The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Just as I was finishing business school, three-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman published the book The World is Flat.. This book seemed to be very popular among many of my graduating fellow MBAs, some of the professors, and a lot of people in the business community. I turned my back on the business world and put my MBA to use in public service management. I had also been working on an MA in Philosophy at a Thomistic Catholic College, so Friedman’s work was the last thing on my priority list at the time.

However, I recently ran across a copy of The World is Flat at a used book sale for fifty cents. I decided that it was time to take a look at Friedman’s book. There have certainly been a number of macroeconomic changes in the almost ten years since this book’s first publication (2005), most notably the housing bubble and the Great Recession begun in 2008.

Friedman’s theme is not hard figure out: the flat world is a metaphor for globalization “gone wild,” where a high school graduate in the United States competes for jobs not only with other Americans but also with hard-working Indians, Chinese, and other new global economic players. The author devotes page after page of anecdotes in support of this thesis. His second thesis is that to be competitive with foreign labor (physical, mental, and technological) the American worker must learn to be constantly evolving, using an almost paranoid sense of impending change as the driving force for “rebranding” themselves at roughly the same rate as the increase in computing power.

My main criticism with The World is Flat is that it seems desperately to want to be a book of social science. Unfortunately it is not. Therefore, when we put down the text we feel as though we have learned something about the proliferation of economic and cultural globalization—but we haven’t. What we have learned is Thomas L. Friedman’s opinion about these things based upon the anecdotal evidence he has collected in his own life.

This is not to say that Friedman’s theses are not correct, but I can offer only the support for them that Friedman offers in the text itself—which is very little. The World is Flat does have many redeeming qualities, however. It is well written with a unique voice. Friedman does manage to cram in a lot of little facts and figures (perhaps to make up for the lack of a proper scientific basis for support) which are interesting. Yet, by far the most interesting parts of the book are those that give a brief glimpse into the inner workings of corporations like Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Dell, and the company founded by all-around unique individual Ross Perot.

While there are some compelling aspects to the case Friedman makes with his “flat earth” metaphor, the book is too flawed to be of any serious use in guiding economic and public policy. Where it fails in its descriptive aspect (to provide any sort of scholarly research to support its main conclusions) it necessarily fails in its prescriptive methods.

I believe that if a journalist is going to undertake the type of project represented by the content of The World is Flat, he or she must work in collaboration with at least one social scientist. Much of the progress of the last 100 years has come about through the use of the scientific method to propose and then support or refute these proposals through a rigorous academic process. Without such standards, all we are left with is conjecture. It might be exquisite, well-written conjecture—but it is conjecture nonetheless.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

My wife and I regularly read a book together, typically a classic from American literature, and discuss it as we go through the pages. Some past selections are The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and The Catcher in the Rye. Recently, we finished William Faulkner’s As I Lay  Dying.

We approached the novel with some trepidation. I had previously tried reading it when I was in my late teens but I found its labyrinthine first-person, stream-of-consciousness multiple narratives almost entirely incomprehensible. This time, reading it with another person proved to be much more fruitful.

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying over the course of only 6 weeks while he was employed at a power plant. It was published in 1930. The title is taken from Homer’s The Odyssey: "As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades." Chapter lengths vary, each one presented in the first person by a new narrator.

The plot centers on the Bundren family in rural Mississippi at what seems to be the turn of the 20^th century. The mother of the family, Addie, is dying. She is presented at first in a somewhat pious fashion, we learn about her demons later. Her husband, Anse, is self-pitying opportunist whose first comment after his wife passes is something like, “Well, maybe now I can get them teeth.” (He claims to have been edentulous for 15 years.) Her children are Cash (a carpenter), Darl and Dewey Dell (twins), Jewell (foul-mouthed and ill-tempered), and Vardaman (who is still at least an adolescent).

The basic plot seems to be inspired by ancient epics although in a more absurdist vein than a heroic one. Addie’s dying wish was to be buried miles away among “her people” in Jefferson, Mississippi. Recent rains have left the rivers flooded and as the family loads her into the coffin and onto their wagon it becomes quite apparent that the journey will be fraught with misadventure.

I will not recount the entire plot here. Instead I will give some general impressions that both my wife and I took from the novel. First and foremost, Anse Bundren is a despicable, annoying, and pathetic human being. Second, Faulkner’s contrast of the simple vernacular of these people with rich, complex inner monologues serves to demonstrate that just because they might seem simple-minded doesn’t mean that they actually are.

Darl is particularly articulate and there are hints that he has a “second sight” that is off-putting to most of his neighbors and even family members. He stands in stark contrast to his younger brother Jewell, who was the “apple” of his mother’s eye. Darl is thoughtful, Jewell is pragmatic. Darl is analytical, Jewell plays his cards close to his chest.

In the end, however, each of these strong characters portrayed in the children gives some part of their very being to see that their mother receives a proper burial. Only Anse gets away clean, looking dirtier than ever.

Read this novel.

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce

Mr. Pierce is a freelance writer and I am most familiar with his work from Esquire magazine. His writing is witty, acerbic, and very insightful on subjects ranging from sports to current affairs. It is the latter that is the subject of this book.

Pierce describes the contemporary United States as something of an intellectual wasteland. He begins by painting a vivid picture of the inherent absurdity of the so-called Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. Men ride dinosaurs fixed with English saddles. A couple of triceratops are lined up (baby ones to conserve space) on Noah’s Ark. Elephants are rescued from the Hindu religion and its god Ganesh.

Pierce described “Idiot America” (undefined, but probably best understood as the mass of the public, the aggregate of US opinion) acting as follows: “It decides, en masse, with a million keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. In this “new media age” (the 24-hour news cycle), “everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is,” (p. 8). He uses controversy over teaching “intelligent design” in public schools and the “debate” over the same. Pierce lambasts press coverage regarding the undermining of the teaching of evolution through pseudo-scientific propaganda.

In a country pulsing with technological innovation, how do such misguided ideas gain popular support, or even an audience? Pierce asserts three premises that guide the commoditization of ideas which allows them to flourish in contemporary American society: 1) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. 2) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. 3) Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough. His unique talent, in this text, is in chronicling the decline of the informed and educated citizenry sought by James Madison. Pierce’s recollections of Madison’s idealism feels like a sad lament, one with which most thoughtful Americans might closely identify.

One of the saddest comments recorded in Pierce’s text is from a minister in Pennsylvania, Pastor Ray Mummert: “We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture.” This is a comment that is difficult to stomach, yet one can easily identify this sentiment as pervasive in our popular culture. Intelligence has almost become some kind of stigma in public life. Recall the election of 2000: Bush vs. Gore. Gore, the soft-spoken intellectual was consistently skewered by both the media and by his jovial, from-the-gut common-man opponent. This is not to say that either candidate’s party or platforms were superior to the other’s, or to criticize or condemn anyone who supported either candidate. The point is that logic, facts, or ideas were marginalized in favor of emotional, gut-level appeal.

Pierce also gives a short biography of a crackpot (he calls a “crank,” in fact “The Prince of the Cranks”) named Ignatius Donnelly. Donnelly lived from 1831 to 1901 and in this stretch of time completed a large collection of popular works on topics ranging from Atlantis to politics to Shakespeare as well as a plethora of pseudoscientific and pseudohistoric ideas. He was also intimately involved in politics in Minnesota and the US. Pierce’s point is to contrast the way in which fringe ideas and movements developed in the 19^th century versus their pervasiveness in contemporary life. Donnelly, although popular and not without a following, was largely relegated to the fringes of public discourse where he belonged. However, these days we are inundated from every corner by pseudoscience and pseudohistory, ranging from Dr. Oz to Ancient Aliens.

In another amusing segment of the book, Pierce discusses so-called reality television. He recalled a mid-2000s Writer’s Guild strike that led to the temporary stoppage of reality television shows such as survivor. According to Pierce, there was no one available to “write” reality. Reality itself has become a more twisted concept than ever. I am struck by the way in which individuals carefully craft a multi-media narrative about their lives through the use of social media, particularly Facebook. Thus, now more than ever, we truly are authors writing the story of our lives; only now, it is more literal than figurative.

Idiot America is a solid, well-thought argument about the “dumbing-down” of popular culture in America. The major problem that I found with the book is that it is mostly descriptive of cultural maladies and rarely offers anything in the way of prescription. Also, by the time the reader has finished the majority of the text, Pierce has reviewed copious supporting examples. I think some of the space the author used to present examples of his cultural critique could have been better used to examine the origins of our reactionary, apathetic, and ultra-conservative culture.

Likewise, the conclusion of the book would have been more effective, to me, if the author had presented some of the ways in which Americans have gotten it “right.” For example, the same country that produced the absurdist Creation Museum is also the only nation to have landed a human being on the moon. The same people that fight and squabble over whether homosexuals should be allowed to contractually enter into a monogamous union was able to struggle, strategize, and protest until women and African-American citizens had equal rights and protections under law. While current affairs might tend to make one despair, it is a better use of the intellect to inspire true social change. With that said, I still would certainly recommend Pierce’s book to anyone seeking to attain a better understanding of where our culture is at present as well as how our government’s various functions have become quite dysfunctional in many respects.

Happy learning!

I Finally Gave In... This is a review of the fictional television drama: True Detective (Season 1)

Almost without exception, I avoid writing about, often even discussing television shows. But like I said, I do make exceptions... when the material is right, when the program is thought-provoking, or when it simply latches on to my psyche coloring my ideas and influencing my modest written output. This was the case with True Detective many times over.

True Detective on HBO was one of the most awesome television projects I’ve ever scene. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Det. Rustin Cohle and Woody Harrelson as Det. Marty Hart. Some episodes are stronger than others. But all of the writing is strong by former UNC ChapelHill professor and novelist Nic Pizzolatto.  I want to take a look at my favorite, including the extra deleted scene from my DVD copy.

The first thing that I could possibly say is that the actor in the second scene of Episode 3: The Locked Room, Shea Whigham, nails the part of the independent evangelical minister. Having heard all too many of these people speak, I can assure you his speech, cadence, and movements are spot on. There is a difference in the content, however. Some parts fit perfectly with traditional evangelical doctrine, other parts are lock-sync with the show’s theme and particularly with Cohle’s (McConaughey’s) references. I think it’s probably one of the best sermons I have ever heard, what with it’s acknowledgment of frailty, of anger, of doubt, and the minister’s perspective rooted in almost philosophical skepticism, albeit perhaps more of a Kantian kind.

Rev. Theriot (actor Shea Whigham) at Revival Meeting:

You were as blind to Him as your footprints in the ashes, but He saw you. Beneath every disguise, every gesture, false or true, every silent resentment. He saw you in those dark corners. He heard you, O my brothers…He heard those thoughts. Now, I’m here today to talk to you about reality. I’m here to tell you about what you already know! That this, [kicks stage monitor] all this, is not real! It is merely the limitation of our senses, which are meager devices. Your angers and your griefs and your separations, are a fevered hallucination, once suffered by us all, we prisoners of light and matter. And there we all are, our faces pressed to the bars, looking out, looking up, asking the question, begging the question, “Are you there?” Would that we had ears to hear, because every moment, every now, is an answer. Every beat of every heart, every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day is an answer. And the answer is, “Yes!” “Yes!” Listen... Your sorrows pin you to this place. They divide you from what your heart knows. And there are a lot of good hearts out there. I’m looking out there, I’m seeing a lot of good hearts out there. I see a lot of joy out there. And we bandage our soft selves, in hardness, in anger! You are a stranger to yourself, and yeah, He knows you. And when your heard heart made you like unto the stone, and broke you from His body, which is the stars, and the wind between the stars, He knew you! He knew you, yet and forever. Because I ask you, how could a father forget his children? How could the world forget itself? Doesn’t matter that the children do not understand what they are. Doesn’t matter that the world thinks it is many different things rather than one! Him! Doesn’t matter. My sad, and joyous, and frightened and courageous brothers, I want you to do something for me. I want you to… I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes, and let your chest swell as His lungs, feel His pulsing in us, in each other. Every single one of you sitting here today, each other. And I want you to listen for that answer. If ever your sorrow becomes such a burden, that you forget yourself, forget this world, I want you to remember this truth, this is indelible, as the sun and sky and the ground beneath your feet. This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own. The shape of our true face is not yet known to us. And so I press my eyes to the bars and I look out, and I look up, and I ask the question… No, I beg the question [voice breaking], Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ! Your arms opened and close. The echoes of my life could never contain a single truth about You! You move the feather in the ash. You touch the leaf with its flame. You lit your soul to an infinity of a time of creation, and of it, I am less than a drop in the ocean. So, how then, can I know sorrow? How then, can I know despair? Does the rain know sorrow? Does the grass, and the mountains, the beautiful mountains, know despair? Such is not His province, and so not be our purpose. Be in Him, of Him, and then, know peace. That is His gift to us. Our birthright. In the end, we will find ourselves at the beginning. And will at last, know ourselves, and our true faces will weep in His light. And those tears… Those tears will feel like a warm rain. Amen. Amen. Amen! Amen!

Behind Minister Theriot is the inscription upon the tent canvas of Proverbs 3:5, as follows:

Proverbs 3:5 - Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

The characters of Hart and Cohle stand at the back of the tent during Theriot’s sermon, having a discussion. I will present Cohle’s comments only.

Cohle (at Revival Meeting):

-What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh?

-[About the congregants]: Just observation and deduction. I see a propensity for obesity, poverty, a yen for fairy tales. Folks putting what few bucks they do have into little wicker baskets being passed around. I think it’s safe to say that nobody here’s gonna be splitting the atom, Marty.

-Yeah, but if the common good’s got to make up fairy tales, then it’s not good for anybody.

-[What people would do if they didn’t believe]: The exact same thing they do now, just out in the open… If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit. And I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.

-What’s it say about life? Hm? You got to get together, tell yourselves stories, that violate every law of the universe, just to get through the goddamn day? No. What’s that say about your reality?

-Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It’s catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he’s effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, dulls critical thinking.

Cohle and Hart’s Discussion in the Car:

Marty: “Think a man can love two women at once, I mean, be in love with them?”

Rust: “I don’t think that man can love, at least not the way that he means.

Inadequacies of reality always set in.”

Marty: “Do you think– Do you wonder ever if you’re a bad man?”

Rust: “No. I don’t wonder, Marty. World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”

Despite his critique of Rev. Theriot, notice the similarity in approach of the minister to Cohle’s interrogation technique.

Cohle’s Interrogation:

I know son, I can read this off you. You’re not bad. It’s not you. There’s a weight. And it’s got its fishhooks in your heart and your soul. Now, what you did is not your fault. It’s not. You was drug to the bottom by that same weight. The same weight that won’t let you get along in a job, the same weight that wouldn’t let you get along at school. The same weight that wouldn’t let you have a mom. I know these things, Chris… Listen to me, son. You got one way out. And it’s through the grace of God. You are only how the Lord made you. You are not flawed. We, you, me, people, we don’t choose our feelings. There is grace in this world, and there is forgiveness for all, but you have to ask for it.

Rustin Cohle (actor Matthew McConaughey) in a video statement to Louisiana CID detectives:

Detective: You figure it’s all a scam, huh? All them folks.

Cohle: Um hm.

They’re just wrong?

Oh, yeah. Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey, “He said for you to give me your fucking share.” People are so goddamn frail they’d rather put a coin in a wishing well than buy dinner.

See, we all got what I call a life trap. A gene-deep certainty that things will be different. That you’ll move to another city and meet the people that’ll be the friends for the rest of your life, that you’ll fall in love and be fulfilled. Fucking fulfillment. And closure. Whatever the fuck those two… Fucking empty jars to hold this shit storm. Nothing’s ever fulfilled. Not until the very end. And closure. No. No, no. Nothing is ever over.

The ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, well, that’s what the preacher sells. Same as a shrink. See, the preacher, he encourages your capacity for illusion. Then he tells you it’s a fucking virtue. Always a buck to be had doing that. And it’s such a desperate sense of entitlement, isn’t it? “Surely this is all for me. Me. Me, me… I… I’m so fucking important. I’m so fucking important. Right? [voice cracking with emotion]” Fuck you.

Detective: Your assist record, man. That’s something else. Any pointers?

Cohle: No, I never really found it that hard. You just look at somebody and thing like they think. Negative capability. I mean, I guess it’s a skill. But most times, you don’t even need that. You know you just look them in the eyes, the whole story’s right there. Everybody wears their hunger and their haunt, you know? You just gotta be honest about what can go on up here [pointing to head with pocket knife], a locked room. But then again, I’m terrible with cards.

Yeah. So while we were grilling B and E jerk-offs and burn victims, I decided to put insomnia to good use. People… I’ve seen the finale of thousands of lives man… young, old. Each one is so sure of their realness, that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with purpose, meaning. So certain that they were more than a biological puppet. Well, the truth wills out, and everybody sees once the strings are cut, all fall down.

Each stilled body so certain that they were more than the sum of their urges, all the useless spinning, tired mind, collision of desire and ignorance. You asked about the interrogations. You want to know the truth? I never been in a room more than 10 minutes I didn’t know whether the guy did it or not. How long does it take you?

Look. Me talking about what happened back then, that ain’t gonna do you any good now. This is what I’m talking about. This is what I mean when I’m talking about time, and death, and futility. There are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Of 14 hours of staring at DBs, these are the things you think of. You ever done that? Hmm? You look in their eyes, even in a picture. Doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive. You can still read them, and you know what you see? They welcomed it, mm-hmm, not at first, but right there in the last instant. It an unmistakable relief, see, because they were afraid and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just let go, and they saw–In that last nanosecond, they saw what they were, that you, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never anything but a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will and you could just let go finally now that you didn’t have to hold on so tight to realize that all your life–you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain– it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person… And like a lot of dreams there’s a monster at the end of it.

Of course, in episode one Cohle had already established his basic philosophical premise:

-I consider myself a realist; in philosophical terms I’m a pessimist.

-I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law.

-We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. The secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody. When in fact, everybody is nobody.

-I think the honorable thing for us to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction. One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.

From the sermon, to Cohle’s diatribes later that “time is a flat circle” echoing the Nietzschean idea of eternal recurrence, to the final revelation of the killer and his insistence on “take off your mask” there is a pervasive theme that not only does this world not matter, it doesn’t exist in the first place—or it exists all at once. Whatever the true meaning, and I think the best function of the show is to actually make you think about some of these notions. If you reject this pessimism, why? On what grounds? Even the minister explains that this world is not real and the face you wear is not your own. Thus, the theology and the philosophy (as so rarely is the case) agree on some central points. There are a lot of things to say about this dialogue and the ideas it presents but I’m woefully under qualified and not at all up to the task. However, I have found some excellent discussions on-line that might be worth your follow through. 

Perhaps for further reading: Cohle's "aphorisms" were revealed by series creator Pizzolatto as being strongly influenced by Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race.  

Well, I leave you with some interesting links that discuss this in a much more erudite and lucid manner. Happy learning!

http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/philosopher-assesses-true-detective-characters-rust-cohle-marty-hart.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/but-not-simpler/2014/03/03/depressing-things-true-detective-says-self-true/#.U7D_MLFurSc

http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueDetective/comments/1yhm08/what_philosophy_booksreading_are_similar_to_that/

The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson

The Inexplicable Universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Recently, I completed viewing Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Teaching Company lecture series The Inexplicable Universe which is currently available on Netflix streaming. Dr. Tyson is one of the great communicators of scientific ideas to the general public since Carl Sagan. He evangelizes proper science frequently on television shows such as The Colbert Report. His most recent exposure to the public was in the form of the revamped, contemporary version of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the original version of which was hosted by the aforementioned great astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Dr. Tyson has distinguished himself through his great willingness to make scientific ideas (and more importantly attitudes toward science) more palatable and relatable than they might otherwise be.

The Inexplicable Universe is divided into six 30-minute lectures: 1) History’s Mysteries, 2) The Spooky Universe, 3) Inexplicable Life, 4) Inexplicable Physics, 5) Inexplicable Space, and 6) Inexplicable Cosmology. As I said earlier, I watched this series on Netflix which means I could only view the lectures. Should you choose to purchase the course from The Teaching Company, it will, like all of their courses, likely include a course outline with more in-depth notes and bibliographical references for further reading. Of course, you choose your level of involvement, so it is not essential to complete the readings or view Dr. Tyson’s notes and comments to understand and benefit from the lectures.

I’ve seen Dr. Tyson lecture and sit for interviews numerous times and I must say that in this Great Courses series he is at his finest. With the first lecture, “History’s Mysteries,” Dr. Tyson reviews myriad problems from the history of science. These puzzles were only solved through the application of modern science and its focus on experimenting rather than pure reason. Dr. Tyson walks us through the solution to many of the mysteries of the past which were solved using science and have become almost mundane at this point. A great example is 18^th century scientists’ insistence on the existence of ether, an invisible substance through which sound waves travelled. This was later proven to be wrong. That is, scientific rigor in experimentation (specifically, the Michelson-Morley experiment) demonstrated that light travelled at the same speed all of the time; therefore, the ether that was supposed to transmit light in wave form didn’t do it.

Lecture 2 is titled “The Spooky Universe” and generally covers quantum mechanics and fundamental particles, explaining how fantastical many of our accepted concepts are. The third lecture, “Inexplicable Life,” talks about the uniqueness of human life in the universe and the conditions that allow life to flourish, as well as the possibility of life outside of our Earth-bound existence. Lecture 4, “Inexplicable Physics” might be the most interesting of the six-part series. Dr. Tyson reviews the development of the field of physics and the search for a unifying theory such as “String Theory.” The fifth lecture is “Inexplicable Space” and it reviews humankind’s search for understanding of the cosmos. The most fascinating bits in this lecture cover dark energy and dark matter as well as the theoretical experience of being at or near a black hole. The final and sixth lecture “Inexplicable Cosmology” goes into depth about the current edges of study in cosmology. The multiverse, antimatter, tachyons and other theoretical advances of the past few decades are covered in Tyson’s inimitable style.

So that is a brief review of some of the content of The Inexplicable Universe. I had been exposed to most of its ideas from other books, lectures, and even podcasts; however, I have to give a strong recommendation for this lecture series because of its accessibility. It is one of the few series that talk about such complex ideas that requires no previous exposure to mathematical or scientific ideas. All you need is an attentive and open mind and you will gleam something or many things from the lectures. As always, happy learning!