My high school; big numbers

[tahnan]

Two entirely disparate topics for one post. Those who don't want to read about my ruminations on my high school and its religious nature, i.e. most of you, should just go straight to "Who Can Name the Biggest Number?" by Scott Aaronson (who claims to be a professor at MIT but who, based on the picture on his home page, is clearly actually David Duchovny). It's mathematical in content, though written perhaps for the layperson, but if you're anything like me you'll find it utterly compellingly fascinating.

All right, on to dear old Westminster, hidden behind a cut tag.


The Spring 2009 issue of my high school's alumni magazine came last week. This month's articles include:

• "Called to Serve: Alumni in the Ministry" (and rest assured, "ministry" is specifically Christian; there are no stories of alumni who are now rabbis, imams, druids, what have you)


• A teaching profile of one of the school's Bible teachers (who is "blessed with six children and ten grandchildren", a phrasing utterly alien to my upbringing), who explains that his job involves "introducing students to the immutable verities conveyed to Moses, proclaimed by the prophets and consummately embodied in Jesus Christ who blazed a sure path for a sane existence in a confusing world"


• A report on Christian Emphasis Week; this year's high school theme was "Feed My Sheep", and if they used religion to encourage people to fight hunger, I'm basically OK with that, even though the elementary school's week ended with "a sing-a-long celebrating the parables of Jesus"


• A description of an alumnus-written book: "In The Love Revelation, Dr. Walthall introduces the reader to a new genre of Christian literature: witty and poignant fiction woven into the fabric of easily digested teaching about biblical love"

Out of fairness, that's not the only stuff in here. (There's also a lot of photos, some non-religiously-themed alumni books, a "sports roundup", and so on. And a picture of Rob Kutner with his daughter Sasha, who's adorable; congrats, Rob! Even if Sasha looks a little out of place in a column opposite blond children named Brantley and Churchill. No bonus points awarded for guessing which one of those is the boy.) But it's enough to make me realize that, while I don't think sending me to Westminster was the wrong choice—and I could have, at any point, said "This is too much, Mom and Dad, please get me out of here and into a sane school"—I believe that I would never, ever send my child to this school. Either my memory has whitewashed the place a little—and believe me, I still remember the Christian Emphasis Week speakers we had, and my New Testament Bible class, and so on—or the school has gotten even more religious since I left in 1991.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

There's an extraneous quote mark in the link to Aaronson's homepage which causes it to not be functional. :)

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Fixed. Regardless of which, he is David Duchovny, isn't he?

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

There is a distinct Duchovnyness about him, indeed! There are worse fates for a man to suffer. ;)

[rootedinsong.livejournal.com]

I've never heard anyone take "feed my sheep" to refer to actual feeding.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

It took me a minute to get that it wasn't about actual sheep.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

...*sigh*

I put on my pentacle and swing by sometime next year. Just to see. The Bit won't be going either.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Focus on the cute offspring of Rob Kutner. And of Bob Spruill. And on the fact that Staci Walker Lynch has an interesting job taking her overseas, and Rob Roberson is off for another year in Iraq.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Turns out I'm actually more interested in the workings of private schools than I am in math. Go fig! :)

[tactical-grace.livejournal.com]

The math article is very cool. I like it a lot.

[cnoocy]

I remember it as a very religious place, and it's also possible that the alumni magazine plays up the religious aspect to appeal to rich christian alumni. The most valid comparison would be to a 1991 alumni magazine.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

True on all counts. I do kind of wonder which, though—has the school become more Christian, or are they just pitching themselves as such?

[srl.livejournal.com]

It's possible that it's just a pitch. If I were a development manager at a faith-based school, I'd lean on the "faith" part hard right now, since people's finances are so tight that appealing to their moral senses might have a better chance of working. And in any case, as an ex-need-based-scholarship-kid, I'm not the people they're targeting with their fundraising.

That said: I think many individual teachers there practice more useful forms of "faith" in practice than the official Christianity of the administration. Frank Finsthwait and Bob Curtis together probably saved my life, and I think the former's probably much closer to a Thoreauvian Buddhist than anything else.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh, on the latter point, there's no doubt. I had plenty of teachers for whom Christianity was probably some sort of background thing but it never really came up, certainly in math classes, also fortunately in science classes (bless you, Eric Brannen), not even all that much in English classes. (I also had Finsthwait for English.) Of course, my NT Bible teacher first semester was Bob Ward the athletic director, who was awful, but second semester we had oh god can't remember his name but I think he's an Episcopal priest now, and he was so amazingly sane and clear and rational and taught us the word "eschatology".

So yes, thanks to the faculty, it's not the house of horrors it could be. All the same, it's definitely there from the administration to varying degrees.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Aaah! I had it until you mentioned it. He was awesome, and I adore him, and the last time I remembered to check, he was still an Episcopal priest...didn't it start with an S? We went to his ordination for pity's sake.

Bob Neu was the evilest Bible teacher there; he taught O.T., and I remember calling my mother at some point to tell her to be prepared for a call from the principal's office because I was >< close to walking out of my bible class.

I remember my senior year history teacher was one of the ones who kept me sane. I'm pretty sure Mr. Byrd was an atheist (or at least close to it.) You know, I never did apologize to him for making him read all of my Teen Angst at the beginning of the school year. People shouldn't require me to write journals; it always ends badly.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

"[T]he infinity of points on a line is greater than the infinity of whole numbers"

Perhaps this sort of thing is "duh"-level for mathematicians, but it just kind of blew my mind.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I think it kind of blows everyone's minds the first time they hear it.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around Ackerman and Busy Beaver numbers. I've encountered Ackerman before, and I get why they get so big so fast, but I still can't wrap my head around how big the 5th Ackerman number is.

Busy Beaver numbers are new to me and I'm not sure I get them at all.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

The class in logic I took from the philosophy department at Brown, which managed to count for both my math degree and linguistics degree, covered Turing machines. So the halting problem was familiar to me, and Busy Beavers are a sort of next step from there.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I've been familiar with Turing machines, the halting problem, NP-complete problems, etc. for a long time, but somehow I missed the Busy Beaver number. It obviously gets big fast, but I'm going to have to take another crack at figuring out why it has to get big faster than Ackerman numbers.

The thing with different infinities that I'm currently working on is the set of all numbers that can be described is countably infinite. Therefore the set of Real numbers that are literally indescribable is the same size as the set of Real numbers. The numbers we can't talk about infinitely outnumber the ones we can, and there's nothing we can do about it because we can't talk about them.

[cnoocy]

It's a seething mass of indescribability! Awesome!

[flynngrrl.livejournal.com]

It's sort of like that worms in the sewer video, except it's in my brain.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Matt is right; more or less everyone has that reaction when they learn that there are just as many rational numbers (i.e. fractions) in the entire number line as there are integers (huh!?), but there are more irrational numbers between 0 and 1 than there are rational numbers in the entire number line (double huh!?).

There were a lot of points in the article where I literally laughed aloud in joy, which is the mathematician's equivalent in this case to "that just blew my mind".

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

What's especially fabulous about it is that it's a rare instance of a key mathematical truth discovered within the last century and a half whose proof is readily understandable by any smart layperson.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

Fun fact: Scott Aaronson went to *MY* high school. It all comes full circle...

[cazique.livejournal.com]

(who is "blessed with six children and ten grandchildren", a phrasing utterly alien to my upbringing)

To your upbringing, maybe, but surely you can understand the sentiment? I don't consider myself the least bit religious, but I sure feel blessed with my two wonderful children, every minute of every day, even if I don't even really believe in "blessed." My parents feel the same way about their kids and grandkids. (Though the numbers, all around, are different :))

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I certainly understand feeling joy at having children (and grandchildren)! It's the phrase "blessed with X" to mean "glad [to a high degree] to have X" that's not really part of my upbringing. I suppose I have "blessed with" to refer to things that one has by chance ("blessed with good teeth"), but not things one acquired deliberately.

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I don't believe he's really David Ducovny. There has to be some other explanation.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

I was playing Scully in a roleplaying game a few weeks ago, and discovered that in terms of catchphrases, the best she had was "There has to be a rational explanation for this" and "Drop the gun, I'm a federal agent!". Not as catchy as one might hope.

[acroarcs.livejournal.com]

Something to note before I read any of this: Scott Aaronson is the older brother of David Aaronson, who is one of my ZBT brothers and was at the convention (though in a touristy, non-participating-except-for-TMcAy's-game sort of way).