Harristotelian Logic

One of the fun things to me about this wacky saga is that every once in a while--every few years or so—I talk about the method behind the apparent madness, kind of like a behind the scenes episode on some movie or some television show.

Those who hate such things can tune out at this point…for the rest here is the rationale that I use in deciding to post and what I think is kind of sort of the point.

First off, the rule of Usenet and Internet is attention has to happen first.

If no one reads you then there is no way you can get any message across, no matter how valid you think that message is!

Second thing, people don't like nice, and they don't like agreement as it's boring.

Posts where people ask nicely for help, congratulate each other, and then talk about how great this process is and isn't it wonderful to be able to share information in such an agreeable place, are boring.

Our world thrives on conflict. Disagreement drives Usenet. Without it, you don't get that thing I mentioned above—attention.

So yes, a lot of what you see in postings from my side is just for show, as they say, merely meant to keep the antagonism up, keep the hostilities up, so that there is a continual tension and sense of conflict to draw in readers.

Over the years I've refined techniques that tend to play to what works and manages a rag-tag group of posters who come and go, kind of like circus players, as over the years I've had a LOT of them, come and go.

I do at times try to tone things down a bit as well, when it gets too outrageous even for me, often with limited success, where the thing that does work is for me to just stop posting for a while, and I'm finding that I have to do that more and more as things get more advanced.

With all of that said there is a lot of real drama taking place as the attention is not the purpose, but keeping the light on my mathematical research IS, and the reality that academics at some very prestigious institutions are not doing their jobs is the underlying theme.

There really was that publication in SWJPAM for instance where the editors withdrew my paper after emails from several sci.math posters (not certain about how many emailed them), and subsequently the journal DID die, and Cameron University, its host, DID wipe all record of its nine year existence from its webpages.

I do have multiple rejections from top journal of papers that are now found on my websites, and I do have very simple mathematical results which cannot be disputed as to correctness—though some posters still try—which inexplicably are ignored by math people who claim they care about "pure math".

My take on it is that to them "pure math" means that they have the right to ignore ANY mathematical result no matter how important it can be shown to be, as long as they do not personally like it!

So "pure math" means "personal math" or "my math" which goes to the bit of side humor in the title of my math blog, when you consider the way math people actually behave.

And that kind of covers the gist of the show as well as the reasons for it.

I am an American who very much studies how modern media works, and one thing we know how to do in this country, is get attention! So when you see all those news stories about celebrities here and their wild behavior, you may just wonder, while I study.

Like Paris Hilton is a remarkable person in terms of giving you some sense of the concept, as make no mistake, our modern world runs as much on attention as it does on oil.

You have to be able to get it, to get anything done, as otherwise, no one knows who you are, or what you have found, no matter what it is you have found.