Patience

I Want It All

It ain't much I'm asking, if you want the truth
Here's to the future
Hear the cry of youth (hear the cry of youth) (hear the cry of youth)
I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now.

But some things take time

Wanting it all and wanting it now is childish.  Patience (not expecting that you CAN have it all and have it NOW) is something that we try to teach our students.  The rule is that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything.  There is an old joke of a pedestrian asking for directions on the streets of New York, ” How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The punchline is “Practice, Practice, Practice.” The joke being mistaking being on the stage with being in the audience. The original construction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris began in 1163 but it was not completed until 1260 almost 100 years later.  An oak tree requires almost 40 to 60 years to mature.  A baby takes years to reach adulthood.

If someone, a con man, promises you an easy way, a shortcut, he may not be telling the truth, and may be only trying to take advantage of you. If you want it all, and you want it now, you may find that you get nothing at all and the cnon man may get what you do have.  And that IS the Truth even if it is inconvenient.

Post Election 2024 II

 

A Day in the Life 

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph 

Which news did you read? 

I made a prediction according to Game Theory, that in the Nov 5th election that  2/3 of the voters would be able to determine the winner in “regulation time”  and would favor Republican policies by 60% to 40% and 1/3 of the voters would go to a tie breaker which would be the character of the candidate. Given that the total popular vote was 50.3% for the Danaid Trump, the Republican candidate, that means that tie breaking voters preferred the character of that candidate over any opponent by 30.9% to 69.1%.  Given that this candidate was a convicted felon, was fined because of racial bias in renting his apartments, has filed for bankruptcy multiple times, his charities were suspended for being used for personal use,  swindled those attending his University, was a civilly convicted as being a rapist,  opposed by those who served with him, etc., it is surprising that this was as high as 30.9% and not 0.0%. 

The problem is that the voters depend on the trusted opinions of others to judge character when they vote.  Many of those trusted sources either did not carry news applicable to the candidate's character (Fox News, News Max, One America News, Breitbart, Sinclair, etc.) or if they did carry the news of behavior applicable to the candidate’s character either “sane-washed” his statements, or because of fear of reprisals,  a misplaced sense of politeness, or taking the “high” road,  put that behavior in the best possible light. When the news goes dark, is it any wonder that darkness results.

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.”