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..
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Birthday
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.
Monday, May 23, 2022
Corporations
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!
Sunday, May 22, 2022
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.
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 12th 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.
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.
Friday, May 20, 2022
Closets
'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.
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
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.