Normal II

We're Not Gonna Take It

Hey hung up old Mr. Normal

Don't try to gain my trust!

'Cause you ain't gonna follow me any of those ways

Although you think you must

Is it Normal to accept no error?

Normal describes a group (a distribution) where the Mean is equal to the Median. If  everyone agrees, then the Mean will equal the Median. But normal is NOT limited to a Variance of  zero. A uniform normal distribution is the most stable distribution, and it has a Variance of one, not zero. (An aside. The big push for resiliency is because the push for just efficiency, making the Variance zero, is not always wise.  I apologize for linking to myself,  but this is what  I mean by efficiency vs. resiliency. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/01/resiliency.html)

If the Variance is zero, then everyone agrees. If the Variance is 1, then most people are not 100%, the same, but people are allowed to be different than the Mean. In a normal distribution, 68% of the observations are within one Standard Deviation of the mean.

If you want to approach the absolute,  then you want to make the Standard Deviation (the square root of the Variance) as small as possible. That is what science is all about. You make lots of observations with a decreasing  Standard Deviation until you approach the absolute. The gold standard in most science is 3 Sigma, 3 Standard Deviations, 99.7%. In particle physics, e.g. the weight of an electron, it is 5 Sigma, 99.99994%.

But once you have established an absolute, then there is by definition no error, and the Variance is zero. But you DON’T start by assuming that the Variance is zero. Error is the Standard Deviation divided by the square root of sample size. If you wish to reduce error, then you don’t automatically assume that the Variance is 0, instead you increase the sample size ( the size of the group). Once you are absolutely correct, the sample size will be irrelevant, the Variance will be zero, and increasing the size of the group won’t change that result. But if there is the possibility that you are wrong, then the way to reduce error, approach an absolute, is to increase the sample size of the group.

It is abnormal to say that the Variance IS zero. If things are normal, then the Variance might be greater than 0 and you better increase the group size if you want to reduce error.

Once upon a time, there was no separation between natural (science) and spiritual philosophy. The separation appears to have been a mistake.  Science can inform the spiritual and vice versa.

Deviation

 

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot 'em anymore
That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel I'm knockin' on heaven's door

Who is knockin’ on heaven’s door?

One day three men die and go to heaven.  “Religion?" God's secretary asked the first man. "Jewish," the man replied. "Okay, go to room 23, but be very quiet when you go past room 8," the secretary said. "Religion?" he asked the second man. "Muslim." "Go to room 10, but be very quiet when you go past room 8." "Religion?" he asked the third man. "Agnostic." "Go to room 71, but be very quiet when you go past room 8." "Why must I be quiet when I go past room 8?" the man asked. The secretary replied, "Oh, the Catholics are in room 8, and they think that they are they only ones here."

I heard this joke from a Catholic Priest.  It pokes fun at the conceit that only Catholics can go to heaven.  There is nothing in the Catholic faith that teaches this. To enter heaven, a good relationship with God is required.  God is an absolute and without error.  So to be close to God is to reduce error. 

What does mathematics teach us about error.  Error is defined as the square root of the variance divided by the square root of the sample size.  If you wish to have no error, then you can either set the variance to zero or increase the sample size.  Since error probably exists in each member of the sample, an error in one direction will be canceled out by an error  in the other direction.  The larger the sample, the more likely will be this cancellation.

Unfortunately some people think that the way only way  eliminate  error is to set the  variance to zero.  The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.  If the variance is zero then, by definition, the deviation also has to be zero.  So in an attempt to be closer to God, some people will allow no deviation.  If there is  no variance, then you aren’t  just closer, you are identical to God.  Thus accepting no variance is the height of hubris and is in fact the belief that you are God.  Isn’t that what we are taught is  why Satan was cast out of heaven.  Rather than a belief that no deviation is the only way to get into heaven, allowing no deviation seems to be the way to get cast out of heaven. Or to put it another way, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Gun Control

 

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Happiness is a warm gun (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, momma (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)

Maybe we shouldn’t be so happy.

It is once again time for the National Rifle Association, NRA, to offer thoughts and prayers and to remind everyone that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Don’t tell them that it is people with guns that are killing people. They will point to the gun ownership rate in Switzerland which is comparable to the gun ownership rate in the United States and say that since murder rates are so much higher in the United States than in Switzerland, they will tell you that mental illness, unlocked doors, unarmed victims, or some other nonsense must be the cause. What they won’t tell you is why gun ownership in Switzerland is so high.

Every Swiss citizen is part of the army, i.e. the state’s militia. They are first conscripted into active duty and after honorable service are discharged with their rifle. That service rifle is to be used in the event that the militia, and remember they are still part of the militia, ever requires their service. Their gun is supposed to be only used in service of the state’s militia. It is not a weapon to be used against other citizens. If you are discharged from the militia, say because you are mentally unstable, then you do not have a gun. In the United States we still have state's militia. A state’s militia is just now known as its National Guard.

The full text of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, which the NRA loves to hide behind, is “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ( emphasis added). The late Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat Justice Neil ”Not Merrick Garland” Gorsuch now fills, wrote the majority opinion in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller. In that opinion, he invented a right to self defense UNRELATED TO MEMERSHIP IN A MILITIA to justify the opinion that, even non-militia members should be able to own guns. Justice Scalia was supposedly an originalist. Uh, that is NOT what the original text says. If you are not a member of the militia then you have no right to bear arms. Unless the militia has said that it will require its members to provide their own guns, it does not appear that the Second Amendment protects even gun ownership by militia members. I do not believe that Salvador Ramos, the shooter in Uvalde; Payton S. Gendron, the shooter in Buffalo; Stephen Paddock, the shooter at the Las Vegas Music Festival; Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook; Nikolas Cruz, the shooter at Stoneman Douglas High School; or ANY of the shooters in the tragic mass shootings were members of a state’s militia. Even if the Constitution did somehow protect gun ownership unrelated to a militia, which again is NOT in the text, only if you are stupid or a liar would say that those shootings were in self defense. It is up to the voting public to decide whether the NRA and its supporters are stupid or liars. Remember when you vote.

Gravity II

 

Little Green Apples

God didn't make little green apples
And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
And there's no such thing as Doctor Seuss
Or Disneyland, and Mother Goose, no nursery rhyme.

What does a falling apple tell us about gravity?

Space-time tells mass-energy how to move. Mass-energy tells space-time how to curve. If space‑time did not curve, then we would live in a Euclidean world. In most applications, the curvature is so small that we tend to approximate spacetime as flat, i.e. our approximate Frame of Reference is Euclidean. But the curvature is there nonetheless, which makes the absolute Frame of Reference non-Euclidean.

If space-time is curved, then the question is that curvature positive, i.e. spherical, or negative, i.e. hyperbolic. If the curvature is positive and the radius of the sphere is exceptionally large compared to a typical distance, then space-time can be treated as virtually flat. If the curvature is negative, its radius is NOT a factor.

Mass-energy should move along the shortest path in space-time. That is what Newton’s First Law says: “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”  The shortest path in in the same direction in spacetime is the hypotenuse between two points, i.e. a geodesic. If space‑time is curved hyperbolically, and the curve of space-time determines the geodesic over which mass-energy will move, then gravity is an apparent force, like Centrifugal Force or the Coriolis Force. If there are two objects, then the geodesic between those two objects is the distance in space-time between those two objects. If spacetime is curved, then the object with less mass‑energy will move towards the object with more mass‑energy. Thus what we interpret as gravity, is because we interpret that movement as Euclidean and it is really an apparent force if spacetime has a hyperbolic curvature. If two objects have exactly the same mass-energy, if both objects are not moving, then they should  NOT move towards each other.[1]

Consider Newton’s apocryphal apple falling from a tree. How might that be interpreted in hyperbolic, non-Euclidean space-time? In Euclidean space-time, the apple moves from the tree to the surface of the Earth. It would keep moving towards the center of the Earth, but the Pauli Exclusion principle, that two objects can not occupy the same space at the same time, says it can not pass through the surface of the Earth. In non-Euclidean space-time, the apple and the Earth are both moving,  e.g. the Earth is moving around the Sun, etc. It is just that both are moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Thus to an observer in our Euclidean frame of reference on the Earth, it only appears that the apple is not moving before it falls. Since the apple is much smaller than the earth, it should fall towards the earth. The path that it follows is the geodesic in space‑time. What appears to be an attraction between the two objects is merely the smaller object moving according to the curvature of space-time.

The difference between a Euclidean geodesic and a non-Euclidean, hyperbolic, geodesic is that the hyperbolic, non-Euclidean, geodesic will follow an exponential formula. In my field of Travel Demand Forecasting, trips are distributed according to the “Gravity” Model. It was called this because the impedance between the production of a trip and the attraction of a trip seemed to follow Newton’s Law of Gravity. A. G. Wilson later showed that this is because the trips actually randomly followed an  exponential function that looked like the gravity function. I was working at the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization when I presented this ( I am amazed now that I was not thrown out for being particularly nerdy) and my favorite comment was by a manager who said that he had a tough time believing that people made trips like apples, but he had no problem believing that people made trips randomly. It appears that even Newton’s apples don’t behave like apples, but instead follow a similar exponential function. If gravity is an apparent force, then trying to find a Quantum Theory of Gravity may make no more sense than trying to find a Quantum Theory of Centrifugal Force. Gravity as a force may not fit into a Unified Field Theory because Gravity is not a real force, it is only an a apparent force.

---

[1] Assuming those objects both have the same charge, etc. If they have opposite electrical charges, then the electromagnetic force will attract them, which IS an application of a force.

Love of Country

 

Tobacco Road

Bring that dynamite and a crane
Blow it up, start all over again.
Build a town, be proud to show.
Give the name Tobacco Road.

Could you blow up your home?

Once upon a time the phrase yelled at protesters was “My Country, Right or Wrong” . Their response to that was “My Country, Right or Wrong.  If it’s Right, Keep it Right. If it’s Wrong, Make it Right.”

The cry now seems to be “My Country is Wrong. Let’s tear it down and start all over again”.  What is left unsaid is what is wrong, and who gets to decide how it is run when it starts over.    The sense of dread, self-hate, and despair about the state of our country seems to be the major commonality of those perpetrating  mass, including school, shootings. Who do you think loves, is proud of, their county? The person who tries to make it right? or the person who tries to tear it down?

Women Leaders

 

Luck Be A Lady

Luck let a gentleman see
How nice a dame you can be
I know the way you've treated other guys you've been with
Luck, be a lady with me

Luck may be a lady, but ladies do not depend on luck.

Bosses are rewarded when they are effective. Effectiveness is determined on results.  Those results may be random, i.e. based on luck, or they can be because of a strategy  that was followed.  If it is random, then there is a difference between how men and women are rewarded and treated  in the workforce.  A man is not always blamed when he is unlucky, the random outcome was less than effective.  A woman is disproportionately blamed and punished if she was unlucky. Thus if the results are positive, and the question is whether those results were due to luck or strategy, it is more likely that the results were due to luck when those results were  by a man.

Stated another way, if rewards are given to those who innovate, and risk is to be minimized when innovating, it is more likely that the risk has been minimized by a woman..  With a man it is more likely that the results are due to random events, luck, as opposed to innovations or some other strategy.

If you are trying to minimize risk, then this is more likely when a woman is in charge.  This is not just conjecture.  It is based on research.  https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2018.1039.  For more on the subject, listen to the interview at https://www.npr.org/2022/05/24/1101064874/why-women-make-great-bosses

 

Democracy

 

PSALM 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Shouldn’t our Sovereign be a Good Shepherd?

Sovereigns have subjects. As we learned in grade school, in a sentence there is always a subject, an object, and a verb. If the verb is to serve and the subject is the people, then the sovereign is the object.  Notice the people are NOT the object. The sovereign is NOT served by his subjects, the sovereign SERVES his subjects. That is the definition of a good sovereign. He is a good shepherd.

Throughout much of history, bad sovereigns have tended to forget this. The drafters of the US Constitution wanted to eliminate any possible confusion. The Sovereign of the United States IS the People. Thus the statements, the People serve the People, and the People are served by the People, are both true and there should be no confusion over the role.

There is however a problem when an individual thinks that the President is the Sovereign. He is expressly NOT. The President serves as the elected executive of the Sovereign, but he is not the Sovereign. The President’s power is constrained by the Constitution. The power of the Sovereign is divided among three co-equal branches of government. There are checks and balances among these three branches to control this power.

Thus the United States is much more than a democracy. In a democracy the people elect their Sovereign. In the United States, the People ARE the Sovereign.

Inflation VI

 

Lucky

I’d rather be lucky than good,
Tough than pretty,
Rockin' in the country than rolling in the city.
Spend my life rolling them dice,
Instead living like everybody says I should.
I’d rather be lucky, rather be lucky than good.

But what about governments?

Inflation is suggested to have two components: 1) currency inflation and 2) buyer-seller inflation. Currency inflation seems to be long term and is controlled by the central bank which manages the currency of c county ( in the case of the US, its Federal Reserve Bank). Buyer-seller inflation includes a range of factors, such as: changes in preferences; changes in the cost of production; changes in buyers disposable income; natural or man-made disasters, etc. Only some of these factors are controllable by the government. Some costs of production by sellers may be governed by the interest rate charged by the central bank. Some costs of purchasing/borrowing by buyers may be governed by the interest rate charged by the central bank. However other factors are beyond the control of any government and include changes in the cost of production related to changes in the costs of raw materials, changes in the cost of production due to natural or man-made disasters,  changes in consumer preference, or technological changes affecting either the producer/seller or the consumer/ buyer.

It is reasonable  to expect the government to control currency inflation. It is reasonable  to expect the government to control the cost of borrowing by sellers or buyers. It is NOT reasonable to expect the government to control the weather, any natural or man-made disaster, or  changes in preference or  technology.

The impact of currency inflation can be dramatic. Weimar Germany in the 1930s, Hungary in the 1940s, or Venezuela in the 2020s are vivid examples of what happens when the government produces currency without regard to the actual usage of that currency. In the United States, since the early 1900s, the long-term currency impacts appear to be stable except during economic crashes, when the US currency was on the gold standard, e.g. was a commodity currency; the 1930s when the US currency was no longer on the gold standard, e.g. was a fiat currency; 1944 when the US currency convertible into gold was made the international trading currency; and 1971 when the US currency was no longer convertible into gold in international trading.

When the currency effects are removed, it appears to show only buyer‑seller inflation which seems to be short-term in its effects. As noted, the government has limited ability to impact buyer‑seller inflation.  To expect otherwise is to expect a government to be not only correct but lucky. Anticipating truly random events such as international wars, supply chain disruptions, pandemics, hurricanes, droughts, etc.,  is a hope that those events are predictable when typically they are not. “I‘d rather be lucky than good” may work for sporting events, but it is not an acceptable national policy. Our national government should be good, not lucky.

Experts

 

I Am The Walrus

 

Expert, texpert choking smokers

Don't you think the joker laughs at you (Ho ho ho, hee hee hee, hah hah hah)
See how they smile like pigs in a sty

See how they snide

I'm crying

What is an expert?

Expert witness have been very much in the news  in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. Having been an expert witness myself a few times, it worked out well once and worked out, IMHO, poorly four other times. Given that I have a pathological aversion to judging or being judged, it was probably inevitable that I had bad experiences. I find it cathartic to blog about my experiences.

A trial is supposed to be about determining the truth. An expert witness is supposed to elaborate on the truth. But how does one become an expert? And if there are experts on each side, and one side is not telling the truth, how do you tell if an expert is telling the truth?

I naively felt that each expert should speak the truth and the court would decide what is the truth. As I said that was naïve. The court does not have expertise on many matters. It instead looks at the credentials of those who are being presented as experts. That was my first experience. The case concerned the use of a computer program, which I had written. The first expert, who I believed had misused my program, testified. When I was on the stand, I was not asked about my program. I was asked if I was a registered Professional Engineer or if I had any other credentials. I did not, and I was dismissed from the stand before I had a chance to discuss my program. I took immediate steps to get a license as a PE. I was eligible to get a license, I just had naively thought the truth was more important than any credentials.

The second court case, (actually a city council meeting)  is where I was prepared to testify when the client came out stating that the matter had been already settled and no testimony was necessary. In this case the truth took a back seat to a back-room deal.

The fifth time as an expert witness ( the fourth time was the one that went well), ironically where the opposing expert was the very one from my first court case a decade earlier. In reviewing his report, I pointed out to my client’s legal team that a fundamental math error had been made. On cross examination of that expert, my client’s lawyer asked him about this. Because of this error the judge struck his testimony and his report from the trial record,  and I did not testify because there was no longer anything to refute. I did get the feeling of Karma in seeing his report and testimony dismissed, but the truth again took a back seat to credentials.

The final time I was an expert witness, I had what I thought was a professional  disagreement with the opposing expert. I was first on the stand and the opposing expert was second. During her cross examination not only was what I thought was an inconsistency pointed out, but her ethics and motives in making her assumptions were questioned. I was so shaken I wrote to the “opposing” expert to apologize.

Experts are not there to present the truth. Their reputations and credentials will be judged to determine whether they are telling the truth. Their motives, which are IMHO irrelevant to the truth, i.e. the facts, will be questioned. It is just as the humorist Carl Sandburg put it” “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you., argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” A plague on both your houses.

 

Birthday

 Won't You Be My Neighbor

Won't you please, won't you please?

Please, won't you be my neighbor?

Thank you Mister Rogers

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was also the 143rd day of the year.  Mr. Rogers used to say that 143 was code for I love you, because the number of letters in each word in that phase was 1-4-3.  I only learned that yesterday.  143 to you to too, Mr. Rogers and to all of you..

Differences are Normal

 

I’m The Only One

But I'm the only one
Who'll walk across the fire for you
And I'm the only one
Who'll drown in my desire for you
It's only fear that makes you run
The demons that you're hiding from
When all your promises are gone
I'm the only one

You may be the only one, but no man is an island.

Arguably much of today's turmoil is caused by a misunderstanding of the relationship between the individual, the group, and the absolute. While I am not a certified statistician, statistics does offer some insights to help enlighten this issue.

Man is a sexual, social animal. The Group that is Man requires new Individuals to replenish the Group when an Individual dies. Man as Individual and Man as a Group seeks a relationship with an Absolute. If something is an Absolute, e.g. God, then it has no error. Statistics says that the Standard Error is the square root of the Variance divided by the square root of the sample size. An Individual has a sample size of 1. Thus an Individual can not have zero error unless his Variance is also zero. A group can approach zero error with a nonzero Variance, if the sample size, the size of the group, is increased. A uniform normal distribution is considered to be one where the Variance is 1. Thus a normal group can have virtually no error if the size of the group is large enough. Its error can not ever be equal to zero, but its error can approach zero.

The problem is that individuals try to approach the absolute. They can only appear to do that if their variance is zero. However that is not true of a group. To be normal, the variance should be one. If the variance is one and the sample group size is 100,000 then the Standard Error is only .001 which is almost zero. The problem is that a nonzero Variance requires that every value is NOT equal, even if those values are part of the same distribution, group.

In addition to not being normal, (a  statistical term not an ethical term), if a variance is zero on one issue, then it is unlikely to be zero for every issue. While Evangelical Christians and Catholics may agree on Abortion, they tend to disagree on the infallibility of the Pope. So how can an individual approach the absolute and still be a member of a group whose variance is not one. Einstein elaborated  on an answer to this in his General Theory of Relativity. It is possible to have an absolute i.e. the speed of light, and your relationship to that absolute depends on your frame of reference. Your weight, length, time all vary based on your speed in your frame of reference relative to the absolute that is the speed of light.

Humorists have long tried to tell us that reducing error in approaching the absolute does not mean that only one frame of reference is correct. In Gulliver’s Travel Jonathon Swift describes a silly difference, over whether you should break the eggs at the Big End or the Little End that led to deaths, war, and rebellion. Mark Twain said that “Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.

An individual man can approach the absolute, but a group of men can also approach that same absolute from a different frame of reference. A group should not expect its variance to ever be zero. In fact if it is normal, then it should have a variance of one.

Thus an individual should not expect a healthy group to have a variance of zero. The fact that individuals require different sexes to reproduce does not mean that an individual can not contribute to a group if that individual does not reproduce. Your sexual preference does govern your ability to reproduce, but your ability to reproduce is not the only way in which you can contribute to a group. A variance of one is normal. The willingness and ability to reproduce should be part of that variance.

Justice II

 

If I Had a Hammer

I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between
My brothers and my sisters
All over this land.

Justice Thomas apparently  doesn’t know it is the Hammer of Justice.

Do we need any more proof that Justice Clarence ”Long Dong Silver” Thomas is the most dangerous man in the United States of America? Admittedly Justice Samuel “ Strip Search Sammy” Alito is giving him a run for the money, but Justice Thomas wins by a nose. The purpose of any trial is to establish the Truth. If the Truth is that there is evidence of innocence, then that is the Truth. In trials for capital crimes, there should be more care that the Truth has been discovered given that execution is not reversible. If the Truth is later found that an executed individual was innocent, there is no opportunity for a Mulligan on that wrongful execution.

Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the Supreme Court case of Shinn v. Ramirez. In that opinion he stated that the court ”may not conduct an evidentiary hearing or otherwise consider evidence beyond the state-court record based on the ineffective assistance of state postconviction counsel.”  The court was NOT being asked to rule on evidence. SCOTUS was only asked if the defendant received his constitutionally required representation to discover the Truth, which may not have been part of the state-court record. Justice Thomas is apparently uninterested in the Truth, as he has shown in previous dissents, majority opinions, etc. The Supreme Court does not exist to protect the State, as Justice Thomas seems to suggest. It exist to protect the constitutional rights of individuals from excesses of the State.

The Supreme Court has become political because Justices such as Justice Thomas have made it political. He has  no respect for the Truth, only respect for the State. The call is coming from inside the building. Danger. Warning. Justice Thomas is NOT interested in wielding the Hammer of Justice.

Corporations

 

People

A feeling deep in your soul
Says you were half now you're whole
No more hunger and thirst
But first be a person who needs people
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world

Are Corporations people?

The SCOTUS, in Citizens United v. FEC opined that corporations are people and thus have the right of free speech.  I do not agree with SCOTUS in that case.  Corporations are NOT people.  The Constitution says that the people are enumerated in the decennial census. That census does not list corporations.  Yes, corporations are groups of people, and people have free speech.  But corporations are legally a special group of people.  If a group is liable for an action, then every member of that group is liable. If you are driving the car in a bank robbery and one of your gang kills a bystander during the robbery, then you are guilty of murder even if you never held the murder weapon.  However if the corporation  is sued for a wrong doing, your assets as a owner of that corporation are protected.   Only those assets that you have legally transferred to the corporation ( i.e. the corporation’s assets) are subject to liability.

The question is thus whether you can transfer the right of speech to a corporation.  If you can not transfer it, then a corporation, even though it is a group that includes you, can not own it.  Freedom of speech is an absolute.  Like life and liberty, it either exists or does not exist.  It can not be subdivided.  You can not give your life to a corporation. (You can give your life FOR a corporation, but it is still your life. You can not give your life TO a corporation.)  You can not give your liberty to a corporation.  You can not give your freedom of  speech to a corporation.  A corporation can not exercise what it does not have.  It thus has no freedom of speech, even though its shareholders have freedom of speech.

You dissolve a corporation, you do not execute a corporation.  You penalize/fine a corporation, you do not jail a corporation. There are no corporations on death row in Texas.  This is because while shareholders of corporations are people, society has decided in law that corporations are NOT people. Corporations can NOT both have special protections and absolute rights. You can not have your cake and eat it too!

Republicans VI

 

Back in Time

So take me away, I don't mind
But you'd better promise me, I'll be back in time
Gotta get back in time

Get back, get back
(Get back Marty!)

Marty McFly was right. I don’t think we are ready for this.

Single-ballot plurality-rule elections structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party such as that of the United States, according to Duverger’s Law. Throughout most of US history, there have been two parties.

The constitution did NOT envision the formation of political parties,  But from the beginning there were effectively two parties: the Federalists and the Democrat-Republicans. This led to the crisis after the election of 1800, when the Vice President, who was supposed to be the second-place finisher in the vote for President and the President and his intended Vice President, were both from the same party (Democrat-Republican) and thus received the same number of electoral votes. This ultimately led to the 12^th Amendment.

After the election of Andrew Jackson,  disaffected conservative Democrat-Republicans joined with  conservative Federalists to form the Whigs. This was the conservative party from 1830 to 1852. The problem is that while there were two political parties, there were more than two pollical beliefs:  Conservative Pro-Slavery; Conservative Anti-Slavery; Liberal Anti-Slavery and Liberal Pro-Slavery. The current Republican Party was formed not as a conservative party but as an anti‑slavery party. It included not only conservatives who believed in Government but also Know Nothings who did not believe in the expansion of slavery and Whigs who did not believe in government regulation.

While the Republican party was more conservative than the Democratic Party, it has had its own divisions. Grover Cleveland was elected president because of the divisions between the corrupt nominee James Blaine supported by the Republican Stalwarts and the anti-corruption Mugwumps. The split between the traditional Republicans backing William Howard Taft and the Progressive Republicans backing Teddy Roosevelt led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

The corruption of James Blaine and the segregation of Andrew Jackson has been combined in today's Donald Trump. Conservative, non-segregationist Republicans may split and form a new party as in 1830 or may serve to usher in only a Democrat Party rule. While examining history can be instructive, the future has yet to be written.

Closets

 

I’ve Had the Time of My Life

'Cause I've had the time of my life
And I've searched though every open door
'Til I found the truth
And I owe it all to you...

 “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”, but nobody should put anyone in a closet/corner.

People choose a cloistered life willingly because they want to have the time to contemplate and “see the world spinning round.”  This is their choice. And because it is their choice, they do have the time to contemplate, and society is often the better for their contemplation, when it is shared with society

The cloistered life is not dissimilar from a closeted life. However, people do not willing chose to enter the closet. They are closeted because society will not accept them as they are. They do not have time to contemplate.  Instead they have to expend time to cover up the reason that society put them in the closet.  The time that they could have spent contemplating  is lost to society.

How many "Eureka" moments has society missed because the time that could have been spent  contemplating was spent closeting. You can’t find the truth until you open every door.

The Republican Party

 

(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) Houseparty

They're dancing on the ceiling, they're dancing on the floor
People everywhere coming through the door
They know there's a party going on
Through the dance and romance all night long

Has the Republican (house) Party gotten out of control?

Nancy Pelosi has said that the Republican Party is needed for the good of the Nation. By that I assume that she means the party of Everett Dirksen, Gerald Ford, John McCain, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George Romney, etc and not the party of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, among many others including he who shall not be named.

Speaker Pelosi means the party of limited government, not the party of no government. She means the party of careful reflection before action, not the party that acts first and gets itself in trouble. The party that acts for the country, and not for themselves. I miss them too! Where did it all go wrong?

People might point to the election of Donald Trump. Others might point to the rise of the Tea Party. Others might point to the Supreme Court’s decision on Florida in 2000. I would like to suggest that it happened when Gorge H. W. Bush accepted the nomination as the Vice President of Ronald Reagan. Somehow a Faustian bargain was struck and the branch of the party that mocked voodoo economics and supply side tax cuts, embraced those positions in order to achieve power.

A candidate who was divorced, and from Hollywood became the darling of evangelicals  (and if you believe that they share the same sexual beliefs, then I have some ocean front property in Kansas I would like to sell you).   A first lady, whose beliefs in astrology and the occult that would have gotten her burned at the stake as a witch in years past, became beloved by evangelicals  A president who was a former union leader  (of the Screen Actors Guild), and beloved by the union members, broke unions. A president who is beloved by the lower and middle class promoted a tax code that has benefited primarily the rich. If he had been opposed by the moderates in the Republican Party, he might never have been elected.

The consequences have been the immediate elevation of Justice Thomas, and the eventual nominations of Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Would we have had either the Iraq War, the Capitol Riot, vaccine and climate (not to mention science in general) deniers, if the Republican Party had not sold its soul. But the genie is out of the bottle and the Republican Party we need may be nowhere to be found. It may be time to shut down the Party.

Catholicism

 

Old Time Religion

Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
Give me that old-time religion
It's good enough for me.

Can a Catholic be a US Constitutional officer?

I am a non-practicing Catholic. I graduated from both a Catholic Grade and High School. It was only after my eldest son nearly failed a required Theology course at Boston College, for daring to question Catholic beliefs, that I stopped practicing. It did not help that my parish church had been a previous posting of Father James Porter, the first Catholic priest in Massachusetts to be convicted of  child molestation. I had even previously been a CCD, "Sunday School" teacher in my parish. My High School was run by the CSC, the same order that runs Notre Dame, the University where Justice Barrett taught and graduated from law school. Boston College is of course run by Jesuits, and the Jesuits also run Holy Cross, the college from which Justice Thomas graduated. Justice Alito is of course a Catholic, as is Justice Kavanaugh. My fear is that the draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion will be characterized as a Catholic opinion.

While I was in grade school, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, was campaigning for President. He attended a Southern Baptist convention where he had to explain that his beliefs as a Catholic would not prevent him from exercising his Constitutional duties as President. Fast forward over 60 years and Catholic President Biden is being chastised by some Catholic Bishops for exercising his Constitutional responsibilities as President over his Catholic beliefs. Uh, guys, you can’t have it both ways. Are some Catholic Bishops now saying that a Catholic can not be President?

It is a Catholic belief that life begins at conception. It is not a Constitutional belief. The Constitution protects persons, including viable fetuses. It does not appear to protect non-viable fetuses, who are not considered the People by the Constitution (e.g. they are not counted as the People in the Constitutionally required Decennial Census).  As a Catholic, I can resent that the draft SCOTUS position on abortion is being characterized as a Catholic opinion. The SCOTUS was asked to render a Constitutional opinion, not a Catholic opinion.

Filibuster V

 

 

Happiness Is

Happiness is finding a pencil.
Pizza with sausage.
Telling the time.
Happiness is learning to whistle.
Tying your shoe for the very first time.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Senator Ted Cruz tried to dis former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki by calling her Peppermint Patty. It did not work because Ms. Psaki was flattered and liked Peppermint Patty. But it did point out that right-wing "Republicans" apparently read Peanuts.

I would like to make a point on the filibuster using Peanuts, the comic strip by the late, great Charles Schultz. Every fall, Charlie Brown tried to kick a football held by Lucy, only to land on his back when Lucy yanks the ball away at the last second. Charlie Brown keeps playing, and Lucy keeps frustrating him. It is a two player game.  Does anyone seriously expect Linus, or Rerun, or Sally, or Schroder, or Jackson .... or even Peppermint  Patty ....to yank the football away. ( Snoopy might… but only to be funny). 

The point is that there are different outcomes and strategies for a two-player game than for a multi-player game.  If Senator Chuck “Charlie Brown” Schumer wants to play with Senator Mitch “Lucy Van Pelt” McConnell and try to pass a bill, i.e. kick a football, then the result is that the bill is filibustered, i.e. the ball is yanked away. This is because it is a two-player, Democrat vs. Republican, game. It was never supposed to be like this. There are 100 Senators, not 2 Senators. The problem is that if Republican Senators don’t vote with him, Senator McConnell and his Party will retaliate against those Republican Senators. Because of that threat, it reverts to a two-player game. However if votes to end the filibuster are secret, he does not have enough information to retaliate. If Senator Schumer plays secretly with, e.g. Senator Romney, perhaps he will get a chance to kick the ball.

And that's the way it could be Charlie Brown.

Normal

It Had To Be You

Some others I've seen might never be mean
Might never be cross or try to be boss,
But they wouldn't do.
For nobody else gave me a thrill.
With all your faults, I love you still,
It had to be you, wonderful you,
It had to be you.

So what does the Mean have to be for things to be “normal”.

Nerd alert. 

If there is an absolute truth, then the number of samples can be as small as one and you should still  find the same value, i.e. truth. The Standard Error is defined as the square root of the Variance divided by the square root of the sample size. Thus if the value is an absolute, and there is no error, then the Variance must also be zero.

Scientists try to reduce error and establish absolute values. In doing so they are reducing the Variance of those observations of the absolute. If the Variance is one billionth of a percent then, this is not zero, but it is very, very close to zero. The Standard Deviation is the square root of the Variance. If the Variance is one-billionth, then the Standard Deviation is 32 one-millionth of a percent. 

While reducing the Standard Error also means reducing the Variance and the Standard Deviation, knowing the upper bound of the Standard Deviation can also give the upper bound of the Skew of the distribution. If you know the Standard Deviation, then you know what percentage of the values that fall within multiples of that Standard Deviation. For example, in a normal distribution, 68.27 % of the values fall within one Standard Deviation from the Mean; 95.45% of the values fall within 2 Standard Deviations from the Mean; 99.73% fall within 3 Standard Deviations from the Mean. The Three Sigma (three Standard Deviations), rule is generally sufficient in the physical sciences. In particle physics, the standard is Five Sigma  (99.99994%). 

This rule requires that a distribution be somewhat normal. While the usual intent is to lower the variance, given a Mean and the requirement that the minimum value of a distribution is zero, it is possible to estimate the required Standard Deviation. If 99.7% of the values fall within 3 Standard Deviations of the Mean, and the minimum value must be zero, then the Standard Deviation must be approximately the Mean divided by three. The are several distributions that are somewhat normal but allow for a non-zero skew.    

A common one is the exponentially modified Gaussian (normal) distribution. In probability theory, an exponentially modified Gaussian distribution describes the sum of independent normal and exponential random variables. It will not allow any non-zero values. An exponentially modified Gaussian distribution will have a skew between 0.0 ( closest to a pure normal distribution) and 0.31 (closest to a pure exponential distribution). In an exponentially modified Gaussian distribution, the mean will always be greater than the median, but the closer the mean is to the median, the smaller the skew. Given a maximum Skew of 0.31, Pearson’s Second Coefficient of the Skew, and a Standard Deviation of Mean/3, then the Median must be greater than 0.897 times the Mean, which is equivalent to saying that Mean must be less than 1.15 times the Median in order for this to be an exponentially modified Gaussian (normal) distribution. 

As noted above, normal distributions follow the 68/95/99.7 rule.  That is 68% of the values are in the range Mean ± 1 Standard Deviation;  95% of the values are in the range Mean ± 2 Standard Deviations; and 99.7 % of the values are in the range Mean ± 3 Standard Deviations.  As noted above, in particle physics the standard is  99.99994% of the values are in the range Mean ± 5 Standard Deviations.  By making the Standard Deviation as small as possible the range of possible values becomes the Mean.  In normal distributions, the Mean is equal to the Median.  In slightly Skewed “normal” distributions, the 68/95/99.7 rule this means that 100% is approximately equal to 99.7%. This means that 100% is in the range Mean ± 3 Standard Deviations and 50% is in the range 0 to the Median. This means that a distribution is "normal" if (Mean- 3 * Standard Deviations)/2 = Median.  The Standard Deviation must be 1.5 divided by the Median multiplied by the Mean . If the ratio of the Mean to the Median exceeds 1.5, then the underlying distribution can not be “normal”.  A distribution can be made up of several “normal” distributions, but it might itself not be "normal".

Critical Race Theory IV

 

I Won’t Grow Up

If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up....Not me
Not I
Not me (not me)

We should want our children to know that it will NEVER be beneath their dignity to climb a tree.

I know that I will vote against Article 20 at the Mansfield Town Meeting on May 17^th, 2020. That article is “To see if the Town will vote to prohibit public K-12 schools in the Town of Mansfield from teaching, instructing or training students to adopt or believe, or causing anyone else to teach, instruct or train any students to adopt or believe, certain DIVISIVE CONCEPTS, regarding race or sex.”   Is it necessary to explain what these DIVISIVE CONCEPTS are?

In trying to understand this article I found not only Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s speech   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLWo8B1R0MY but the latest episode of This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/605/kid-logic.

Senator McMorrow said that supporting the rights of marginalized people does not mean that you are yourself a marginalized person. Characterizing those that oppose you as being groomers threatening children is vile, hateful, and untrue.

This American Life, which shall forever be immortalized by the line in The O.C, the teenage Prime Time Soap Opera on Fox,  as “the show where hipster know-it-alls talk about how fascinating ordinary persons are” presented an episode on how Kid Logic is different than Grown Up Logic. I will never forget the face of my college  roommate Keith when he found out the phase he learned as a child, “It’s a doggie dog world”, was actually “It is a dog eat dog world.”

When I was in college the phrase “My Country, Right or Wrong” was claimed to mean that you love your country. The best response to that is that the full phrase should be “My County Right or Wrong. If it is Right, keep it Right. If it is Wrong, make it Right.”  That is loving your county. Teaching children that you country  was never wrong is a DIVISIVE CONCEPT. You should know that you can climb a tree and still grow up.

Boldness vs. Caution

 

My Back Pages

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Why are the young bold, when they should be cautious?

When you are six years old,  the time from one birthday to the next seems like forever.  It is 1/6 of your life.  When you are 70 years old, the time from one birthday to the next is an eyeblink.  It is 1/70 of your life.  The same effect in the reverse may be why the young are bold when they should be cautious, and why the old are cautious when they should be bold.

If life expectancy is 90 years old, when you are 20 years old, then each event in the future is only 1/70 of your life.  When you are 70 years old, each event in the future is only 1/20 of your life.  It becomes even more problematic when this is rounded to two decimals places. 1/70 is .0142571, which rounds to .01.  1/20 is .05, which rounds to .05.

Mastery of a subject is suppose to take 10,000 hours.  Most twenty-somethings can not be expected to have mastered any subject.  A seventy year old most probably has mastered at least one subject.

The risk of an action is the consequences of that action multiplied by its likelihood.  The consequences should be the same for both the 70-year old and the 20-year old.  If the mastery is not considered, but the life expectancy is considered, then the risk of the 20-year old is 1/5 the risk of a 70-year old.  The problem is that likelihood should be unrelated to how many time you play the game, i.e. your remaining life expectancy.  The likelihood without mastery, should be the same for young and old.  But mastery should be greater for old than young, which means that the likelihood and thus the risk, should be lower for the old than for the young.   The young may be bolder, but they should be even more cautious than the old.

The value of the future should be unrelated to your age.  But if you ignore any future that occurs after you have died, even if your group endures, you are not valuing any future events as being real. 

If the risks taken  when an individual is young are greater than the risks that same person takes when they are old, that might indicate that person only has an individual perspective, and does not have a group perspective. In those cases, youth is wasted on the young.