Sidetracked by work and the fact that I haven't seen Bullitt in a long time, I bring you no word today. But tomorrow, you can expect one to make up for it.
In related news, I'm working on a list of films antithetical to the revenge/blatant-disregard-for-human-rights flicks that have so-long populated our cinema so expertly. I'm putting together a list of films that critique that mentality and (often) supply a different role model. I dub them "Due Process" movies to distinguish them from the "by any means necessary" approach celebrated in so many movies. Just a few examples:
Zodiac Bullitt L.A. Confidential Absence of Malice
These films celebrate due process and the procedure of law, rather than the law's reckless abandonment in the name of justice and freedom.
Despite what you may think, though, I did not pick today's word for the above praise. Though it is deserved. My parents have been married 43 years. They have been married as long as Russian mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky has been alive. He has a PhD now and teaches at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He even won a Fields Medal.
So that's a long time. Outstanding.
Which also reminds me of a joke my Dad loved to tell. Kind of. Actually, it wasn't really a joke. We would just be driving along on a rural road and my Dad would point at a farmer on his land and say, "There's a man outstanding in his field."
Maybe you have to be there.
Incidentally, here is Vladimir Voevodsky, a man out standing with his Fields.
That's Vlad there on the left.
The reason I think of this word, though, is because I've got noir on the mind. I'm reading a Ross Macdonald book right now - a Lew Archer novel to be precise - called Find a Victim. It's excellent, even beside the fact that it has a Stephen Crane poetic epigraph:
A man feared that he might find an assassin; Another that he might find a victim. One was more wise than the other.
If you know anything about noir, you'll know the answer to that (admittedly obvious) riddle.
So Ross Macdonald developed the Lew Archer character and books, two of which were made into films starring Paul Newman as the detective (as Lew Harper since "H" movies had been so lucky for him: Hud, Hombre, Hustler). The first is Harper (after Macdonald's The Moving Target), the second of these is The Drowning Pool. A villainous character in there, in a good-natured and slimey way, repeats the word "Outstanding." It's creepy and hilarious at the same time. Anyway, I like the movie a lot. Of course, I like any Paul Newman movie. I could watch him watch paint dry in a movie and be entertained. As evidence, watch the first couple minutes of The Drowning Pool.
outstanding (adj., n.)
Pronunciation: \au̇t-ˈstan-diŋ,
Definition: 1) standing out, as in a projection 2) a. unpaid, b. continuing to exist, unresolved 3) standing out from a group, conspicuous; esp. with eminence
This word is largely known in its modifier form, but it also holds a position as a noun. An outstanding would be some kind of object, say a pulpit, for instance, that jutted out from something else. In fact, it was the noun use that developed first. It wasn't but two hundred years before it was used as an adjective, even in its financial form.
You know, looking into Vladimir Voevodsky I stumbled upon a Mathematics Geneaology Project, which reminded me of my own physics academic lineage. Those outside of the sciences and maths may not know much of this tradition, but students in those subjects like to trace their primary instructional influences (usually in the form of the thesis advisor, but also those who were influential peers or colleagues) to discover who their ancestral teachers were. I have a cool history. Pardon the blatant boasting.
My primary influence in terms of my physics was Dr. Charles Montrose (may the good man rest in peace). He taught me the way I approach physics. He worked at Catholic University, a University with a far larger physics history than most realize.
Montrose worked at Catholic University under Karl Herzfeld, a man who worked with Linus Pauling; his advisors were Friedrich Hasenohrl and Hendrik Lortentz. Hasenohrl had taught Erwin Schrodinger, as well (Schrodinger and Niels Bohr, incidentally, had taught Pauling). One of Herzfeld's most well-known students is John Wheeler,* who taught Richard Feynman. Montrose also worked with Clyde Cowan, who, along with Frederick Reines, discovered the neutrino. Reines received the Nobel Prize in 1995 on behalf of them both, since Cowan had died in 1974.
Dr. Montrose taught me who...promptly went to graduate school in English.
I can't compete with that.
*weird side note: John Wheeler was also Hugh Everett's doctoral advisor. Everett (a Catholic grad) developed a many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics to which I subscribe. His son, Mark Oliver Everett, is the band The Eels.
p.s. Before you go off thinking I'm bat-shit crazy, the many-worlds interpretation is a mainstream interepretation in physics. Look into it. It's crazy. It's crazy true.
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