August 24, 2009
Monday Poem
… the “Law of Frequency of Error” … reigns amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, the greater the anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason.
......................................................................... --Victorian statistician Francis Galton
The Frequency of Error
The frequency of error
is not a count of radio waves
or of an articulation of sound
radiating from me to you
through space with
ample atmosphere
The frequency of error
is the number of times,
in the fog of Me,
I’ve stumbled into doors
and bashed my head
on low-hanging branches
of the tree-of-knowledge-
of-good-and-evil
yet against all odds
have lived to tell the tale
The frequency of error
is not a dulcet wave
but a mob of mad particles
which routs the better angels of my nature
hammering them with crude clubs
made by my own hand
in fits of.id
by Jim Culleny; August 2009
Posted by Jim Culleny at 12:10 AM | Permalink
Comments
Excellent poem, I really like the text, great picture of life at certain periods (lets hope not all of them), the frequency is high my friend, it needs to lower the pitch. The frequency of uncertainty, of unknown, of unexpected things from the world is much lower than the frequency of errors going on in our own brains.
Posted by: marianasoffer | Aug 24, 2009 3:37:01 AM
Do you think Galton would (after we explained what an id is -always fun to explain that one to a Victorian statistician) see the final lines of the poem as a case of "regression to the mean"?
Good one Jim. Excellent? Probably.
Posted by: Pete Chapman | Aug 24, 2009 9:45:55 AM
Lovely! Thanks.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Aug 24, 2009 11:20:51 AM
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