![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/mad3.jpg\")
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n When I was a child I had but one ambition for my future life and career.
\n All my friends wanted to be firemen and astronauts, certainly worthy
\n pursuits, to which I devoted occasional fantasies and game playing time,
\n but not what I had in mind for my future at all. My aspiration, since
\n I can first remember, was to grow up to be a Mad Scientist. My earliest
\n role models were Baron von Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll – not monsters themselves,
\n but rather good men who became the creators of monsters in the service
\n of science.<\/p>\n
Now that I’ve reached a certain stature at the mid-century mark (in other
\n words, it’s all downhill from here), perhaps it is time to evaluate to
\n what degree (if any) I have realized this lofty childhood ambition.
\n ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/mad_scientist.gif\")
\n First of all, let me say that at that age and at that time, my impressions
\n of what madness and science we all about were composed largely of images
\n from American classics like "The Bride of Frankenstein" (in which a compassionate
\n but misguided scientist tries to bring peace and marital bliss to his
\n poor creation), "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (which illustrated the timeless
\n theme "Don’t mess with mother nature") and Mad Magazine (scientists in
\n huge eyeglasses with kaleidoscope lenses). But those images merely adorned
\n a desire as deep as anything I can remember to harness nature through
\n science in previously unimagined ways.<\/p>\n
It was probably not a true calling to science as a vocation. I guess
\n science was just the popular religion of the fifties. Its miracles were
\n all around us, in the news, in our skies, highways and kitchens. It was
\n a means to do the incredible, the impossible, the transcendent. Maybe
\n if I had been a little kid in the sixties it would have been Merlin and
\n magic. Still, I had an intense desire to create something truly new. <\/p>\n
In third grade I formed a secret society called "The Bachelor Inventors
\n Club". The twin aims of the club were to eschew the incomprehensible
\n but obviously fatal temptations of what was still at that time widely
\n known
\n as the "weaker" or "Opposite" sex, and to invent all of the great stuff
\n we were sure was right around the corner, like videophones, anti-gravity
\n cycles and instant learning skullcaps to allow us all to be geniuses
\n without the need to go to school or study.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/MadScientist-1.jpg\")
So how have I done, on the Mad Scientist scale? Answering this question
\n forces me to face one of the Fundament Questions of Life, a question
\n which obsesses some, but which is rarely asked by those who really need
\n to hear the answer. Am I mad?<\/p>\n
Quite frankly, I consider myself the sanest person I know, although I
\n doubt many of my colleagues or acquaintances would agree. Years of psychedelic
\n group and self-therapy (statute of limitations long expired) and study
\n of arcane metaphysical disciplines (still practiced) as well as a long
\n apprenticeship with a legendary Peruvian shaman have allowed me to explore
\n the furthest nooks crannies of my mind. Despite some truly discombobulating
\n discoveries, I have come to know and love its weirdness and idiosyncrasies.<\/p>\n
However, there are other meanings for "mad". There is the sense of "Angry",
\n or "Mad at the world", which I nearly never am, even perhaps when I should
\n be, for my own good. And there is the Kerouacian meaning, as in "Madcap,
\n inspired, manic, incandescent," which I aspire to but rarely if ever
\n achieve. <\/p>\n
The mad scientist role-models of my youth were not evil men, although
\n they could unleash great destruction on the world, unwittingly. They
\n were not Joseph Mengele or Hannibal Lector. They were closer to the edge
\n than the Nutty Professor who invented Flubber, or for you youngsters
\n Dr. Emmett Brown from "Back to the Future", but not demented to the point
\n of Drs. Strangelove or No. More like well-meaning, absent-minded, socially-inept
\n geniuses who end up wreaking havoc through flagrant disregard of the
\n laws of nature. Perhaps my career resembles theirs in the flagrant disregard
\n department, but in little else.
\n ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/madscientistad.jpg\")
\n The question of whether I can call myself a scientist is quite a bit
\n easier to answer. The answer is "No". I studied Anthropology in college,
\n a "Social" science, but gave it up after concluding that 95% of what
\n I was reading was bullshit, and not especially clever or well-written
\n bullshit
\n at that, and what I got out of the other 5 % could have probably been
\n more efficiently and effectively communicated through a short story or
\n a folk song. <\/p>\n
I switched to Physical Anthropology in graduate school on
\n the theory, propagated by practitioners of that bastard discipline,
\n that numbers and measurements were more rigorously scientific than
\n that touchy-feely
\n cultural anthro. I subsequently gave that up upon realizing that
\n one could lie just as convincingly, and much more authoritatively, by
\n using
\n numbers and statistics rather than words.<\/p>\n
Both of my stabs at a doctorate washed up on the shoals of my persistent
\n inability to abide fools. The articles and chapters I have published
\n were in obscure journals and out-of-print collections referred to
\n only by the most thorough or desperate researchers. Most of my career up to this point
\n has been
\n spent as a university lecturer and administrator, decidedly non-scientific
\n endeavors.<\/p>\n
The only lasting legacy of my career are the students, strewn across
\n the map of the world, getting on with their lives and only occasionally,
\n and in isolated cases judging from my email, remembering their old
\n professor. Their names, however, are all in a book, and I dream of
\n someday, in a
\n comfortable retirement, taking a Global Grand Tour, visiting Princes
\n and Presidents. Dream on.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/kirby12.jpg\")
All in all I would have to say I failed miserably in my quest to
\n be a scientist. I’m not sure I even believe in Science anymore, as
\n a religion.
\n And although it may undermine any future attempts on my part to resort
\n to an insanity defense, I can’t honestly say I conform to any of
\n the commonly
\n accepted definitions of "mad". So it would seem safe to say that
\n I am closer today to being an astronaut or fireman than to being
\n an authentic
\n mad
\n scientist.<\/p>\n
But this frank assessment doesn’t mean I am without hope for the
\n future. I have decided to reactivate the Bachelor Inventors Club.
\n Given the
\n increasing jealousy show by Norma Yvonne toward the time I spend
\n with my blog (which
\n she calls my "other woman"), I may be a bachelor again sometime soon.
\n And I am now really ready to invent all of the great stuff I am sure
\n is right
\n around the corner, like a cure for tennis elbow, a fat-free eclair
\n which tastes like the real thing, and instant learning skullcaps
\n to allow us
\n all to be geniuses without the need to go to school or study.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a child I had but one ambition for my future life and career. All my friends wanted to be firemen and astronauts, certainly worthy pursuits, to which I devoted occasional fantasies and game playing time, but not … Continue reading