Here is a quick collection of some of my "lighter side" works that I didn't know what to do with otherwise. No, this isn't side-splitting, tears-in-your-eyes, roll-on-the-floor stuff, just insightful, sarcastic commentary on contemporary issues with a couple chortles thrown in. Enjoy!
Perturbed by "Publish or Perish" ? Need to actually do something scholarly with all that grant money? Just keep bilking your favorite project as follows:
Paper #1 : Do a thorough survey of all the other research on your topic. Ruthlessly criticize everybody else's theories, approaches to the problem, experimental methodologies, and the experiments themselves. Vaguely outline your theory / method, suggest how it could surpass all the shortcomings you mentioned, and state that further research is underway.
Paper #2 : Repeat the vague outline of your theory / method, then describe it in great detail, then suggest some experiments that might be performed to verify it. State that further research is underway.
Paper #3 : Actually perform the experiments. Analyze the results. Suggest refinements to your theory / method to improve them. Respond to all criticism you may have received at this point. If necessary, suggest additional modifications to answer the criticism. Suggest real (non-laboratory) world applications for your idea. State that further research is underway.
Paper #4 : Summarize your work so far. Perform real-world type experiments. Analyze the results and discuss how promising they are as compared to real world applications of other ideas. State that further research is underway.
Paper #5 (and so on) : Generalize your idea to another area. Suggest additional refinements and improvements. Perform experiments. Discuss results and compare to other ideas in the field. State that further research is underway.
The Obnoxious Ticketer : determined to make the world safe for parking - writes more than Stephen King - requisitions his ticket books wholesale - grins while he works - loves to chase speeders - never lets you off with a warning - fantasizes about meeting the owner of the Mercedes parked in the handicapped spot as the car is towed
The Screaming Sergeant : a money saver for the department, as he can chew out an officer and be heard halfway into the surrounding precincts - officers will buy him coffee and donuts, but will never share their garlic pizza with him - Can't be left at the desk because his energy will build up inside him and cause him to literally explode
The Hot-to-Trot Cop : most common among younger cops who aren't sick of hearing "bug off" yet - will pull over females and ask them for dates - has a bumper sticker that says "If this patrol car's rocking don't bother knocking" - will be caught making a serious pass or in a compromising position while on duty at least once by a superior - would never think of acting this way when off duty unless severely drunk
The Militant Feminist Cop : wants to date civilian men but somehow always winds up breaking their arms when they make unflattering remarks about women being cops (even in jest) - has permanently crippled at least one man for offering to "rescue her from her dangerous world and give her a nice, safe home and kitchen" - has sent the balls of at least one of her fellow officers into Earth orbit for describing his latest "conquest" or similar sexist behavior - eventually marries an ex-Hot-to-Trot Cop who got sick of being told to "bug off".
The Joe-Shmuck-in-the-Academy Cop : thought everything taught in the academy was B.S. - finally graduated when instructors couldn't think of any more ways to discipline him - sent his Field Training Officer into early retirement - gives "by the books" cops the jitters - has the tendency to age partners 10 years overnight - nobody wants him to drive or answer serious calls - has more lives than an alley cat - somehow, he's never the one who gets hit - makes everybody wonder what side he's on - usually the precinct prankster, which only makes matters worse
The I'm-Not-Really-a-Cop Cop : wraps her nightstick around the throats of street toughs with pleasure while on duty, but wants to be the perfect lovely lady when off duty - will duck questions about her job to avoid scaring away men, or attracting the wrong kind of man - looks awesome in a dress with high heels and makeup but will do anything to get out of "decoy hooker" assignments because she's afraid her dates will see her and guess that's her real job
Clueless : every precinct has at least one - never fills out forms correctly - everything said in roll call goes in one ear and out the other - mixes up procedures with the skills of an internationally-famous chef - forgets partner's birthday - during traffic accidents stands near patrol car staring off into space and looking pretty - unfortunately, applications of nightsticks to a clueless' head does little to jog his/her memory
The Lousy Shot : also wretchedly common - his or her mere presence is enough to send civilians diving for cover - the type who accidently shoots signs down on top of armed suspects - tries to compensate by keeping gun ultra-clean and polished, hoping the shine of it will be deterrent enough
The Paranoid : known almost everywhere as an excellent cop, but impossible to live with - has enough guns to supply a whole shift and, due to a persisent fear of burglars, rapists, and reprisals, stashes them everywhere in the house : in cereal boxes, under the commode, in the laundry hamper, in his housemate's / spouse's underwear draw, in the toolchest, behind the bookshelf, under his pillow - housemates / family / guests will be constantly finding stray bullets - instead of going Christmas shopping will buy amazingly sophisticated alarm system as a "gift to everybody" - at which point "everybody" will start packing
The Street Counselor : usually a college graduate who couldn't find another job - tries to be a psychologist in the midst of gang fights, domestic disputes, and bar brawls - never studied zoology, and it shows - generally disdained by other officers until he gets flipped over in his patrol car by a Missing Link that he tried to reason with - warning : if this kind of cop should ever lose his/her temper, evacuate a 500-foot radius or face filling out some nasty paperwork
The unpleasant truth of the matter is that we never stop being students.
Take it from me. I am Alpha Trion, a visiting professor from the Northeast Institute of Advanced Technology, Cybertron. I am a 33 million-year-old robot, Master Technician on my homeworld. I thought I could take my knowledge and experience for granted. And then I came to Earth.
My first gaffe when I arrived at the University of Buffalo was proudly stating to everybody I met that I was trying an "alternative lifestyle". I wondered for days why some of the students found that so amusing. On my world, "alternative lifestyle" means a robot voluntarily living with flesh-and-blood beings. A curious LGBA member finnally informed me of my error. Lesson 1 : Language teachers never tell you anything.
The arriving-at-UB experience alone was something one could have paid tuition for, barring Lesson 2 : The School of Experience only accepts down payments of aggravation and anxiety.
UB lured me from my homeworld, saying that they'd have everything "set up" for me when I arrived...claiming to "understand the difficulties of internationals in making living arrangements for the first time in the USA." Which brings us to Lesson 3 : Bullsh*t has a very distinctive odor.
There I was at the airport with all 15 pieces of my luggage filled with the bare necessities to start my new lab. UB said they'd have transportation to the campus waiting for me. Even with my vision, I couldn't see a single sign that said, "Welcome, Alpha Trion" or a vehicle with anything resembling the UB logo. I waited in the lobby. Maybe they were going to find me. Someone 8 feet tall with silver skin wasn't going to be missed around here. I waited and waited and waited some more. I got many strange looks but no ride offers. I sought out a phone and tried to call the Campus President.
All I got after dialing was, "Please deposit 25 cents," a phrase which had no meaning to me. I assumed the phone was malfunctioning and took it apart. I found out what I thought was the problem : several dozen metal disks with no apparent function were jamming it. A quick cut with my laser scalpel released the disks. The crowd that gathered to watch me operate now swarmed me. Lesson 4 : If you want to be popular in the USA, give away a lot of money.
I finally got the phone to work and patched through to UB. Their "voice-mail" system initially routed me to the Office of Work-Study Opportunity for Educationally Disadvantaged Native American Pre-Law Transfer Students with Handicaps. When I explained I was trying to reach the Campus President, the secretary transferred my call to the Student Association's International Concerns Committee's Academic Bureau's Administrative Liason. When I exlained I wasn't a student, my call was transferred to the Faculty Senate Office of Relations With Executive Officers in Curriculum Development. NO!! I already had my syllabus finalized! I've been teaching Robotics for 20 million years and I don't think any of you are qualified to debate my course content!!!!
Eventually I was able to restrain my temper. They apologized and patched me through to the President's Office. After waiting on hold for more than 45 minutes, the secretary casually informed me that the President had an emergency appointment with the Buffalo Club. Some filthy rich mob banker had cancer and wanted to make it up to society by donationg his fortune to some worthy cause. Maybe tomorrow I could be "squeezed in"...whatever that meant. Lesson 5 : If you're not a high priority, your standing will be made perfectly clear to you.
At that point I figured out that I had to get myself to the campus. I hastily assembled a hoversled and loaded all my remaining belongings onto it. Some kind but terribly nervous soul gave me directions to the Amherst Campus. I was already to go. It was then that I discovered that I forgot to take the good generator and because of that, the hoversled could carry either me or my belongings but not both. It was a long, hard walk back guiding the hoversled. Once I spotted the telltale buildings, I could not help but take a shortcut across unexplored terrain. Lesson 6 : What you don't know can hurt you. It took me hours to scrape off all the caked, polluted mud on my legs and refinish all the areas corroded by it. Another curious Earth custom I ran into was the concept of physically subdividing one's territory. I had to cut through a dozen fences that got in my way.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "This guy is a guest on our planet and one of the first things he does is destroy public and private property." Well, anybody who continues to think that is just asking for his car to fall completely apart the next time he starts to exceed 20 mph. You try walking back to Amherst from the Airport without losing your cool.
I finally arrive on campus at about 3:25 am. Nobody's around. I stop and whip out my map, looking for the President's office. Then I hear in the dark, "What the hell is that?"
I turn around and there's bright red and white lights shining in my eyes.
"Freeze! Whatever you are, don't move!"
"You flesh-beings can't tell me what to do!"
My skin stung as a spray of bullets came at me from all sides.
"What's going on here?!?!? I'm an invited guest!"
One Public Safety Officer peeked up from behind his car, "You mean you're allowed here? Can I see some ID?"
I handed him a mound of paperwork. The other five cops remained in combat mode.
"It's OK, guys. He's legit," the cop smiled, "Welcome to UB. It says on your papers here that your office is in Furnas Hall, 6th floor," and he pointed me on my way. They left before I could ask them about the President, as one of them offered to treat the rest to donuts.
The building was locked, but I finally found a way in through Bell Hall. My office was still labeled with the name Chun-gin Gaosutku. Then I realized since I never met my contacts, I never received they keys to my office. After another half hour, I had picked the lock. Some janitor had left a pushbroom and a mop bucket inside, along with 10 rolls of toilet paper. There was no furniture and I had no other place to stay.
At that moment I gave serious thought to radioing the Cybertronian Embassy and flying right back home, never to return. Then the realization hit me. I didn't just come here to teach. I came here to learn.
Lesson 7 : Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
That still didn't make for a very restful night.
When Western people discovered the rubber plant in the jungles of the Amazon, the latex it offered went on to revolutionize our culture. Yet this tree, as its cultivation became commercialized, offered more than its blood. It offered us a lesson, and as of now, it has not been properly learned.
As more applications for rubber were discovered, we, the factory-minded people, took to raising the rubber tree in huge plantations, clearing huge tracts of rain forest, often by fire, in the process destroying habitat for hundreds and hundreds of species, some perhaps unknown, some perhaps plant and insect species with special, valuable traits yet to be noticed by the users and exploiters from our parts of the globe.
These rubber trees did not grow well, their bodies adapted to the diverse ecology of the rainforests of the Amazon and the complex, unique web of chemical interrelationships that the great biological variety represented. Unlike certain kinds of people, the rubber tree could not thrive in monoculture. The expected solution of the agribusiness execs was to cover over this problem by producing and applying special fertilizers. As the delicate rainforest soil wore out under these unnatural conditions, the need for the chemicals could only increase. The added expense to provide them in terms of money was overshadowed by the larger, ignored cost to the environment. At the point of production, this included the permanent presence of the chemical plant and its parking lot, dozens of minor chemical spills due to careless employee accidents, and regular emissions. At the point of use, this included truck fumes, runoff, and leaching into the underground water supplies.
Even those tolls were minor compared to those exacted by the need for pesticides when jungle-hardened insects descended upon the helpless, densely-packed plantation trees. Unlike fertilizers, concentrated nutrients intended for plants but also beneficial for algae and bacteria growing in water, pesticides are poisons. But like fertilizers, pesticides are rarely as species-specific as their creators would like. Many insects die but some do not get the lethal dose. They are eaten by birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and other insects, and the poisons accumulate in the predators' tissues, perhaps turning into timebombs with the potential to explode through whole species, bringing death, hideous tumors, and birth defects, as in a bird I once saw in a picture. It had hatched but died shortly afterwards, as most of its internal organs had formed outside its body.
Some pesticides are known to be harmful to humans, but, despite simplistic precautions, humans are exposed anyway, through a variety of sources about which the individual can do little. Some are not known to be a threat to people, but still build up in their bodies and remain for years, chemicals that by Nature's law should not be there, doing damage in the little-investigated long run, or reacting with something else that should or should not be there. Eventually, the species that suffers least is the insect species, its prolific breeding pattern favoring the rapid emergence of resistant strains. The agribusiness execs turned to newer and/or deadlier poisons whenever this problem arose, all the attendant risks be damned.It took painfully long before mankind became aware of this first lesson.
The plantation's problems were larger than insects. The forest is a vast resevoir of life and especially of microorganisms like the leaf-rot fungus.The fungus spread by rain. Under natural conditions, some of the leaves on which the spores would fall would be on susceptible plants and some would be on non-susceptible plants. A batch of non-susceptible plants growing in any given spot could hold the fungus in check, preventing it from spreading too rapidly. The rubber plant was susceptible, and a good rain in a plantation plus a few stray spores could equal a distaster. It was then that more natural, biological methods of protecting the trees were investigated. For insect pests, this meant promoting the diseases and predators that affected them. For plant parasites like the leaf-rot fungus other efforts were required that led to an even greater committment of money and manpower.
There were aleady tree-breeding programs in effect with the single goal of promoting strains that produced ever greater amounts of latex. Once small groups of people in charge of the programs worked out of shabby greenhouses. These grew by leaps and bounds and moved into state-of-the-art labs in new institutes built for the study of rubber trees as money poured in to expand their goals to the production of strains resistant to a variety of diseases.
Unfortunately, the traits for resistance to, say, leaf-rot fungus rarely coincided with the trait for extremely high latex production. Science had to take another step. Through grafting they were able to create a plant that was several plants in one. They would raise high latex-producing trees and, while they were but saplings, cut off their branches and replace them with a bud from a breed that displayed some pest-resistant trait. They hoped to produce a tree that was the best of both worlds, a trunk bursting with latex and invulnerable leaves. The result was a vast improvement, but there were limits to this technique. With every new graft, there was increased chance of infecting or weakening the tree. Some grafts didn't always take, and, of those that did, there was only the assurance that a tree wouldn't be devastated by a particular pest. Damage couldn't be prevented, only mitigated by the patchwork trees.
The next move by the plantation manager was to reduce the possibility of damage even further. They started by interspersing trees that were naturally resistant to leaf-rot fungus among the rubber trees to confine any outbreaks of the disease to small sections of the plantation. Afflicted grafted trees were not permanently set back, but it would be better to never become afflicted at all. This was soon followed by adding trees which provided a natural habitat for the predators of harmful insects, and trees that were short and very shady which prevented the weedy undergrowth that competed with rubber trees for nutrients and root space. Soon other trees were identified that enriched the soil through their life activities and through the organisms they hosted, and these too earned some spots in the plantation as they reduced the need for fertilizers. Even though fewer rubber trees were now planted in the same space, the health and productivity of the remaining trees shot up. Some kinds of grafts were rendered unnecessary by this new method of adding different tree species. This was Nature's way of disaster prevention.
This new strategically diversified plantation, developed through years of scientific experimentation, serendipity, and trial and error, sure enough began to resemble......a forest.
Much more is on the way ! Return soon !
© 1998-2001 rayden@erols.com