Roman Empire - new data and more confusion

A theory explaining the fall of the Roman Empire was described here and our research team is elated with the positive responses. While superiority of the decimal system is self evident, the mayhem caused by the roman numerals still needs more evidence. In this search our team visited the ancient city of Aphrodisias located in central Turkey. Aphrodisias was founded in the second century BC and prospered for several hundred years to become a ghost town in the sixth century CE.  What focused our attention on this particular site was the following question:

Why would a city of 10,000 people build a sport facility that sits 30,000?

Mother of all stadiums

Indeed, one of the better preserved objects in Aphrodisias is a gigantic stadium. It has a 800 meter racetrack, javelin range, and several stations where people can be gored by wild animals.   Taking into account the population size and its needs and means, the only more extravagant structure is  Rungnado May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, the largest stadium in the world. It can hold up to 150,000 of captive audience and was build two millenniums later.

We suspected that roman numerals played a role in this mischief and our team went out to search for funding documents.  What we unearthed illustrates mathematical issues involved in estimating the size of the stadium as well as the decision making procedures that led to its construction. In a hindsight, the process looks very modern...

The panel

that recommended funding of this project had the following members (some details are omitted to protect confidentiality):

Maxorus, a retired centurion with solid interest in gladiator sports,

Decius,  investor and reportedly  a member of the  local crime syndicate,

Flavadius, an expert in aqueduct building,

Quintimius, an absent minded  mathematician,

Libonus, a wine merchant from the Mediterranean coast. 

In addition the panel had one female participant representing Aphrodite:

Decorina, a housewife of many talents,

and two foreign panelists:

Brunleifur, a representaive of Vikings and a master ship builder, and

Skrotkolak, a quiet individual who did not speak Latin or any other  civilized language.

Program officer in charge of the panel  as well as of the stadium project was Wulfnoth, a naturalized Roman citizen.

In the end, Libonus' interest in acquiring exclusive rights for providing wine for gladiator shows was deemed to be a conflict of interest, and both foreign panelists quit after finding out that they will not be compensated for their efforts at the same rate as the Romans. 

Panel minutes

The evaluation of the project began in bouleuterion at 8:30am with  Wulfnoth, Decius,  Flavadius, Maxorus,   Quintimius, and Decorina present. Skrotkolak was packing his sack on the side.

Wulfnoth: Colleagues, I have already briefed you on the conflict of interest issues. The task of this panel is to advise Aprodisias City Council regarding appropriateness and feasibility of building a top-notch sport facility in Aprodisias. We ask you to assess the appropriateness using two basic criteria: valor and effectus. If the project scores well on both criteria, we will proceed to  discuss size, location and financing. Who wants to start?

Maxorus: Let me speak to valor. Since my retirement  from the army and settlement in Aphrodisias I  have not seen a good contact sport performance. I am talking about the manly stuff: wild beasts, blood and gore, and men with oiled bodies, six-pack abs and supple buttocks competing against one another. Our community needs this stuff like a breath of fresh air, and I am not speaking for veterans only. By Jove, how many toga knitting competitions a man can endure? We need this stadium more than anything.

Decorina: I am not sure if wild beasts (she gets interrupted by Flavadius).

Flavadius: I agree with Maxorus, valor is very good. For effectus, I would mention that the project anticipates that the facility would run many performances a year. This includes CXCIII "Gore a Christian" shows, LIII "Strong, naked and invincible" gladiator performances, XXXVII "Bitches of Corinth"  appearances featuring female warriors in a mud bath, and LXXXVI shows for children in two series "Ants versus snails" (animal track) and "Dwarfs and Goblins" (baby gladiator track). On top of that there is a number of one of a kind performances. Proposal anticipates standing invitations to "Lepers of Tiberias" and "Mutants of Capri" as well as frequent visits by "Can you eat this?!" reality show. 

I would also add that organizers pledge to use only local Christians for shows involving them, and this will strengthen the economy through wealth redistribution. Overall, effectus is very good. It is clear that proposers paid attention to diversity of shows, reaching out to various underrepresented audiences and providing top quality entertainment.

Decorina: Are shows like "Lepers of Tiberias" really what our community (she gets interrupted by Skrotkolak)

Skrotkolak:  (waives goodbye and says)  Selamat tinggal dan selamat tinggal. Anda tidak merawat panel asing dengan baik dan saya tidak akan bekerjasama dengan anda.

(everybody waives back unsure of what the hell he just said)

Decius: I agree with the others that valor and effectus are both excellent. Let's move on.

Wulfnoth (looking around and nodding): Fantastic, overwhelming support. What about the size and financing?

Decius: me and my partners can offer excellent financing option, a 100/1-ARM, a five hundred year loan with fixed interest for the first hundred years and then the yearly adjustments. One hundred years of fixed interest coincides with the anticipated duration of the conquest of Britain, let the Brits swallow the markets' variability! (he adds with grim satisfaction).

Wulfnoth: Whatever, whatever, I do not understand what you are talking about. But this is a good deal, right?

Decius: The best. If we can only conquer whiskey producing isles of Caledonia (he murmurs to himself anticipating inventions that will occur a millenium later).

Wulfnoth: Lets have a short bread and olive break!

Math maze

Wulfnoth: We come to the last issue - how big our stadium needs to be? It has to accommodate our growing population, attract visitors and be guaranteed to last at least for the duration of the mortgage. Quintimius, it is your turn to provide some input.

Quintimius: (fighting massive anxiety attack): I propose to use a new mathematical technique called a formulae. You give me all the things that you want to consider, and how they affect the outcome and I will fit them into the formulae and tell you how big the stadium needs to be.

(All but Decorina look at him with total lack of comprehension)

Quintimius: ok, ok, let me explain. The formulae has two parts - the numerator and the denominator. Things that make the stadium bigger go into the numerator and things that make it smaller go into the denominator. There are several ways in which two numbers can produce a third one and in the end the numerator and the denominator will yield a new number as well. 

(Decorina sits quietly with a slightly bored look on her face, rest of the panel is clearly in distress as these explanations are confusing them even more). 

Quintimius: (sweating from excitement) Let me start over. Any two numbers can produce a third number. And if this is the case then we can also invert this procedure and treat the second number as the third one and ask what the second number is (there is audible sobbing in the background). Since two numbers can produce a third one in a variety of ways this can all happen in many ways (Decius draws a knife and tests the blade for sharpness). I hope everything is completely clear!

Decius: I am a hands on, applied kind of guy. Enough of this rubbish, lets move on with the calculation!

Quintimius (taken aback and obviously in love with how numbers interact with one another) Ok, tell me what you want and I will fit it into the formulae. Lets begin!

Maxorus: "Gore a Christian" shows are very popular. I would expect CCCLXVIII spectators for each show.

Quintimius: Great. Put CXCIII and CCCLXVIII in the numerator.

Decorina: I sort of like "Bithes of Corinth". There might be CCXCIX of my countrymen for each show.

Decorina watching Bitches of Corinth

Quintimius:  Put XXXVII and CCXCIXI in the numerator.

Decius: Now I get it! Put LIII and CCCLXXIX for "Strong, naked and invincible" and LXXXVI and CCLI for children's shows. Oh, and add XXXIII and CCXXXVII for lepers and mutants. All in the numerator (he says happily).

Quintimius: What else?

Flavadius: People go for a show once a week, I think.

Quintimius: Right, put LII in the denominator (sounds of confusion). That is right, if citizens go to more than one show then they are counted more than once (grunts faking understanding are heard). Now (he exclaims triumphantly) we combine each pair of numbers as we would count area and then combine the results as we were counting length (dark cloud of depression envelops the panel) and do the reverse area computation on the numerator and the denominator (Maxorus is leaning dangerously on his sword).

Quintimius: anything else?

Maxorus: our stadium should have IV sectors and III tiers.

Quintimius:  No problem, combine this as area with everything else (Decorina looks startled and starts scribbling with her big toe in the sand) Now we put this all together and the answer is approximately 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMCCCLXIV. 
This is the final size of our stadium.

Decorina: Could it be only MMDXXX (she says happily as this is the first complete sentence that she was allowed to produce).

Decorina makes a point

Quintimius: (with a patronizing smile) That is a very different number! Aren't you forgetting something?

Decorina: perhaps these sectors and tiers have nothing to  (Flavadius cuts in)

Flavadius: are we done? can I get my per diem now?

Wulfnoth: Thank you very much for your panel service. Your help is invaluable and we know how precious your time is (Maxorus tries to look busy). We will be discussing a project for Emperor's bathhouse next week. I hope I can count on you.

Aftermath

The panel ended and the final recommendation was off by an order of magnitude, the stadium was designed for 30,364 seats rather than 2,530. A five hundred year loan taxed the city to death and failure to capture Caledonia crushed it with ballooning  interest payments. By sixth century CE the city of love was abandoned never to be populated again. Our team was saddened, but we cheered up sailing along the Mediterranean coast and taking it easy. 

Taking a break with students and postdocs

In the end, our research did not put the blame squarely on the Roman numerals, and perhaps more nuanced factors played role in the fall of Aphrodisias. Our team was divided too. Guys sort of liked the stadium and found its gargantuan size in line with their dreams and ambitions no matter what the cost. Gals cared little about the stadium, but they mourned the destruction of Aphrodisias and were appalled by the neanderthal treatment of Decorina and a lost opportunity for listening to a voice of reason. 

Botany Unit Confidential

This is a continuation of my uncle's diary. The previous installment is here.

Philosopher's club of the Ministry of Everything

The cornerstone idea of our system is that we do not know much about the future, cannot put much trust in the past, and live in a world where nothing lasts forever. The spiral of dialectic development  propels things through an eyelet of self-negation and comrades want to know: where are we in this cycle?
This is an important question that is inspired by a growing sense that we might be a bit lost.   And this is how our club started. We meet twice a week in a drab and dark shed that we call Smolny (after the  Bolshevik headquarters during the October revolution) and we take pains to maintain total secrecy. Still, our meetings would not amount to much if not for a serendipitous event that provided a much needed reference point.

The trip

The comrades from the Botany Unit do not travel much. In the eyes of the Command Center, travel is an unnecessary folly. The theory of the leisure class  is a favorite book  of the senior comrade responsible for approving our travel requests, and consequently no gratuitous luxury will sneak under his watchful gaze. "You do not want to read about yourselves in the Central Committee bulletin" he warns us with a fatherly smile. Younger comrades call him  Frankenstein,  after a mythical creature that was built entirely from Party propaganda.
But a miracle has happened. Whether Frankenstein got sloppy or just wanted us out for a few days,  we were sent on an official delegation to Moscow! Imagine that, a foreign country. We were allowed standing places for the two day train trip, although Frankenstein was genuinely concerned that this luxury would spoil us.
The trip was uneventful and the business part was trivial - visit to Lenin's Tomb, Red Army headquarters and a local elementary school. Our adventure started soon afterwards. We cracked the first bottle on Biblioteka Imieni Lenina station taking the Red line towards Komsomolskaya where our tents were pitched on a large construction site. But we never made it there, on Lubyanka station a bunch of grim looking agents interrupted our revelries and soon we were locked up in a holding room  for transient passengers. Public disturbance and unlawful consumption, they said. We took nervous sips from the last vodka bottle that survived the check-in procedure until we realized that we were not alone. A  foreign-looking young men was lingering in the corner and by the look of him, he must have been there for weeks. In broken Russian he explained that his name is Edmund Slowdown and that he took upon himself to reveal the ugly truth about the capitalist empire. There is little that we do not know about capitalist conspiracies against us but when we mentioned the Ministry of Everything he lit up and pulled out a big roll of perforated tape. "This", he said, "will interest you because it is about your sister organization that the capitalists copied from you. It is  called the Government Science Organization."

Government Science Organization - from beginning to the end

Reading perforated tape is a tall order, but it was worth it. This turned out to be a fascinating story not unlike our own. GSO as it used to be called was started with a great idea.   We have all agreed that sometimes you owe  respect to your adversaries and this was clearly the case. Fortunately for us, after several glorious decades the vision started to fade.  Our comrades found the process strangely familiar. Every day we come across members of the Central Committee who, no matter what the question is, are ready with an answer - "Build another steel mill" or "Dig up more coal". For our comrades at GSO, as we started thinking about them, the pitfall was in the concept of so-called "interdisciplinary research". The documents are never clear what the "interdisciplinary" contributes to other than that it is "pushing", "accelerating" and "transcending" - things that in our system are aptly delegated to the Secret Police in cases  where the workers' willpower to get things done is waning. It looked as if capitalist scientists, not unlike small children, fought bitterly to be narrow, parochial, disciplinary and also slow, systematic and incremental, while their administrators like good parents wanted them to taste the interdisciplinary cake and open their eyes to a wider experience.
Eventually the GSO's  management  got tired of listening to a gaggle of conflicting voices and  started looking for shortcuts. They  forgot the centerpiece of their system, a free market of ideas, and decided to do what they do worst - to lead. Like a battleship in heavy seas GSO was firing broadsides of solicitations aimed at the challenges that nature put in front of them. Eventually our foreign comrades slowly started losing their grip on reality. The so-called Research Proposal Manual was edited every six months, threatening more and more draconian penalties for wrong fonts and margin size and single-minded enforcement of rules addressing mostly irrelevant issues.  We were chuckling that after decades of poking fun at us, our capitalist comrades were getting the taste of the centralized planning of scientific endeavors, a bitter experience that we learned long ago is better swept under the rug.

What went wrong?

All this reading was convincing us that we too might be nearing the end of the cycle, but a clear picture  was eluding us. Many things went wrong but not so much as to explain why the Ministry of Everything is still alive and kicking  while poor GSO is biting the dust.
In the end, we came up with a simple explanation that still needs to be verified. It has to do with our comrades scientists, a community whose basic features are the same regardless of the time and environment. Many of our best scientists are arrogant, full of themselves, narrow-minded when confronted with issues outside their expertise, and just plain jerks. Through trial and error we discovered that they work best when stationed in isolated little hamlets in Siberia, free of distractions and temptations to torment weaker minds. However, our capitalist comrades have taken a different path and tried to ingratiate their scientists with the rest of the society. Needless to say, it did not quite work and one of the last ideas coming from GSO to address the issues was the "Second Best" program. Rather than constantly fighting to get the best scientist, talented manager, or most qualified employee, and so on, the idea was to aim for the second best. These would be more mellow people, with a big smile replacing acerbic wit, and good rapport with the general population. It appears that "Second Best" program unleashed powerful forces of mediocrity and started the race to the grave which ended several years later.

We were sipping warm beer in a dark shed, patting each other on the back, commiserating with capitalist scientists, and wandering what the future of the Botany Unit might be.

Aftermath

The sad end of our capitalist comrades  was immortalized in art. The monument to commemorate efforts of the scientific workforce to earn societal support was build in San Francisco a few years after GSO was shut down  (you can see the famous Golden Gate bridge in the background).

It shows a throng of distinguished capitalist scientists pleading for grants and, like poor lemmings, being pushed off the fiscal cliff.   But I suspect the sculpture allows an alternative interpretation as well.  When brave and talented people set out for a journey of discovery, success and failure may superficially look just about the same.  In hindsight, this is not so surprising, given that the people responsible for the outcome, sponsors and administrators, usually prefer to stay out of the picture.

Continued here.

The Fall of the Roman Empire finally explained

Nobody knows how long the documents were lying in a dumpy basement of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.  In a crowded room, sharing space with John Paul II wetsuits, Benedict XVI hockey sticks, and  Francis I baseball bats, boxes of ancient parchments  were patiently waiting for their  time to be seen again. Evidence suggests that  the first occupant of the residence - Pope Urban VIII - passionate enemy of science and the last Pope to expand Christendom by military means, brought them there to study.

When our team found them many papers were partially destroyed, and a year later only a small fraction has been translated. But a few that we studied in depth illuminate a path that connects events separated by two millennia.

Below is is one of the first documents that we came across. It is a medical case history unearthed from what appears to be a 20,000-bed Mathematics Trauma Center (MTC) that the Roman Imperial Army was operating at the time of Caligula.

Math fiasco in Bayern

Name: Gluteus Maximus
Rank: Centurion
Legion: Legio XXII Primigenia
Coverage: Kaligula Care (pending final Senate legislation)
Case worker: Galla Placidia

Interview transcript:

Gluteus Maximus: Ave Caesar!

Galla Placidia: (confused) Fine, thank you. How big is your legion?

Gluteus Maximus: We had MMMMMCMXCI legionaries including auxiliaries.

Galla Placidia: Tell me about your last campaign.

Gluteus Maximus: We were operating in lower Bavaria. The place was swarming with hostiles. The Emperor's circular stipulated that every member of the legion must capture or kill at least IV Vandals and Goths per day.

Galla Placidia: So how many did you have to get daily?

Gluteus Maximus: (with some anxiety and clearly reciting from memory) MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMCMLXIV.

Galla Placidia: Does your legion have a math support unit?

Gluteus Maximus: Yes, we had about LIX warfighters with additional large number training. Unfortunately we have lost them early on in the campaign. They were not meeting the quota  of captured Vandals and I had to put them on the rack - routine punishment for cowardice. I wanted my officer to put the rack on a low setting and (with growing agitation) I tried explain how to do it. It is a simple trick with numbers but I used X for the unknown quantity that I was looking for. He took X for the rack setting, maximal as it happens, and the entire math unit was put out of commission and had to be sent back to Rome to recuperate.

Galla Placidia: Did you start training another math unit?

Gluteus Maximus: Of course. I had LXXXVIII volunteers, but they seemed to be cursed. Soon after we started abacus workouts many lost digits to some freak accidents, others developed an unusual taste for fighting and were too tired to learn anything, and the rest did not have what it takes to deal with numbers.

Galla Placidia: How did you manage without a math unit?

Gluteus Maximus: It was horrible. Goths and Vandals were down in the valley. They arranged their forces in a large rectangle. We had two warfighters, one was putting a pebble in the jar for each row and the other for each column of the enemy infantry. The first jar had MMMMMMMMMDCCCXCIX pebbles and the other MMMMMMDCCXCVIII. But without the math unit we were unable to to proceed. The War Manual stipulates that we should not engage the enemy when there are more then two of them for every one of us, and (with desperation in his voice) we could not make this determination (he starts sobbing quietly).
So their forces were growing day by day, and we were digging in and requesting a new math unit from Rome.

Galla Placidia: What happened next?

Gluteus Maximus: (defiantly) In the end, a courier came from Rome and I was put on the rack!


Interview analysis and diagnosis: Gluteus Maximus suffers from an advanced form of math phobia and fear of numbers masquerading as letters. The simple act of counting gives him the sweats, and advanced operations such as combining two numbers as length or area result in a partial shutdown of major organs. Diarrhea, fingernail sensitivity, chest pains, shallow breathing, and aggression frequently occur in a context of even small numerical challenges. When faced with inverse mathematical operations such as getting length out of area and another length, massive panic attacks ensue.


Recommendation: Keep in the Mathematics Trauma Center  for as long he has the insurance coverage. Release afterward. The affliction is not treatable at the moment.

Collapse explained

For the last 250 years the Gibbon book, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire has been a definite source on the history of the Roman Empire. Beautiful and engaging writing, if a tad old fashioned, and a mountain of historical data.  Yet these newly found documents reveal the fatal weakness of the Roman Empire that gets barely mentioned in Gibbon's treatise - the Roman numerals!  We may quarrel  over whether the economy can be based on central planning, the invisible hand of the market or something else entirely, but there is no doubt whatsoever that it cannot be based on the Roman numbering system. With Roman numerals addition is hard, multiplication awful (even today people do not know how to do it correctly ), division nearly impossible, and did I mention that there is no zero?  The discovery of the logarithm, a gateway drug to higher mathematics, is out of the question.  Everyday Roman life created multiple venues for mathematical exploits. Think of the military practice of decimation as a gentle entry into modular arithmetic, or reality shows of Christians and lions  as a path towards the study of two-player games. But in every case, the flawed numbering system stands in the way, not only hindering the development of mathematics, but also compromising banking, record-keeping, and business. With this kind of system you could not send a kid to buy a loaf of bread or a ticket for a gladiator show because they would need two decades to learn how to figure out the proper change!

Roman Empire is a  case of "one aqueduct too many". Excessive investment in public utilities, military and entertainment that left science in the dust.  It is hard to speculate, but with minor capital outlay Romans could have had decimal system, and with it made inroads into analysis and calculus, Fourier analysis, number theory and the rest of mathematical gems.  Sustained scientific effort  would put us on a path of having steam engine around V century, and  electricity and nuclear energy by the end of IX century. As always, nay-sayers point out that Vandals armed with the nuclear-tipped spears would have been a much tougher enemy, and having a Second World War thousand years earlier is also a dubious benefit.
Our team avoided these idle speculations and pushed forward!


Why so slow?

Discovery of the  true reasons for the fall of Rome, a tour de force of modern historical research and a shining example of investigative spirit for the next generations to follow, forced our team to  instantly refocus on a new task. Without science paving the way for welfare and progress, and mathematics that keeps science honest,  the Empire was doomed and this fact is profoundly obvious in the hindsight. So what stymied our less successful predecessors from making this discovery decades ago?
We may never know, but one possible explanation is that the fall and decline was so unbelievably slow. Rome lasted for over a millennium; first five hundred years as a republic, and then another five centuries as a crumbling Empire.

With this in mind we started searching for  factors that could counterbalance the  lack of strong science and education, and provide exoskeleton that keeps the society going even when the rational thought is in retreat. This work is still in progress and several competing theories emerged.  One of them is a "Theory of good life." Aqueducts, good roads, daily reality shows at the local colosseum, and heated towel racks and bathroom floors should not be altogether written off.  These are important and pleasant things; despite the fact that they represent spiraling consumption, and, if  government is involved, a source of endless deficits. Others argue that a millennium back then is roughly equivalent to twenty years today, short enough to burn through a scientific surplus if you've got it. Supporting data comes from analyzing  military salaries. In Roman times military pay while generous would stay fixed for two and half centuries at a time without much grumbling from the rank and file. Today numerous examples indicate that government morale drops considerably after barely a half a decade of a pay freeze. That is a 50:1 ratio that leads to our time scale adjustment. But the leading theory is that of an Endless War. It has to do with campaigns  in far away places and against insignificant enemies.  It requires that through conquest, resource-grabbing, or simple arrogance, one continuously produces armies of low-grade adversaries.   These enemies can do only an occasional harm, but they represent enough of a threat to suspend the common sense of  general population for a long time.
Whichever theory is true remains to be seen, but suddenly the problems of our toga wearing predecessors seem no different that what our republic is grappling with today.

Ministry of Everything gets a new logo

This is a continuation of my uncle's diary. The previous installment is here.

The new logo  is an idea originating from the upper management.  Our contribution is related to Celestial Seasonings,  tea brought by the previous boss of the Command Center. We all have a daily taste of it and unlike vodka, which calms the comrades down, Celestial Seasonings makes you nervous and jumpy.  The common suspicion is that it is 99% chemistry, even though the label indicates a whole range of components.  It is not clear what long term effects of this overindulgence are, but there is a growing sense of imbalance.

So, the history of new logo is a bit murky but at least the following is known. After the untimely departure of the minister who ran the Ministry of Everything for just over a year, his flagship concept of unity was about to be  abandoned. It was unbearable to hear that we are one of this or one of that, and we started moving away from the concept of One by changing the logo. The  old logo was fairly simple and it had unity embodied in it -  a single gear resembling a compass rose with some ornamental lettering. The new logo, which is called "Strong  hand with five fingers" focuses on synergy, plurality and anticipates imminent downsizing. Our ministry has seven major units and a handful of wannabes. The latter ones were already absorbed  and two of the main units are also slated for some major reorganization. The new logo  foresees the final layout comprising of  five distinct pieces of our organization turning in sync, connected to one another and  providing the necessary momentum for deep societal changes awakened by these revolutions. While unity is still prominent, the emphasis is on the movement and distinct pieces forming an entity that is more than a sum of its parts - all just as the name indicates. Here is the basic layout waiting for a splash of color and a cheerful background.

Colleagues in the Botany Unit found the mechanical concept of the new logo quite amazing and truthfully showcasing the synergistic nature of our current operations. Some comrades quickly called it a Teeth Breaker as invariably some broken incisors may lie on the path to a synergistic heaven. Strangely, our managers, whose attention span is compromised  by minutiae laid out daily by the Central Committee memos, seemed to have skipped the basic testing of their concept and are already pushing ahead with new initiatives.

Continued here.

Mathematics- the new beginning?

In the waning days of the First Gulf War, a marauding US Army unit came across a treasure trove of five thousand years old Egyptian scrolls discussing the decimal number system. One particular document resembling a government circular and affixed with several high level endorsements puzzled historians. In a semi-literal translation it said:

"Counteth the children of all your numbers and for each of their children giveth a dinar to the pharaoh."

Historians had problems understanding the exact meaning, and the document lingered in the Pentagon archives for several years. Enter NSA cryptologist and amateur egyptologist hiding under the code name Pink Squirrel. After quick glance at the document she posited that this is a patent claim for decimals and the document establishing the double logarithmic taxation system. More precisely, for ancient Egyptians, digits in the decimal notation were "children" of a number. Thus the number of children is a logarithm of a number and the number of grand-children is a double log. The idea that the mathematical community owns the decimal system and can exact a modest charge (log(log(x)) is a nearly constant function) for using it was very exciting and prompted a great deal more research. It turned out that the number crunching capacity of early societies was quite significant and the level of tax evasion was low. Consequently the revenue stream from the Double Log Tax in the five hundred years since its introduction created the pharaonic surplus that comfortably funded  the pyramids and various melioration projects. The Double Log Tax was applied for the next two thousand years, leading to unprecedented scientific developments and the creation of the Seven Wonders of Antiquity . All historians agree that until the stoning of Hypathia and the burning of the  Library of Alexandria, science was doing quite well. Afterward things turned sour and it was a big lesson for the mathematical community that perhaps they had tried to collect too much too early.

Fast forward a decade to  the Second Gulf War  - US Army units plundering the Baghdad's historical sites came across an arabic document from 513 AD which copyrights the sine function! The document allows for free use of the sine function for the first 1500 years, after which there is a sliding scale fee for each use. Clearly the mathematical community decided to give a moratorium for early adopters of the technology and to hook generations of teenagers on the art of triangle solving. Now the trigonometric holiday is over, time is running out and as of January 1, 2014, the mathematical fiscal cliff is looming large. School districts are worried and so is the  general population. Of course the document is being contested and attacked from many sides. Opponents of Sine Function Usage Fee bring up faded signatures on the original document and Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses, questioning the right of Islamic mathematicians to the ownership of the sine function. The Taliban's sudden affection for mathematics and the pledge to abandon opium trade for sine function revenue does not seem to be helping anybody. And there is much more: further historical studies show that the only commonly used mathematical objects that are free to use forever are zero and TeX. Everything else, such as +, -, =, square root and other standard functions have varying user licenses. None of this is completely unexpected, even if it is widely unknown. School districts have argued for years that studying polynomials of a degree higher than two is not worth the effort and educators have been suppressing the multiplication sign in their anticipated cost cutting efforts.

Suddenly mathematicians are facing a possibility of cashing in on their inventions. Re-enacting the Double Log Tax and enforcing the Sine Function Usage Fee and all of its cousins would be a tremendous source of income.  Just to illustrate consider the following: It is widely known that there are at most six degrees of separation between any two individuals on the planet. What is less known is that there are two degrees of separation between a person and a criminal. Consequently, even though criminals account for only a small percentage of the society, the high level of connectivity of this community makes it necessary to put entire population under surveillance, and that was how NSA's Prism program was born.   With an appetite for numbers which is that big, the Double Log Tax bill for NSA alone would fund the development of modern mathematics and bring the leadership in this area back to the US. 

 The latest news

So this is where we are. In a close vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the Double Log Tax and Sine Function Usage Fee and such are constitutional and cleared the way for the Congress to act. Furthermore, during a brief lull in fighting, a US Army  unit operating alongside the Syrian rebels  came across an ancient papyrus from 5000BC that describes executive orders concerning the Double Log Tax. Although the pharaoh is listed as a nominal recipient of the proceeds, the executive order specifies the "counters" as the caretakers of the funds. Consequently, just like most things in this world, numbers have a legitimate owner and it is the mathematical community. For the first time in history, mathematicians have a chance to free themselves from the government handouts and caprices of the modern day sponsors, and simply cash-in  on the contributions to Humanity that they were making for the last several thousand years.

The American Mathematical Society, which has always had a rocky relationship with the government funding agencies, took the lead in lobbying for the legislative action. Politically this is a very slippery ground. On one hand, proposed laws represent new taxes, an intolerable course of action for many members of Congress. On the other hand, the issue represents the recognition of intellectual property rights at the dawn of human civilization - something that the Founding Fathers would have respected deeply. In the end, the bill H.R 666 proposes to recognize intellectual rights of the mathematical community to its inventions such as numbers, functions and formulas and to compensate them according to the law of the land. There is a great deal of discussion in the society about these proposed laws. Mathematicians are also energized, and many conflicting views are being presented.  Superficially, enacting the Double Log tax has more than a passing resemblance to a retirement - an annuity after a long and productive life. Many younger colleagues do not quite feel ready, even if they are neither appreciated nor respected. Others argue that this is the dawn of a golden age of mathematics. Free from the bondage of interdisciplinary research and the need to reach outside own community, mathematicians will pursue their own interests in the yeshiva-style environment. Classical geometry, point-set topology, and finite group theory will came back roaring and infuse the discipline with the unprecedented level of abstraction and irrelevance.  Applied and computational mathematicians are quite pragmatic, they plan to collect whatever they can and find something useful to do in the aftermath. Statistics community is most nervous. For years they insisted that statistics is not mathematics and now they are out of the loop. At the same time the Double Log Tax is likely to ruin the entire community, and it is not certain whether the  societal importance of this discipline warrants the government bailout.

Needless to say, to push this through Congress is not a trivial task and many compromises have to be made. As with every major piece of legislation, unusual alliances and back-room deals shore up the votes. It is not different this time. The American Mathematical Society needed to strengthen its hand and its alliance with National Rifle Association came both as a surprise and a big gamble. Details are sketchy, but math meetings will be combined with gun shows and mathematicians will be encouraged to get concealed weapon permits and carry sidearms. AMS members will get a complimentary subscription to Guns and Ammo while NRA members will enjoy Bulletin of the AMS. A few thousands of AMS members dropped out immediately, but the influx of five million new souls from NRA compensated it thousand-fold. This union is a big challenge for the mathematical community, and we are encouraged to welcome our gun-toting friends with open arms. So far so good, we are doing our best, even though seeing ads for a Bushmaster M4 semi-automatic in the Bulletin of AMS takes some getting used to.

Other amendments are piling up as well, given the size of the revenue stream going towards math, from subsidizing Obamacare and Social Security to new subway lines in several cities and a zoo in North Dakota.
Neverthless, it looks like math has enough of the  votes. If all goes well, math will begin a new millennium as the first science that is sustained entirely by its past contributions to Humanity, and no real expectation to keep on giving.  Indeed, 7000 years old tools that just keep on getting better and carry a lifetime warranty - unbeatable!

Scientists of the future

About a couple of percent of the population has what it takes to be a scientist, but lately we are having trouble meeting this quota. There are many thorny issues regarding underrepresentation in science, so let me focus on the most fragile and threatened group - the US born male. For some reason, USBMs are missing in action! I know, becoming a scientist means financial ruin in the near-term and a low probability of actually joining the scientific workforce in the long-term; the educational system is driven by greed; your future colleagues are a pack of wolves, and so on: there are multiple reasons to stay away. Therefore, rather than trying to figure out what drives USBMs away from universities and research labs, I decided to find out where are they are running to. And this brings me to the second topic, which is

Nerdy bartenders

Have you been to a bar lately? I am not talking about a place where you get respite from the challenges in your life in the company of equally miserable people,  but rather a place where you go to explore and study. Bars like The Passenger, The Aviary or The Dead Rabbit to name just a few.

My induction into alcohol drinking followed a path of blackouts and humiliations,  and only recently under the patient guidance of my daughter's boyfriend have I started recognizing the finer aspects of mixology and visiting establishments where this art is performed. Needless to say this is where I solved the puzzle of the missing scientific workforce. For when you enter one of those bars, you are entering a modern science lab. There are hundreds of bottles containing tinctures, extracts, infusions, elixirs and so on, liquid gases, centrifuges, and of course the Higgs field that makes it all possible. These are not places where drinks are made, but also invented, discussed and studied. Honestly, if Newton had frequented any of these bars he would have manufactured the philosopher's  stone and left the  calculus for  Leibnitz. A modern bar is a stimulating place to be. This is where USBMs would excitedly discuss the virtues of lime zest versus lemon peel, kinds of cherries that go into your Manhattan, essential oils that are squirted onto the rim of your glass, shaken versus stirred, the morphology of ice cubes, and so on: the list is nearly endless. All the paradigms of the scientific method are observed: careful repetition of successful experiments (e.g. multi-layer validation), blind-testing, random sampling, etc.  The parallels with universities are plentiful, as the modern bar is a place for being imaginative and creative in the most collaborative spirit.  Many of the miseries of academic life (boring meetings, vengeful colleagues, administrators that make your life living hell) are pushed into the background.  Bars used to cater predominantly to USBMs but this is changing and modern bar is beating academia in building a more gender-balanced environment. Very often investigators work in teams of two involving both genders. Focused research groups are also common, and research training groups are a dominant mode to get people up to speed. Clearly, the modern bar takes the best practices from academia and funding agencies and tries to leave the junk behind. Administration is reduced to a minimum. Indeed,  your bartender is your teacher, mentor, administrator, and a person that can police the environment if the need arises. And yes, they can be as nerdy as you are.

If mixology is science and the bar is where it is done, then they set an example of a stimulating intellectual environment that really works. USBMs are voting with their feet by offering their scientific talents there.

Nevertheless, as with every new idea, the scientific yield so far is not great and the work is still somewhat narrow. Hanging out in a bar is often viewed as more of a hobby, and frankly some of it lacks rigor and discipline. Like  modern statistics, there is strong emphasis on  data analysis over theory development, and occasionally there is a "big data" problem - this is when investigators collect more data in a short amount of time than they can handle. There is apparent fragility and the bar, as a new research frontier and incubator of scientific talent, needs more nurturing and care.

Scottish Cafe Project

As always, our organization is on top of things, and we are ready to follow the talent where it may lead. A new program called "Excursions in Education" intends to explore non-academic environments rich in scientific talent, and these newly discovered pockets of excellence are ripe for a more thorough study. Yet, the puritan roots of our organization make the exploration difficult, as our relationship with alcohol is highly regulated. Just when the solution to scientific workforce issues seem to be in sight, this is one excursion in education that we are forbidden to take! Eventually, the Office of Inspector General came up with a drink escrow scheme that allows one to store drinks in a bucket to be consumed when off-duty, but this solution was widely viewed as impractical. Malaise and depression followed: many units of our organization are already shrouded in misery caused by lack of leadership and the erosion of their guiding principles.

But then a miracle happened - the mathematics unit, hardest hit by  dwindling resources and condemned to irrelevance by the upper management, started  Scottish Cafe Project, an informal initiative named after the bar where a sizeable chunk of modern mathematics was born seventy years ago. One by one, mathematicians offered their vacation time, sick leave and free time to hang around in bars for as long as it is needed. After fulfilling their daily obligations in record time they would serve on the "bar beat" and retreat there to keep tabs on the members of the scientific workforce frequenting these establishments. USBMs were initially the primary focus, but in short time the program became  all-inclusive. This valiant service and willingness to sacrifice were exemplary and boosted morale tremendously. Many felt that they were interacting with "the greatest minds of our generation", "having the best time of their life", or simply "finally doing something important and relevant." These are exact quotes from the employee satisfaction survey conducted soon after Scottish Cafe Project began.

Colleagues were challenging each other to do more "bar time," some got into a habit of taking the lunch break in their favorite watering hole, and most gave countless hours to this service. In the end, the Scottish Cafe Project turned out to be the glue that kept our unit together in these trying times, building the synergy necessary to carry on. Suddenly hanging out with mathematicians became cool and fashionable and the Scottish Cafe initiative became a model that others are aching to imitate.
Things are looking up....

Fairy tales redux

Education is a battleground where the future of our society is being determined. Scientists are there in the trenches fighting for the minds of the new generation. It is clear that in this fight, kindergarten emerges as a strategically important position of crucial significance. The scientific community established itself there early on (in part because so many of its members have never moved past these first attempts at socialization),  but in hindsight these efforts were too subtle. While every child knows the story of  Red Riding Hood, only a handful of them know that the story depicts the troubled history of how the Superconducting Super Collider  was wolfed down by the  US Congress. How many of you know that the  story of Rapunzel is part of an effort to make children aware of the  amazing physical properties of carbon nanotubes?  and what about Snow White and crystallography? Examples abound, but it is safe to say that literary connections with science are not always straightforward, and others have appropriated and twisted fairy tales for their not always pure needs.

Consequently, scientists needs to retell these folk tales in a more direct manner, and with a clear goal of delivering an uncluttered message. To illustrate, I will lead with  a new version of The Three Little Pigs. The message of the story is simple - life without science is not worth living, and science without external funding is not worth doing. A strong message, a modern setting, good character development and an early introduction to the vocabulary of funding agencies and proposal writing will channel children's thinking in the correct direction. Without further ado, let's begin!

Three Little Pigs apply for a grant

Scene: a well lit living room. Bookshelves in the background, issues of Scientific American and New Yorker lying around. An old copy of Feynman's lectures in physics and a Rubik's cube on the coffee table. In one word - a pigsty. The three little pigs repose and chew on acorns.

But wait a moment! they are not that little anymore … they are big, raging with hormones and restless.

Blimpie, the oldest,  jumps up and down and tries to do somersaults. "We've got to get our research funded!" he yells way too loudly. Tummy glances at him and murmurs "Yeah, the tenure clock is ticking," and Plumpie, the youngest, as usual does not say anything. The die is cast: the pigs are stuck in an academic rut, and struggling. Their research is moderately successful, but without external funding they will soon find themselves working at a state school or even a community college. Furthermore, Plumpie suffers from Swineburger Syndrome - absent mindedness and aloofness combined with acute fear of cookbooks.   He was like that from the day he was born but it has gotten  worse since their parents went to a Korean restaurant and never came back. Blimpie and Tummy are worried about Plumpie's teaching evaluations, of which he is blissfully unaware. Yet, as is often the case in the pig family, it is Plumpie who sets things in motion, "Call the wizard," he says.

"What a great idea!" exclaims Tummy, the most level-headed of the lot, and goes looking for the phone.

A week later the wizard appears at the doorstep. He is a young strapping lad covered in tattoos. A tat on his left bicep says "Moo" and one on the right  "Oink," and this makes Plumpie nervous. But otherwise the wizard is a charmer who knows his job. He plops on the couch and explains that he will begin with a simple aptitude test. At this point Blimpie starts jumping up and down yelling "Aptitude, altitude, test, test, test" louder and louder. "He needs Ritalin," says the wizard to nobody in particular, and  pulls from his bag a small container with a little plant and presents it to the pigs. "Plant it in the yard and take a good care of it. In a month's time I will come and we will talk again." And in a blink he is gone.

The plant does not look like anything although it must have some magical properties. For the next month, the pigs check on it several times a day and try not to pee in the vicinity. The plant first sprouts a lot of green leaves and then produces pale white flowers. The end of semester is coming, the tenure clock is ticking and there is a lot of anxiety in the air.

The wizard comes one month later. He has a new shiny truck and a fresh suntan. "Overhead," he says somewhat cryptically.

The fam sits in the living room in a circle looking at the wizard. Blimpie is gnawing on his hooves and brimming with excitement, Tummy has a notebook in his hand and a printout of all active solicitations of GSF (Government Science Foundation) by his side and Plumpie's mind is thousands of miles away.

"I will start with you" says the wizard pointing at Blimpie, "what part of the plant do you like the best?" Blimpie is so psyched that he looks like he is going to have a coronary in a second. He takes a big breath and roars "Flowers, FLOWERS!!!! preeetttty" while jumping at least three feet in the air.

The wizard is pleased, "I have something just for you," he says. "GSF has a new program called ASPIRE, all you need is a lot of ideas and two pairs of friendly ears." Blimpie's excitement is overflowing, he starts chanting rapidly "aspire, inspire, aspire, inspire" while running around, and then he suddenly changes the direction, exclaims "I am Schroedinger's cat!" and runs full speed into the closed door. Apparently he is trying  to demonstrate the quantum tunneling effect but it is not successful because  the value of Planck's constant is at least twenty orders of magnitude smaller than what he thought.  It is a neat idea though, and as if for a consolation the lock breaks and he rolls outside half conscious  "He definitely needs Ritalin," murmurs the wizard and turns his attention to Tummy.

"How about you? Which part of the plant do you like best?" Tummy puts on his glasses and opens a PowerPoint presentation on his laptop. He has accumulated a lot of data, rate of growth and such, taken pictures, and surreptitiously biopsied the plant on few occasions. In the end he concludes that "the plant's leaves offer useful biomass and have tremendous utility value. This is what I like best."

The wizard is very pleased. "Engineering" he pronounces, "this is where you apply for your grant!" "Your colleagues will not be the coolest or the brightest but you will fit in just fine and you will be doing useful things." Tummy, who already knows the GSF's administrative layout by heart, is pleased with the choice, but a bit taken aback by the wizard's condescending attitude towards his future colleagues and collaborators. Furthermore, he thinks that there is a great deal more to his ideas of biomass than just being useful. He also feels that the hours that he spent plant watching have not been fully appreciated. His ego is buoyed by these self-promotional thoughts and he decides to become a computer scientist. A tad cooler than an engineer and you get to publish every paper twice!

At this moment the door bursts open and Blimpie runs in. He jumps on the sofa, yells "watch me now" and tries to paint Maxwell equations on his belly using mud that covers most of his body. "You forgot the speed of light constant" mumbles Tummy, irritated by his brother's attention-grabbing attitude.

"It is time for you Plumpie, what part of the plant you like best?" asks the wizard rather hopelessly as it is clear that Plumpie's mind is  drifting on the outskirts of the solar system. Luckily at this moment Blimpie bites his leg ferociously and for a second Plumpie focuses on the wizard's question. He pauses awkwardly and says in a Yoda-like voice, "good is hidden. What is seen is not important."  As often, neither Blimpie nor Tummy have the faintest idea what  their brother is trying to communicate, but the wizard seems to be in heaven. "Yes, the Force is strong with with you" he answers trying to impersonate Obi-Wan Kenobi, "this is a potato plant and the best part of it are the tubers deep underground. The leaves and flowers do not make sense without the tubers, which are hidden out of view." The wizard smiles happily and  says "you are a mathematician and should apply to the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the GSF, to the purest and deepest of the programs that they have." "The name starts with F" he adds sensing lack of enthusiasm.  Yet Plumpie is back to counting his hooves, and  the prospects of submitting grant application are dim.  The wizard leaves and there is a lingering taste of disappointment. But then the dark clouds are gone when Plumpie utters one of his half-sentences - "Check discovery". All of them run to the yard and rip the plant out. Indeed, three nice  looking potatoes hang there at the bottom projecting image of deliciousness and accumulated wisdom. Blimpie starts devouring one right there and then, Tummy grabs the other and yells "I want it cooked and mashed" and,  invisible to others,  a rough surface of the third potato channels Plumpie's thoughts into  interactions between geodesics and singularities.