A Rambling Wreck: Book 2 of The Hidden Truth

by Hans G. Schantz

  “I’m dating her roommate,” I pointed out.

  “You’re too young to settle down with one girl,” Amit counseled me. “The best way to be confident with girls is to have lots of them in your orbit. If you don’t care about any particular girl, you adopt an abundance mentality. Girls love confident men with options.”

  “But I do want to care. At least about one particular girl. And Ashley didn’t appear to appreciate you for your confidence and your options,” I pointed out.

  “Some girls are just… needy,” he countered. “That’s why you need more than one – so your dating doesn’t suffer when one flakes out on you. If you keep enough plates spinning, you don’t need to worry when one crashes and breaks.”

  I thought about Amit’s notion of running up his score with girls. Something troubled me about it. “I can see there are advantages to confidence. Certainly practice and experience breed further success at anything, including dating, but it’s like your goal is just to run up the score and sleep with as many girls as possible, though. You’re focusing on the persuasive techniques and dating methods that let you hook up with the most receptive girls, the easiest girls, the least discriminating girls.”

  “You mean the sluts,” Amit nodded. “Yes, of course. That’s the goal.”

  “Are those the girls you really want, though?” I asked. “The ones you can really care for?”

  “Depends on how hot they are,” he flashed a lecherous grin. “Too many years of sleeping around really wears them out fast, though. They get nasty diseases, too, so it’s better to get them young,” he said smugly.

  “I’m serious,” I replied. “If you perfect your game toward quick scores and easy sex, doesn’t that become all you get? At the expense of a deeper and more meaningful relationship?”

  “Yeah…” he nodded. “So?”

  We were going to have to agree to disagree.

  With one semester at Tech under my belt, the second semester seemed easier. If anything, the material was more difficult, but I’d developed the appropriate study habits and support network to make the experience much less stressful than starting from scratch. Even social justice became more interesting, because Professor Gomulka was transitioning from theory to practice.

  “Welcome to Applications of Social Justice,” he greeted us on the first day of classes. “Good to see you all back after your break.” I saw him glance over at Ryan and Marcus. Was that a hint of displeasure in his voice? Marcus and Ryan had both aced the Intro to Social Justice final, thanks to their mysterious friend, George P. Burdell. I didn’t know how Amit and I were going to be able to keep them in the program in the long run, what with Professor Gomulka deliberately trying to fail them. We’d won the first round, though, and we’d just have to do our best the next time around.

  “Last semester, we learned about the theory and history of social justice and what it means in our personal lives,” Professor Gomulka continued. “This semester, we’re going to put that theory into practice. I see most of you already have our text.” He held up a copy of Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky. “We’re going to apply the principles and teachings of this book to effect social change right here at Georgia Tech. We’ve made great progress aligning the faculty in the College of Liberal Arts toward an emphasis on social justice. For too long, however, the science, computing, and engineering faculties have maintained a narrow focus on their subjects without critically examining the broader applications and implications for society at large.

  “That changes now,” he insisted, “and you are going to be the agents of that change.” I could feel the excitement ripple through the class. Gomulka had berated, browbeaten, and shamed everyone there for an entire semester. We’d come through his social-justice boot camp, and now the class was eager to show their beloved professor that his confidence in them was well placed.

  He flashed a professional portrait of a smiling woman “Meet Dr. Cindy Ames. Dr. Ames is a thought-leader in social justice pedagogy. She will revise the engineering curriculum to make it more relevant to a more diverse population of students. This mission of the College of Engineering must converge to put social justice first – above all other concerns. Dr. Ames is the social justice warrior who will make that happen.”

  I noticed he was becoming more comfortable with the term he coined – “social justice warrior.”

  “This man is a threat to our vision and our community.” Professor Gomulka flashed a photo of Professor Muldoon on the screen. The lighting was poor. Muldoon wore a scowl on his face, and he looked sinister and evil. “Professor Harmon Muldoon’s reactionary obstructionism in the Faculty Senate is single-handedly blocking our prospective head of the College of Engineering. Worse, he’s been rallying opposition to Dr. Ames from faculty and influential alumni.”

  “Boo!” Amit was really getting into it, and the class was following his lead.

  “No,” Professor Gomulka held up a finger to silence the class. “No. This is a good thing. Individuals are easier to hurt than organizations. Muldoon has made himself the champion of the reactionaries. Now, in order to defeat the reactionaries, all we have to do is defeat Muldoon – the rest will fall in line. We have picked our target. We will isolate him – ‘freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.’ We will keep the pressure on and never give up!”

  Gomulka had challenged Muldoon to a “Dialog on Diversity,” and apparently, Muldoon had accepted. I could see exactly what Gomulka was thinking. Destroy Muldoon’s credibility with a surprise audit and all opposition would collapse. He’d win by default.

  In the meantime, though, the social justice warriors of Georgia Tech would organize for victory. “Of course, it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to use class time to organize for specific political action,” Gomulka observed, “so let’s discuss, hypothetically of course, the kinds of steps students at other campuses have taken to effect social change, within the general framework that underlies all activism.”

  He wrote, “TARGET,” on the board. “First we have to ask ourselves, who is the target of our activity. If our targets are individuals, we want to change their attitudes or behaviors. If our target is a group or organization, we may want to change the group structure, redirect one or more vectors in the network of power relations, or secure greater participation and control for our allies. If our target is a community, we want to change intra-group relations such as discrimination, or attitudes, or beliefs. Finally, if our target is the society-at-large, we want to impact policies like globalization, education, the economy, health care, the environment, and so forth. Campus activism can take on any of these targets. Our focus is on a group, the administration, and to a lesser extent, the public whose support they require, and the individual reactionaries who oppose social justice.”

  He added, “AGENT,” below it. “Then, we have to consider who the agents of social change are. The agents of social change can be leaders, directors, politicians, the people in charge. Or it can be the supporters or backers on whom the target relies. Or it can be the grassroots volunteers, employees, or interested citizens.” He smiled benevolently at the class. “That’s you – the idealistic student advocates for social justice. You need to keep it simple, maximize cooperation by maintaining good relations, and be ready to show how change benefits the target. Which brings us to…”

  Then, he wrote, “AGENT TARGET,” on a third line. “How does the agent relate to or impact the target? The target may already be well-converged toward social justice and only require a modest nudge. Pre-converged targets are in the grasp of reactionaries and require a change in beliefs, attitudes, or values. Finally, anti-converged targets are actively opposed to social justice. They may dominate and oppress the agents, requiring more forceful measures.

  Finally, he wrote, “SUPPORT,” at the bottom of his list. “What actions are required to gain public support for your goal? Social change is easiest when the target is already well-converged: acknowledges the problem, agrees change is needed, i
s open to assistance, and willing to change. That’s the case in most campus advocacy. We already have allies and fellow travelers in the administration who recognize that true equality requires more than head counting and quota checking. Equality requires fundamental changes in beliefs and attitudes that can only be achieved through changes in how and what we teach our students. The administration needs our help to overcome and silence the determined opposition of reactionary voices. Well-converged targets only require empirical evidence – information journalism, reports, and studies. They can transform that information into the right action.” He wrote, “CONVERGED = RATIONAL / EMPIRICAL,” on the board.

  “Pre-converged targets need re-education. They need to be taught to adopt new values and new norms, either through the carrot of rational or emotional means, or the stick of facing the consequences of their poor choices. The holdouts, the reactionaries, the opponents of social justice,” he smiled, “and no campus is without a few of those, they respond best to non-violent methods – strikes, protests, rallies, sit-ins, publicity, advocacy journalism, public shaming, boycotts – those are the principal tactics.” He added “PRE-CONVERGED = NORMATIVE / RE-EDUCATIVE,” on the board.

  “Anti-converged targets require coercive strategies and raw power, up to and including riots, guerilla warfare, revolution, and terrorism.” He added “ANTI-CONVERGED = POWER / COERCIVE,” on the board.

  “Campus advocacy will typically employ rational / empirical and normative / re-educative strategies for social change. Power or coercive strategies are rarely appropriate. Why?” He pointed at Madison.

  “Because the administration is, like, on our side already and we want to cooperate with them,” she answered.

  “Exactly!” He beamed. “You’re providing cover for them, giving them a justification to do what they want to do already because ‘the students demand it.’ Alinsky tells the story of radicals who lobbied FDR for a particular policy. ‘OK,’ he agreed with them, ‘you’ve convinced me. Now go out there and put pressure on me to do this, so we can make it happen!’ You have to keep the pressure on to help the administration overcome the opposition to the social justice changes we all want to implement.

  “Of course, all I’ve been saying is true of campus activism most everywhere, including here at Georgia Tech. As I said, it would be highly inappropriate of me to organize activism here in class. I’ve covered all I need to say today, so class is over.” A few students started to gather their things. “However,” he loudly interrupted them, “if you find yourselves gathered here and want to take advantage of the opportunity to organize outside of class time, why, I see no reason why anyone would object. I’ll see you next time.”

  The message was loud and clear. Everyone sat back down, afraid that a failure to demonstrate a proper commitment to the ideals of social justice might jeopardize their scholarships. Gomulka had already coordinated with Amit and me regarding precisely the kind of campaign he wanted. After Gomulka left, Amit stepped up to the board and began soliciting ideas. The class was well-trained. They suggested most of what Gomulka wanted. I filled in the few aspects of Gomulka’s strategy that the rest of the class had overlooked. Finally, Amit went around the room seeking commitments – “What will you do for social justice?” He put everyone on the spot trying to out-do each other for the cause.

  After class, I caucused with Amit. “He’s making Muldoon the focal point of all the opposition to Professor Ames. That “Dialog on Diversity” should prove interesting. He’s anticipating a win by default. Muldoon is… formidable, ruthless. Gomulka wouldn’t be so eager to take on Muldoon directly if he didn’t have his audit ambush waiting in the wings.”

  “I just hope Muldoon took George P.’s warning to heart,” Amit muttered.

  I’d considered looking ahead at my textbooks over the break, getting a head start on my spring classes. Like so many vague desires to accomplish something, I’d put no thought into how to make it happen, so it didn’t. Instead, I’d spent my entire winter break working in the mirror lab, generating isotope maps, studying Majorana, trying to understand the physics, and when my physics background failed me, investigating the history surrounding Majorana’s mysterious disappearance.

  Turns out, I should have been hitting the textbooks, too.

  That spring, I still found myself straddling the line between physics and electrical engineering. So far, I could still choose either subject, and the courses from the other would fulfill my requirements for technical electives. By the end of the semester, however, I would need to choose whether to commit myself to electrical engineering or physics. Professor Fries convinced me to sign up for his microwave circuits class, saying that my physics electromagnetics class would be adequate preparation.

  On the first day of class, he handed out his syllabus and a strange sheet of graph paper with a curious, circular sort of graph. It looked like this:

  Those circles… those arcs… I tilted the center line. It looked remarkably like the background on MacGuffin’s yin-yang diagram. I raised my hand. “Professor Fries, what is this graph?”

  “That is a Smith Chart. You’ll need to make copies of this sheet,” he announced to the class. “We’ll be using it to solve impedance matching problems graphically.”

  I remembered the words from MacGuffin’s manuscript – that “Mr. Bini” (Majorana) said the yin-yang diagram followed from the work of an American named Smith and a Russian mathematician. I may have finally found the elusive Mister… Doctor? Professor? Smith. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I’d been searching the library for the last couple of weeks looking for a physicist named Smith, and here he was in my microwave circuits textbook: Phillip Hagar Smith. Only, apparently he was an electrical engineer, which explained why I hadn’t found him.

  My eagerness to solve the rest of the mystery overcame my discretion. “Is there a Russian mathematician known for his work with Smith?”

  “No,” Professor Fries paused, searching his memory. “I don’t recall Smith collaborating with anyone in particular let alone a Russian mathematician. Of course, Schelkunoff came up with the concept of impedance in the 1930s, so Smith’s work followed from Schelkunoff’s.”

  “And Schelkunoff was Russian?”

  “I believe he was American.” Professor Fries seemed amused at my sudden interest. “He may have come from Russia originally, though. We’ll be discussing him today, so hold your questions for now.”

  Every electrician and electrical engineer knows Ohm’s law: voltage equals current times resistance (V = I R). A little algebra tells you that resistance is the ratio of voltage to current (R = V/I). Heaviside, along with Lodge and a few others, extended Ohm’s law to cover AC or alternating current circuits. In the modern representation, voltage, current, and resistance become complex numbers, only the resistance gets called “impedance” and it has two parts: “resistance” (R) is the real part and “reactance” (X) is the “imaginary” part (Z = V/I = R + jX). Of course, there’s nothing truly imaginary about it. Both parts are physically real – complex numbers are just a bookkeeping method – keeping track of a voltage wave and a current wave, for instance, that may have different amplitude and phase.

  Don’t ask me how impedance got denoted by the letter “Z” and reactance by the letter “X.” Maybe it’s because current already took the letter “I” and resistance had adverse possession of “R.” And don’t get me going on how electrical engineers use “j” to denote the square root of negative one instead of “i” like physicists and mathematicians. They certainly didn’t disclose such sensitive information to mere undergraduates.

  Anyway, this Schelkunoff had the brilliant idea that if impedance was the ratio of voltage to current, then maybe there was an analogous kind of impedance that could be defined as the ratio of electric to magnetic field. The units make it really clear: electric field is volts per meter and magnetic field is amps per meter, so the ratio of electric field to magnetic field works out to volts over amps, just like v
oltage over current. Now, maybe we’d covered all this briefly in Professor Graf’s emag class, but where impedance was an afterthought to physicists, it was the main event to these electrical engineers. This entire microwave circuits class was all about applying AC electronics ideas to electromagnetic waves not simple enough to be mere voltages and currents, but caught up in transmission lines so they couldn’t be treated as waves in free space.

  It may not excite everyone, but was I looking forward to understanding this stuff. After Professor Fries’ introductory lecture, I could see how Schelkunoff had a big hand in the theory behind the Smith Chart, the theory of impedance, but I still didn’t see where the actual yin-yang curve came from.

  “Is there some reference I could look at,” I asked Professor Fries after class, “to check out Schelkunoff’s work?”

  I followed him back to his office. He opened his Omnibrowser and Omnied his search query to come up with a reference: “The Impedance Concept… Bell System Technical Journal, January 1938.” He turned his monitor to show me. “Shall I email this to you?”

  If it were a crucial clue, the last thing I needed was an electronic trail connecting it to myself. “Could you just print it out for me?” He did, and he handed me the copy.

  I thanked him for the Schelkunoff paper and left. I read through it as best I could while taking notes during my next class. It really didn’t seem that complicated or difficult. I was itching to try plotting out some of Schelkunoff’s equations, but I didn’t want to risk working on them in public on my thoroughly compromised school laptop. Instead, I got an early start on my homework between my classes, and then, I had an early dinner.

  I saw Jennifer leaving the dorm as I was returning to work on my Schelkunoff calculations. “How was your…” I began to ask when she cut me off.