Some Thoughts on a Mad Man

Nearly every sonata written by a composer with any degree of merit is composed of four parts. Each begins with an introduction, an overarching statement of the piece's tone. The exposition follows, presenting listeners with the melodies, the key, the tempo the composer has chosen to advance their idea. With the major ideas and tone stated, the music takes a turn; melodies are developed, scales and tempos are modulated. These deviations from a well-established pattern use their differences to highlight importance, that new key, that embellishment, and just important as what is now present, is what is missing in its absence. Lastly, the composer recapitulates the piece, returning to the original melody with lots of repetition to emphasise the finale.

While it seems unlikely that a person insisting that the cacophony of emergency klaxons resonate through campus has an intimate appreciation for classical compositions, there are parallels to be made to this Mad Man – and yes, my belief is that this is a man – and the piece of work he is conducting on this canvas of a campus. What we've seen is an early introduction of a desire to cause disruption with the early, erratic threats to Chevron and the Cathedral. In time, this Mad Man developed his exposition, presenting highly consistent pattern of threats - a late morning and early evening call during the weekdays, when students were more likely to be in class. Then, these patterns were developed into something else altogether; first with new buildings around campus, residence halls, and now more recently a complete deviation in their tempo - overnight threats, nights, weekends. The recapitulation, the crescendo, the coda, has not yet been written, or rather has yet to be played out. Undoubtedly, this menace has an ending planned, but the true sound, the true form of the piece will depend on the interplay between this Mad Man, the authorities responsible for catching him, and perhaps most importantly, the students of the University themselves.

So what does this collection of threats and evacuations, this pattern that someone has gone to great lengths to establish and subsequently deviate from, tell us about this Mad Man? This is a question that members of the University and law enforcement are working tirelessly to answer correctly. They are in the unfortunate position where getting the answer wrong may mean lives are lost. It's a high-pressure situation, and not an enviable one, and, perhaps to a fault, it is one that must rely only on analysis of the evidence at hand.

As an outsider (to the investigation, at least) who is equally motivated to have a non-violent conclusion to this ordeal, if not more so, I'd like to offer a profile that may be an accurate assessment of who this Mad Man is. This isn't driven by some desire to in the future remark "I told you so", but rather, to offer a different perspective, one born more from intuition than analysis of hard fact.

What was seen initially was a honed focus on the Cathedral of Learning in the earliest strings of bomb threats. Of course the Cathedral is a well-suited targeted for a variety of reasons: it is a high-traffic region during the day, which lends it self to concealing suspicious activity and causing maximum disruption, as well as the Cathedral as an symbol being closely associated with university identity. For someone intent on causing havoc to the university logistically and psychologically, the Cathedral of Learning is an astute first choice.

Chevron, on the other hand, is a less compelling target. It is a busy area during the day, but no more so than a handful of other buildings around campus. While the building has recently been renovated, its drab eighties architecture hardly makes it a symbol of university status. Instead, it seems that this building is part of a personal symbolism for this Mad Man – an event, or something of the sort, has made this building a locus of attention.

As these threats have continued, other buildings have had the unfortunate coincidence of having a bomb threat called in. The pattern, which had been established as bomb threats to the Cathedral and Chevron, no longer seemed to apply. David Lawrence, Thackeray, Posvar, Music Building, Frick Fine Arts, etc. These targets have little relationship with one another – in fact, they have become increasingly erratic in origin. So much so that the only pattern that one can possibly conclude exists must spring forth from the mind of this Mad Men. These learning buildings seem to have become increasingly personal in origin. I would conclude then, that if these buildings have some personal significance, they must be representative of places this Mad Man feels he was slighted. In short, it is exceedingly likely that he took classes which met in these buildings.

Further evidence can be inferred from this Mad Man's jump to the disruption of residence halls. With Towers being the first and most frequent target, the threats soon escalated to Sutherland, Forbes, Holland and Lothrop. Curiously, these dormitories are almost exclusively inhabited by freshman students.

So what can we conclude? No, conclude is too strong a word, but rather, what can we intuit? Here are some thoughts:

• This is a current, or possibly former, Pitt student.

• They greatly enjoy the feeling of being in control, of being able to coerce something as large as a university into action.

• They are highly meticulous. Initially, when the threats began to increase in frequency, I believed this was a sign that they were losing control of the situation, with the authorities closing in. Instead, it appears that these escalations are well-planned and well-executed.

• They are non-confrontational, almost to a fault, producing actions that cause an intended effect as opposed to making demands that must be met.

• Attention is a primary goal of this Mad Man. Every tweet, every status, every story is further proof of a well-executed plan.

• They are highly anticipatory, resorting to more elaborate methods only when such measures are absolutely necessary. For the record, I believe they are an avid fan of chess.

• Based on what little we know about the content of the bomb threats, they seem to have a dissociation between the threat of a bomb on campus and the actual violence of an explosion from said bomb. The threats characteristically relate to this Mad Man in a personal manner; he states "I have planted" as opposed to "There is a bomb", clearly desiring an association between the threat and himself. Yet, no imagery of the violence of a bomb explosion has been noted in the public record. This could lead to two conclusions. Either this Mad Man is uninterested in acts of violence and is instead using them as a tool to bring about some other goal - to what, I cannot say, though it seems unlikely that this is an elaborate prank. The other, more chilling possibility, is that he is in fact planning a violent act, but one that is not brought about by a bomb. Given the personality traits these threats have illustrated, I would imagine he is interested in a more personal form of violence, such as a shooting. Truly, I am not sure which of these possibilities is more likely, however I do hope it is the former.

• Given the targets, I would hazard to guess that the suspect is a male, 20 or 21, who is a student in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. More than likely, they had a difficult time freshman year, particularly in their classes, and believe the school has slighted them in some way. No particular group has been singled out in these threats but rather than the university as a whole, which is good in that no one need worry of being specifically targeted but at the same time makes this Mad Man more difficult to trace. Were I to guess further, I believe they lived in the Litchfield Towers their freshman year - not a stretch, given the size of the residence halls, but it may narrow down the field further. This was all predicated on events prior to this morning, in which Sennot Square and Benedum Hall were added to the list of targeted buildings. Nevertheless, I believe that these buildings were singled out more to remind students that the entire campus is not safe (likely driven by students' comments of the relative safety of these buildings).

I would like to follow up with this issue further in the following days. What worries me the most, and what I will try to follow-up upon as soon as possible, is that this Mad Man has so far anticipated every one of the school's responses. My worry is that this mot recent response by the school, the closing down of buildings to a single entrance and the inability to bring backpacks, was likewise anticipated. In that case, is this an opportunity for him to further his plan, or merely another victory in causing disruption in the school? Or in the case that the move was not anticipated, does he feel slighted that the school unfairly changed the rules? I sincerely hope we are fortunate enough to capture this Mad Man before the answer is determined.

UPDATE: Well, the last 24 hours have been an extremely active period, to say the least. Nevertheless, I'd say these conclusions are still mostly valid, and these recent accelerations are a sign that this Mad Man is nearing some sort of culmination, as well as showing his displeasure in the school's recent policy changes.

Zeal

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” – Aristotle

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I remember what zealotry used to feel like. That ever-expanding frontier of something-ness. The thought that this, this, THIS, above all things is worth my time. That zeal used to burn bright.

For a while it was chemistry, grandeur found in the course catalogue of the University of Chicago. Then, sitting in a to single class at Brown University, neuroscience consumed all thought. When those tides waned, bioengineering filled the hole. I don’t doubt that ad infinitum could very easily have sufficed to explain the rest of that torrid history.

I say could, because what once was a Molotov of a blaze is now a dull sheen of indifference. It wasn’t the chemistry, nor the neuroscience, nor the bioengineering, nor was it what ever other godawful replacement likely to come in its place. It wasn’t the summit, it was being at base camp looking up the slope, with flag in hand. Chasing the high of the action, instead of relishing the act.

It just doesn’t fucking matter.

What’s the difference of having the Laplace transform down pat? Of knowing what the six layers of the cortex contain? Of the name of some chemical reaction no one gives a shit about? These concepts, ideas, reactions – whatever your poison may be – are tools. Does a carpenter spend four years of his life learning about how his hammers are made, or what constitutes a good hammer, or how to tell the difference between a hammer and a banana? No – he learns a craft, practices it, and spends the rest of his life, if he is dedicated, perfecting it.

Here I am, here you are, I suspect, a year or two away from the biggest transition life can give us, and we’re learning about tools – our hammers, our nails, our million-dollar biomedical imaging devices. How more prepared are we from four years ago? Daily we spend our time learning, instead of creating, or thinking, or imagining, or even daydreaming. We are kept busy with drudgery, if only to placate that half-formed wariness that what we learn makes so, so little difference.

Michael Lopp writes about a similar phenomenon that plagues managers in “real-life” world, a phenomenon he calls the Faux-Zone:

It is a place intended to create the same rewarding sense of productivity and satisfaction as the Zone, but it is an absolutely fake Zone complete with the addictive mental and chemical feedback, but there is little creative value. In the Faux-Zone, you aren’t really building anything.

It doesn’t have to be like that. There’s no reason for you and me, sexy smart thinkers that we are, to go on pretending. Lopp suggests devoting one precious hour every single day to building something.

I say go further. If there’s one thing in this world worthing being full of zeal for, it’s yourself. Wonder. Daydream. Write. Build. But do it with a passion. Or don’t do it at all.

Deutschland

“This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it.”

– Jean-Paul Sartré

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Adventures don’t happen in everyday life. Minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, engrossed in the banality of the passing of time. Life slipped and squeezed between highlighter stains, sips of coffee, snippets of lectures unprocessed.

And every so often, a break, a breath. Reflection, recounting events – a plot thickens, a them. Recollect the climax, drift to the denouement. The banal becomes exalted, every step drawn out into an Odyssey.

Man is either a teller of tales, or he lives, he exists. Should life be told, portrayed recounted and broadcast with every step, every breath? Or felt, touched, lived?

An adventure, perhaps. Or a banality. Germany this summer – a notebook, a camera and film, and yes, none of you.

Merry

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My father gave me my tenacity. My single-mindedness. My attention to detail. My inability to give up control. Some call it being a perfectionist. I call it getting things right. He calls it work.

My mother gave me my practicality. My unflappability. My fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. My inability to manage my time. Some call it procrastination. I call it collecting my thoughts. She calls it high-pressure productivity.

Both gave me my stubbornness. Both, my creativity, in their own way. Both, their good sense of humor. Both, every ounce of love they had.

Some call it raising a child.

I call it being the luckiest son in the world.

Merry Christmas. Mom, Dad, all.

The Dangers & Ethical Considerations of Performance Enhancements

To begin to understand the ethical considerations and potential dangers of artificial enhancement of blood oxygen carrying capacity, it is first necessary to frame our question. In doing so, we can ask ourselves the reverse question: “Does allowing an athlete who hails from a high-altitude region to compete against other athletes constitute an unfair advantage or an unethical situation?” Perhaps this seems somewhat silly; of course it isn’t unethical to allow a competitor from a mountainous region, and in fact it seems that it would be unethical to disallow competition. Similarly, it does not seem to constitute an unfair advantage to hail from a hometown above the tree line – competitors, after all, cannot control where they are born.

It is also important to distinguish our three concerns – what, after all, constitutes fairness, ethicality, and harmfulness? Let us briefly briefly state our frame of reference for each of these:

1. Fairness constitutes a fundamental availability of access; an ideally fair enhancement would be equally available to all competitors. While this is often a practical impossibility, a fair enhancement would be optimally accessible.

2. Ethicality constitutes specific societal considerations as to the nature of a treatment; they must be socially acceptable, recognized, and widely used among the relevant population. As cultures vary around the world, society in this sense denotes the governing body that oversees the competition; usually this is mutually agreed-upon by member nations of the competitions.

3. Harmfulness is a much easier metric as it can typically be quantified. Any treatment which provokes a negative acute or chronic response within the body should be considered harmful. Furthermore, any treatment which has a net negative impact on society would also be considered harmful.

Which of these considerations, should they be violated, constitute banning from competition? As stewards of both present and future athletes (as well as being caretakers of the inevitable future in which athletes retire from sport), oversight committees should strive to prevent any performance enhancement, or indeed any potential situation arising from competition, from causing any undue, unnecessary, and avoidable harm. As such, any treatment which could be reasonably constituted as harmful, as determined by a series of accredited and independent set of researchers, should be banned from competition. Thus, while it could certainly be argued that living in high altitudes could cause serious respiratory problems in the general population, athletes are much less likely to see these effects. Furthermore, regardless of any potential individual harm due to homologous transfusions, of which there are many, they should be banned by the simple fact that they provide a net negative influence on society; using donor blood that would otherwise be donated to a blood bank strains already continually in-demand supplies.

Additionally, competitions must inherently be kept competitive; while many have argued that  universal approval of performance enhancements would promote universal adoption, thus negating any unfair competitive advantage, universal adoption is necessarily possible, especially in international competitions (let alone the potential health issues that this may cause). Thus oversight committees should strive to ban any enhancement which is reasonably unfair. Again, there is some judgement inherent; while it could be concluded that it is unfair to allow high-altitude training given that countries like the Seychelles do not have native access to mountain ranges, but such a thing would seem to go to far. After all, Switzerland is a perennial contender in the America’s Cup, an oceanic sailing event, despite being entirely land locked. EPO stimulants, in addition to likely being harmful to the body, would constitute an unfair advantage, as availability is not widespread.

Lastly, we arrive at the question of ethicality, the most nuanced of the three categories. It would be, for example, entirely unethical to poison a competitor prior to competition; however, this is also an unfair and harmful competitive advantage. In fact, most situations of ethicality are covered by the previously stated cases for banning. The only major category is deception – using (approved) performance enhancements while not disclosing them. While this may not feel right to some, there is nothing inherently unfair, or harmful about deception, and thus, it is not a cause for banning. Thus, with the stringent requirement that it is safe and performed properly, there would be no issue with autologous blood doping, a more unethical form of RBC enhancement: athletes all over the world have equal access to their own blood, and treatment centers are almost universal widespread with the capability of performing these operations. The issue, of course, is what levels of transfusion could be considered safe, an issue that would need to be researched and overseen.

Off-Key Themes

I set out with this piece to describe to very distinct concerts – a ballet and Lollapalooza – through the use of the sonata form. This is what became of it. -SM

Tiny reflections reflecting from chandeliers flutter against the gilded ceiling. Muted pink flats scuff against ornate patterns. Their owners struggle to escape the cloying gravity of their granite guardians, wrapped in grey peacoats and more austere attire. A flurry of activity in the atrium orchestrated to some unknown rhythm. Children and adult alike imbued with light-footed excitement.A delicate choreography laced between last-minute snack purchases and souvenir shopping.

Serene chimes emanating from the walls themselves vibrate within the bustling hall. Sparkling jewels of eyes lock onto vaulted doors. Their owners navigate toward the yawning portals of the cavernous theater, enthralled in saccharine fantasies and coiled anticipation. A chauffeur guides every guest to their prescribed position. A cacophony of animal calls grumbles ominously from beneath. Faceless musicians, thrown below deck, fearlessly continue their tune-ups despite their imprisonment.

Grey skies beget a drizzle. The crowd draws closer together. Uncertain if from warmth or anticipation, a magnetic draw toward the twin black cabinets. Bluish smoke hangs thick. The crowd hazy from smog and source. Tens of small orange flares scattered in the midst, wafting sickly sweet smells into the air.

Clouds give in to sun. The crowd quiets in anticipation. A man steps forward on the spartan stage, but alas no performance; just a Hawaiian shirt and a sound check. An empty stage again. The crowd presses closer to the edge. Two figures emerge now, applause growing with realization, as the musicians take their place.

A lone note escapes from the pit, first solo, then swelling with instrumentation. The lights of the theater diminish as do the whispers. Ephemeral silence as the cogs wind-up for their release. Their operator, hardly more than a baton and disembodied head, makes a leisurely approach. The sharply honed point rises for the strike. A delicate downward drift signals the overture. Dulcet notes encompass the entire hall in delicate warmth as the intricate scene is set.

No awknowledgement of applause. No orchestrated performance, no, an attack. The first rat-a-tat staccato, a false start, or a prelude to an eruption of sound. Thunder from the ground shakes rain loose. Passion interrupts silence, or the reverse. Two instruments rest on the stage, but with them their caretakers craft an entire orchestra of sound.

Soft feet leap back and forth from prescribed position. Rise and fall in scale mirrors movement. Emotion contained in the sweep of a leg, bend of a bow, placement of a note. No words fall from made-up lips. No segue, non-sequitur, into elaborate song. The body alone, with harmonic accompaniment, the sole device of communication.

Slender fingers brush delicately against synthetic keys. Raven locks swing wildly from frenzied moves in time to tune. Fever pitch of song, not verse itself, conveys unbridled passion of her craft. Her stoic partner more grounded, subdued. Focus enticingly apparent from strumming hands and pedaling feet. Two on-stage characters, juxtaposed in movement and grace, yet exceedingly similar in conveying their art.

The audience slowly drawn forward, entranced. Ballerinas-to-be imagine themselves on stage. Faeries dote playfully on every cherubim desire, a come-to-life Tinker Bell. The crowd wrapped in music’s movement. Each fan roused into independent rhythm. All dancing to the same tune, yet every snowflake twirl and sway, unique.

The performers switch, seamless, from piece to piece. No time for claps after each denoument. No acknowledgement, no respite; intent only on offering up ever greater music. No bows seen from the pit. Applause for the dancers, yes, but none for their accompaniment. Faceless performers, whose only intent is to produce a backdrop for lithe dancers to leap and bound.

Velvet curtain falls on the shimmering scene, peotic prancing finished. The last melodic notes hang in suspense a fraction longer, a final glimpse of Neverland. The audience, silent silhouettes, now erupt, erect and applauding. Curtain pulls back, revealing not characters, but the performers unmasked. One by one they bow, showered with adoration. And yet all the while the musicians go unnoticed, unrecognized, unacknowledged, faceless.

The thunderous bass ends its last trembling reverberations. Hairs, stood on end from an hour of blasting chords, slowly fall flat against stilled arm. Sullen realization dawns on all that the last note has been played. The crowd applauds ever more boisterously. Jumping and pressing forward, clamoring for just one more song. As if recognizing for the first time that the crowd exists, the woman looks out, says “thank you”, and departs.

Three and Twenty

“For the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it.” – Jean-Paul Sartré

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What is it, precisely, that changes in the world, when you realize you’re the luckiest man in the world? Does the world revolve ever so slightly slower, to savor the delight of the moment, or instead does the pace of the world abruptly quicken so as to hasten the end of that luck? Is there some diffuse filter that descends upon the scene, softening all features except the ones that matter most.

But existence does not drag along with it curtain drops, and catchy melodies; existence plods, flows by, just existing, without pause. We don’t even recognize our luck in the moment; it is only later,when we recall our fortune, that we realize just how blessed we were.

To be the luckiest man in the world. To get things, inexplicably, amazingly right on the first try. To have the terrible misfortune to realize it only after everything had gone.

We are either the traveler in our turbulent experiences, or the teller of the fabulous stories that result; we can never be both. Do we decide to live the banal existence, or do we recount our fantastic adventures. There’s no good answer. But I do fear that we avoid lving the banal in order to tell a story that was never ours to recount. Perhaps, too, in some ways we avoid telling our story to live in banality.

In either case, it’s never good enough.

I’ve been blessed to have been given the time to relish in that sublime experience. But I was too young to realize just how meaningful that time was.

Existence always slips away, unknowing. And all we are ever left with is the stories we may one day tell.