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.

Statistics

 

Source of image: https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm

It is only because People don’t UNDERSTAND statistics that is taken to be lies.

It is possible to use mathematics, and statistics is a branch of mathematics, to lie, e.g., 1+1=3, but the lie is very obvious.  It is only because people don’t understand the terms in mathematics or statistics that they think they are lies.  In the routine “Why a Duck”, it is only because Chico Marx doesn’t understand the terms ford or a viaduct, etc. that it is a comedy.  When Johnathan Swift called for the boiling of Irish children, he was intending it as satire, not as a cookbook.  When Archie Bunker sings “Those Were the Days”, we are supposed to laugh at him, not with him..  There is a difference between tactics and strategy, between a battle and a war, and between weather and climate. Just because they are similar does not mean they are the same.  If you think that there is no difference between a standard deviation and standard error, then like Lou Costello, you can expect someone like Bud Abbott to take advantage of you.           
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9udNrOh5DyA.

Standard deviation is σ.  Standard error is σ divided by the square root of n.  Yes, σ is a Greek letter.  This is a because much of our mathematics was developed by Greek philosophers.  In fact, Science used to be called Natural Philosophy to distinguish it from Spiritual Philosophy.  If you know the terms in philosophy, then you should also know the terms in science, mathematics, AND statistics.

N in the equation of standard error is the size, number of observations, in a distribution.  A distribution is just another name for a group.  The standard deviation multiplied by itself is the variance.  A standard normal distribution, such as those in Nature, has a standard deviation of, which also means that the variance is,  1.  During the COVID pandemic, the phrase “flatten the curve” became popular.  To a statistician that phrase is identical to “increase the variance”.  Its opposite would have been “steepen the curve”, “decrease the variance”.  Decreasing the variance has problems of its own. https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2022/01/resiliency.html.

If the goal is to eliminate error, the response should be to INCREASE the size of the distribution, group.  It should not be to set the deviation to zero.  If the deviation is zero, then any value of n, including decreasing the size of the group, is possible.  Thus, claiming that to reduce error, deviation must be zero is absolutely compatible with exclusion.  However, IT IS NOT NORMAL.  Not only aren’t statistics lies, but we would also be better off if our politicians understood statistics.

 

 

Affirmative Action

 

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive

You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mr. In-between

Is Affirmative Action positive?

When my firm was preparing a sample of shippers for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, PANYNJ, to establish the behavior of shippers, at first there was a random sample of shippers based on their mailing address and size.  After the first sample was prepared, and obviously not every shipper was, nor was it expected to be, surveyed, as responsible survey designers we compared the sample to the general population of shippers.  It was found that very large shippers were underrepresented in the survey sample.  This was not unexpected.  Because they are a small subset of shippers, it was expected that the large shippers might have been missed in a random sample of any size.  An oversampling of large shippers was undertaken to ensure that the sample looked like the population of all shippers  to ensure that the sampling of behavior was consistent with the overall population of shippers.

When you come right down to it, isn’t this exactly what is being done in affirmative action programs.  The first sample of qualified candidates who would meet the original selection, sampling, procedure might result in a sample that is NOT consistent with the general population. If the goal is to have a sample that IS consistent with the general population, then affirmative action is appropriate.

No one claimed that in the shipper choice survey, that special treatment was being given to large shippers because they were being oversampled.  No one claimed that those small shippers who were not part of the original selection, were being discriminated against. In the same manner there is no discrimination against those in an affirmative action selection process who were NOT part of the original selection.  If the result of the original, is not consistent with the population that is intended, over sampling, affirmative action, of the targeted population is appropriate.

There is no judgment against the original sampling, selection plan.  In the Knights of Columbus, the membership is not expected to be Protestants.  The Ku Klux Klan is not expected to have BIPOC or LGBTQIA+ members.  The B'nai B'rith is not expected have Catholics in proportion to the general population.  But if a result is expected to be consistent with the general population, such as the civil service, police, Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, etc., then oversampling, affirmative action, is not only a good thing, it is the correct thing, accentuating the positive.

 

Mararthons

 

Go The Distance

And I won't look back, I can go the distance
And I'll stay on track, no I won't accept defeat
It's an uphill slope
But I won't loose hope, 'till I go the distance
And my journey is complete, oh yeah

Is going the distance winning? or an initiation?

If you have any interest in marathons, e.g. the Boston Marathon, can you tell me the winner of the most recent Marathon? I bet you can’t. But I bet that you will be able to tell me those who you know that completed that marathon, i.e. went the distance. That is because a marathon is not a single race. A marathon is an initiation, a rite, a ritual, as much as a Bar Mitzvah. The podium positions do not matter as much as knowing who completed the marathon, …went the distance. That is why there are thousands of entrants for a major marathon. There may be only one winner but winning is NOT the point. Going the distance, completing the marathon, is the point.

That is also why a baseball season is called a marathon, not a sprint. Moonlight Graham, in real life and in the movie Field of Dreams, or Roy Gleason of the 1963 Los Angles Dodgers, are considered to be major league players. Moonlight Graham had a single plate appearance and hit. In the movie his pain was eased because he became a marvelous doctor and saved the protagonist’s daughter. Roy Gleason played for the Dodgers and after a single plate appearance and hit, he was drafted and sent to Viet Nam where he was awarded the Purple Heart. They both went the distance and were initiated as major leaguers, even though they only stayed for the proverbial cup of coffee. They may not have been elected to Cooperstown, but they went the distance. Winning is not everything, playing the game the right way is. Fans didn’t follow the Cubs or Red Sox during their respective decades long droughts only because they expected to see a winner, although as a Red Sox fan the 2004 season was sweet! But I was in the stands before 2004 because I saw players who went the distance.

The playoffs are nice, and making the playoffs is exciting, but the playoffs are more important to the owner’s ego than to the hardcore fans. To borrow a phase, it is not whether you win or lose but how you play the game…. go the distance. Second place is not first loser. Second place, and every position including last place, still went the distance.

Truth II

 

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

WHO can’t handle the truth?

"I believe that college actually erodes the best our country has to offer," Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, told Breitbart's Alana Mastrangelo, detailing his belief that college is "bankrupting our country," "brainwashing our youth," and is "a multi-trillion dollar enterprise that is designed to try to turn children against their parents." and ""The College Cartel" is no better than Mexican Drug Cartels"

Are you kidding me?  Charlie Kirk, who never graduated from college, has a warped idea of college. In 2015, Kirk told The Atlantic that he was taking part-time online classes at The King's College, and he was taking classes at Harper College, a community college near Chicago, but dropped out to pursue conservative activism.  He should ask for his money back.  The purpose of college is not to brainwash anyone.  It is to try and train students to discover the truth for themselves.

Sometimes you might be offended by what they discover to be the truth.  But your truth is NOT the only truth, no matter how “woke” it is. Can we all say sour grapes!