Tiresias: Does Tiresias name drop?

My friends,

There is this English Club man Tiresias knows of. He belongs to the right clubs and moves in the right circles of London. He has the right name. His name is Peregrine St John- Smythe (in the best English method of confusing those not in the know, pronounced “Synjin-Smyth”. One day he was at a luncheon, at his club, talking to fellow clubmen, and talking a lot. As usual, St John-Smythe recounting his recent social encounters, as he always did, and just continuously name dropping. Utterly fed up, his friend could stand it no longer and cuttingly interrupted.

“Synjin-Smythe” he said. “You are the worst name dropper I have ever met.”

Unperturbed, and quick as a flash, St John Smith replied,

"Yes, the Queen says that too.”

Now, Tiresias doesn't want to be accused of being a namedropper, but would like to recount an experience which may be of some interest to his friends and fellow shareholders in Optiscan. The publication of a recent paper, posted on HotCopper, published by Cambridge University Press; “Fluorescence In-Vivo Endomicroscopy:”, by Rangrez et al, reminded Tiresias of his meetings with the inventor of the original confocal microscope, Marvin Minsky. Marvin was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), from 1958 to his death at 88, in 2016. Marvin Minsky is considered one of the fathers of machine learning artificial intelligence. Tiresias had read much of Minsky’s work, and in fact at one stage himself dabbled in programming neural networks. As is the nature of the Universe which even Tiresias cannot fully fathom, it happened, that one day at a wedding in Boston Massachusetts, Tiresias and Marvin met; Tiresias from the Australian groom’s side, and Marvin from the American bride’s side. And they talked. And they talked of many things. They talked of AI, psychology, mathematics, and microscopes and much more besides. Tiresias and his goodwife were invited to have tea at Marvin's house at Brookline. This was a week after the wedding.

Tiresias, Marvin, and their spouses had a very stimulating afternoon, in the Minsky’s garden over tea and cookies. Tiresias and Marvin discussed of many more things of mutual interest. It was one of the most memorable and stimulating encounters that Tiresias has had in his life. Tiresias was a shareholder even way back then. He did discuss OIL with Marvin, though it would have been declassee to talk of shares and prices at such an encounter. Of some interest to my friends would be what happened next. As Tiresias has mentioned this afternoon tea took place a week after their first meeting at the wedding. Tiresias and his goodwife had spent the intervening period, as guests, on Chappaquiddick and Martha’s Vineyard. Yes, that Chappaquiddick and of the famous Bridge and Mary Jo Kopechne fame. Yes, that bridge, from which Tiresias just looked at the current beneath, and pondered what effect it had on the history of the United States and the world. He also told Marvin and Gloria, and how their hosts had told them, to be careful of walking into the woods as there were many deer ticks about and they carried Lyme disease. His hosts also told them, to make sure, at bedtime when to check himself for any attached ticks over the entire skin. Tiresias confesses that he politely listened, didn’t do the necessary check on those evenings. Then, on about day three, he felt and intense itch on his left thigh. He started to scratch it and then examined it and found that there was a tick firmly attached. He stripped down and had his good wife examine him. There were three more ticks on various parts of his body. Unperturbed, he asked his hosts what to do. Being Americans, they were alarmed and distressed. Deer tick tweezers were promptly produced, and the ticks were removed. They advised that Tiresias should immediately start a course of antibiotics to prevent Lyme disease. Tiresias, knowing of Lyme disease, was not concerned, and planned to prescribe himself some tetracyclines when he returned to Australia.

Tiresias recounted the story to Marvin and Gloria Minsky. Tiresias did not know that Gloria was a medical doctor, a paediatrician in fact. She was flabbergasted and immediately insisted that Tiresias start tetracyclines forthwith. She wrote out a prescription for tetracyclines, commanded Marvin to take Tiresias, with the prescription to the nearest drugstore for Tiresias to get the medicine. We of course complied. On the way to the drug store, Marvin assured Tiresias not to worry, Gloria loves the drama, and it is best to just go along. Tiresias duly completed the month’s course of tetracyclines and thus far shows no signs of Lyme disease.

If you check up on Marvin, he has since passed. He is truly one of the fathers of artificial intelligence and the father of confocal microscopy, and the basis on which Optiscan’s confocal laser endomicroscope is based and is now set to revolutionise cancer surgery and cancer screening.

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe in Karma?

A seer does.