Endorsements

 

The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

What is the motto of the Washington Post?

The motto of the Washington Post is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  Journalism is supposed to ensure that the voters in a democracy have access to the truth. When the founding families of journalists controlled their own newspapers, it was a tradition that those newspapers would endorse candidates in elections. This may not be truth, but it was truth as seen by the editors and publishers of that newspaper. But as private venture capital has bought out the founding families of journalists, the new owners are reluctant to endorse any candidates in elections. It gets even worse when those owners are billionaires who have a lot to loose if they endorse a candidate who loses.

The LA Times, previously owned by the Chandler Family and now owned by billionaire Patrick Soon- Shiong declined to make an endorsement for president triggering the resignation of its editors. The Washington Post, previously owned by the  Meyer/Graham family and now owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, also declined to make an endorsement for president, triggering a massive loss of its subscribers.  It is understandable that the billionaire owners wish not to offend the winning candidate in an election by endorsing the losing candidate. They also have a lot to lose. But not endorsing anyone, not speaking truth, is a coward’s way out. The U.S. Constitution has enshrined freedom of press as a basic right for our representative democracy. The People count on the press to tell the truth as they see it, regardless of the consequences. The saying “A coward dies a hundred deaths, a hero dies but once” applies here. Better to die once than to die a hundred times. Democracy will die if the journalists are afraid to publish the truth, to speak truth to power. The voters may count on the endorsement of those journalists.  Has “Democracy Dies in Darkness” become “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend”.

Intentions

 

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

You know, sometimes, baby, I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And then sometimes again it seems, that all I have is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side
But I'm just a soul
Whose intentions are good
Oh, Lord
                                                   Don’t let me be misunderstood                                                    

The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions. 

My college roommate sent me an article about minimum parking requirements in New York City.  So why are there minimum parking space requirements in the first place?  When you create a housing unit you probably create the demand for parking associated with that apartment, which is why there is a minimum.  That parking will either use public roads (e.g. curbside parking), or public parking, or will increase the demand for private parking. When the demand goes up but the supply does not, then the cost of existing parking, including illegal use of public spaces, will go up.  So minimum parking requirements are an attempt by government to deal with that, by requiring an increase in the supply.  But the unintended impact is to create more households with cars in the first place.  So the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

As an aside,  I am a "Rockefeller" Republican.  It is because government response IMHO should be limited because while the intentions are good, their other impacts can be bad.  In the battle between NO Government/NO Taxes MAGA and the Big Government/High Taxes Liberals, I am in favor of SMALL government/LOW taxes.  This used to be my wing of the Republican Party.  I joined the New York City government after college to join the John Lindsey administration.  While not my department, while I was living there, NYC government tried to solve a problem.  NYC has no alleys like in Boston’s Back Bay in which to store trash and its containers.  The metal trash containers that they did have were noisy and leaky .  Lindsey thought plastic, smell-proof, trash bags stored in front of buildings until private trash haulers could pick them up solved a problem.  And the rats have LOVED it.  Good intention, bad result. IMHO the correct response is a limited (well-vetted) response in the first place, not NO response, or a BIG response.  Don't be misunderstood.

 

Work/life Balance

 

Stay Awake

Though the world is fast asleep
Though your pillow soft and deep
You're not sleepy as you seem
Stay awake, don't nod and dream
Stay awake, don't nod and dream

So how much sleep do you need?

We all need sleep. Following the rule of threes, one should expect to spend 1/3 of your life sleeping, 1/3 of your life working, and 1/3 f your life a leisure. Sleep is something that we need every day. One third of 24 hrs. is 8 hours of sleep per day, which sound like what the doctors order. During sleep our brains undergo various processes that help us consolidate out memories, regulate emotions and clear toxins. Lack of sleep can lead to irritability, anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. The inability to sleep even has a name, insomnia, and we speed vast amount of effort combating it.

Works and leisure get more complicated. They do NOT have to happen every day. In fact days without work, such as weekend, holidays, and vacations are expected. Every day is not a work day. We may spend 8 hours at hour during a work day, but we also spend on average 30 minutes each way commuting to, and from, work and have a lunch hour while at  work. That amounts to, on average, 10 hours per work day. If there are 52 week in a year and 5 work days a week, that amounts to 2,600 hours per year. Since  a year has 8,760 hours (365 times 24), thus 30% of a year is spent working. To this add in time during leisure spent thinking about work and you get to 1/3.  That means leisure should also be also be about 1/3 of the time.

The rule of three is also informative about retirement age,  child protection, and education. If life expectancy is 75 years, then you should expect that 1/3 of them should NOT be working years. From birth to about 20 we are being educated and getting ready for work. From retirement age to death we are not working. That means that retirement age should be should be on average near 70, (2/3 of 75 plus 20 years), after working for 50 years.    Pretending that we are instant experts is not a good thing.  It takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert and you are actually only working 8 hours a day, thus it should take 6 years (at 200 working days per year) to become an expert at something.

Whoever thought that 365/7/24 is a good thing! A work life balance, including time sleeping, and playing, being educated, and retired are important too! Pretending that we are instant experts is also not a good thing. And if you dream during the time spent awake too, all the better!

Absolutely VI

 

Let’s Hear it for the Boy

Let's hear it for the boy
Let's give the boy a hand
Let's hear it for my baby
You know you gotta understand
Oh, maybe he's no Romeo
But he's my lovin' one-man show
Oh, whoa-oa-oa
Let's hear it for the boy

And lets hear it for the tie.

In any contest between two parties there are three outcomes: win, loss AND tie.  We don’t often think about ties because so many contests have tie breakers such as: extra innings, sudden death, overtime, extra time, shoot outs, goal kicks, etc., so that those ties eventually become either wins or losses. But they were still ties in the first place.

It will be a tie if both  of those parties in the contest are NOT absolutes.  If one of the parties is an absolute, then the absolute should always win, or else it is not an absolute.  If both of the parties are absolutes, then what?  Then one of the absolutes must lose, which means that party can not be an absolute.  However, if there is only one absolute then that absolute can win every contest, because that absolute could only pay against another party who was not an absolute.

Thus the only way for Game Theory to be consistent with absolutes, is for there to be only one absolute.  Then that one absolute will always win, never tie. 

 

 

Imposssible II

 

Impossible

Impossible! But the world is full of zanies and fools
Who don't believe in sensible rules
And won't believe what sensible people say
And because these daft and dewy eyed dopes
Keep building up impossible hopes
Impossible things are happening every day!

I think the song means imPROBABLE.

If the odds are a million to one, not NO chance, that is the very definition of improbable but not impossible. This is because of how zero is treated and that relates to dominance and certainty. There are two types of zero, an absolute zero and a relative zero. An absolute zero is the absence of an absolute. A relative zero is the midpoint between two absolutes. They may look the same, but just as a human may not see any difference, while a computer makes a distinction between 0 and “0”, it is because of the absolute that there is a difference between dominance and certainty, although they may look the same.

Certainty is the probability of an outcome subtracted from 1. Dominance is when one party of an outcome is greater than any other party. Thus a zero as an absolute is different than a zero as a relative. If there are a positive integer number members of a group,  it can  only reflect certainty if the number of outcomes is also zero. The probability before any outcome is zero and the certainty is 100%. However the moment that there are any outcomes, the certainty by definition is always less than 100%, while the dominance is assured as long as one outcome for one party of the contest is greater than an other party of the same contest.

For example let’s assume that there are 9 members of a group, say the number of justices on the current supreme court. A 9-0 decision may appear certain but the moment the justices have made a decision it is no longer certain. That 9-0 decision is only one of 2⁹, 512, possible outcomes. The dominance of that 9-0 outcome is 100%, but the certainty is only 1-1/512=99.8%. An 8-1 decision also has a 100% dominance, but there are 9 possible outcomes that could give that 8-1 decision, so its certainty is 1-9/512, 98.24%. A 7-2 decision is still 100% dominant, but there are 36 possible outcomes that could be 7-2 making its certainty only 1-36/512, 92.97% even if it is 100% dominant. There are 84 possible outcomes, a certainty of 83.59% for a 6-3 decision, while it is still 100% dominant. There are 126 possible outcomes, a certainty of 75.39% for a 5-4 decision, while it is still 100% dominant. There are 256 possible outcomes for every remaining decision, a certainty of 50.0% while every one of those decisions is 0% dominant.

In any contest between two parties, where neither party is an absolute,  one of those parties may be dominant, but by definition that party can not be 100% certain. Dominance can be 100%, but that is NOT certainty. Lack of dominance does not determine that its is impossible, only that it is improbable.

Electoral College III

 

Sophisticated Lady

Educated lady with your college degree
Amazes me why you just can't see
Learned everything from your books on the shelf
But no one ever taught you how to think for yourself

You may be educated but are you electoral?

The sovereign of our country is "We the People" but the name of our country is the United States.  The President should be the choice of the people AND of the states.  The Electoral College is is a means of ensuring that the President is the choice of both.  It ensures that the choice has not only the support of the people.  but also a broad representation of the states.

Is the current system flawed? Absolutely.  The method of selection of Electoral College votes in Nebraska, with its famous "Blue Dot" instead of a "Winner takes all" means that the choice is one of both the people AND the state.  The attempt to change Nebraska's electoral policy on the eve of the current election is not only cynical, it shows how deeply flawed is the current system.  Every state should aspire to be like Nebraska, NOT Nebraska should aspire to be like every other state.

Are the 435 congressional-based electoral votes awarded to the states flawed?  Absolutely, but that number is not a feature of the Electoral College.  The number itself is NOT a constitutional requirement but the cowardly abandonment of the Congressional mandate to apportion seats after a decennial census that is based on a compromise after the 1910 Census.  A fairer way to apportion House seats would be the Wyoming Rule under which California would have 68, instead of 52, House of Representative seats and the total seats in the House would be 574 instead of 435.

The Electoral College Compact, that a state awards its votes to the winner of the national popular vote, ensures only that the President is the choice of the people, but that might not be the choice of the states.  The Electoral College is intended to be a means to ensure that the choice represents the people AND the states.  As wrong as it is for the loser of the popular vote but the winner of the Electoral College to be the President, it would also be wrong to see the winner of the popular vote but the loser of a revised Electoral College to be President. Two wrongs never make a right. It is possible that the winner of the presidential election could have a majority of the people but that support be concentrated in a narrow representation of states.  A revised Electoral College might prevent this from happening.

It is not the Electoral College that is flawed.  It is suggested that the number of votes in the Electoral College and the awarding of those votes on a "winner takes all" basis that is flawed.  As long as we are the United States then the President should be the choice of the people AND the states. 

That there are battleground states is evidence that the current system is flawed.  There should be battleground congressional districts.  The election should be not people OR states but people AND states. Countries that are divided, like Christians and Muslims in Lebanon, have other power sharing agreements that may only be customs which can be violated.  The Electoral College is an attempt to peacefully recognize and deal with those divisions in the law.

Absolutely V

 

Try

Try, try, try just a little bit harder
So I can love, love, love him, I tell myself
'Cause I'm gonna try, oh yeah, just a little bit harder

There is no Try.

With apologies to Yoda’s “Do or not Do. There is no Try”,  “Good or no Good. There is no Evil”.  Yoda was not saying that there is no such thing as trying. And the second statement is not saying that there is no such thing as evil.  What both statements are saying is that the choice is about an absolute.  Trying is not an absolute, neither is evil.  Thus the G.W. Bush and cronies' conception of the world as a battle of Good vs. Evil elevates Evil to that of an absolute.  There is only one absolute and that is Good. Good is not merely the absence of Evil, it is the presence of Good, which means that Evil is NOT an absolute.