Born to do Math 135 - Woe to the Math Man (1)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner
September 8, 2019
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are writing a book now. Why? What makes this different than in the past?
Rick Rosner: The deal is, if I do not write something or a paid guild writing job in the next year, I am going to lose health insurance and will have to retire and then go on retirement guild health insurance. I don't want to do that.
Because you take a financial hit in retiring so early. Besides, I am not fucking retired because I am still doing stuff. I have something decent, which should sell. I haven't had my hopes dashed yet. The novel begins a year or two from now and then covers the next 15 or so years.
There is a reason for 15 years. I will not disclose this here. I won't really disclose many of the specifics about the novel because that would wreck the fun of it. I don't want to give everything away. I will talk about the issues involved with writing about the immediate future.
One thing is probably now more than ever before. It matters who wins the next presidential election because the character of the country will be extremely dependent on whether we have got that motherfucker in office for the next four years or if we have a democrat.
Also, whether the democrats take back the Senate too, because, at this point, the Republicans are the worst major U.S. political party since, at least, the Gilded Age. They are super corrupt. It is a fantastic period.
By fantastic, I do not mean great. I mean almost unimaginable previously to all this shit happening in a period in American history. It is crazy how shitty things are. The time period I am covering in my novel, what happens or what I can talk about, and what I have to dance around, a lot of it depends on the election of 2020.
That's one thing that has to be addressed or danced around. Probably, the biggest movie that looks at the near future, the period that I am talking about, of the past 2 to 4 years is Her with Scarlett Johannson and Joaquin Phoenix.
It is very careful to keep its scope limited. Ex Machina is another movie probably set in the near future. It is even more limited taking place in a house with an opening scene in an office. It could be 2 or 3 or more years from now.
But there are no clues because it is just in a house. But Her goes out and is filmed in Singapore, which has futuristic architecture. Everyone wears futuristic clothing, high-waisted pants. But not everything is overall too different.
I haven't taken a census of the relative number of books from different periods to the near, medium, to the far future. But I think writing about the future depends on the nature of the book. A book set 5 years from now about 3 sisters and their relationship.
You can make it seem like it is set in the future by making it seem like the sisters have a few devices, and taking forms of transportation that are now available. If you keep the focus on how people are affected by modern technology, any author is going to have to dance around the not being able to get the specifics of the future right.
We know the stars of 2032. You can do jokey references to Madonna trying to be sexy 8 years from now, when she is 68. It is a tough thing because the specifics are important in the near future. They come out of the present in which we live.
If you write about 800 years from now, you can put Ryan Gosling in it. You could say this with helps of advanced medical technology. But most aspects of 2350 will not have much of a relationship to the cultural ephemera of now.
Although, it is a mistake that sloppy science fiction writers make, trying to build bridges between now and 800 years from now by having characters interested in shit from now. One character will say, "Have you ever seen Pulp Fiction?" It is like, "Fuck no!" Nobody cares about that stuff.
It is like asking about The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is fucking forever ago and apparently a good novel. So, the farther future has fewer issues of cultural ephemera. One is cultural ephemera as an issue and then carrying it into the future.
[End of recorded material]Rick Rosner: The deal is, if I do not write something or a paid guild writing job in the next year, I am going to lose health insurance and will have to retire and then go on retirement guild health insurance. I don't want to do that.
Because you take a financial hit in retiring so early. Besides, I am not fucking retired because I am still doing stuff. I have something decent, which should sell. I haven't had my hopes dashed yet. The novel begins a year or two from now and then covers the next 15 or so years.
There is a reason for 15 years. I will not disclose this here. I won't really disclose many of the specifics about the novel because that would wreck the fun of it. I don't want to give everything away. I will talk about the issues involved with writing about the immediate future.
One thing is probably now more than ever before. It matters who wins the next presidential election because the character of the country will be extremely dependent on whether we have got that motherfucker in office for the next four years or if we have a democrat.
Also, whether the democrats take back the Senate too, because, at this point, the Republicans are the worst major U.S. political party since, at least, the Gilded Age. They are super corrupt. It is a fantastic period.
By fantastic, I do not mean great. I mean almost unimaginable previously to all this shit happening in a period in American history. It is crazy how shitty things are. The time period I am covering in my novel, what happens or what I can talk about, and what I have to dance around, a lot of it depends on the election of 2020.
That's one thing that has to be addressed or danced around. Probably, the biggest movie that looks at the near future, the period that I am talking about, of the past 2 to 4 years is Her with Scarlett Johannson and Joaquin Phoenix.
It is very careful to keep its scope limited. Ex Machina is another movie probably set in the near future. It is even more limited taking place in a house with an opening scene in an office. It could be 2 or 3 or more years from now.
But there are no clues because it is just in a house. But Her goes out and is filmed in Singapore, which has futuristic architecture. Everyone wears futuristic clothing, high-waisted pants. But not everything is overall too different.
I haven't taken a census of the relative number of books from different periods to the near, medium, to the far future. But I think writing about the future depends on the nature of the book. A book set 5 years from now about 3 sisters and their relationship.
You can make it seem like it is set in the future by making it seem like the sisters have a few devices, and taking forms of transportation that are now available. If you keep the focus on how people are affected by modern technology, any author is going to have to dance around the not being able to get the specifics of the future right.
We know the stars of 2032. You can do jokey references to Madonna trying to be sexy 8 years from now, when she is 68. It is a tough thing because the specifics are important in the near future. They come out of the present in which we live.
If you write about 800 years from now, you can put Ryan Gosling in it. You could say this with helps of advanced medical technology. But most aspects of 2350 will not have much of a relationship to the cultural ephemera of now.
Although, it is a mistake that sloppy science fiction writers make, trying to build bridges between now and 800 years from now by having characters interested in shit from now. One character will say, "Have you ever seen Pulp Fiction?" It is like, "Fuck no!" Nobody cares about that stuff.
It is like asking about The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is fucking forever ago and apparently a good novel. So, the farther future has fewer issues of cultural ephemera. One is cultural ephemera as an issue and then carrying it into the future.
Authors[1]
American Television Writer
(Updated July 25, 2019)
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America's, North America's, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main "Genius" listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the "World’s Smartest Man." The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named "Best Bouncer" in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com
(Updated September 28, 2016)
Scott Douglas Jacobsen founded In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com.
Endnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
License and Copyright
License
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Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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