9 December 1970 / About PSACOT

If you look very closely at the top of this column, you may note that the title is "A Column on Things." The title was chosen after a great deal of deliberation, because it promises nothing and everything at once. When I came to ERGO, I intended to write a generalized column of offbeat information. In recent weeks many people seem to have ignored title and premise. I have been asked:

"Why isn't your column more serious?"

"What is it doing in ERGO?"

"Your article on New York City made you sound like a country boy dazzled by the City Lights."

Any 'real" newspaper contains personal journalism, the quality of which is a highly subjective judgment. ERGO is a "real" newspaper, or is, at least, becoming one, and as such it is spreading its horizon to encompass a broader scope of comment, news, and opinion. This column is part of that trend. That's what it's doing in ERGO-- that's why Steve Wright is here too.

My column is a function of my personality. I am not by nature a dour, serious person. Life is too short--and since I firmly believe that happiness is a state of mind, it's not necessarily related to what's happening around and about you. You make your own happiness by the way you react to stimuli.

I was a "small-town" boy looking at the City light when I wrote about New York. I come from Portland, Oregon, and that city just doesn't stack up to the world's largest.

Changing Gears:

Perhaps it is beating an old horse to death. Perhaps. But it seems to me that, on a random basis, the language one chooses to use is a function of the institution of learning he attends. I can think of N occasions plus or minus epsilon (for very small values of epsilon) on which I have heard MIT students, most often upper classmen, use the language of math in general and calculus in particular in everyday situations.

"The ability to study is a function of your personality."

"Let's charge $45 plus epsilon where epsilon is some small number."

"Some random shithead"--Baker lobby conversation, in ERGO last issue.

One explanation has been offered for the frequent use of the words random and the phrase by definition.

"Everything at MIT is either so vast and confused as to seem entire1v random or so simple-minded as to seem obvious by definition."

It seems intuitively obvious that the above is true, at least as far as the MIT campus is concerned. I have checked with 2 people for very large values of 2, and they agree with my analysis. Besides which, the time I have to finish this article is ∞ for very small values of infinity. The proof of this article is trivial, and is left as an exercise to the reader.

Zomarr was better than almost ever on Mike Davis (9 p.m.-12 m) over WTBS (88.1 FM). The captain will sing out on a Christmas Special, Over the same program , at 10 pm. On Dec. 19