Political Socialists?

 

Dazed and Confused

I've been dazed and confused for so long it's not true
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you
Sweet little woman, say what you will
Tongue wag so much when you end up in hell

When you call someone a socialist in a political campaign, are you confused?

Communism, socialism, or capitalism are descriptions of economic beliefs, not political beliefs.  A political belief is between various forms of democracy and authoritarianism.  If group, political, decisions are made by everyone, such as at a New England Town Meeting, then this is the purest form of a democracy.  If the people elect representatives to act for them, such as at a representative New England Town meeting, or most government legislatures, this is called a republic.  If the leader of the group makes decisions for everyone in that group, it is called authoritarianism.  That leader may be installed after a physical battle, or by electors, as in the Holy Roman Empire.  If the leader’s heirs are the children and other relatives of the leader, this is called a dynastic monarchy.  The leader of the group may be an individual or a party, for example the National Socialist Party, Nazis, or the Communist Party of China.

Economic beliefs concern who controls the production of goods in an economy.  The production of goods requires capital, priced raw materials, unpriced raw materials, and labor. It results in the production of goods for sale.  If the goods, and their production, are unregulated by the group, it is often called pure capitalism.  If the unpriced raw materials controlled by the group are corruptly awarded to specific producers, it might be called crony capitalism.  If the final products, or their production, are regulated by the group, such as: controls on the contents of the good; controls on the labor used, e.g. minimum wage, overtime, etc.; or controls on the use of unpriced public goods, e.g., air or water pollution controls, fishing quotas, etc. it is called regulated capitalism.  If some, but not all, e.g. steel but not shoes, of the products, or the components used to make a product, belong to the group then it is it a socialist economic system.  If all of the products, and components of their production, are owned by the group, then it is a communist economic system.  You can have a communist party in a democracy, e.g. the Communist Party of Italy, or the communist party can rule as authoritarians, e.g.  the Communist Party of North Korea.  Calling someone a communist or a socialist provides no indication of their political beliefs. They can be democrats, with a lower case “d”, or authoritarians. You don’t say that someone follows the Tampa Bay Lightning football team.  That is confusing sports teams.  Saying that  someone is a socialist in a political campaign is just as confusing.

Third Parties

 

It Takes Two

One can have a dream, baby
Two can make that dream so real
One can talk about being in love
Two can see how it really feels

Maybe it takes three.

The United States has three parties. What’s that you say? You understand that there are Democrat and Republican parties, but what is that third party? The US Constitution and the voters in the United States are that third party. Often in what appears to be a two-player game, like a baseball game, a football game, a chess match, or elections, there is an implicit third party. A professional  baseball game happens because there is Major League Baseball to administer the rules of the game and provide the umpires. Similarly professional American football games happen because there is a National Football League, college games happen because there is a National College Athletic Association, chess matches are sanctioned by the Chess Federation, etc. Even though there are only two political parties, they vie for elections under the US Constitution, etc. These third parties may have no stake in the outcome of those two-player contests, but they are important because they are the administrators of the rules for those contests and want to ensure the success and continuation of those two-player contests.

According to games theory, there are different strategies for winning a two-player game, than a three or more-player game. In a three-player game, not only individual behavior, but also behavior that continues the games and benefits the group is rewarded. In a two-player game, only individual behavior is rewarded, not the continuation of the game or the benefit of the group. I have argued that two-player games are only an illusion. There are only two players if there is no group that administers the rules of the game. If that third party is doing its job correctly, it should not even be noticed, but it is still there. Acting as if there are only two parties may be why we have a problem. In a two-player game, there is no incentive for the players to abide by the rules of the game. Winning is the only thing, even if you cheat to win. But it is winning for the group, not winning for the individual, that matters in the long run. It takes three, not two.

 

Resilency II

 

Be Prepared

I know it sounds sordid
But you'll be rewarded
When at last I am given my dues
And injustice deliciously squared
Be prepared!

It is smart to be prepared!

A hundred year flood does NOT mean that a flood will only occur every hundred years.  It means that there is a one in one hundred chance of experiencing that flood each year.  Every flood is independent of each prior flood.  A flood does not know that you just had a hundred year flood and it shouldn’t flood you for another hundred years. That is not how probability works.  Each event may be, and probably is, independent from previous events. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwLEVQGbrM

Knowing that  sh*t will hit the fan, means that you better have a plan for when the sh*t hits the fan, which better NOT be that the sh*t will never hit my fan.  That is why good engineering balances efficiency with resiliency.  It does NOT try to increase efficiency by decreasing resiliency.  Resiliency is figuring how likely it is that the sh*t will it the fan, what are the consequences when the sh*t hits the fan, and what to do when the sh*t hits the fan.  Counting on the sh* t never hitting my fan and maximizing my system might make for have an efficient system, but it will not make for a very resilient system.

When you board an elevator there is typically a weight limit posted.  It does not mean that if you exceed that weight limit by one ounce, then the elevator will fail.  That limit lets you know that you are experiencing an unacceptable risk if you exceed that amount.  This might be called a safety margin, a design standard, or…. resiliency.

In queuing there is an amount where the queue starts rapidity going to infinity.  This generally happens if the arrival volume exceeds 80% percent of the service volume, capacity.  If you exceed this point, then if the system fails, you will have an extraordinary problem recovering from that failure. In traffic engineering this point is typically Level of Service “C” or “D”.  In rail operations it is called a parametric capacity, which is also about 80% of the physical capacity.  It might seem very efficient to be at 100% of capacity, but that is NOT a very good idea.  That is why there are guardrails, design standards, safety systems, etc., so that you don’t sacrifice efficiency for resiliency. That is also why well engineered systems have redundancy, so that when one item fails, another item can pick up the load.  It is also why females have two mammary glands even though when they only have one offspring.  Nature is resilient, not just efficient. Let’s learn from nature.

Thinking about sh*t hitting the fan is not very pleasant. Why do you think that insurance companies have cute mascots like geckos, emus, Snoopy or ducks. My favorite is the AFLAC Duck getting confused by Yogi Berra. “When you’re hurt and miss work, it doesn’t hurt to miss work”,  “Huh?”  Don’t be confused yourself.  Efficiency at the expense of resiliency is bad.

Messages

 

Razzle Dazzle

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give 'em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather 'em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?

Don’t be fooled by the Razzle Dazzle.

The medium is NOT the message, no matter what Marshall McLuhan might have said.  Yes, Nixon was sweating during the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates, but his appearance is not why he lost.  Barry Goldwater might not have been as crazy as the infamous mushroom cloud and the little girl picking daisies TV commercial made him appear, but that was not why he lost.  The message is the message.  The rest is Razzle Dazzle.  Ronald Reagan might have said he paid for this microphone, but that microphone wasn't Reagan’s. It was a Bob Molloy microphone. "One of the many," says Molloy, who had been doing sound and video contracting for New Hampshire events since 1976. https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2015-12-05/meet-the-microphone-ronald-reagan-paid-for-at-the-famous-debate-in-nashua.

That Ronald Reagan bent the truth, gave us the Razzle Dazzle, should not be a surprise.  He started in show business by creating play-by-play accounts of baseball games using only basic descriptions that the station that employed him received by wire as the games were in progress. He appeared in movies and TV, make believe, long before he entered politics.  He was a union leader and pretended to be a friend of the unions, before he broke the union of air traffic controllers.  He embraced what was called “voodoo” economics by his rivals, particularly George H.W. Bush, who then sold his soul by becoming his vice president.  The Reagan Tax Cuts and “Reaganomics” were the beginning of a long con that saw a decline in the growth of the US economy and a shift of wealth and income to the very rich.   The only two countries that saw a marked increase in the inequality of income over this period are the US and the UK which also embraced “supply side” economics under Margaret Thatcher.  At least the British appear to have reversed that trend in the 1990s.  The US  shows no sign of abating.

The long con has been aided by inflation.  When inflation is not considered it appears, according to Census reports, that the mode, most common, income has been increasing or stable.  Stated in 2019 US Dollars, and considering inflation, the mode of income has been decreasing.  It is long past time to separate the Razzle Dazzle from the message.

History

 

I’ve Got You Under My Skin

For the sake of havin' you near
In spite of a warnin' voice that comes in the night
And repeats, repeats in my ear,
Don't you know, you fool, you never can win?
Use your mentality, wake up to reality.

Is history a warning voice that repeats?

The caning of Charles Sumner, or the Brooks–Sumner Affair, occurred on May 22, 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. The attack was in retaliation for a speech given by Sumner two days earlier in which he fiercely criticized slaveholders, including South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, a relative of Brooks. The beating nearly killed Sumner and contributed significantly to the country's polarization over the issue of slavery. It has been considered symbolic of the "breakdown of reasoned discourse" and the use of violence that eventually led to the Civil War.

Although Sumner was unable to return to the Senate until December of 1859, the Massachusetts legislature refused to replace him, leaving his empty desk in the Senate as a public reminder of the attack.            
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner

The Senate is the “World Greatest Deliberative Body” is it not?  By the way, I just checked.  The Sumner tunnel under Boston Harbor to Logan Airport is not named after Charles Sumner

Following the declaration of secession by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, its authorities demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, Major Robert Anderson of the U.S. Army surreptitiously moved his small command from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress built on an island controlling the entrance of Charleston Harbor. An attempt by U.S. President James Buchanan to reinforce and resupply Anderson using the unarmed merchant ship Star of the West failed when it was fired upon by shore batteries on January 9, 1861. The ship was hit three times, which caused no major damage but nonetheless kept the supplies from reaching Anderson. South Carolina authorities then seized all Federal property in the Charleston area except for Fort Sumter.

During the early months of 1861, the situation around Fort Sumter increasingly began to resemble a siege. In March, Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, the first general officer of the newly formed Confederate States Army, was placed in command of Confederate forces in Charleston. Beauregard energetically directed the strengthening of batteries around Charleston harbor aimed at Fort Sumter. Conditions in the fort deteriorated due to shortages of men, food, and supplies as the Union soldiers rushed to complete the installation of additional guns.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

Let’s stop the nonsense that the Civil War was fought over state rights or was a War of Northern Aggression.  The debate was over the expansion of slavery into federal territories, not  the ending of slavery. This why Bloody Kansas, which at that time was a federal territory not yet a state, earned its name.  The Southern States started the aggression, not the North. That the South ultimately lost the aggression does not change that fact. Note in the article that the President was James Buchanan not Abraham Lincoln.  It was the election of Abraham Lincoln as President that prompted the formation of the Confederacy. 

Violence in the Capitol?  Election deniers?  Polarization? What state does Lindsey Graham represent? Mark Twain was right.  History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sovereigns IV

 

You’ll Be Back

You'll be back like before
I will fight the fight and win the war
For your love, for your praise
And I'll love you till my dying days
When you're gone, I'll go mad
So don't throw away this thing we had
'Cause when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

We WON'T be back.

When King George III sings the above in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, he is speaking as the sovereign of the colonies in America, whose people were revolting to eventually become their own sovereign as enshrined in the US Constitution. The role of a sovereign is to serve their subjects, NOT to rule their subjects.

Sovereigns are often chosen by dominance, which is why we have coups, revolutions, wars, etc. When sovereigns are chosen by succession, they are heirs of the previous sovereign. If that sovereign has no heir, then war can result when the sovereign dies, e.g., the War of Spanish Succession; the War of Austrian Succession; the Carlist Wars, etc. It is also why when there is a coup or revolution it often involves the death of the old sovereign and their heirs, e.g., the deaths of the Romanovs during the Russian Revolution, the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, to ensure that old sovereign can not return.

To promote peace and to ensure that the sovereign is a servant, not a ruler, of their subjects, the US Constitution took great pains to make it clear that the sovereign IS the People. Constitutional officers serve their subjects, they do NOT rule their subjects. Persons who confuse the fact that the People are the sovereign and Constitutional officers are merely servants of the sovereign, and are not the sovereign, are wrong and are to be pitied. The United States has chosen the path of peace. We WON'T be back.

Diversity

 

Seventy Six Trombones

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand
They were followed by rows and rows

Of the finest virtuosos

The cream of ev'ry famous band
Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds
Springing up like weeds
There were horns of ev'ry shape and kind

IOW, that parade is NOT just trombones

Typical is NOT a synonym for normal.  In statistics, typical is the mode, the most common value of a distribution.  It is not the ONLY value in a distribution.  A normal distribution is one where the skew is close to zero and we don’t always expect the mean to be equal to the median.  Why then would we expect the mode to be equal to the mean.

A parade of only trombones would be silly.  An orchestra of only one type of instrument would NOT be an orchestra.  A string quartet consists of violins, violas, and cellos.  A barbershop quartet consists of baritone, bass and tenor voices singing in harmony. Diversity in music is why there is harmony.  In life, diversity is a good thing as well. If diversity is harmony then the opposite of diversity must be discord.

Changes

 

For What It’s Worth

There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?

Isn’t it worth figuring what is happening?

When something is happening, it is generally obvious.  In the world of data analysis, pattern recognition, this is called a discontinuity, a phase change, etc.  Often when plotted as a curve, the data will display a “Hockey Stick” shape, so much that I was tempted to use lyrics with H-E- Double Hockey Sticks to begin the post.  The heel of that hockey stick most probably represents the beginning of a change from one equilibrium to another. It can be expected that there will be two discontinuities, one at each equilibrium.  Knowing why there is the first discontinuity might provide an understanding of the nature, the what, and where, of that second equilibrium.

A plot of life expectancy shows a hockey stick shape, a discontinuity. The blue bars are the reported life expectancies for various period in history.  The red line is a moving average of those life expectancies.  A discontinuity happened in the 19^th Century, …perhaps modern medicine and sanitation?…which is continuing today.  However at some point this trend will be capped by the life span of a human and what we are seeing is a change from an life expectancy of  ~30 years to one of ~100 years.  Eventually it will be harder and harder to increase life expectancy and the curve will follow another downward facing hockey stick.

Source: analysis of data from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Another famous instance of the Hockey Stick shape may be global temperatures. Beginning at the start of the industrial revolution and its accompanying burning of fossil fuel, this increase will continue until it reaches a new equilibrium.  That equilibrium can include humans that have switched to non-fossil fuels for energy, or it can be without humans and their fossil fuel burning.  The first discontinuity has already happened.  The debate is what and where will be that new equilibrium.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

A third discontinuity  is  consumer prices.  As I have blogged before, https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/01/inflation.html, there was a discontinuity that occurred with the Nixon Shock of 1971. It is when the USD dollar continued to be the major international trading currency, but it was no longer convertible into gold by foreign nations.  It is suggested that this discontinuity has occurred and the new trend will continue until an international trading currency which is separate from any national currency, is adopted. At that point there will be a second discontinuity.

 

Source: https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/01/inflation.html

Theses shapes are most probably the Cumulative Distribution Function of a logistic distribution, where µ is the mean of the distribution,  and note that the median, the  50% percentile value, occurs at this mean, and s is the the scale, an indication of the range over which the change occurs.  The scale is a fixed factor of the variance of the distribution. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_distribution

As shown in that distribution, there will be a second change, discontinuity. Understanding the first can help make decisions about the second.  Stop.  Everybody look what's going down.

Ranked Choice Voting II

 

I’m A Loser

I'm a loser
And I lost someone who's near to me
I'm a loser
And I'm not what I appear to be

Is Sarah Palin, or Donald Trump for that matter,  a Loser?

Sarah Palin lost the Ranked Choice voting for the election of a representative in Alaska. Unsurprisingly, she and many Republicans blamed the state’s ranked choice voting system.  They have characterized it as too complex and unfair.  But it is not so complex that a form of it is used in college sports polling or parimutuel betting systems.  Just because the public changed the system, and you lost, doesn’t mean that the change was unfair.

The first college basketball tipoff is not until two months from now in November. But the preseason polls are already out.  The North Carolina Tarheels are ranked first.  They did not receive a first place vote on every ballot.  But that is not how basketball polls work.  They may work on a points system where a first place on a ballot listing the top 20 teams is worth 20 points, a second place ballot is worth 19 points, etc.  The consensus first place might not be the majority choice for first place, but that is not how these polls work.

In the Kentucky Derby or any pari-mutuel horse race, the first place pay-out is based on the number of people who selected that finisher for first place.  Unless the odds on a horse are lower than 1 to 1, they were not the first choice of the majority of bettors.  The race is not awarded to the consensus of the betting.  The race actually matters! 

Ranked choice voting is not uncommon.  It is how rankings with more than two selections are generally made.  The best restaurant is not the one that receives the most first place votes.  If a restaurant is everyone’s second place restaurant and people are divided on what is their first place restaurant, then that consensus second place is probably the best restaurant. Just because you didn’t want to lose, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t lose. 

 

Voting Rights II

 

How Long ( Has This Been Going On?)

Oh, your friends and their gentle persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
But I can't help but have my suspicions,
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.

How long is too long?

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 established preclearance rules for states, counties, and townships that had in the past acted to restrict voting rights.  If those jurisdictions wished to enact changes in voting procedures, they had to pre-clear those changes with the Federal Government before those new procedures could take effect.  In 2013, the Supreme Court in Shelby vs. Holder held that the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which determines which jurisdictions are covered, is unconstitutional because it is based on an old formula.  They effectively ruled that after nearly fifty years, those mostly southern states who were covered under the VRA have learned their lesson and deserved relief.  It is true that those who enacted and enforced those restrictions were probably no longer in power and proposing new procedures.  But that is besides the point.  The restrictions were government actions, not those of individuals.  States, counties, and townships do not die, even if the individuals in those jurisdictions have died.  No one who is alive today participated in the 1916 Turkish death marches of Armenians.  So obviously Turks and Armenians must have agreed to let bygones be bygones!  The battle of the Boyne happened in 1690, so clearly Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants have gotten over it!

How long should preclearance be required?  To paraphrase Jesus, seven years might seem like a long time, but shouldn’t the standard be seven times seventy.  It is a matter of trust.  Preclearance means that the changes in the voting procedures are not forbidden, they just are not trusted.  When ever I fly, TSA assumes that I am not to be trusted.  They have required that I remove my belt and shoes, subject my carry-ons to x-rays, forbid liquids, etc.  I do not expect those restrictions, which were enacted after September 11th, to be lifted anytime soon.  Why does SCOTUS think that those governments that have demonstrated that they should not be trusted in the past, should be trusted now. A crime is a crime regardless of when it was committed.  Being based on an old formula does not mean that it was not a valid formula at that time.  Bills of attainder are unconstitutional.  You can not make an action that was not a crime at the time, retroactively a crime.  Similarly, you should not be able to make a past action, which was a crime, not a crime.  You can be pardoned, but it was still a crime.  How long?  How about forever. If you asked for preclearance to be eliminated, to me this is pretty convincing proof that your preclearance should NOT be eliminated.

Immigrants

 

I Pity the Poor Immigrant

Whose strength is spent in vain
Whose heaven is like Ironsides
Whose tears are like rain
Who eats but is not satisfied
Who hears but does not see
Who falls in love with wealth itself
And turns his back on me

I am the grandchild of immigrants.

My maternal grandparents were Wojceich Biernacki and Marjanna (Augustyn) Biernacki.  They immigrated from Poland and never learned to speak English.  My paternal grandparents were James Beagan and Margaret (Leonard) Beagan.  My paternal grandfather was born to Irish immigrants in Canada and was, I believe, an illegal immigrant to the US.  My paternal grandmother was born in the United States, but her mother and father were both born in Ireland.  Gaelic was not spoken at home. 

Florida Governor Ronald DeSantis apparently has forgotten that, like everyone in this county, he is a descendant of immigrants. To remind him, all his great grandparents were born in Italy. His maternal great-great grandfather, Salvatore Stori immigrated to the US in 1904.  His great‑great-grandmother, Luigia (Colucci) Stori and their children, his great grandparents, joined her husband in the US in 1917.  They of course were not flown to Martha’s Vineyard, but if they had I am sure that they would have been welcomed and treated kindly.

The Samaritans were the descendants of those Jews who were not taken into captivity in Babylon.  The returnees from the Babylonian Captivity, despised the Samaritans.  While the Samaritans were not immigrants, they were considered inferior to those who had immigrated (even if that immigration was in their eyes a return). The Levite and the priest in the Parable of the Good Samaritan were among those who had returned. From the gospel of Luke:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

The lyrics quoted at the beginning of this post are by the Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan. He also wrote

Well, I'm living' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
Come in, she said
I'll give you shelter from the storm

To the residents of Martha’s Vineyard, thank you for giving those asylum seekers from Venezuela “Shelter from the Storm”.

The Queen

 

God Save The Queen

God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen!
God save the Queen.

Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the Queen!

😢

Humanity is a group, pack, animal.  As such, there has to be a leader, a sovereign, of every group.  In the UK that leader, sovereign, is the Monarch.  In the United States, Donald Trump and Trump-world not withstanding, the sovereign is “We the People”. “We the People” can not die, but a sovereign, as an individual, can die.  As  Americans is it any wonder that we don’t understand why the British are sad? 

Do I think that the British should have dominated the world as they tried?  No, and as an Irish-American I certainly can understand the antipathy in India and other former crown colonies toward the Queen’s passing.  However the Queen as sovereign should not be blamed for the sins of her ancestors and people.  As a sovereign, she always understood that she was an obedient  servant of her people, not their ruler.  Rest In Peace Elizabeth.  God does not have to save this Queen.  She has saved Herself. We, as fellow sovereigns, are very proud of Her.

Gatekeepers

 

Can I Get A Witness

Can I get a witness? I want a witness
Witness, witness, witness, witness
Everybody knows, especially you girls
But love can be sad
But half of a love is twice as bad

But what is an EXPERT witness?

In Law, the Daubert test on expert witnesses is

1. Has the expert's theory ever been tested?
2. Has the expert's theory been reviewed by their peers?
3. Are there standards that control the theory's operation?
4. Does the theory have a known or potential rate of error?
5. Has the scientific community accepted the expert's theory?
6. Have the expert's findings ever been published?

While this works for a long-standing theory, it doesn’t work so well when the theory challenges the accepted scientific wisdom.  If the theory is true, but new, it probably has not yet been tested.  If the theory is new, it probably has not been reviewed by its peers, never mind that those “peers” probably do NOT accept that theory.  The third and fourth standards do speak to the proof of a theory:  What are the controls of the theory; and its rate of error.   The last two standards place an overemphasis on the scientific community which reviews and publishes the theory.

If Daubert had been used to qualify Copernicus or Kepler as an expert witnesses, they would have failed.  Galileo not only was not an expert according to Daubert, but he had to recant his observations on the movements of the moon of Jupiter or be excommunicated, and supposedly uttered under his breath “But yet it moves”.  Truth is the truth, regardless of what the conventional wisdom says. In the past accepted wisdom has been: The world is flat; The earth revolves around the sun; Space is full of luminiferous aether in which light moves; The earth is only 6000 years old, etc.  If Daubert is the Law, then Charles Dicken was right in his novel Oliver Twist. "The law is an ass—an idiot."

Deviation

 

Sticks And Stones

People talking, trying to break us up
Why don't they let us be
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But talk don't bother me

But even if they don’t break any bones, using the right word is better.

Deviation is a loaded word, and its use may do more harm than good.  Some common synonyms for deviation are perversion, anomaly, error, aberration, abnormality.  However, when the term is used in statistics it is not intended as a loaded term. It only means the amount by which a single measurement differs from a fixed value such as the mean.  In less contentious terms this might be  defined as  complexity.  If there was no standard deviation, as used in statistics, only one value would have a probability.  Thus a little complexity might be considered to be a good thing. While something that is very complex, e.g., a Rube Goldberg-ish contraption with unnecessary complexity, might incorrectly imply that a any value is correct.  A standard deviation of 1, in statistics, means that distribution is normal.  If the name is changed from standard deviation to complexity, it might be more easily understood.

The human body is composed of 60% water.  The human body is also complex, it consists of many different cells and organs.  A pail of water is 100% water.  It is not complex. Excluding the pail, it only consists of water.  It would be foolish to say that there is no difference between a human body and a pail of water because complexity, i.e., standard deviation, matters.  It is true in statistics that for a normal distribution if the mean grows, then the complexity also must grow for the distribution to still be normal and the probability at zero to also be zero.  A human body is more complex than a pail of water.  If you look at standard deviation compared to water, there is no standard deviation for the pail of water but there is a standard deviation with respect to water in the human body.  A more palatable term might be complexity, not deviation. Then sticks and stones, and words will not hurt.

Passwords

 

867-5309 / Jenny

Jenny, Jenny, who can I turn to
(Eight six seven five three oh nine)
For the price of a dime I can always turn to you
(Eight six seven five three oh nine) 

Having trouble remembering numbers or passwords? 

I have just been asked to reset my password to a 16-character code, which must change every 60 days! Passwords are getting harder and harder to remember, but being hard to remember is not a new phenomenon. I can readily remember only four phone numbers: 1) my late parent’s home, 2) my land-line phone, 3) my own cell phone, and 4) the Sheraton Reservation number. And the last is only because of the memorable jingle, 8 0 0-3 2 5-3 5 3 5. My parent’s phone, which was the number I grew up with, was WIlliams 1-6928. In the old days, phone numbers had exchanges. PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is a telephone number in New York City, written in the 2L+5N (two letters, five numbers) format that was common from about 1930 into the 1960s. The PEnnsylvania exchange served the area around Penn Station in New York City. 

PEnnsylvania 6‑5000 was the name of a Glen Miller Song, and also the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania which, claimed it to be the oldest continuously used telephone number in New York City.  It was eventually converted to 736. WIlliams 1 eventually became 941. In fact, most land line numbers were converted from telephone exchanges because those exchanges were easier to remember. My home landline has a 339 exchange after the area code, which means that at one time it would have been EDgewood 9. 

I find that rather than series of meaningless numbers, letters, and punctuation marks, a line from a song, a punchline from a joke, etc. makes a better password that I can actually remember. There is a reason that the Hilton number has stuck in my memory for so long because the jingle is an earworm. But my IT mangers need not worry. My new password is not a series of that or 867-5309😁.

Cures

 

Good Lovin’

Honey, please squeeze me tight (squeeze me tight)
Don't you want your baby to be all right? (be all right)
I said baby (baby), "Now it's for sure (it's for sure)
I got the fever, yeah, and you got the cure

Just as long as the cure is not worse than the fever.

I have previously blogged that risk is the product of two things: likelihood and consequences.  The cost of a cure should be less than the cost times the risk of getting the disease. Some anecdotes if I may:

When I was a senior in High School, and I had gym class, I used to store my notebooks and books for my next class in a common area outside of the gym (because they would not fit in my gym locker.)  One day my notebooks and books were not in that common area after gym class. My reaction was, “so it goes”.  In my next class, I got a call to go to the principal’s office.  He had taken my notebooks and books to teach me a lesson that my possessions could be stolen.  I replied that before the Principal did, no one had ever stolen them.  In fact, I now realize that we both saw the likelihood the same, but he valued  the consequences of losing my possession much more than I did.  The cost of learning my lesson was that I did not use the common area any more for gym. An inconvenience, but not a big cost.

Before the Tylenol murders, the likelihood of getting a tainted product was no different than the likelihood after.  But the consequences of getting a tainted product was not acceptable.  Nothing could be done about the consequences, but the risk could be lowered if the likelihood was lowered.  Tamper Proof packing does nothing to change the consequences, but it does decrease the likelihood, which decreases the risk.  The cost of shrink wrapping, and tamper proof caps, is small compared to the consequences.

When the liquid bomber tried to blow up an airplane, I had just traveled by plane the previous week. When I tried to fly home after, TSA confiscated all of the liquids in my carry-on bag.  This confiscation and ban did nothing to change the consequences of a plane explosion, but they reduced the likelihood of the plane explosion.  The cost of confiscating, and banning, my (and other passengers) liquids was considered less than the cost of a plane explosion.

Macros are small pieces of code within computer files.  In most cases they are benign, especially if you wrote them yourself.  But if they are malicious and you did not insert them, then they can have dire consequences.  Microsoft's and my firm’s IT department's solution is not to trust anything on a network because you don’t know where it came from, even if you put it there.  The consequences may be dire but reducing the likelihood also means that the cure is that macros can longer be inserted in network files and files with existing macros are no longer trusted.  IMHO, the cure, which is no more macros, is worse than the risk times the cost of the risk.

Since people get risk confused with likelihood, consequently the costs of the cure and the costs of the disease can also be expected to be confused. And that may be why God allows evil in the world. The cost of eliminating evil may be greater than the cost of the evil, at least that is what the Christian Gospels say.

The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.  But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.  When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

 The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’’

 “An enemy did this’’,  he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’’

 “No’’ he answered, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn”

 

Trinities

 

One Is the Loneliest Number

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one

How about THREE?

Three seems to be a common number.

• There are three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. (Yes there is often a fourth state, plasma, that is defined, but let’s consider plasma to be a special case of matter being completely converted into its component energy.) 

• There are three elemental signs of the zodiac and alchemy: earth, air, and water. (Where the fire signs are proposed to be treated like plasma). 

• Christians worship the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

• Many mythologies include three principal gods, e.g., the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, who respectively governed the sky, sea, and underworld. 

• An English sentence has three essential parts: a subject, an object, and a verb. 

• In physics there are three major classes of subatomic particles; electrons, protons, and neutrons, where protons and neutrons are, in turn, each composed of three quarks.   
  
  
• There are three families of quantum particles: each with their own neutrino; the electron, muon and tau neutrinos. 

• There are three fundamental forces in the Unified Theory of Physics: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.  The Unified Theory is not able to include gravity, but this may be because gravity is an apparent force defined by a Euclidean frame reference and not a fundamental force.

• In engineering, the strongest polygon is a triangle.

• In wood working, the minimum number of legs for a stable stool or table is three.

• Newton proposed three Laws of Motion.

• There are three Laws of Thermodynamics.

• There are three forms of geometry: depending on whether the curvature of a plane is positive, zero, or negative.  The curvature is defined by the sum of the three angles in a triangle, where a sum is greater than 180 degrees (positive curvature, spherical); equal to 180 degrees (zero curvature, flat or Euclidean); or less than 180 degrees (negative curvature, hyperbolic).

• In political science it is common to speak of two parties, but the government is controlled by one of those two parties depending on how well they form a coalition with, are supported by, independents, an unofficial implied third "party".

Three certainly does not sound like a lonely number.

 

Queen Elizabeth II

 

Her Majesty

Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
But she doesn't have a lot to say
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
But she changes from day to day
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot
But I gotta get a belly full of wine
Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl
Someday I'm gonna make her mine, oh yeah
Someday I'm gonna make her mine

Thank you Your Majesty.  Rest In Peace

Great Britain has had three exceptional Queens, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. The late Elizbeth II was such a great sovereign because she thought of herself, not as a ruler, but as a servant of her subjects.  Let us hope that Charles realizes that he is a servant, just same as his mother. The Queen is Dead. Long live the King.

Impulse Control

 

Think

People walking around everyday
Playing games, taking score
Trying to make other people lose their minds
Ah, be careful you don't lose yours, oh

Look before you leap.

In 1992, I was appointed by Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld to be the Director of the Bureau of Transportation Planning and Development of the Massachusetts Highway Department.  Mass Highway is now part of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.  At the time before reorganization, it was only loosely affiliated with the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, EOTC. The Bureau was on “loan” to EOTC.  My secretaries had two phones, one of which they answered, “Mass Highway” and the other of which they answered, “Executive Office of Transportation”.  My superiors were in the Executive Office and not surprisingly were also Republican appointees. To me, conservatives are believers in the republican form of government outlined in the US Constitution, but have differences from liberals in the size and role of that government.  They believe that since power corrupts, the government should be as small as possible.  They also believe in unintended consequences, that haste makes waste, and looking before leaping. Thus, aversion to power and impulse control.

Authoritarians who are rINOs are seekers of power for themselves and have no impulse control.  I have characterized them as lower case "r" because they do NOT believe in the republican form of government defined by the US Constitution and are thus "republicans In Name Only". Because I was appointed by a Republican, was a white male, was a graduate of Ivy League schools, and had a surname that sounded very much like Republican former President Reagan, rINOs assumed that I was one of them. 

I would like to offer an anecdote highlighting the lack of impulse control of one of my rINO superiors.  One of my managers did something to offend my superior.  She (and this is not a gender characterization.  My superior could just as easily been a male and my conclusion would be the same) demanded that the manager be fired.  I pointed out that the manager had Civil Service status, and his Civil Service position actually had a higher salary than his position as a manager.  If he was “fired as a manager’, then he would revert to his Civil Service status and be transferred at higher pay within Mass Highway.  I pointed this out to my superior, and she realized that her impulse to fire would actually benefit her target.  Instead, she directed me to tell that manager that, as punishment, he was NOT going to be fired and he had to keep working at his current position.  I was delighted to convey this Yogi Berra message, “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”.

If this sounds familiar to you, it probably reminds you of Gov. DeSantis and the Florida Republican state legislature cancelling the Reedy Creek Improvement District to punish the Disney Company, only to find out that the state and local governments would then be liable for the bonds issued by the District and for all future costs.  It probably felt good to have the “power” to “punish” Disney, but the impulse came back to bite them.

 

MAGA

 

Tomorrow

The sun'll come out tomorrow
So you gotta hang on 'til tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow
You're always a day away

Let’s stop saying again.

Given the number of attorneys in Trump-world that already have, or soon will, lawyer up, my favorite definition of MAGA is Making Attorneys Get Attorneys.  However, the originators of MAGA have defined the acronym as Make America Great Again.   You can tell if someone is an authoritarian when they don’t think the rules of the group apply to them because they have dominated the group, “Do you know who  I am?”, and also when they overuse the word “Again”.  An authoritarian also does not believe in a future, especially without him, and thus wants you to believes that the past is superior to the future.

The phrase is “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, not “There are NO birds in the bush, so I better protect this bird I have.  And that bird yesterday, now that was a bird:” If the group is growing, then the present has to be greater than the past. But you remember yesterday.  You hope for, have to imagine, the future. 

If the future is equal to zero, then there is no value in the future. The future has to be worth something more than today if you are going to continue.  If things are declining, then the rate of growth is negative, and eventually the future will be zero. The future is always worth the inverse of the growth rate.  For example if the rate of growth is 5%, then the future is worth 1/(100% +5%),  or the future is worth ~.95 of today.  If the past was worth 5% more than today, then you don’t have a growth rate. You have  a decay rate.    Do you want a leader who believes that the past is worth more than the present?  That is what is meant by again.   I prefer to believe in leaders who believe that the sun will come up tomorrow.

Mississippi

 

Here's to the State of Mississippi

Here's to the State of Mississippi
For underneath her borders, the devil draws no lines
If you drag her muddy rivers, nameless bodies you will find
Oh, the fat trees of the forest have hid a thousand crimes
The calendar is lyin' when it reads the present time
Oh, here's to the land you've torn out the heart of
Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of

Does it surprise anyone that the State of Mississippi, 
the Dobbs in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health
has failed to provide water to the citizens of Jackson, Mississippi?

Apparently their concern for human life ends at birth.  Babies can not be bathed in Jackson because there is no clean water.  The water crisis in Jackson, the State Capital of Mississippi, is not unexpected.  It comes after years of warnings and neglect of basic infrastructure repair.  The fact that the bigots and pseudo-conservatives that are the state legislators can not flush their toilets and have to smell their own waste is poetic justice.  Sad, but poetic.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.  He who smelt, it dealt it.

If there is no government, and there are no taxes, then there can be no services provided by government.  Government of the people, by the people, and for the people has perished from the Earth in Mississippi.  The rest of the country should be paying attention.