Post-election 2024

 

I Will Survive.

No, not I, I will survive
Long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got my life to live
And all my love to give and
I will survive
I, I, I will survive

Sing it loud.

Before the November 5^th election I was prepared to start a blog post with the lyrics of Easter Hymn, The Strife is O’er. In the aftermath of the election I was prepared to start a blog post with lyrics of the Doors, This is the End. But that is behind me and I have calmed down. There is a difference between marginal and effective, relative and absolute, certainty and dominance, free and unpriced. Just because a majority of those voting got confused does not mean that there is no difference. But we will survive.

Lies

 

Sympathy for the Devil

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mm, yeah 

All that glitters is not gold.  And all that is gold does not glitter. 

The best lie is one that contains a glimmer of truth. Then it is not obvious to the listener that the statement is a lie.  Not all cops are criminals, and therefore not all sinners are saints, and heads is not tails. 

President Nixon famously said that “I am not a crook” and we wanted to believe him, and then came Watergate and we knew that he was a crook. Ronald Reagan started his career by “re-broadcasting” Chicago Cubs games, which meant that he added sound effects , etc. in orders that those listening to him on the radio did  not know he was merely reading updates of the game which he received by telegraph. Henry Kissinger believed that the "Enemy of our enemy is our friend" which is why our country supported Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, when they were fighting our enemies.  Barry Goldwater said that “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Except that moderation is always a virtue and extremism is always a vice.  Newt Gingrich become famous for the broadcasts of his  speeches on C-SPAN but what the camera did not show is that he was speaking to a mostly empty House Chamber. 

It is like the dialogue when Dorothy discovers that the Wizard of Oz is a fraud. She says  “I think you are a very bad man” to which the Wizard replies, “I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard, I must admit”.  When voting today, remember that you are voting for a good man, not a good wizard.

Revenge

 

I Wanna Be Around

I want to be around to see how he does it when he breaks your heart to bits,
Let's see if the puzzle fits, so fine,
And that's when I'll discover that revenge is sweet,
As I sit there applauding from a front row seat.

Revenge may be sweet, but is it correct?

“I am your retribution”-  Donald Trump, CPAC convention, March 2023

“Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. - Romans 12: 19

So which one do you believe? It sounds like revenge is something that God reserves for himself. Is Donald Trump God?😝

Isn’t that violating the First commandment. “I am the Lord thy God, you shall not have strange gods before me.” You have to give Donald Trump credit. And here I thought he was trying to violate all of the Ten Commandments. He bears false witness, covets, commits adultery, steals, etc. I guess he IS obeying the Fourth Commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”  Considering that:

• Donald’s father, Fred, was a slum lord, who was arrested for attending a KKK rally, who cheated at taxes, paid a fine for discriminating in rentals of his apartments, and who pretended to be Swedish after WWII, and 
• Donald's paternal grandfather, Friedrich, who died of the Spanish Flu in 1920 not during the WWI years as Donald claimed, emigrated from Bavaria to the US to evade Bavarian military service, made his fortune in America by running brothels, returned to Bavaria after he married, and was promptly exiled from Bavaria for previously evading their draft,.  

Donald Trump might be violating almost all of the Ten Commandments,  but why did he have to pick this one to obey?

Tolerance

 

tolerate it

I wait by the door like I'm just a kid
Use my best colors for your portrait
Lay the table with the fancy shit
And watch you tolerate it
If it's all in my head tell me now
Tell me I've got it wrong somehow
I know my love should be celebrated
But you tolerate it

Tolerance is uncertainty, NOT error!

I learned statistics as an Engineer, and what statisticians call Standard Deviation, SD, I was trained to call Tolerance.  The problem is that in this case deviation does NOT mean error, so it is IMHO bad branding. 

Let’s use a fair game of craps as an example.  The Mean/Median/Mode is a roll of 7, but the possible rolls are from 2 to 12.  The tolerance is the highest roll minus the mean roll divided by 3 or (12-7)/3= 1.67. The variance is 1.67 squared, or 2.77.

The error and the tolerance, SD, have NOTHING to do with each other.  The error is 0 because it is a fair game.  The standard deviation is NOT zero because while it is a fair game it is an uncertain game, a game of chance. 

·       The mean plus one tolerance is 8.67.  To be a "normal" distribution  it should have 68% of the outcomes.  It has rolls of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8  which are 31 of the 36 outcomes or 86%.

·        The mean plus two tolerances is 10.33. To be a "normal" distribution it  should have 95% of the outcomes. That means rolls of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 which are 33 of the 36 outcomes or 92%. 

·        The means plus three tolerances is 12.To be a "normal" distribution it should have 99% of the outcomes. That means 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10,11,12  which are 36 of the 36 outcomes or 100%.

Only if there is no chance, is there no error.  So a sample can be correct, in that it is certain, but that does not mean that its standard error is zero. Tolerance and error are as different as INtolerance and no error.   Don’t mistake error with uncertainty.  What is next? Mistaking median for mean? Are you trying to prove Disraeli's attribution by Twain: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics? Marginal tax rates for effective tax rates? Are you Reaganomics?   End of Life discussions for Death Panels.  Are you MAGA?  Bribes for gratuities? Are you the Supreme Court?

Preseservation

 

Old King Cole

Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he
He called for his pipe
He called for his bowl
He called for his fiddlers three.

There goes that THREE again!

I have stated before that I am a big proponent of the Rule of Three. As a monotheist, I apologize to my polytheist Hindu brethren, but I believe that the highest of the Hindu gods are the pantheon of three Gods: Brahma the Creator; Vishnu the Preserver; and Shiva the Destroyer and that they have something to teach us monotheists. Those three gods could respectively perhaps each have a catch phrase, “Do something”, “Do the right thing”, and “Throw the bums out.’  Brahma creates everything, but not everything is worth saving. Shiva wants to destroy everything, but not everything should be destroyed. Vishnu has to decide which things Brahma has created  should be preserved and protected from Shiva and which things Brahma has created should not be preserved and should be destroyed by Shiva.

Creation, Destruction, AND Preservation are the important to the world. All creation is not good. All destruction is not bad. Some things that are created are good, and they should be preserved. Some things that are created are bad, and they should be destroyed. Creation and destruction; good and bad; hard and soft, or any two extremes are only that, the extremes.  The wisdom is in the middle of those extremes, knowing what to preserve. “Do the right thing.”

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.