Hello, children!

As you know from reading here, President Obama wants the United States to return to promoting science and technology to the nation’s youth. Ideally, if influential people could describe how and why science, technology, engineering, and mathematics has enabled them to achieve fame, we could put America back on track.

The Mandarin is honored to do just this. As you know, without science, I would be unable to understand how polarized vectorometry can change the weather on a global level. After all, what better way to confound the climatologists by alternatively raising and lowering global temperatures every 7.3 years?

But simply knowing how neutronic physics can affect adiabatic lapse rate transitions is not enough. It takes serious technology to perform the billions of calculations necessary each second to track, identify, isolate, and affect the water vapor in the air! I had to study computer technology quite heavily since the 1950s just to get my orbital weather weapon platforms to network without producing a “Finder can’t find the Finder” error on bootup.

And keep in mind the extensive engineering required! You can’t simply get day laborers to build a fleet of space weapons on time or on budget, nor can you expect small golden tamarinds to do the heavy lifting using mind power alone. Engineering is applied math: some days you have to roll up your billowing sleeves, get in there, and micromesh the quantum fusion inter-relays yourself.

And that leads us to math. As your Mandarin, I use math every day. Sometimes it’s simple math, like calculating the elliptical area of probable destruction from an orbiting weapon, and on other days, I’m calculating a five-dimensional manifold matrix to analyze how Kaluza-Klein tunnels enable me to read the minds of your mommies and daddies while they sleep and reprogram their brains. That’s part of the fun in math, in that you never know what you’ll need that day!

So take it from me: if it wasn’t for science, technology, engineering, and math, I’d be just another shiftless layabout around the Castle like ‘Puter. So stay in school, and learn your numbers, because you would much rather be my servants than my subjects, if you know what I mean. See you in your dreams tonight!

The Mandarin

The Mandarin, whose real name is 吏恆, joined the order in 1309, and introduced the Gormogons into England during the 18th Century.

The Mandarin enjoys spending time with his pet manticore, Βάρἰκος, or Barry (who can be found in the Bestiary). When not in the Castle…well, frankly, nobody is quite sure where he goes.

The Mandarin popularized the fine art of “gut booting,” by which he delivers a powerful kick to the stomach of anyone that annoys him. Although nearly universal today, the act of gut booting or threatening someone or something with a gut boot is solely due to him.