Safe Schools

                                                                 Ever True to Brown

We are ever true to Brown,
For we love our college dear,
And wherever we may go,
We are ready with a cheer,
And the people always say,
That you can’t outshine Brown Bears,
With their Rah! Rah! Rah! and their Ki! Yi! Yi!
And their B-R-O-W-N.

Go Bears!

I graduated from Brown University in 1973.  While I am proud to be a Brown Alum, this was not my first, or even my second, choice of school.

My first choice was the US Naval Academy.  I thought that my godfather having the rank of Navy Captain and my being a Merit Scholar made me a shoo in.  But I failed the medical exam because of my eyesight.  ( I CAN see a battleship!  I immediately went to my draft board physical and was found to be 1-A before I got a student deferment.  Apparently I see good enough to be a grunt, just not to be a naval officer!)  My second choice was MIT, but I was rejected there. Which made Brown my "safe" school.

Art

 

A Secretary Is Not a Toy

That a secretary is not a toy
No, my boy
Not a toy to fondle and dandle
And playfully handle
In search of some puerile joy
No, a secretary is not
Definitely not
A toy

And an artist is NOT his work of art.

The worst blowout in College Football happened in 1916 when Georgia Tech beat Cumberland College by a score of 222-0.  Apparently the football coach of Georgia Tech, who was also its baseball coach, wanted to enact vengeance because of a baseball loss to Cumberland College of 22-0.  Cumberland College had disbanded its football team and tried to get out of the game.  The Georgia Tech coach refused and the game was to be played as scheduled.  A ragtag football team was assembled from the student body for just this game.  Georgia Tech scored on every possession in the inevitable slaughter.  The vengeful football coach of Georgia Tech?  John Heisman. Yes, the same coach whose name is honored in the Heisman trophy.

Sticking with a college football theme,  Pop Warner was the coach at the Carlise Indian School where he was not above cheating to win his games against other college football teams.  In fact many of his efforts to bend the rules of his day were adopted to become the regulations of what we know today as football.

It isn’t only college football.  Vincent Van Gogh was a madman who cut off his own ear.  Thomas Jefferson owned slaves when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.  Kevin Spacey won an Oscar for his performance in American Beauty before his sexual assault scandals.  Bill Cosby was America’s Dad before his own scandals. Has anyone seen the movies The Imitation Game or A Beautiful Mind?

All humans, including artists, are flawed beings.  The Bard was being ironic when he wrote “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones”.  Often it is the good that lives after them and the evil that is buried with their bones.  What endures is art.  The art may be judged as good or great, even if the artist is flawed.  You might expect great art from certain artists, but that does not make those artists without flaws.  The art may be great, but the artist, as a human, can be not so great. Don't confuse the two. "Love the sinner, but hate the sin" works both ways. You can "Love the art, but hate the artist".

Absolutely III

 

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

So if you like pajamas (I like pyjahmas)
I'll wear pajamas (you got pajamas)
For we know, we need each other
So we better call the calling off, off
Let's call the whole thing off
Let's call the whole thing off (yes)

You saying ee-ther and I saying eye-ther is not a very big difference!

At infinity, the absolute, differences do not exist.  The absolute is accepted as being two things at one time: odd and even, male and female, red and black, less filling and tastes great, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, etc.  So if we are to try and emulate the absolute, shouldn’t we accept that our differences do not matter, we are all the same and we need each other.  Let's call the calling off, off.

Absolutely II

 

Woodstock

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song
And a celebration

And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Riding shotgun in the sky
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

We are here because we are billion-year old carbon.

In the United States, it is said that a hundred miles is a short distance but one hundred years is a long time.  By contrast, in Europe, it is said that one hundred miles is a long distance but one hundred years is a short time.  In both places, a million miles is a very long distance and a million years is a very long time.  And maybe that is a lesson for all of us.  

Our lives are typically no more than a hundred years. The typical human will travel 30,000 to 50,000 miles in their lifetime. The Earth on which we live might travel 370 million miles in our lifetime but those are still insignifcant compared to the 14 billion light-year size, 14 billion year age of the universe. https://www.space.com/human-travel-trillion-miles-lifetime-universe-motion 

But we are here because the universe is as large as it is and as has existed as long as it has.  Each individual may only live for a mere fraction of the age of the universe and travel only a mere fraction of the size of the universe.  And even that age and that size of the universe is limited.  The absolute is limitless.  Remember that.  Don’t get caught in the devil’s bargain.  Get back to the garden.

Morality and the Law

 

Anything Goes

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, God knows
Anything goes

But don’t confuse morality with legality!

Immoral and Amoral are two words that sound similar but have different meanings. Immoral is an adjective that describes “something against pre-established morals, ethics, or standard societal practices.” Amoral, on the other hand, is an adjective that describes “something or someone completely lacking morals.”

https://www.easybib.com/guides/grammar-guides/vocabulary/confusing-words/immoral-vs-amoral

Justice is blind.  The legal system is supposed to represent ALL moralities.  That does not mean that it is immoral because it does NOT represent only the majority morality.  But it also does not mean that it has no morals at all.  This suggests that perhaps another word needs to be used. The legal system is omni-moral!

You can’t legislate morality.  Society should enact laws to protect itself, and its members, but unless its members, or itself, are harmed it has no business imposing its morality on another.  To impose the morality of the majority, whether it is prohibition of alcohol, religion, gender preference, sexual orientation, etc. should not be the subject of laws unless society or its members are actually harmed, not merely offended.  A moral majority might indeed be moral and a majority.  But that does NOT mean that its morals should be the law.

Curves

 

It Takes Two

It takes two, baby
It takes two, baby
Make a dream come true
It just takes two

Not Four,  Two.

It is a standard concept that there are four fundamental curves:

1.      a circle,

2.      an ellipse,

3.      a parabola, and

4.      a hyperbola. 

I would suggest that there are really only two curves: an ellipse and a hyperbola. A circle is a special, perfect, case of an ellipse, and a parabola is a special case between a hyperbola and an ellipse.

A curve is defined by its major axis, a, and its minor axis, b.  An ellipse is a curve where the major and minor axes are both less than infinity.  There is no other restriction on a or b.  A circle is the special case of an ellipse where a = b, which is why it is said to be perfect.

A hyperbola is defined by having both axes, a and b equal to infinity.  A parabola is that case where also a ≠b.  But this is between an ellipse and an hyperbola.  Saying that at least one of the axes, a or b, is less than infinity makes it a partial  ellipse.  Saying that at least one of the axes is equal to infinity makes it a partial hyperbola.  A parabola is a mathematical curve where one of the axes is very, very large but NOT infinity.  It looks like it is different than a hyperbola and an ellipse, but actually it is partially both at the same time.

Error

 

O Holy Night

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.

There is still sin and error.

The mathematical statement 5±1 does not mean that there are only two answers: 4 and 6.  It means that any value between 4 and 6 is correct.  The term 5 in this example is the true answer, the mean/median/mode of a normal distribution, and the term 1 is the standard error.  Mathematically it could have also been expressed as 4 ≤ x ≤6, where x is the solution. 

The standard error is the square root of the variance.  A random number is a number with a non-zero variance, which means that it also has a non-zero standard error.  We can try to make that error as small as possible but “To err is Human”.  Scientists can design their experiments such that there is minimal error, but there will always be some error.  Engineers deal with the fact that there is variance and design systems such that the solution considers variance, error, randomness.

The solution of x²-1 as (x-1)*(x+1), x±1, should not be taken to mean that there are only two answers.  It should be taken to mean that any value of x between -1 and 1 is correct.  Otherwise you are effectively assuming that there is NO error. You might as well assume that there is no sin as well!