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”