Shame

 

It’s A Shame

It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
It's a shame (shame) the way you play with my emotions
It's a shame (shame) the way you mess around with your man
You're like a child at play, on a sunny day
'Cause you play with love, and then you throw it away

Have you no shame?

The exact words uttered by Joseph Welch to questions by Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army hearings of 1954 were “Have you no sense of decency”. This was of course a rhetorical question directed to the audience of the hearings. Senator McCarthy of course had no sense of decency. A sense of decency, the ability to feel shame, means you value the opinion of the group more than you value your own opinion. Like the Orange Menace, Senator McCarthy cared not one whit about the opinions of the group. He only cared about his own opinions. Al Franken can resign from the Senate over an inappropriate photo. Abe Fortas can resign from the Supreme Court over a controversial $18,000 contribution that he refunded. Now that is shame!

And by the group, I mean the entire Nation, not just the group of supporters who share his opinion. The fact that Senator McCarthy was holding hearings charging lax security at a top-secret army facility was only an attempt to raise fear on the issue. A classic con artist stunt. “We’ve Got Trouble Right here in River City.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI. Henry Hill did not care at all about the pool hall. A digression. Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang magazine mentioned in the lyrics became Whiz Comics which debuted the original Captain Marvel. Shazam! THAT’S your idea of trouble? He only wanted to sell band uniforms. It starts when you’re always afraid.

Math III

 

Born Free

Stay free
Where no walls divide you
You're free as a roaring tide
So there's no need to hide

Is division the opposite of being free?

Engineers such as myself may not care about the difference between approaching and being. We primarily care about close enough. But we understand that there is a difference. Division by infinity approaches zero, but it is NOT zero. A mathematician and a physicist would give different answers. The limit of a constant k divided by x, k/x,  as it approaches zero is undefined according to a mathematician, because if k is zero, then k/0 is undefined. If k is equal to zero, a physicist would  say 0/0 is 1 because the formula k/x approaches 1 as x approaches zero from the positive side. However if it were approached beginning from negative infinity, them its limit would be -1. So at 0 there is a discontinuity, but there is also a paradox because the limit is both -1 and 1.  Engineers like me don’t generally deal with negative numbers, and we have no dog in this fight, but work it out guys please. Discontinuities, abrupt changes in the slope of an equation, that we can handle. Paradoxes, contradictory values at the same value, typically indicate that a deeper truth is not yet understood. The fact that this involves division might be significant

As mathematicians and binary machine language computer programmers can tell you, multiplication is easy, division is hard. Multiplication of a by b, where a is the multiplicand and b is the multiplier, is the product ab. To get that product, you add the multiplicand to itself multiplier times. So multiplication and addition are easily linked. Also multiplication does not involve a change of case. If a and b are both integers then their product, ab, will also be an integer.

Division is not linked to subtraction in the same manner. If multiplication is just repeated addition, division is NOT repeated subtraction. Also division involves a change of case. The division of two integers will result in a rational number. It is even worse for roots. The root of an integer or a rational number can be an irrational number. Multiplication, or raising a number to a power, is a series of additions with no change of case. Division, or taking a root, is not a series of subtractions and it involves a change of case. The biblical injunction is “Be Fruitful and Multiply.”  “Divide and conquer” was said by Julius Caesar. I knew that there was a problem understanding that whole Render onto Caesar and God thing, but those who promote dividing us have at least made it clear on which side they are.

Math II

 

I Believe

Everytime I hear a newborn baby cry,
Or touch a leaf, or see the sky,
Then I know why, I believe!

Do Christian Nationalists believe in God?

Christian Nationalists have preached the belief that theirs is the only correct way and thus they believe in a government of “My way or the highway” rather than ‘All roads lead to Rome.”  Mathematically they believe in a Cumulative Distribution Function, CDF, that is 0 before a point  e.g.  “A Come to Jesus Moment,” µ, and is 1 after that point. But they also believe that there should be no variance, whose square root is σ, and their Probability Distribution Function, PDF, is the only PDF with the correct CDF. In fact it is not.

A normal logistics PDF for any value of x is  ¼*1/s*sech²((x-µ)/2s). Its CDF is ½+½*tanh((x-µ)/2s). It has a variance, σ², of s²π²/3. Its CDF is also 0 before a point, µ-3*σ, and is 1 after a point, µ+3*σ. Thus the difference between the Christian Nationalist, and a normal distribution is the value of the variance, σ². Christian Nationalists believe it can only be zero, while according to mathematics, normally it can be any nonzero number.

If you accept the premise that before µ , the “Come to Jesus” moment,  you were not saved, did not accept God/Jesus, and after µ you were saved, but you also believe that there is no variance, σ=0, then  you also have to believe that s = 0. The problem is that those people have confused variance with error. God has no error, but he does have a variance. In fact, according to a normal logistics function, when s= 0.5, which is also the mean and median of the CDF of Christian Nationalists, the variance is not zero but is perfection, God, π², divided into three parts, 3, times choice squared, s²= 0.25.  If you believe that your variance is zero, but God’s variance is not zero, you must also not believe in God. So please don’t call yourselves Christian Nationalists. Be honest and call yourselves Anti-Christian Nationalists.

Math

 

Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)

Birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love

And after that let’s do it, let’s do some math!

Mathematics is not only NOT hard, it is the basic language of the universe. 

·        The shape of a shoreline or a tree - Fractals. 

·        The shape of a sunflower seeds-Fibonacci spiral.  

·        A snowflake- Six sided radial symmetry.

·        The honeycombs made by bees - Hexagonal shapes.

And even humans do complex math in our head. 

·        A unbiased fair jury follows the 68/95/99 rule of normal distributions and a unanimous 12 member panel reflects 99.97% certainty.

·        People choose the 95th percentile time to ensure that they will have an on-time arrival  I can barely count to 10 anymore and I can compute the 95th percentile time without even thinking?

·        The founding fathers chose 2/3, 67.7%,  for the most important decisions and 68% is the mean plus one standard deviation.

·        The universe seems to mandate tolerance. And not only things are most probably random, not deterministic, Free Will over Determinism has a mathematical basis!

Math is NOT hard.  It is intrinsic to nature and we ignore it at our peril.

Seven Game Series

 

Step to the Rear

Will everyone here kindly step to the rear
And let a winner lead the way
Here's where we separate
The notes from the noise
The men from the boys
The rose from the poison ivy

How many games does it take to determine a winner?

The 2004 Boston Red Sox beat the 2004 New York Yankees in Major League Baseball’s American League Championship Series. The 2004 Red Sox prevailed to win four games in an epic seven game series. But were the Red Sox the better team? And why seven games? Why not  a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 or 9 game series?

On any given Sunday, any team can win a game, and all jazz. So how many games does it take before you can be certain that the winner of a series of games IS the better team. In a one game series there are two possible outcomes: Win or Lose. The mean is 0.5, if a win is worth 1, and a loss is worth 0. The square root of the variance of those outcome is 0.167.  If there were an infinite number of games, and both outcomes, Win and Lose are equally likely, then the mean is always equal to half the number of games. If that mean is subtracted from the number of wins such that number of points is normalized to zero,  it is like the figure below.

The problem is that we can’t afford to play an infinite number of games, we can only afford to play a finite number of games. For a finite series with an odd number of games, the mean is equal to the median but neither of those are an integer number of games. By contrast for a finite series with an even number of games, the mean is an integer, but with an even number of games, this outcome could occur by chance and thus the outcome can not decide who is better.

Infinity is both odd AND even. Its median is its mode is its mean, which is one of the hallmarks of a normal distribution. However the other hallmark of a normal distribution is that it satisfies the 68/95/99 rule. And with an infinite number of games you can satisfy this. But what are the fewest number of games in a series that satisfies the 68/95/99 rule? You also want to discard all even games series because there should only be one winning outcome, not two.

A seven-game series satisfies more of the 68/95/99 rule. The 2004 ALCS was a seven-game series, and the Red Sox were thus the better team. Ain’t statistics wonderful!

Leaks

 

We’re Gonna Move

Well there's a leak in this old building
Yes, there's a leak in this old building
Well there's a leak in this old building
We're gonna move to a better home

Amen Elvis!  But wouldn't it be easier to just stop that leak.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he has a “pretty good idea” who leaked the draft of his ruling that overturned abortion rights.

“I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” Alito said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Alito was referring to the leak of a draft of his opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last May.  https://news.yahoo.com/sam-alito-says-criticism-supreme-161500730.html

“Strip Search Sammy”, I have watched enough episodes of Scooby Doo to know that the villain is usually the one who benefits the most from the villainy.  Before the leak, Chief Justice Roberts was making an effort to get you, “Long Dong Silver” Thomas, “Not Merrick Garland“ Gorsuch, “I Like Beer ” Kavanaugh and “Handmaiden” Barrett to not screw the pooch.  Those efforts ended with the leak.  Dare I say that you know who the leaker is because YOU ARE the leaker. (and I am the Walrus. Goo goo g' joob.)

Art

 

The Lady In Red

Say have you ever met the girl who's the toast of the town
A work of art without a question
You better write her number down, you fools

Is the work of art the artist?

I have some moves I would like you to see.

·        Annie Hall,

·        Rosemary’s Baby,

·        Braveheart,

·        American Beauty. 

Works of Art each one.  But by flawed Artists.

·        Woody Allen,

·        Roman Polanski,

·        Mel Gibson,

·        Kevin Spacey 

And there is a lesson here.  Would I hire any of these artists as a baby sitter?  Would I want to work for or with any of them without sufficient protection?  Would I fawn over them as celebrities?  Surely you jest.

Would I turn away, throw out their art because it was their art?  That is a more difficult question.  I do not want to reward the artists for bad behavior, but I also don’t want to deprive myself of that art. The Artist is not the Art. Just as you can love the sinner and hate the sin, you can love the art and hate the artist, by admiring the art, not necessarily the artist.

And maybe there is something good to take away from this.  No matter our flaws, and we all have them, we are capable of so much.  Go and make some art.