Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

I'm currently on a factory inspection tour, first going to one of the day-job world's suppliers in Cleveland and now going to their supplier in Cookeville, Tennessee. One side benefit, though, is that I flew into Nashville and got to swing by Vanderbilt, visiting for the first time in more than thirty years. The old place looks pretty good. Leafier than I remember in spots, and lots of buildings that weren't there before. But plenty for me to remember. My most important destination was the student media offices, where I spent so much time in the mid-1980s. They've expanded well beyond "the tunnel," the bottom floor of the student center. Everything is digital now. My old yearbook and newspaper darkrooms have been merged into a brightly lit conference room, with windows looking into the old newspaper office turned news room and soon to be a recording studio, I think. The old yearbook room was partitioned off into offices, but now they're about to...

Does anyone else (probably my age) remember an ABC Afterschool Special called The Wave ? It was based on the true story of a California teacher's social experiment in 1967. His students couldn't understand how the Germans had all gone along with Hitler, so he fabricated a bogus fascist movement called "The Wave" and was able to get all the kids to buy into it. The movie exaggerates what happened, but apparently a mob mentality really did set in and things got out of control. The big climax of the movie is when the teacher calls a special assembly, promising to show the kids the leader of the "Wave" movement. He shouts, "Here's your leader!" and a film of Hitler speaking appears on the auditorium's movie screen. The kids are shocked into silence. I feel like we're in a similar situation in America these days. I feel like the Trumpocalypse is some sort of weird social experiment gone terribly wrong. Someone's going to cal...