Critical Race Theory III

 

Children Will Listen

Careful the wish you make,
Wishes are children
Careful the path you take,
Wishes come true.

Careful the spell you cast,
Not just on children
Sometimes the spell may last
Past what you can see,
And turn against you.
Careful the tale you tell
That is the spell,
Children will listen...

Can children handle the Truth?

On May 17th, 2022,  the Mansfield, Massachusetts Town Meeting will vote on Article 20 “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?

The problem appears to be that certain truths are “inconvenient" and make people uncomfortable.  But that is no reason to shield children from the Truth.  Children will understand as much of the Truth as they are ready to understand. 

Which reminds me of a joke.  A second grader comes into a room and asks his father “What is sex?”.  His father is surprised to face this question so early and proceeds to deliver the “Talk”.  His son’s eyes glaze over and after the talk is over he asks,  “But I don’t understand.  Do I check the “M” box or the “F” box when the form asks the Sex question?”.

I am old enough to know the Truth about Santa Claus.  But if you drive past my home in December you will see a lighted display where Santa’s Sleigh is flying through the air. Because I know that children will also want the Truth about Santa.  And like the response to Virginia long ago, I believe that the Truth about Santa is “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. ‘

I have lived in Mansfield for more than 40 years, but it was not until last year that I found that the Town was named in honor of  William Murray, the First Earl of Mansfield.  He was Chief Justice of England before the Revolutionary War.  During his illustrious career, one of his most famous decisions was the Somerset  decision.  James Somerset was a slave who escaped in England and was recaptured by his “owner”, a Boston Customs official.  Somerset was to be transported by his "owner" to Jamaica and sold.  The question Lord Mansfield was asked to resolve was whether he should be allowed to be transported from England. He ruled that slavery was not legal under English Law and that "no master ever was allowed here (England) to take a slave by force to be sold abroad".

I believe that this is not taught in Mansfield School today.  My sons were never taught this.  To protect school children from ever hearing such a DIVISIVE CONCEPT, I would propose that if the voters approve Article 20, that they also change the name of the Town from Mansfield.

Children will listen.  Our children will learn from this proposed Article that you should hide from the Truth. Is this the lesson that we want to be teaching?

Tribes

 

We Are Family

All of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a family dose

Join in with me!

Man is genetically wired to join groups. Man's smallest group is a family. Families may join together to form Clans. Clans may join together to form Tribes. Tribes may join together to form Nations. You can be a member of more than one group. I am a member of Red Sox Nation. I am also an American .  There are those who live in the Canadian Maritimes Provinces who are also members of Red Sox Nation. ( They probably are not also Bruin hockey fans, but that is another sport and subject). It is thus possible to be an American or a Canadian National and to still belong to Red Sox Nation.

Man is also genetically wired to be fearful of, and not trust, those in other groups. And that creates a conflict when a person is in more than one group. For example, Americans are guaranteed freedom of religion. Thus it is possible, for example, to be an American and a Catholic, or an American and a Southern Baptist  ( As someone who was born in Rhode Island, which was founded by the Baptist Roger Williams, who was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religion, I think Roger Williams would be appalled that there were Southern Baptists). When John F. Kennedy ran for President, he had to convince a  Southern Baptist conference that he was running as an American, and owed no allegiance to a foreign Pope.

Most religions and cultures recognize this problem and have admonitions for the protection and honoring of strangers. They recognize that the energy spent in excluding others does not serve to advance the purpose of the group. John Donne famously said that “No man is an island”. When you try to exclude others by building a moat around your group, you are trying to act as if you are an island.  This is not a game of Survivor. Let’s not vote people off the island. Instead let’s welcome them if they wish to move to the island. What was true in 1776, is true today.  "If we don’t hang together, we will all hang separately.”

Republicans V

 

Love and Honor

 Love and honor never cross your mind And love and honor is something hard to find When someone tempted you, you ease across the line And I'll bet love and honor never cross your mind

There is no honor among thieves …or apparently  the current Republican Senate. 

·       Lindsey Graham said Republicans wouldn't give Jackson a hearing if they had the Senate majority.

·       "If we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee," he said Monday.

·       His comments underscore the depth of Republican hostility to Biden's Supreme Court nominee.

https://news.yahoo.com/lindsey-graham-says-republicans-wouldnt-191354971.html

Really Lindsey?  Really?  Really?  That is NOT a mark of pride.  It is an acknowledgement that the failure to hold a nomination hearing on Merrick Garland was NOT because his SCOTUS nomination was during an election year and was thus not appropriate.  But Justice Amy Coney Barrett's nomination hearings already proved that,  didn’t they.  The problem is that most Republican Senators will not hold hearings on any nomination to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President. This means that Republican Senators will not honor their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent for nominations by a Democratic President. 

Senators, Democrats and Republicans, swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, whose sovereign is the People. They do NOT swear an oath to the their Party.  Should anyone trust admitted oath breakers?

It looks like those who believe in small government, but who also believe in the truth and who believe in the inclusion of all people do NOT have a place in today's Republican Party.  Representative Upton has only been the latest to have figured that out, hasn’t he?  Where are the rest to go? 

Vigilantes

 

Boss Man

Big boss man!
Won't you hear me when I call?
Yeah, you ain't so big bossman
You just tall that's all!

Just because you are big doesn’t make you right.

Batman is a vigilante.  He believes that his code of Justice is correct.  Criminals who do not believe in his code of Justice must be insane, which is why they are confined to Arkham Asylum and not the Gotham Jail. Batman administers Justice not the Law.  But it is his Justice.  There is a  scene in the Untold Tales of the Batman miniseries where the phrase “It’s not Justice, it’s the Law” is uttered to explain why Bruce Wayne did not become a lawyer or a policeman.

Batman’s popularity grew at the same time that other vigilantes became popular:  The Punisher, Wolverine, etc.  Vigilantes were also embraced in general popular culture: e.g. Death Wish.  Wolverine and the Punisher were first introduced as villains: Wolverine as a villain for the Hulk, the Punisher as a villain for Spiderman. 

Comic book heroes up to that point had a System Optimal perspective.  “Fair Play”; “Live by the Golden Rule”; “Might for Right”; “With great power comes great responsibility”. They captured  criminals and turned them over to the police, society, for the administration of Justice.  Batman in the 1980s, as well as Wolverine and the Punisher, had a User Optimal perspective.  They administered Justice as they saw it. “ My way or the highway”; “ He who has the Gold makes the rules”; “Might makes Right”. Yes, their Justice was also what society promoted as its ideal, but it was still their Justice. There is a difference between administering Justice, and delivering criminals to society for Justice.

The danger of embracing vigilantes is that their belief in what is right may not be the belief shared by the system.  Vigilantes by definition live outside of the system, society. 

We may have reached the logical conclusion to vigilantism.  If you can decide if your wife’s honor has been violated, then you, not the system, can apply a slap.  If you can decide that Weapons of Mass Destruction should be eliminated or DeNazification should be undertaken then you, not the system, can impose your might.  

The objection to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was that Superman would not administer Justice on his own.  Superman would deliver wrong-doers TO the System, but he would not determine that he was empowered to administer Justice FOR the System.  Superman v. Batman should not be just “Might versus Might”, but  “Might FOR Right” versus “Might IS Right”, System Optimization versus User Optimization.

What Is In A Name

My Name Is

Hi! My name is (what?)
My name is (who?)
My name is
Slim Shady

It sounds like Donald Trump needs some help with names.

"A guy who spells his name M-E-I-J-E-R but they pronounce it Meyer," Trump said. "What the hell kind of a spelling is that?

He continued: "I said, how the hell do you pronounce this guy's name? Nobody knows if he's done nothing in Washington... I said, how do you pronounce his name, is it MA-GER, MY-GER? They said it's MY-ER. How the hell do you get MY-ER out of it?" Donald Trump 4/2/2022

Donald, Donald, Donald. Meijer is a Dutch name. It refers to a profession similar to a bailiff or steward. It originates from the Latin word major and is often rendered Meyer abroad. One would have thought that Donald Trump would be used to Dutch names since New York City was once called New Amsterdam. A large number of the Manhattan elite, who snubbed Donald Trump as an upstart from Queens,  had Dutch surnames.

I can understand how Donald Trump would be confused by European surnames. His father claimed that Trump was a Swedish name after WWII. Actually it is German, but Fred Trump did not want to be associated with Nazi Germany. That is cowardly but what do you expected out of a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer and an admitted racial discriminator. ( Donald should remember that from 1973. He was  fined by  HUD at the same time his father was!)

Cowards run in Cadet Bone Spur’s family. Donald’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was deported from Bavaria for draft dodging. Friedrich died of the Spanish Fu in 1918. You would think that that his Grandfather’s death would have made an impression on Donald, but he always got it wrong, falsely saying the Spanish Flu began in 1917.

And before the stable genius starts attacking me, yes, I know that he has a Bachelor’s degree from UPenn. But I actually went to class when I got my Master’s degree at UPenn. 

Distributions

 

Patterns

And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl

Finding the pattern,  (theory) can help you solve a puzzle.

Ruh-Roh.  Be warned.  This blog posting is especially nerdy.

Statistics is a descriptive science. It is NOT a predictive science. While statistics can help develop probabilistic models, Probability and Statistics alone can not develop models that predict with a  certainty. (see Pynchon’s  Gravity’s Rainbow or Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.)  It is possible to observe relationships that can assist in developing a theory, which is then used in predictive models, but first there has to be a theory. Observations can support a theory. But observations alone do not make a theory.

A normal statistical distribution has to allow the possibility of negative values. If the mean is significantly greater than zero, negative values are improbable BUT they are not impossible. For example, a normal distribution might have a mean of 100, a variance of 10, (the phrase “flatten the curve” that become popular during the COVID-19 pandemic would be translated to “increase the variance” by a statistician), a skew of 0, and a kurtosis of 0. If the kurtosis is 0, then the observed data has no outliers. If the skew is 0, then the function is uniform, and the mean is equal to the median which is equal to the mode. At a value of negative 100, this uniform normal probability function still says that -100 could be observed 2.2529*10^-262  % of the time. This is NOT zero. but it is a vanishingly small number and is often treated as if it WERE zero. 

There is a difference between a negative which is reported and a real negative. When you say it is  ‑10 degrees Fahrenheit outside, it does not mean that there is negative energy. Just that a value of zero on the Fahrenheit scale,  0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. The other limit established was a best estimate of the average human body temperature, which at the time the Fahrenheit scale was established was 96 °F. The Centigrade, or Celsius,  scale of temperatures defines values of 0 °C as the freezing point of water and of 100 °C  as the boiling point of water. At -40 degrees, the Fahrenheit and Celsius system are the same. However both systems are merely a translation of temperature from a temperature of absolute zero.

If negative numbers are not allowed, statistics suggests the use of an exponential distribution. While an exponential  distribution does not allow negative numbers, it is a smooth continuous function. That is a probability function of 1.5 will have a value, even if only integer values should be observed. It may be convenient to state the mean family size of as 3.14, and the median family size as 3.12, but families don’t come that way. Each family member will only be an integer value. The mode is most probably 3, and thus family size is  skewed, even if it is a very small skew.

A uniform normal distribution requires that the mean, median and mode are equal. In an exponential distribution the mode  is zero; the demand is equal to 1/λ, where λ is the coefficient of the exponential in the probability function of the distribution, λe^-λx; and the median is ln 2/λ , the mode is 0, and the skew is 2. A distribution that combines the features of a normal distribution with the features of an exponential distribution is an exponentially modified Gaussian (normal) distribution. Then the mode does not have to be equal to zero, and the median can be adjusted to be close to the mean without being the equal to the mean.

 

 

 

Gravity

 

Defying Gravity

It's time to try defying gravity
I think I'll try defying gravity
And you can't pull me down

Gravity follows spacetime. Is spacetime Euclidean ? Or is spacetime Non- Euclidean and  hyperbolic?

“According to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity is no longer a force that acts on massive bodies, as viewed by Isaac Newton's universal gravitation. Instead, general relativity links gravity to the geometry of spacetime itself, and particularly to its curvature.

In classical physics, time proceeds constantly and independently for all objects. In relativity, spacetime is a four-dimensional continuum combining the familiar three dimensions of space with the dimension of time.

To account for gravity in relativity, the structure of this four-dimensional spacetime must be extended beyond the rules of classical geometry, where parallel lines never meet and the sum of a triangle’s angles is 180°. In general relativity, spacetime is not 'flat' but is curved by the presence of massive bodies."
  https://sci.esa.int/web/lisa-pathfinder/-/56434-spacetime-curvature

This is a bit of an exaggeration. Gravity IS a force, but it is an apparent, fictitious, or pseudo force. These fictitious forces  are familiar forces. Water in a bucket spinning overhead on a rope, appears to defy Gravity because of Centrifugal force. If a Centrifugal force were not acting on the water, it would slosh out of that spinning bucket. A motorcyclist in a Globe of Death seems to defy Gravity and rise on the walls because of Centrifugal force. Water in a drain spins in a clockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere, but in a counterclockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere, because of the Coriolis force.

Saying that Gravity is not a force, but is a fictitious force means that there is, with apologies to Paul Harvey, a Rest of The Story. Gravity is like a trick in stage magic. Understanding how it works can better understand how you were tricked. Like Humpty Dumpty told in Alice in Through the Looking Glass, understanding  Gravity means “which is to be master — that’s all.”  If you wish to master and  defy Gravity you have to understand Gravity.

Gravity is the observation that particles will follow the shortest geodesic in spacetime.  When spacetime is curved, as it is required to be by General Relativity, then what appears to the path of a particle may be because spacetime is curved.  In Euclidean , what is called classical geometry in the quote above,  this apparent deviation from a straight line is attributed to Gravity.  If spacetime is curved, Non-Euclidean, and hyperbolic where the angles in triangles sum to less than 180 degrees, then Gravity can be a fictitious force.

If Gravity is a fictitious force, then efforts to include Gravity in a Unified Field Theory may be misplaced.  If Gravity is a fictitious force then efforts to develop a theory of Quantum Gravity may be as silly as trying to develop a theory of Quantum Centrifugal Force.