Egypt: what is going on?

AlJazeera’s report…

Paul Ryan: social security leads to dependence?

Really Mr. Ryan?

3. Ryan’s father died when Paul was only 16. Using the Social Security survivors benefits he received until his 18th birthday, he paid for his education at Miami University in Ohio, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science in 1992.

Ok….

Teabonics

This is protesting that Arizona sheriff who dared to ask for more civil rhetoric.

Anyhow, I wonder if this is one reason some Fox News people feel the need to act dumb and ignorant…

Just for the heck of it
Thumbnails from Girls in Yoga Pants…click on the thumbnail to see the post at GIYP

Note: this young woman is in bad need of a computer upgrade:

Really, I was noticing the old monitor in the background….really.

29 January 2011 noonish

Workout notes I was stiffer than yesterday morning; evidently doing rotator cuff stuff with a calculus book doesn’t work.

I stretched, did 100 sit ups (20-20-25-25-5-5) and went to the treadmill:
mile 1 run: started at 10;50 mpm and made mile one by 10:40 or so; I went up to elevation .5
Then I walked about .125, ran 1.125 at 9:40, walked .125, ran 1 in 9:40, walked .125 and then finished the remaining 1.75 miles with 2 more .125 walking breaks (9:40 running pace) to get to 5 in 52:00 or so. Then I walked 1.25 in 17 minutes to finish 10K (plus)
I got off and my back was stiff, so more stretching.
Then rotator cuff, weights:
incline press: 10 x 115, 10 x 115, 5 x 135
curls 20 lb. sets of 15, 15, 11
rows: 10 x 180 lb., 10 x 180 lb., 8 x 200 lb.
That about did me in.

The university was having its indoor triathlon; I wanted to be able to do it but I wasn’t ready for the swim. Maybe next year.

29 January 2011

Ok, more of the Rah-Rah, Winning the Future (I know…WTF) but hey it is ok.

Stupidity: Recursivity points us to this article:

Mathematics tends to be both misunderstood and credited with magic powers, especially by those who are intelligent but not mathematically inclined. Arising from this, there is a perennial temptation for mathematicians to play to the gallery and to assume the role of magicians and, even more temptingly, high priests.

The late Bernard Scott, founding professor of mathematics at the University of Sussex, wrote a paper in the 1960s deploring the tendency in some schools to treat mathematics as juju. This, if left unchecked, leads to people acquiring a blind faith in mathematics and mathematical formulae, a faith that bears little relation to their true logical powers.

We know that a major cause of the financial crash of 2008 was the blind faith invested in certain mathematical risk models by managers in the financial institutions. They thought they had covered the risks, but the mathematics and financial reality were, it turned out, miles apart. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that few senior managers in the banks understood the mathematics.

Scott warned against the dangers of letting mathematical educators adopt attitudes that tacitly encouraged their pupils to interpret mathematics the “blind faith” way. It is a warning we need to heed now more than ever.

Groan. The problem is that the models didn’t apply and NOT that the mathematics was bad. Example: ordinary differential equations with constant coefficients do a good job at modeling some classical mechanics problems (harmonic motion) but don’t deal with, say, quantum behavior.

But there is even more crackpot stuff here:

We have seen blind faith in mathematics in action recently. In addition to the contribution of mathematical models to the great credit crunch of 2008, take physicist Stephen Hawking’s claim that philosophy is dead. The reason he gave was that philosophers have stopped bothering trying to understand modern mathematical cosmology. This cosmology is based on current mathematical physics, most of which has been in place for less than 100 years. It is an impressive edifice of concepts and mathematical models, but one that has not yet built up a track record for reliability over a thousand years, let alone a million years.

Well, duh: really understanding cosmology requires a background in things like differential geometry and few have the combination of the ability and the time to learn it on that level.

Let’s skip to mathematics

So how has it happened that for a hundred years, the mathematical establishment has swallowed the idea of transfinite sets? Georg Cantor produced an argument that seemed to point to transfinite immensities, but that was before we realised that mathematics was incompletable. In effect Cantor’s argument showed that the set of real numbers was incompletable. It did not (could not) show that there were more mathematical objects than an ordinary infinity.

No: he showed that there were more than a countable number of real numbers. This clown is confusing the incompleteness theorem with uncountable cardinals. The incompleteness theorem shows that any system will have logically true statements that will remain unprovable within that system; the uncountability of the real numbers is a different matter entirely.

Why the mainstream press publishes the writings of cranks is beyond me.

FAILS for the week…

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Someone needs to lose their license.

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This has to be the Knoxville’s version of The Onion.

Professor FAIL
A professor was grading papers and astonished to find that the stack wasn’t shrinking. It turns out he was putting the graded ones at the back of the stack.

Then he noticed that one student was doing very well….then finally noticed that he had made up a key earlier in the day and had put it in the stack.

I won’t tell you who he is.

28 January 2011 PM

Politics
The entire 2012 GOP field (well, what I anticipate to be the field anyway) reminds me a bit of this song:

And we have Mr. Pawlenty going off like this:

In an interview released in Christianity Today Thursday, Tim Pawlenty asserted that the United States was “founded under God” and that the founding fathers put that into the nation’s founding documents. In the wide-ranging interview, Pawlenty talked about his faith, his reversal on cap and trade, and the possibility of running against Rep. Michele Bachmann for the 2012 Republican nomination for president.

“If I make a faith-related comment, I usually quote from the Bible, often from the Old Testament,” Pawlenty told Christianity Today. “I remind people that our country is founded under God, and the founders thought that was an important perspective. I watch my tone so I don’t get judgmental or angry about issues. I try to express myself in ways that are measured and appropriate and hopefully civil and positive. Lastly, I try not to say that God is on my side, but I strive to be on God’s side.”

Christianity Today’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey asked him, “Your book encourages Christians to be involved in public issues. At what point might Christians rely too much on political solutions to current problems?”

Pawlenty responded, “I started with the perspective of someone who says that faith is separate from public law and public service; it really isn’t. We have, as a country, a founding perspective that we’re founded under God; our founding documents reference and acknowledge God, and acknowledge that our rights and privileges come from our Creator.”

Despite that claim, the United States Constitution makes no reference to a creator or God. The Declaration of Independence merely refers to a creator and to “Nature’s God.”

In the interview, the magazine also asked about Bachmann and Sarah Palin. “You seem to get comparisons to Palin and Rep. Michelle Bachmann,” the interviewer stated.

“[A comparison to] Sarah Palin, of course, is a compliment,” Pawlenty responded. “She’s a force of nature, she’s kind of in a league of her own when it comes to attention and the media’s focus on her so far. I don’t know if she’s going to run or not, but I think she’s a remarkable leader. I know Congresswoman Bachmann, I campaigned for her, I consider her a friend and I have a positive and good relationship with her as well. Voters will have to choose the style of who they want representing the party as a nominee.”

Oh dear. Is total ignorance of US history a prerequisite to getting the GOP nomination?

But he has plenty of company:

Remember, people like Mr. Pawlenty are trying to get Fox News viewers to vote for him.