics is and how it works.

MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett with _On Being_. Today with Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin. Stanford has been a pioneer of MOOCS, Massively Open free Online Courses. And Keith Devlin has been one of the first professors to join in, offering “Introduction to Mathematical Thinking” to thousands of students at a time, all over the world.

  MS. TIPPETT: So tell me about these Massively Open Online Courses you’re doing. I mean, what is it like to teach 27,000 people. _[laughs]_

  MR. DEVLIN: It’s like going on the radio and talking to however many million people we’re talking to now, actually. I’ve always been driven for various reasons towards trying to spread the word — there’s a sort of evangelical streak in me here — just to spread the word …

  MS. TIPPETT: Absolutely. You are totally a mathematics evangelist. I know that.

  MR. DEVLIN: But whenever there’s a new communication medium, I sort of look at it and I can’t resist seeing if I can use that — or how I can use it, I know I can use it — how can I use that to communicate mathematics? You do it in different ways. You know, the way — in a movie, you do it one way; on TV you do it a different way …

  MS. TIPPETT: Hmm-mm.

  MR. DEVLIN: And in a text book, you do it one way; And so I gave my first MOOC a year ago. And I changed it a bit and gave it again in the spring of this year. And in September this year, I’m going to give it a third time in a third incarnation.

  And I think education, to me — I approached the MOOC the same way. It’s not about me talking to 100,000 students, it’s about me talking to one student. In fact, in many ways, I find MOOCs more intimate than giving a lecture to a class of 30 students. And most of my time, I give lectures to classes of university students of maybe between 15, 25, 30 students sometimes. And I give big lectures to sort of a few hundreds of students. But those are very impersonal. They are theatrical displays.

  But part of doing a MOOC is you’re — it’s you and one student, because by its very nature, it’s one person, sitting at a computer in front of a screen, interacting with you. Now, the interaction is mostly one-way, but part of the trick of putting these courses together is to compensate for the fact that the student can’t directly address you back. Now in a big class of 100 students the students can’t do that either but they have TAs and they can interact with each other in the classroom and so there is a lot of interaction going on.

  With a MOOC, the challenges are more acute, when you think of individual students in remote places who aren’t even in the same classroom as other students and don’t have access to anyone to ask questions for. That makes it a very interesting thing to design. And most of the mathematics is done with a cheap little camcorder mounted on a tripod above my desk.

  MS. TIPPETT: Mmm.

  MR. DEVLIN: But I did go into the campus TV studio here and spend an exhausting six-hour period, actually, recording all of the intercam punctuations, which actually, if you look at them — I’m not talking about mathematics. I’m establishing human contact, by looking into that camera, eye to eye, looking at that student. Because it was all about establishing human connection and getting them to feel comfortable with me as their friend and instructor.

  MS. TIPPETT: Hmmm. I’d kind of like to take you back to the book you wrote in the late ’90s, _Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind_.

  MR. DEVLIN: Ah, yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: I mean, I found that really wonderful book, and you — you know, one of the things you were pointing out is that just in about the last 300 years, we’d glorified rational thought and logic in a way that had not been done before in history. Even in the history of science, kind of treating our minds as calculators. But that we’re now getting this much more sophisticated understanding of our minds and brains and learning and intelligence.

  And then the reason I thought that I would like to talk to you about this now is, you know, that was I think ’96 or ’97. So here we are these decades later and these decades of rapid transition and rapid new fields of knowledge about, in particular, our brains and our minds and our bodies. So how would you look now at this notion of, you know, what the world looks like beyond logic, beyond Descartes?

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. Well, if anything, what I’ve said, what has happened since then, is simply reinforce the feelings I had then. It was interesting the transformation that led me to write Goodbye, Descartes. It was very expressly goodbye to the sort of Cartesian logic based approach to life. In a sense, I was finally renouncing my former self. Because I went into mathematics — I mean, I don’t think I was ever a sort of total Platonist. But I went into mathematics seduced by the fact that the power of the logic of the reasoning. And in the 19th century, mathematics ruled supreme as the basis of physics, of engineering, calculus, all the more, economics. Mathematics literally built the modern world. To the degree where people in mathematics, including myself, began to think, well, we’ve got this powerful mechanism. We can take it into the realms of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and start to make sense of these soft sciences, you know.

  MS. TIPPETT: And kind of solve every problem with this logic …

  MR. DEVLIN: We can certainly try to solve every problem. That had already been tried a bit a few decades early by the people who try to build artificial intelligence systems and expert systems. And in both cases, they had very limited success but not great success.

  But you know, undaunted by that, I thought, well, maybe we can do it in natural language, understanding language impulses. So when Stanford founded its Center for the Study of Language and Information in 1983, I got very interested and came out as a visit in ’85.

  Now, what I didn’t expect was that when I got to CSLI, I would be brought face to face with all these psychologists, these linguists, these psycholinguists, these social linguists, sociologists, the etymologists. I was brought in with all of these people in what I used to call the soft sciences …

  MS. TIPPETT: Right. Right.

  MR. DEVLIN: … as opposed to the hard sciences, and thinking — you know, I wasn’t so naive I would be able to say, here’s some mathematics; it will make your discipline a little more robust. Although, some of my colleagues seem to have that belief.

  I was prepared to sort of be taught new things. What I wasn’t prepared for, but what happened to me, was I ended up realizing the huge limitations on mathematics in those domains. And this happened to Chomsky when he tried to sort of do the same to linguistics in the ’50s.

  MS. TIPPETT: Right.

  MR. DEVLIN: And it became clear there were — it was good stuff and lots of stuff has come out of it, but it wasn’t coming close. It was like trying to reach the moon by building taller and taller ladders. That was not the way. Didn’t mean to say that you wouldn’t get to the moon, but you weren’t going to get there by building a ladder. And building the ladder that got us to the moon certainly involved a lot of mathematics. And building the ladder that would involve us to understanding — sort of really understanding people and society, mathematics can certainly play a role. But it’s not the rule of the king and laws that it was in physics. It’s the rule of a trusted worker who can provide stuff as and when it’s needed.

  We needed to stop trying to build mathematical ladders that would help us reach this moon of understanding of human beings and society, and simply view mathematics as a tool that could play a useful role in a more broad and holistic interdisciplinary study that would help us to understand it.

  Along with that, came, in my case, the final acknowledgement that mathematics isn’t the discovery of an external platonic realm, that it’s actually the building and study of a realm within our own minds.

_[music]_

  MS. TIPPETT: I mean, I don’t know if you would think of this in this context at all, but it seems to me that in this century, you know, and as late as 2008, with the economic downturn, the crisis, we’ve kind of lived more deeply into this recognition that — that we, that we had called things rational that weren’t rational, right? That …

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah.

  MS. TIPPETT: … this principle of logic and pretending that when numbers are involved it is logical. Somehow, it was in precisely those systems — our financial systems, that work with numbers — that turned out to be these monuments to irrationality. And then, suddenly, there’s this recognition also in the field of economics, which I think had had that Cartesian view that somehow at bottom, this is all rational. That, in fact, this is what you’re pointing out as well: we’re getting a more complex sophisticated understanding of ourselves from a lot of different directions.

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately, mathematics is black and white, and the world that we live in is an infinite variety of shades of gray. I mean, mathematics can work in localized ways and be useful. And it can also provide interesting metaphors to help us make decisions. There’s all sorts of great uses mathematics has in sort of making sense of today’s world and building the world of tomorrow from it.

  But as I said a moment ago, the days of the 19th century, when mathematics ruled how you built your machines and how the machines worked, those are gone. And if anything, the financial crisis was a great warning that says, if you build systems based on mathematics, you are heading for disaster. This circles back to this business about NSA and security. Those systems are built on mathematics. And they, if not checked, they will lead to disaster every bit if not worse than the financial crisis — for the very same reasons. Because mathematics works when you’re talking about a clockwork mechanical universe; it doesn’t work when you’re talking about a human society.

  MS. TIPPETT: _[chuckles]_ Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. It’s so important. And I also do want to circle back to your love of mathematics. And, in fact, you know, it’s very interesting to me the spiritually and theologically evocative way, the aesthetic way, that physicists and mathematicians speak of mathematics.

  There’s this quote of the English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell that I’ve seen you use a few times. I’m just going to read this because it’s very beautiful and I hadn’t seen it before: “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty. A beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”

  MR. DEVLIN: Yeah. Isn’t that wonderful?

  MS. TIPPETT: Yeah.

  MR. DEVLIN: Actually, as you were saying that, I remembered your very first question was, you know, when I was a child, do I have — am I spiritual. And I actually tangented off immediately to talk about not having religious beliefs in a sort of white-bearded god in the sky, and that kind of thing. But I mean, the reality is, of course, that I’m deeply spiritual. It’s just that my spirituality is in mathematics and through mathematics understanding ourselves and the place we have in the environment we’re in.

  So in the sense — if spirituality means revering existence, revering my fellow creatures on the planet, reflecting in them, thinking about them— in my case — through the eyes and the mind of a mathematician, then I’m as spiritual as it gets. And you know, if that manifests itself with poetic language and overblown use of language, then that’s just the price you pay for that spirituality.

  MS. TIPPETT: How do you think this work you do, this life you lead, this mathematical thinking with which you move through the world — how do you think it forms your sense of what it means to be human or affects the way you live your life?

  MR. DEVLIN: I see the world differently from anybody who’s not a mathematician. In fact I see the world differently from many mathematicians. So, in some sense, I’ve seen things that other people are not seeing. But I think it’s almost — actually, I guess I have to use the words “shades of gray,” although that’s been co-opted for a different purpose these days.

  MS. TIPPETT: _[laughs]_

  MR. DEVLIN: But anyway, I think we all see the world through shades of gray. There’s a period — when most of us learn mathematics, there’s a period in our early career when we’re in our teens or 20s, when we think that mathematics provides the black-and-white view of the world — the view of the world. I remember distinctly having that view because it seemed to be so logically correct. Now it is logically correct more so than any other discipline, but the question is, at what cost for connecting to the rest of the world, especially the human social world.

  So there’s that period. But then you go beyond that — or you should go beyond that to realize that mathematics is just another shade of gray that gives you a different perspective on the world. But it’s still the same world. The grayer world to one person is not that much different from the grayer world to another [person].

  MS. TIPPETT: So this really is my last question. Is there any frontier, right now, that you’re aware of, where new things are being learned or new processes are being experimented with that you are watching …

  MR. DEVLIN: Wow! Where do we begin?

  MS. TIPPETT: Well, just tell us about one thing that’s unfolding that you’re really watching with great interest.

  MR. DEVLIN: Oh! It’s the one that I’m right in the middle of, which is online learning. Not because of the fact that we’re reaching thousands of people. We’re finally beginning to understand how people learn. Here’s an analogy: If you went back to the 18th century and you got sick, good luck, because you might find somebody who was instinctively a good doctor or who was lucky, but medicine was just hit and miss by then and depended on talent and whatever it was, on luck. Because it took the development of, first, chemistry, then biology, evolutionary biology, and the developments of modern science on which we can ground medical training.

  So, when you go to a doctor today, the chances are that person is going to make you well, providing you at least have a recoverable disease, because we’ve learned the science on which medicine is built. Science in 200 years, science went from hit-and-miss hunches to a scientifically grounded discipline where the chances were very high that the doctor would be able to help you and make you well.

  Right now, in education, we are in the 18th century. We are actually, I think, within a couple decades — of being able to actually improve mathematics education to the point where people actually do begin to get it and get over the hurdles. Because we’re beginning to understand it better..

  Education is now starting to make that transition, to the fact that, yes, there’ll be good teachers and bad teachers and better teachers and worse teachers, but it will all be grounded in understanding. And in the process of understanding how we learn, we are, of course, doing what mathematics has been doing since the very beginning. And as I’ve been saying, we’ve been learning about ourselves. Because the more we learn about how we learn, the more we learn about what it is to be human.

_[music]_

MS. TIPPETT: Keith Devlin is executive director of H-STAR, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute at Stanford University. His books include _Introduction to Mathematical Thinking_ and _Life by the Numbers_.To listen again, share this show, or subscribe to our podcast go to our website at onbeing.org. On Facebook, we’re at facebook.com/onbeing. On Twitter, you can follow our show @beingtweets. I share my thoughts @Krista Tippett.

_On Being_ is produced on-air and online by Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, and Stefni Bell.

Trent Gilliss is our senior editor.

question: What is the host's name?

answer: Krista Tippet

question: Who is Keith Devlin?

answer: A leader on the frontier of MOOCs, massively open online courses

question: How did Krista Tippet introduce Keith Devlin on her show?

answer: Krista introduced Keith as the co-founder of H-STAR at Stanford University, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute

question: What was Keith's first introduction to science or technology?

answer: Keith was introduced to chemistry first.

question: What discipline is Mr. Devlin passionate about?

answer: He is passionate about math.

question: What was the book called that Mr. Devlin wrote in 2000?

answer: He wrote a book called Book Gene

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: This short story is a radio interview of Mr. Devlin, a mathematician, and is being interviewed by Ms. Tippet, the radio jockey. Mr. Devlin's love for computations and mathematics is delved into as well as his history into being introduced to science and technology.