Schemes: "supra petram ponere sedem fundamenti"

It means: "--to build foundations on stone," ("cum sit enim proprium/viro sapienti," "if it is the way of the wise man," is the couplet prior), but mainly it's just fun to say. (Go ahead, no one's listening.)

(There's a trend here that needs to be broken, quickly, because if every post around here was such a heavy tome of allegories and allusions that one wondered if there was going to be a quiz on it at the end -- that might have gravitas but it wouldn't be Sun-Drunken.)

BKF Boxmaker I call myself; I make boxes, then I fill them. It's the life of the prole for me. "Slumming it." I even sing songs to myself, working songs, drinking sounds. Tam pro papa quam pro rege/Bibunt omnes sine lege, that sort of thing, you know, classics.

They're sturdy boxes, I just follow the directions, mostly, (the first one wasn't quite right), and at the end I feel good that I Built Something. Then I fill them; this is a packing problem, because every cubic centimeter costs money. (Sort of. Since the stuff currently being packed -- books -- probably weighs more than the "box weight," which is used only, I gather, to charge for volume for underweight boxes, potentially there is no cost incurred against slightly inefficiency. However, if there's something that doesn't fit into the boxes, it gets left out; so that encourages me to be dilligent.)

Needless to say this gives some time to reflect on the emptiness of my mind, or the outer world, or whatever. And hatch schemes. Schemes are an important mechanism to cope with the world around me. The notion is that if you can anticipate, plan ahead, make contingencies, then you can overcome through the power of understanding what initially seems very daunting; and to some of us, almost everything seems daunting, or at least potentially troublesome, hence, the schemes. Or else it's just a bad habit, compulsive planning, that I picked up somewhere, maybe playing chess.

If you recall, I did visit Princeton this March. I met lots of people there, other prospective graduate students, some of whom doubtless will be accepting this offer of admission. The problem is that I don't remember all their names. This could lead to social awkwardness. So what do you do? One obvious thing to do is to play the Pronoun Game until you've eavesdropped enough to save yourself. Another is to always introduce yourself first, a kindness to them since they've probably forgotten yours, and hope they reciprocate -- they have to, really. This latter sounds like a well-adjusted plan to me.

Here's a less obvious game-theoretic type possibility. The fundamental problem is that I do remember some names but have forgotten others. So, some people get the Full Point and some people get Zero Points, and it's this asymmetry that's unappealing. It would be better if everyone got something, even if no one got everything. So the plan is: Never volunteer a name. Instead assert that you remember some fraction of names, maybe fifty percent, but that you don't want to slight those in the bottom half. Now perhaps everyone will think: Fifty percent I got a Full Point, fifty percent I got Zero Points. That's the same as everyone getting a Half Point. But, better, it might not be a zero-sum game. Since any person has no trouble remembering their own name, they always feel bad forgetting someone else's just for this reason -- how hard is it to remember a name?! So I think people are more likely to put themselves in the Remembered group, earning us even a Three-Quarter-Point average or something. Score!

Or they might think I've forgotten everything and am just covering, badly. If I give any name unprompted, too, the percentages change. Worse, they might not think it's a funny story. Maybe they'd think the game-theoretic exposition was a blatant and vulgar attempt to gain favour with bad jokes.

So, those schemes, they can go rotten without ever being put into practice, and then where are you? Just with a broken scheme.

-- well, more, a known-broken scheme! -- huh! I guess that means it's time to pack more boxes. Sing along with me: stultus ego comparor, fluvio labenti: "--then I am a fool to them, [building on] a flowing stream."