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.