Fraters Libertas

Cipherin'

Another word that I have now grown tired of hearing bandied about in the Miers nomination debate is cipher. Miers is frequently labeled as a cipher because so little is really known about her and her views. The Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia defines cipher as:

1. The mathematical symbol (0) denoting absence of quantity; zero.
2. An Arabic numeral or figure; a number.
3. One having no influence or value; a nonentity.
4. a. A cryptographic system in which units of plain text of regular length,usually letters, are arbitrarily transposed or substituted according to a predetermined code.
b. The key to such a system.
c. A message written or transmitted in such a system.
5. A design combining or interweaving letters or initials; a monogram.

Whenever I hear the word I can't help but think of a movie that we watched in grade school. Even though it was only twenty-one minutes long, it left an impact on my young, impressionable mind. It was the bleak and disturbing tale of a boy who dropped dead at his bus stop one day, allegedly because no cared about him.

The movie, called Cipher in the Snow, was produced in 1973 by the Church of Latter-Day Saints and is described thusly:

When a teenage boy dies unexpectedly, his math teacher is asked to notify his parents and write his obituary. Although he was the boy's favorite teacher, he hardly knew him. Shy and ostracized, the boy was a "cipher"--an unknown number in a class roll book. As the teacher unravels the mystery of what led to the boy's death, he commits himself to not letting others suffer the same fate.

It's based on a real life story by Jean Mizer, who seemed to have an axe to grind with the educational establishment of his day. Why we watched it in grade school was not clear to me at the time. I guess they wanted to show us what could happen if we weren't nice to other kids. Don't tease Charlie, he might end up keeled over in a snow bank someday.

All I know is that it freaked me out back then and it's the first thing that comes to mind today when I come across the word cipher. Let's hope that Harriet Miers' fate is a better one than Cliff Evans'.