Zero

I'm almost finished reading Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. I'll have to read it again and underline pertinent passages, because when I tried to explain zero and infinity the other night, I got myself into a terrible mess.

But, here's a bit of what I remember: Aristotle and Pythagoras were scared of zero (aka the void) and of infinity, so they refused to believe in them. To them, all numbers represented geometric shapes, so how could you have a number that had no shape? Aristotle said it was ridiculous. When Aristotle's star pupil, Alexander the Great, took over most of the world, he spread Aristotle's beliefs (which became the basis of Christianity...that's why our calendar jumps from 1 BC to 1 AD -- the monk who had to develop the calendar did not know about the number zero).

The Babylonians were the first to use zero, but only as a placeholder. (They never went into the negatives.) This sped up their calculations so much that the Greeks, who were banned from having their own zero, started using Babylonian numbers (which were base 60, incidentally, which is why we tell time using base 60) for their calculations. But then they had to convert the results back into Greek.

(In Japan, I learned that babies there are born at age one. This must stem from when they didn't believe in zero, either.)

The Indians had no problem with the concepts of void and infinity, and gladly took the Babylonians' zero and started doing algebra. They never liked geometry, so they didn't get mired in the question of how a number could exist that had no shape. The Arabs adopted Indian numbers (thus we call them Arabic numerals) and their love of the void and infinity. Islam was originally a religion that embraced the void, while Christianity hated it.

There, that's enough for now.

Word of the day: apostate

I finally looked up the word 'apostate'. I'll always remember how dumb the nursing assistant looked, when Mom declared that as her religion. (Of course, I didn't know what it meant, either. But then, I knew my mom, so that gave me a clue.)

The woman just stood there, staring first at my mom, and then at her clipboard; I realize now she had to check a box, and she had no idea which one.

"Does that, like, make you Evangelical?" she asked, her pencil poised.

"No, I guess that would make me apostical," Mom said, chuckling.

The nursing assistant finally marked something -- I wonder what? And then asked her her food preferences.

The next morning, Mom had to go to the Intensive Care Unit.

After a few days, a middle-aged woman came by and stared at me significantly through the room's glass wall. She was wearing an old, sack-like dress (I remember the shoulder pads had metastasized forwards). I finally went out and asked her what she wanted.

She said, "I'm the minister on duty this weekend, and I'm told your mother may need to speak with me."

"Who told you that?"

"They give me a list of patients in the ICU before I make my rounds." She waved a piece of paper, like it was an entry ticket.

"I don't think she'd be interested."

"Are you sure? The relationship with God is a very personal one."

"My mother can't speak right now."

She looked at me as if I were a bouncer blocking her entrance into some exclusive nightclub.

"I can offer words of comfort, then."

When you're in the ICU for awhile, things get weird. This woman seemed so confident of her god-given abilities, I almost believed her.

I went in and stood over my mother, while the minister stared at us expectantly. Mom's eyes were closed so tightly, I knew she wasn't asleep. I looked back at the minister, and she nodded.

"Mom, do you want to speak to a minister?"

She opened her eyes instantly and shook her head no. To me, it was deafening.

"I'm sorry. I'll tell her to go away. She just comes and visits everyone. It doesn't mean anything."

I went back out. "No."

"Maybe later?"

"No. I should have told you, my mother's an apostate."

It seems when a straight-out No doesn't work, a weird reply often does. The word seemed to puncture the woman's messianic armour, revealing the baggy panty-hose underneath.

"Well, then. May God bless you." Her thin, colorless lips tightened, as she added an unspoken, "because I certainly can't."

I felt like I was watching a smack-down match between her conceit and her belief. In any case, she grabbed both and marched away.

Vanity plates

Yesterday I saw a shiny new Jaguar; its license plate read 'THNKSJC', which I translated as "Thanks, Jesus."

I know that J.C. means Jesus because I went to a party where I was the only non-Evangelical, and the people there kept referring to some guy named J.C. They thanked him for the karaoke machine, the food, etc. At first I thought maybe he was the party planner. But then one woman's eyes rolled upwards everytime she thanked him.

It reminded me of when I first met my ex's sister: she kept talking about her "roommmate, Dougald." "Dougald didn't look at all well today." "Dougald is really smart." I thought Dougald was a person, until she said, "Dougald coughed up a hairball."

Anyhow, if I ever got a vanity plate, it'd be 'WASHME'. Then I could preempt whoever keeps writing that on my hood.