Mutatis Mutandis;

California Jones had worked well past lunch. He knew that, like (going from indications) Hollywood script writing, there was only so far a man could go on unsolicited efforts. Thereafter solicitation was in order.

The Latin for solicit was hard to say good things about - circumvent seemed to be the best transliteration. He could understand Solicitors circumventing, and solicitation was circumventing decorum, but what of charitable door-to-door solicitations? Oh well, they were pretty well hated too, so he would avoid THAT like the plague.

He dug out yet another unsolicited effort and polished for a time.

There was a man in Russia, named Rasputin, who studied very deeply and discovered the answer to all of Russia's problems. He was a man of letters, and familiar with what the French called 'le chiffre indechiffrable,' back then.

He had a close working relationship with the royal family, but he wanted to be certain before he unleashed the fruits of his labors on the entire nation of Russia. His wisdom led him to consult a holy man named Makariy, in far away Verkhoturye; he did not want anyone to misuse the information so he coded it.

His messenger was intercepted by spies of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church who killed the messenger and hid the message. After Rasputin's death, Prince Yusipov's men were able "by dint of much effort," to obtain the solution of the cryptogram. They were convinced of Rasputin's hidden wisdom and brought the ground breaking results to the Prince. Because they did not want the Prince to know who had written it, they told him they had found the cryptogram in his mother's effects, and obtained the password by psychic telepathy.

The Prince looked at the encrypted source and compared it with the result, and immediately declared it to be "AN AMERICAN TRAP!" to all and sundry... and that is why all Americans, when they think the KGB has intercepted their letters, laugh and say...

'poor bastards!'

Hmmm... he regarded the product critically. Was it truly finished?

Charlie knew that most people (his teachers not excepted,) relied upon individuals failing the reflexive test of all imperatives. The paradox of self-reference (Asimov had been clear enough about THAT one,) did not exempt one, it was simply a pitfall. The case that he honestly worried about was even more troublesome: Recursive manifestations of reflexive imperatives.

He circled his idea warily, wondering IF he would get stuck in a loop from THIS one. Take a safe case and apply IT _first_, he told himself. Was _Satan_ a 'poor bastard?' He HAD a message straight from God, unencrypted. True, he had looked at it and declared it to be a trap, but who was his authoritative audience? Either the worst person in the Universe was not a 'poor bastard,' OR (he paused...) the 'poor bastards,' were not the worst people in the Universe.

He investigated further. If a Satan_IST looked at the same message, he'd declare it trap city, like steam escaping from a cooking Lobster shell, and take it straight to Satan for review. Uh-uh... in the JOKE, he could clearly see the Prince was the ruler, and HE had been the one to declare a trap. If a Satan_ist called "trap!" and yet was not the ruler...

How did the saying go... "There is truth in humor, but not humor in truth?" It parsed grammatically, and was not an obvious paradox, but was meaning encapsulated? It appeared to be a syllogistic statement of contrapositive, but the lingual "in," made even an Euler diagram challenging. Challenging? Try Impossible!

It was _funny_ AND it was true; in _that_ order!

Corruptissima Re Publica Plurimae Leges ;

Charlie peered at the open black-faced Masterlock in his hand. Eve had been the kind of girl who liked hair-of-the-dog for breakfast. She had implored him to certify any messages addressed directly to _her_, by placing them in a lockbox certified by the Masterlock in question. There did not appear to be any way to deceive the process, but then Charlie had been reasonably confident that there had been no way to deceive the Diffie-Hellman key exchange the day before. His confidence in the perennial availability of deceit was more than he had estimated.

If they missed each other at the cafeteria at lunch, he'd be bummed... most girls just gave him something they'd give ANY guy to make him feel special; Eve had easily managed to make him believe that he _was_, in spite of herself. He hung it from the cross-bar in his closet; he didn't want to have to explain an accidental locking in person.

He surveyed his room as he turned from the closet. The bed was already made, so he tossed the few articles of clothing laying about into the hamper, and showered up. He figured that he'd await a moment when he had something truly _memorable_ to say. He smiled inwardly; either that, or a memorable motel to recommend.

He was curious if anyone had added to the Clock-Tower collection, but the sun was up, so he turned his attention to a new batch of term papers.

Tu quoque Brute filii mihi? (Et tu Brute?)

Charlie was anonymous among a group of similarly anonymous students. To call them scholars might have been too generous; academics nonetheless. The curtain rose upon a large stage, in introduction to "Diglet: An experiment without Digitalis."

Charlie had not been sure of what his expectations should have been comprised, but Hamlet was a classic. Piglet had been the parody; Diglet appeared to be about a Virtual Childhood awakening to the reality of "the web." How bad could it be? He kept going over and over the scene from fiction in his head. Sean Courtney and his Archery teacher, playing "Strip 20 questions." The test was such that IF you got ALL 20 questions _correct_, the pot for all 20 articles, (whether clothing or other instructive artifact,) would go to the student - else it was winner take all, and the teacher could re-robe and leave without a word. The teacher who had recommended the Digital production was feminine, but not likely to succumb to such suggestions... too bad.

Within the first 20 minutes Charlie had decided that his favorite scene from Hamlet was the one in which Hamlet soliloquizes "...the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King." Juvenile fascination with recursion and the reflexive case notwithstanding, he had to catch him SOMEHOW.

On stage, Turing came and went, with very little new material until they portrayed the perfect calculus of mapping an analog signal onto a digital continuum by exactly twice-over sampling. He had never known that sufficient data could be derived from so small a sample. The subject turned to the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. He enjoyed it from the very beginning...

The stage was divided into two villages. Stage left was Tribe "Histrionix," and stage right was Tribe "Melodrama." The Histrionixes and the Melodramas fought like Capulets and Montegues, with Histrionix faithful Bob pining fruitlessly after Melodrama faithful Alice. She dutifully mooned back, and Eve from the original "Evil Knievel" tribe came to their rescue. Neither trusted the messenger, so they made an Ellen Degeneres' style, "phone call to God."

Bob soon produced a Green Masterlock to which he had the combination. Eve arrived with a treasure chest with a hasp at either end of one side. Before the whole assemblage he scrawled,

"Meet me by the plastic tree near the left wing,"

...and put it ostentatiously in her chest. Eve lugged it over to Alice, and Alice peered hopelessly at the lock without observable progress. She used her own Red Masterlock to lock the opposing hasp, and Eve duly lugged it back over to Bob. Struck by apparent inspiration, he removed his Green lock, and smiled wickedly at Eve. He gave her a peck on the cheek and sent her packing back to Alice. Alice courtesied to the prospective courtesan, and removed her own restraint, opening her love letter with relish. She wrote her own reply rather more legibly.

"I'll love you until the clock strikes 9:37 PM."

...she inscribed. She locked her lock upon Eve's burdensome bureau, and they danced the dance in reverse.

Bob seemed satisfied with this response, and started a new conversation. This time he made a show of writing where Eve could not see, and the audience was put in suspense. Meanwhile, Eve had enlisted the help of two partners in crime, Adam and Steve. Adam contributed a Green lock of his own, while Steve produced a Red. When Bob locked his message in the box, Eve took it to the plastic tree and let Steve lock it with _his_ Red lock, returning soon thereafter. The charade was reproduced at the other end, with Steve removing his lock just as Bob had done, and Adam adding HIS _Green_ one. Alice duly pretended to be deceived. She attached her own authentic Red lock, and Adam bravely removed a lock he had added only moments before. Alice completed the charade of betrayal by removing her lock and responding to the challenge, "What is the highest purpose of Philosophy?" Adam, Eve and Steve had all three had opportunity to contemplate a persuasive answer to lull Bob into a false sense of security, but all for naught.

The skit had gotten a little long, but the answer (a large sign provided by Alice for the occasion,) confirmed the two were more in tune with each other than the interlopers; the impostors had been on the same sheet of music, but it had gotten "pretty black," and they could not play the score. The gig was up; it was time to face the Music and pay the piper.

"Earth Girls are Easy!"

...was the chosen non-sequiter.

Charlie joined in the standing ovation... he had to stand up just to get another look at Eve. He pondered that the whole production would have ended more quickly, and possibly more dramatically if he had been allowed to smash the hinges opposing the locks. He then could have used the padlocks as hinges in their own right, and the message would have been evident to all. He liked clandestine trysts but this cloak and dagger stuff, with partisans and patriots, was entirely too much drama.

Eve was receptive, and they made their way to McDonald's for a cone.

A Posse Ad Esse;

Charlie began taking notes on the "Venus" controversy. Aphrodite and Venus were apparently in a competition for virtue and virility. The Romans wrote Odes... the Greeks wrote what could be loosely termed as Ballads. The Romans had no real appreciation of happy endings... the Greeks wouldn't even LOOK at Roman efforts; the Latin rhymes for Venus were lacking. A creative soul would have figured out a way to name Venus directly, and speak to the virility discussion, where most of the Latin efforts centered on the chastity and virtue of the Roman beauty; they wouldn't even name her as a fellatrice. The Romans refused to even NAME their adversary.

Odd, he observed, you spell THAT word with a 'u!'

He decided to call it an evening. The Romans were a peculiar lot, and the bellicose nature of ALL their colonies could hardly be a coincidence.

Causa Sine Qua Non;

The Cliff's Notes edition was green, not the traditional yellow, but helpful; no more so than the run of the mill, but certainly no less. He regretted that he did not have a learning disability; if he DID, these nuggets of knowledge would not be so easily obtained, and he would be less inclined to forget them. He started taking notes.

The mode of citations among the ecclesiastical scholars was interesting - they all agreed to memorize the Torah, and after that, your specialty was the extra stuff you knew. Jesus and his gang (ecclesia, not militia) had quite a repertoire. It was interesting that they borrowed the Greek club name, but neglected the greatest Governmental invention ever - they must have thought the the natural extremes of Monarchy offer better odds on a long shot than the more moderate Democratic gamble.

In order not to embarrass the Priests, people didn't specify a citation exactly, but rather stipulated "...it is written." After you translate from Hebrew into Greek (Aramaic dialect - they used Coinae for legal stuff,)from Aramaic to Coinae, Coinae to Latin, and Latin to English, it was hard to find the citation from the reference section. He found several "study" editions that had citations in them. Thompson's chain didn't do citations much, but had Mr. Thompson's scripture chains in numbers in the study section. Charlie made a note to try and buy one with wide blank margins for his own notes, good citations and a complete concordance in the back. An exhaustive one was impossible, but if you represented each word once (after throwing out all the thees, thous, ands, if, buts and intos Etc,) it was adequate... as long as you knew ALL the words in the verse you were trying to find.

Charlie branched out. Gideon's was a translation authorized in violation of the Pope by King James I of England. To his surprise this was not the one trying to get a divorce - that was King Henry the Eighth, but James was the guilty party. He dated it to 1604, the early 1600's but academically speaking already the 17th Century. King James failed to predict the future and make it come true BOTH, just like Greek Cassandra, and skipped the CRUCIAL Academic step of translating into Latin first. His pragmatism was well rewarded, and the Authorized Edition is more reprinted than any other.... he did a quick computation in his head and balked at his estimate. What were they doing... eating the things? Oh yes... they burned a bunch in Russia, and had to import all knew copies.

Other translations attempt to use recent jargon and colloquialisms to better catch the meanings of the original. As he delved more deeply into what is called "textual criticism," (that branch of science where Scholars and Archeologists try to certify the authenticity of The Ovid, The Textus Receptus, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Aesop's Fables and similar old texts,) he discovered that before Gutenberg, the job of Scribe was a profession just like Doctor or Lawyer. Their qualifications included taking inventory of the number of lines, the number of words, letters in columns and rows, and finally a count of some kind on the diagonal. In this regard, the Library on the Banks of the Dead Sea was remarkable in one thing - it had ONLY ONE TEXT, but (colloquially speaking) Millions of them!

Figures... paper has ALWAYS been the biggest expense of printing.

Argumentum ad baculum;

Charlie came back from an extended lunch of Taco Bell and lemonade refills. He had used the time to reflect upon his progress, and decided to skip to the back of the book and read the ending.

The details of the trial were illuminating. For one thing, there was less than $20 at issue - the only technicality he could have asked for was that it was a capital offense. It was kind of cool where he told an open mic to China that Pilot himself thought HE was the king of the Jews. Other than that, he DEFINITELY needed the Benefit of Counsel. The benefit of the doubt might have helped too, but then presumption of innocence was only as Roman as "I cannot prove a negative." That's probably why they wouldn't rubber stamp his execution. Good execution though - screw-ups were apparently commonplace, and they had to break their legs to get them to die before sundown. The Hollywood documentary on his passions might be instructive; might be some nudity too, he reflected - Gandhi had been a real disappointment in THAT regard.

Argumentum ad consequentiam;

Charlie had free time on his hands, so he took himself down to the library where it was cool and quiet. His trusty Gideon's was in his hand, and he was borderline happy.

Jesus' Will was complicated, and certainly not traditional - for example, it included itinerary not just for him, but all his Campaign supporters as well. In fact if it was not all helpfully collected together in a chapter, it would have been confusing. It was sad that he was such an unsuccessful Politician - his agenda might truly have helped matters. It was weak on economics, but then can anyone lured into Iure actually BE a good economist? This Jesus character seemed to be running for the Ecclesiastical Principality of Messiah. The Chair of the board of Messiahs got to tell the Jews what to do nationally, and didn't have to roll the Urim and Thumim dice. These appeared to have gone missing with the Ark of the Covenant (according to a commentary on the commentary,) and the Jewish Mafia didn't want ANYONE screwing up their gig. He was scared of the Romans too, but this cowardice was apparently for some other reason than death - he refused the Royal Kingdom in favor of Royal Priesthood. It is instructive to know that Geeks employ the electronic philosophy of Phreqs to a social application instead. Jesus' Geek credentials were not obvious, but his observation at the end of Mt 5 (47th sentence,) was curious - Charlie had seen this too. He decided that he would take special notes next time he attended the ecumenical club.