OTOH, hit 59, retired. Hit 60 and decided, “Second Childhood!!!!!! You can’t make me.” OTOH not stupid enough to actually go to jail. Please note, my mother is still alive, so have to behave somewhat … But only somewhat.
She tries, bless her heart. Some of the pre-18-me arguments? Still happen. Difference? I win. (It is hilarious.) I get to say “because I said so!” Which interestingly enough, we, hubby and I, never ever used with our son.
I no longer if it was astronomer Patrick Moore or simply him relating someone else’s claim that the correct (or least harder to be made fun of) pronunciation is YOU-RAN-US.
The guy who started it and headed it, Morris Dees, certainly was a white dude, and eventually got old. The SPLC followed the course of many NGOs: Noble initial purpose, and turned into a continuing grift when the problem was solved.
Very rich. SPLC has been one of the more successful grifts in American history. Houses, yachts, offshore bank accounts — probably stuffed to the gills with taxpayer money from all levels. And the SPLC “hate map” was, like Sharpton, an offspring of Jesse Jackson’s blackmail setup. Montgomery AL had it’s very own Jesse/Sharpton team, Joe Reed and Alvin Holmes.
Trying something new today – ground cacao; treat it like coffee. Interesting on its own, but a bit thin. Better with a shot of half and half. No caffeine, which is where I have been moored/marooned for years.
My favorite this morning is the cats in the truck, wearing cummerbunds and shorts.
Reminds me of a short story by Dean Ing, his contribution to the Kzin Wars lore of Larry Niven. (“Tiger, Tiger” I think it was called.) It involves a Kzin crashing in 19th century India and finding himself at the receiving end of a tiger hunt by the local Brits.
Hmm, that one I don’t recall, but likely there would have been more than one book. There was one story where a human was captured by the Kzin and had a “do not go away” poison injector stuck to him. Thought it was one of Ing’s.
My favorite was le boop followed by Cuba Libre. Heh. Didn’t understand the garden gnome in the vents one. Pretty the hell portal has been open alot longer than that. ;)
Hypothetically, what if in 2024 we had at least 50% excess gun homicides because of Biden and because of BLM.
I forget what the numbers were in 2020.
But, you can either believe that lockdowns could prevent 200k excess deaths from the common cold, or that it was more important to prevent a year of gun related deaths by clapping our hands for tinkerbell.
Alternatively, you can be like me and understand that BLM made everything worse, and also that epidemiologists run amok made ‘public health’ actively worse.
Dan McLaughlin had a infographic whose data I cannot verify.
320 occupations by percent donating to Democrats versus Republicans. Most democratic ten were above ninety percent for Democrats, and the least were still like 30%.
If true, unlike what he said, the issue is not how echo-chambered certain occupations are. The issue is that the subsetting by occupation may have counted a lot of tiny occupations that can be coopted by activists, and basically become owned subsidiaries of the Democrats.
Yeah, some of the commentators on the covids may not be America’s finest statistical minds.
I’m closer than some, and being a hobbyist, interested mainly in applications, and being lazy towards those applications probably means that I will never be one of America’s finest statistical minds.
I skipped or jumped over an important connecting thought. McLaughlin’s repeated claim listed epidemiologists as one of the ten 90% or more democrat donating occupations. I think epidemiology was 93%, in 2014. Or until 2014, the dataset started earlier.
Two types of professor were also on that list.
I basically concluded that even then epidemiology must have been a curated occupation that existed in that form mainly for some Democrat political reason. Okay, I had intense prejudices about some of the other ninety percent occupations, and I don’t even know that the basic data is both real and valid.
Anyway, I think I do concur that America’s education system is pumping out a lot of people who are not the greatest thinkers, and who let a lot of things get between them and doing really clear statistical thinking. And then there are politically motivated hacks who assume the conclusions convenient to them.
(Which statement now has me wondering about the log in my own eye, because I have just today put in some effort at organizing some statements around politics, where I was attempting to be a fair source. I’m not entirely sure that I am fair towards those that I disagree with, or in my summaries.)
I think it’s more likely that Republicans in those professions are less likely to donate to politics, instead giving their money to churches or other non-political causes.
Do try not to mispronounce certain phrases in Japanese: 🤣
“May I sit on your chair?”
“You should donate your chair to Goodwill.”
“Can’t quite reach it. Let me stand on your chair.”
“All you do is sit on your chair all day!”
Except the most common words for chair and testicles are “isu” and “kintama”, respectively.
Then again, my sister once spent several hours in a meeting in Japan, referring to one of her co-workers as Yukata-san (“Mr. Bathrobe”). When they took a break, he quietly said to her, “it’s Yutaka”.
OT: My oldest nephew and his wife welcomed twins this morning via C-section. One boy, one girl, and all are well. They’re now up to 4. The oldest is 5.
Oh so very much the “drowning in information.” One of the tasks for next academic year is teaching data evaluation along with subject matter. This will be … interesting
Pretty much need to include the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (sometimes just Gell-Mann Amnesia) near the beginning.
What it is:You read a news article on a topic you know well (your field of expertise), and you immediately see it’s full of errors, simplifications, distortions, or outright fabrications (“wet streets cause rain” stories, as Michael Crichton put it). Then you turn the page and read stories on topics you’re not familiar with as if the newspaper is suddenly reliable and accurate.
(Text swiped from Grok – remembered the definition/description but not the name)
Gell-Mann, coined by Chrichton, in this other novel he wrote about some ecoterrorists with a plot that I am remain skeptical of to this day. The doomsday device was meant to sound plausible in universe, and I do not know enough for a proper analysis myself, but I always had energy conservation concerns.
Chrichton had a similar “law” in The Andromeda Strain about the human nucleus. Originally: “There are 24 chromosomes in the nucleus, and here are the pictures.”
Challenge: “There are 23 chromosomes in the nucleus, and here are the pictures.”
Gotcha: Same pictures.
Law: “All scientists are blind.”
I hit a Gell-Mann with Chricton’s Congo. The McGuffin was a search for blue diamonds, “excellent for semiconductor usage”. Nope, nopity, noway. Wouldn’t be pure enough (though he was a few years before diamond films were available.) He also described some power unit as depending on Krylon, as memory serves, is a DuPont paint brand name.
OTOH, when he writes about stuff I’m not familiar with, OK, I’ll go along. :)
a joke goes that there are good people and there are bad people, and good people are always correct on every detail, and bad people are always incorrect on every detail.
(Which is pretty much Mathematics has entered the chat, “this is disproven by contradiction”, Mathematics leaves. )
I don’t really buy Mathematics as the only or most important source of truth. But sometimes mathematics is persuasive evidence.
(The amount of times I have screwed myself up applying mathematics incorrectly or improperly…. Mathematics can build confidence, and sometimes that confidence is the wrong choice for me. )
Mathematics is a tool, like a hammer, a programming language, or an accordion. I use the tool. The tool does not use me. I exist for some purpose beyond the tool, no matter how cool the tool.
God put me on Earth for some purpose. I may not know what, but He did. That has helped me with a lot of ‘dark of the night’, when the tools do not make me happy or satisfied.
The only problem with pure mathematics applied comes when you start to actually believe in the spherical cow of uniform density in the frictionless vacuum and start iterating designs based upon that. Even when you add a bunch of complicating variables, any tower built upon a foundation of frictionless cows of uniform density in a perfectly frictionless vacuum will tip over, fall down, and sink into the swamp.
We tend to connect mathematics to the human experience through applied mathematics.
If we are talking introduction to data, and if we are talking highschoolers, we may not be talking pure mathematics.
Believing in mathematics can be functional, right up until the point where it stops being functional.
I feel the important thing for mathematicians to learn, that they might not learn, is do not be like Ted Kaczynski. IE, do not take the claims of the social sciences, even if expressed numerically, as holding validly for the usual mathematical models. But, really, that is the only thing I might have to offer a mathematics department as an instructor, so I will not be applying for any mathematics faculty positions.
This is maybe a far more relevant and important lesson in fields like physics or some of the engineerings, that are pretty much applied mathematics.
Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies– but not before they have been hanged.
Heinrich Heine
I thought about that for a minute, and liked it, but then I realized – if that refers to personal enemies, there is no evidence I have any! I’ve been victimized, mildly, by general human cussedness and incompetence, and more profoundly by Leftoid politicians and policies, but nobody specifically has it out for me.
I’m not recruiting for any!
Makes me wonder if I an just fortunate in that way, or if I have made so little difference in the world I am not any kind of adversary.
Making a difference doesn’t always announce itself with grand pronouncements. One never knows what offhand comment or moment where you were not thinking of becoming a spectacle can stick in others’ minds.
I thought the “Lady of the Lake” one was a reference to the oft-repeated joke of “Guns? Sorry Mr. Government Man, I lost all my guns in a tragic boating accident.”
Of course there’s also this one: “Q: Why do Australians pour oil in their back yard? A: to keep their guns from rusting.”
Dennis: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Arthur: Be quiet! Dennis: You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! Arthur: Shut up! Dennis: I mean, if I went ’round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away! Arthur: Shut up! Will you shut up?! [Grabs Dennis and shakes him] Dennis: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system! Arthur: Shut up! Dennis: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Supreme executive power is vested by God in the people as His deputies.
Only with the consent of the people can a watery Sovereignty figure offer somebody a symbol of both military power and a scabbard of healing.
Arguably Merlin’s sword in the stone offers the consent of the Britanno-Roman nobility, while the Lady of the Lake is the representative of other consenting parties.
The Reader believes all economists (with very few exceptions) are flat earthers. Socialist economists are flat earthers who want their totalitarian foot on the face of flat earth forever.
I’m enough of a jackleg or wannabe economist to say that I do not think you are wrong.
My economics may be the academic field where I have the least empirical evidence, and most confidence.
The other stuff I have read up on, properly, are also ones where I have much more knowledge of empirically or otherwise showing that I have been wrong.
I’m not literally a flat-earther. Metaphorically, in a lot of my scholarly reading…
Bob, your first sentence baffled my surgery addled brain.
That said, the first concept in virtually any econ text is that econ is about the allocation of scarce resources. Economics stubbornly refuses to deal with the concept that the only real resource on the planet is the human mind. All else comes from that. ‘Resources’ become scarce because the human mind dreams up stuff to do with them. Price theory is useful but not fundamental.
Socialist economists are not just flat earthers. They’re the crystal healing canned air huffing tide pod eating aliens had Elvis’ baby crazies that, in a sane leg of the octopus of time, would be on the modern equivalent of the old looney papers you used to see in the checkout line.
Reliable year-by-year breakdowns of attributable cold deaths are limited, as studies often use multi-year baselines or projections. Here are the main figures from major studies:~363,500 annual cold-related deaths (baseline ~1991–2020 period, covering broader Europe). This dwarfs heat-related deaths (~43,700/year in the same baseline), with a ratio of roughly 8:1.
Total non-optimal temperature deaths: ~407,000/year.
2020–2022 (COVID period): Excess mortality spiked overall (hundreds of thousands), complicating cold attribution. Cold effects may have been masked or interacted with pandemics.
2023–2025: Recent studies note ongoing high cold burden, though warming may slightly reduce it (offset by rising heat deaths). A 2015–2024 analysis across 28 countries found net fewer deaths overall from temperature shifts due to milder cold seasons, despite more summer heat deaths. No sharp year-by-year jumps reported solely from cold.
The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1) by Ben S. Dobson is pretty much the wizards/programming thing. Fun book too, but the series went downhill from there.
I believe that was the book I started reading because the title sounded promising… then about 20% into the book I started saying “Okay, wait. Those two barely know each other! And it looks like they’re going to sleep together. If they sleep together I’m quitting the book.” They slept together, and I returned the book to KU.
I don’t demand that the protagonists in the books I read follow Christian morality. But I would prefer to read books that model healthy behaviors, which don’t have a high chance of screwing you up if imitated in the real world. And what the woman did in that book I’m thinking of (still only 80% sure it was The Flaw In All Magic) was sleep with a guy she’d only just met. Now, in the book it worked out fine (I would assume), because he was the protagonist, and a nice guy, and all that. But in real life, pretty much everyone here knows people who have really screwed their lives up by sleeping with someone they only just met. It’s just not a good idea.
If the protagonist is sleeping with his girlfriend, whom he’s been dating for six months… well, there are still reasons why, in real life, you’d be wise to wait longer before jumping into bed together, but many couples who don’t wait long enough still dodge the problems that can happen. (One of which is, if you discover over time that you aren’t compatible and end up breaking up, it’s a lot more emotionally fraught and hurts more if you had been sleeping together, even if the breakup is amicable. And six months often isn’t enough to learn whether you’re really compatible or not). But as I said, that’s not going to make me hammer the “return to KU” button: it’s not the best example to give young readers, but it’s not a terrible example to show. Whereas “hey, sleeping together with someone you just met can lead to wonderful things!” is a terrible example — it’s far, far more likely to cause you massive problems than to lead to something good — and that’s the example set by the book I was thinking of.
Wizard’s Bane by Rick Cook. Computer nerd gets summoned to a fantasy world, is dismissed as useless for having no magical talent, creates a whole new magic system loosely based on Forth.
In The Wizardry Compiled he assembles a team of programmers to formalize the language, compiler and verification tools.
According To Hoyt 
TRAILLLL
ERRRRRR
SHARK DOOT DOO DOODOODOO
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Just two rows back from Bubba Yaga’s Dancing Single-Wide. 🤣
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Naaaaaarf.
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Er, MOO!
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I’m 67. Ain’t happened yet. 🤣
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I’m 69.
Nope.
Not limited to male or female either.
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OTOH, hit 59, retired. Hit 60 and decided, “Second Childhood!!!!!! You can’t make me.” OTOH not stupid enough to actually go to jail. Please note, my mother is still alive, so have to behave somewhat … But only somewhat.
She tries, bless her heart. Some of the pre-18-me arguments? Still happen. Difference? I win. (It is hilarious.) I get to say “because I said so!” Which interestingly enough, we, hubby and I, never ever used with our son.
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I no longer if it was astronomer Patrick Moore or simply him relating someone else’s claim that the correct (or least harder to be made fun of) pronunciation is YOU-RAN-US.
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…no longer sure if it was…
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In Interplanetary Janet, they pronounced it “Your On Us”
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Futurama predicts that by the 31st century they’ll have rectified the name.
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Call it George.
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IMNSHO, that deserves a crap, er, carp.
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Yep.
I’m 73 and can’t help noticing that the other pronunciation reminds me of pee.
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Every time I played Mass Effect 2, this was one of my first stops once I got onboard the Normandy 2:
https://youtu.be/l6rtQ0-ez4g?si=Cx6CW35sruZ2s78t
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… but today is not that day.
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Re: Potato
That’s all it took to be the Good House? A potato?
And here I made all this three bean salad for nothing! (I asked AI to come up with an appropriate illustration, but it really didn’t add anything)
Re the snake one: I sent that one to middle daughter, who so far has not reacted. I suppose she’s a little too rational.
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The onion house wasn’t quite as popular.
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That’s because a 3.14 meter long snake is not exactly a pithon, it’s only approximately a pithon.
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We always give out caramels.
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One hump or two?
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Bactrian forever.
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Hibiclens will shorten that forever for you.
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Looks like the boat yard hired Forklift driver Klaus.
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Klaus der Staplefahrer!
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SFBS!
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Time out! European summers are more deadly than American firearms?
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European governments. FIFY! 😄
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European governments. FIFY! 😄
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The Dirt Goddess demands human sacrifice.
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If you have a pi-thon you have an irrational snake
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But it’s transcendental as well.
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Magic VS software, was a bit close to home.
Good batch!
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I prefer my settings with magic to be fantasy.
It Just Works – now there’s a powerful magical concept.
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I remember a cartoon, not sure if in Byte or Kilobaud or another computer magazine from Back When.
Devil lying on a couch, “And what does he want? Booze? Women? Money? Power? No. This guy wants 1000 lines of error free code!”
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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Haven’t seen that one.
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As a career hardware engineer, I split myself laughing. The stories I could tell.
OT-since I’m just home from successful heart surgery, that laugh hurt.
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Congratulations on the good kind of chest pain! :)
You’ve probably discovered the trick of clutching a towel/jacket tight around your ribs to stabilize your sternum before spontaneous laughter.
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The hospital gave the Reader a heart shaped pillow for that.
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The huggin’ pillow is nice, but try the jacket method. You can squeeze your chest together with just your hands, so your pecs can stay relaxed.
Be sure to do this before seeing anything funny!
Congrats on the good outcome.
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Glad you’re back in mostly the same number of pieces!
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Application Software myself. Yes, I laughed. I have a few stories myself.
Glad you came home. Open heart? Or Traverse?
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Open heart. The surgeon actually went in and repaired my mitral valve.
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May your path be smooth sailing and as quick of a recovery as possible.
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You get well before laughing again! (Wait that sounds weird.)
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Trust me it isn’t weird. The Reader is working on grinning like a madman to avoid laughing.
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It’s really good news! Glad it was successful.
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Is the head of the SPLC a rich old white dude? 😃
‘Cause that would be just too perfect.
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The guy who started it and headed it, Morris Dees, certainly was a white dude, and eventually got old. The SPLC followed the course of many NGOs: Noble initial purpose, and turned into a continuing grift when the problem was solved.
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Did he get rich from his work? Or was he too honest for that, unlike, say, Al Sharpton?
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Very rich. SPLC has been one of the more successful grifts in American history. Houses, yachts, offshore bank accounts — probably stuffed to the gills with taxpayer money from all levels. And the SPLC “hate map” was, like Sharpton, an offspring of Jesse Jackson’s blackmail setup. Montgomery AL had it’s very own Jesse/Sharpton team, Joe Reed and Alvin Holmes.
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Not awake enough to enjoy these memes. Need coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Trying something new today – ground cacao; treat it like coffee. Interesting on its own, but a bit thin. Better with a shot of half and half. No caffeine, which is where I have been moored/marooned for years.
My favorite this morning is the cats in the truck, wearing cummerbunds and shorts.
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I really do want to read that trilogy about how the stranded wookie became Bigfoot before he joined MHI.
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You may have to pull it loose and write your own.
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Reminds me of a short story by Dean Ing, his contribution to the Kzin Wars lore of Larry Niven. (“Tiger, Tiger” I think it was called.) It involves a Kzin crashing in 19th century India and finding himself at the receiving end of a tiger hunt by the local Brits.
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“I say, old chap, what load do you prefer for rakshasa?”
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Hmm, that one I don’t recall, but likely there would have been more than one book. There was one story where a human was captured by the Kzin and had a “do not go away” poison injector stuck to him. Thought it was one of Ing’s.
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My favorite was le boop followed by Cuba Libre. Heh. Didn’t understand the garden gnome in the vents one. Pretty the hell portal has been open alot longer than that. ;)
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Pretty sure, sorry.
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Could be an Aliens reference. Only instead of chest bursters it’s garden gnomes with suspiciously surprised looks on their faces.
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That would explain it!
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Or it’s an MHI garden gnome. You definitely don’t want those in your house.
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https://uploads.dailydot.com/2024/11/why-not-both-why-not.gif
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OK, so GIFs are beyond WP. WPDE. Here:
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Dibs on the Gnomes vs the mutant roman rats in MHIs basement
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Hypothetically, what if in 2024 we had at least 50% excess gun homicides because of Biden and because of BLM.
I forget what the numbers were in 2020.
But, you can either believe that lockdowns could prevent 200k excess deaths from the common cold, or that it was more important to prevent a year of gun related deaths by clapping our hands for tinkerbell.
Alternatively, you can be like me and understand that BLM made everything worse, and also that epidemiologists run amok made ‘public health’ actively worse.
Dan McLaughlin had a infographic whose data I cannot verify.
320 occupations by percent donating to Democrats versus Republicans. Most democratic ten were above ninety percent for Democrats, and the least were still like 30%.
If true, unlike what he said, the issue is not how echo-chambered certain occupations are. The issue is that the subsetting by occupation may have counted a lot of tiny occupations that can be coopted by activists, and basically become owned subsidiaries of the Democrats.
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I have literally seen claims that the excessive mortality from 2020 was all COVID and that proves that the numbers are honest.
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Yeah, some of the commentators on the covids may not be America’s finest statistical minds.
I’m closer than some, and being a hobbyist, interested mainly in applications, and being lazy towards those applications probably means that I will never be one of America’s finest statistical minds.
I skipped or jumped over an important connecting thought. McLaughlin’s repeated claim listed epidemiologists as one of the ten 90% or more democrat donating occupations. I think epidemiology was 93%, in 2014. Or until 2014, the dataset started earlier.
Two types of professor were also on that list.
I basically concluded that even then epidemiology must have been a curated occupation that existed in that form mainly for some Democrat political reason. Okay, I had intense prejudices about some of the other ninety percent occupations, and I don’t even know that the basic data is both real and valid.
Anyway, I think I do concur that America’s education system is pumping out a lot of people who are not the greatest thinkers, and who let a lot of things get between them and doing really clear statistical thinking. And then there are politically motivated hacks who assume the conclusions convenient to them.
(Which statement now has me wondering about the log in my own eye, because I have just today put in some effort at organizing some statements around politics, where I was attempting to be a fair source. I’m not entirely sure that I am fair towards those that I disagree with, or in my summaries.)
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I think it’s more likely that Republicans in those professions are less likely to donate to politics, instead giving their money to churches or other non-political causes.
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Do try not to mispronounce certain phrases in Japanese: 🤣
“May I sit on your chair?”
“You should donate your chair to Goodwill.”
“Can’t quite reach it. Let me stand on your chair.”
“All you do is sit on your chair all day!”
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Except the most common words for chair and testicles are “isu” and “kintama”, respectively.
Then again, my sister once spent several hours in a meeting in Japan, referring to one of her co-workers as Yukata-san (“Mr. Bathrobe”). When they took a break, he quietly said to her, “it’s Yutaka”.
-j
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Definitely puts a different spin on the Reddit thread “Do women actually like a guy pulling out their chair for them?”
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Me: I feel weird today. Tired, brain all fuzzy, no motivation. What gives?
My stomach: The last thing I had to eat was well over twenty hours ago and I’m about to cut a b!tch if I don’t get some food soon.
Me: Oh. That’d do it.
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Uh oh. Larry Correia‘s garden gnomes are loose again. Hide the beer.
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OT: My oldest nephew and his wife welcomed twins this morning via C-section. One boy, one girl, and all are well. They’re now up to 4. The oldest is 5.
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Congratulations to them!
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Congratulations!
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That’s enough for a basketball team! Congrats!
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Misread that; well, with the parents that’s six.
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Congratulations to them, grandparents, and great-uncle.
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Yaaaay!
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Congratulations all around.
And just a note that [1,1,2] is a rate progression…
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Fibonacci Children? Triplets next time…
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The clan increases. :-)
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Congratulations!
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Congratulations!
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Congratulations! More, please!
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Fire team complete. Working on squad.
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Hm. Three days of posts and most are gone. Did I annoy someone?
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No. I wondered why you were posting lightly. I think you annoyed WP. Sometimes I annoy WP. I don’t know why. No one knows why.
WP Delenda Est. hugs.
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Sarah, I wonder if this has anything to do with the Report link I showed you, because today, it’s gone again.
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<rolls eyes. Probably. I mean we know there are ridiculous people who read this blog. Sigh.
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Oh so very much the “drowning in information.” One of the tasks for next academic year is teaching data evaluation along with subject matter. This will be … interesting
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Pretty much need to include the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (sometimes just Gell-Mann Amnesia) near the beginning.
What it is:You read a news article on a topic you know well (your field of expertise), and you immediately see it’s full of errors, simplifications, distortions, or outright fabrications (“wet streets cause rain” stories, as Michael Crichton put it). Then you turn the page and read stories on topics you’re not familiar with as if the newspaper is suddenly reliable and accurate.
(Text swiped from Grok – remembered the definition/description but not the name)
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Gell-Mann, coined by Chrichton, in this other novel he wrote about some ecoterrorists with a plot that I am remain skeptical of to this day. The doomsday device was meant to sound plausible in universe, and I do not know enough for a proper analysis myself, but I always had energy conservation concerns.
:D
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Chrichton had a similar “law” in The Andromeda Strain about the human nucleus. Originally: “There are 24 chromosomes in the nucleus, and here are the pictures.”
Challenge: “There are 23 chromosomes in the nucleus, and here are the pictures.”
Gotcha: Same pictures.
Law: “All scientists are blind.”
I hit a Gell-Mann with Chricton’s Congo. The McGuffin was a search for blue diamonds, “excellent for semiconductor usage”. Nope, nopity, noway. Wouldn’t be pure enough (though he was a few years before diamond films were available.) He also described some power unit as depending on Krylon, as memory serves, is a DuPont paint brand name.
OTOH, when he writes about stuff I’m not familiar with, OK, I’ll go along. :)
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a joke goes that there are good people and there are bad people, and good people are always correct on every detail, and bad people are always incorrect on every detail.
(Which is pretty much Mathematics has entered the chat, “this is disproven by contradiction”, Mathematics leaves. )
I don’t really buy Mathematics as the only or most important source of truth. But sometimes mathematics is persuasive evidence.
(The amount of times I have screwed myself up applying mathematics incorrectly or improperly…. Mathematics can build confidence, and sometimes that confidence is the wrong choice for me. )
Mathematics is a tool, like a hammer, a programming language, or an accordion. I use the tool. The tool does not use me. I exist for some purpose beyond the tool, no matter how cool the tool.
God put me on Earth for some purpose. I may not know what, but He did. That has helped me with a lot of ‘dark of the night’, when the tools do not make me happy or satisfied.
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I apologize if this ends up a double post, WP delenda est!
Pure mathematics is pure truth — there’s no getting around that!
Applied mathematics, on the on the other hand? Let’s just say all models are wrong, but some are useful.
And then there’s the Social “Sciences”, which seems to consist wholely of “lies, damned lies, and Statistics”!
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The only problem with pure mathematics applied comes when you start to actually believe in the spherical cow of uniform density in the frictionless vacuum and start iterating designs based upon that. Even when you add a bunch of complicating variables, any tower built upon a foundation of frictionless cows of uniform density in a perfectly frictionless vacuum will tip over, fall down, and sink into the swamp.
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Yes.
We tend to connect mathematics to the human experience through applied mathematics.
If we are talking introduction to data, and if we are talking highschoolers, we may not be talking pure mathematics.
Believing in mathematics can be functional, right up until the point where it stops being functional.
I feel the important thing for mathematicians to learn, that they might not learn, is do not be like Ted Kaczynski. IE, do not take the claims of the social sciences, even if expressed numerically, as holding validly for the usual mathematical models. But, really, that is the only thing I might have to offer a mathematics department as an instructor, so I will not be applying for any mathematics faculty positions.
This is maybe a far more relevant and important lesson in fields like physics or some of the engineerings, that are pretty much applied mathematics.
I dunno.
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John Carte posted on Substack a bit ago
Heinrich Heine
I thought about that for a minute, and liked it, but then I realized – if that refers to personal enemies, there is no evidence I have any! I’ve been victimized, mildly, by general human cussedness and incompetence, and more profoundly by Leftoid politicians and policies, but nobody specifically has it out for me.
I’m not recruiting for any!
Makes me wonder if I an just fortunate in that way, or if I have made so little difference in the world I am not any kind of adversary.
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Making a difference doesn’t always announce itself with grand pronouncements. One never knows what offhand comment or moment where you were not thinking of becoming a spectacle can stick in others’ minds.
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I thought the “Lady of the Lake” one was a reference to the oft-repeated joke of “Guns? Sorry Mr. Government Man, I lost all my guns in a tragic boating accident.”
Of course there’s also this one: “Q: Why do Australians pour oil in their back yard? A: to keep their guns from rusting.”
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I associated that “Lady of the Lake” one with the joke about “choosing kings by lake tarts giving them swords”.
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sorry, truncated the best part:
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Then again, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords as a basis for government has been looking more and more reasonable these days ….
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Supreme executive power is vested by God in the people as His deputies.
Only with the consent of the people can a watery Sovereignty figure offer somebody a symbol of both military power and a scabbard of healing.
Arguably Merlin’s sword in the stone offers the consent of the Britanno-Roman nobility, while the Lady of the Lake is the representative of other consenting parties.
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Eh, compared to elections nowadays. . . .
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We could do worse…and have.
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Why not both?
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Nope, nobody appreciates it at all, sigh….
Evil plans don’t come up with themselves? Hmm….
Damaged Federation starship, indeed.
Font praise. *Cackles*
Who made that forklift sign? It’s awesome!
Zeus no….
Sea is for cookie = win.
Lady of the Lake has upgraded!
Definitely not acting.
Broken chair. *G*
…Welcome to America. : )
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Marco Rubio, US Secretary of Steaks. (And burgers, and hotdogs, and cold beers, and….)
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Marco Rubio, US Grill Master Secretary <– FIFY
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Marco Rubio, US Secretary of Steaks. (And burgers, and hotdogs, and cold beers, and….)
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The Reader believes all economists (with very few exceptions) are flat earthers. Socialist economists are flat earthers who want their totalitarian foot on the face of flat earth forever.
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I’m enough of a jackleg or wannabe economist to say that I do not think you are wrong.
My economics may be the academic field where I have the least empirical evidence, and most confidence.
The other stuff I have read up on, properly, are also ones where I have much more knowledge of empirically or otherwise showing that I have been wrong.
I’m not literally a flat-earther. Metaphorically, in a lot of my scholarly reading…
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Bob, your first sentence baffled my surgery addled brain.
That said, the first concept in virtually any econ text is that econ is about the allocation of scarce resources. Economics stubbornly refuses to deal with the concept that the only real resource on the planet is the human mind. All else comes from that. ‘Resources’ become scarce because the human mind dreams up stuff to do with them. Price theory is useful but not fundamental.
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Socialist economists are not just flat earthers. They’re the crystal healing canned air huffing tide pod eating aliens had Elvis’ baby crazies that, in a sane leg of the octopus of time, would be on the modern equivalent of the old looney papers you used to see in the checkout line.
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Wait, aliens didn’t have Elvis’ baby?
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Plural, no less.
(Plural aliens, singular baby. No, I don’t think I’m awake.)
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That wretched sink reminds me of the literary concept of minimalism (please pardon the expression).
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Now tell us how many Yoorupeens freeze to death in the winter. Bet it’s more. Bet it’s a lot</b more.
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Seems to be so … from Grok
Reliable year-by-year breakdowns of attributable cold deaths are limited, as studies often use multi-year baselines or projections. Here are the main figures from major studies:~363,500 annual cold-related deaths (baseline ~1991–2020 period, covering broader Europe). This dwarfs heat-related deaths (~43,700/year in the same baseline), with a ratio of roughly 8:1.
Total non-optimal temperature deaths: ~407,000/year.
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The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1) by Ben S. Dobson is pretty much the wizards/programming thing. Fun book too, but the series went downhill from there.
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I believe that was the book I started reading because the title sounded promising… then about 20% into the book I started saying “Okay, wait. Those two barely know each other! And it looks like they’re going to sleep together. If they sleep together I’m quitting the book.” They slept together, and I returned the book to KU.
I don’t demand that the protagonists in the books I read follow Christian morality. But I would prefer to read books that model healthy behaviors, which don’t have a high chance of screwing you up if imitated in the real world. And what the woman did in that book I’m thinking of (still only 80% sure it was The Flaw In All Magic) was sleep with a guy she’d only just met. Now, in the book it worked out fine (I would assume), because he was the protagonist, and a nice guy, and all that. But in real life, pretty much everyone here knows people who have really screwed their lives up by sleeping with someone they only just met. It’s just not a good idea.
If the protagonist is sleeping with his girlfriend, whom he’s been dating for six months… well, there are still reasons why, in real life, you’d be wise to wait longer before jumping into bed together, but many couples who don’t wait long enough still dodge the problems that can happen. (One of which is, if you discover over time that you aren’t compatible and end up breaking up, it’s a lot more emotionally fraught and hurts more if you had been sleeping together, even if the breakup is amicable. And six months often isn’t enough to learn whether you’re really compatible or not). But as I said, that’s not going to make me hammer the “return to KU” button: it’s not the best example to give young readers, but it’s not a terrible example to show. Whereas “hey, sleeping together with someone you just met can lead to wonderful things!” is a terrible example — it’s far, far more likely to cause you massive problems than to lead to something good — and that’s the example set by the book I was thinking of.
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Wizard’s Bane by Rick Cook. Computer nerd gets summoned to a fantasy world, is dismissed as useless for having no magical talent, creates a whole new magic system loosely based on Forth.
In The Wizardry Compiled he assembles a team of programmers to formalize the language, compiler and verification tools.
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