Startup_8

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Jubilation

It is late fall of 1940 and the Battle of England has just been won. The weather is bad, as often in Cambridge at this time of the year.
In an oak paneled room and behind the closed door there is a small ceremony going on. Har is sitting in the first row and he is about to receive a medal from his colleague Lewood. Lewood gets up and begins his presentation.
"Fellow mathematicians, scientists and colleagues! It has been many centuries since  Archim has put mathematics on the path toward the completion of its mission. We believe that we are approximately 100 years from accomplishing this goal. The need to hide, evade and obfuscate has never been greater.
So it is my honor to present "The Medal of Deception" to my dear colleague Har for his book "Mathematician's Apology.""
There is prolonged ovation and Har gets up and bows toward the audience, while Lewood continues:
"This book is a bulwark against probing eyes, it shrouds mathematics in a dense fog of irrelevance and frankly, it sets us back by hundreds of years. Its growing popularity is a guarantee that fellow mathematicians will be regarded as feeble-minded dreamers, unable and unwilling to make  real contributions to the world. Har's opus cloaks us from unwanted attention in this final century."
Har is beaming happily as he accepts the medal. "I hope I did not fuck it up," he whispers to himself, "writing this rubbish was harder than working with Nujan."



Mathematicus Inutilis

The second retreat topic is the support of mathematical sciences. Man, who recently returned from Germany, presents her findings. While visiting Gottingen she came across some notes concerning a conversation of Uss and Mann concerning Mathematicus Inutilis.
"It is a worthwhile topic for discussion," she begins.
"What is Mathematicus Inutilis and why do we care?" Dy cuts in unsure if this topic is worth investment of anybody's time.
"Well, a good question," Man is unfazed, "and certainly Uss thought such creature is worth supporting."
"By beating up everybody else," she adds.
"I am not sure what Mathematicus Inutilis exactly is," Ie says quietly, "but they seem to write better proposals then the rest of the bunch."
"Good observation," says Man, "in fact in my program we had such a hard time with the most original and productive mathematicians that we focused entirely on incremental work."
"But I would not call any one of them Mathematicus Inutilis," she adds nervously.

"I can see a solicitation coming," says Nifer. "Can you capture the essence of Mathematicus Inutilis in a positive and endearing way?"
"How about "What you see is what you get"," Nna throws an idea.
"Excellent," Nifer agrees after a moment of thought, "it has a strong positive connotation, at least among Microsoft Word users, and it is unlike everything else that we support where you are after things that you actually do not see."

Everybody has lingering doubts about the whole idea but Uss' endorsement makes it a lot more legitimate.


Grievances

"The time is now!" echoes faintly as Lander steps down and heads to the exit.  There is a stunned silence which only gets interrupted when Uce angrily asks, "And you motherfuckers knew about all of it for hundreds of years?"
Lander is not a bit insulted. He puffs up his cheeks and in a voice imitating Jack Nicholson in "A few good men" he answers, "You wanted the truth? But can you handle the truth?!"
He relaxes and continues, "When Mathematics Unit of GSA was created 60 years ago we had hoped that you will help us to slow things down. After looking at your Project Guide we trained the most talented and productive mathematicians to write their proposals to guarantee that they will not get funded."
"Not funded??" interrupts Dy.
"Yeah, not funded," confirms Lander, "as in tiny fonts, no margins, text full of gibberish and in some cases a mere three pages worth of crap."
"And?" asks Mek.
"And you idiots funded it all;  it seems that all you care about is the resume."
"Is this really a problem?" asks Nna.
"Yes it is," answers Lander raising his voice, "because until now you were a bunch of fuckers who played for the wrong team."

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