First Blog

When I grew up, we were all told and believed that love conquers all. In the last decades its antipode has reared its head.   Yes, HATE.   It has walked in the room, ordered drinks, and is working its magic on all.   Now we have so many hates and too little time to enjoy them. Hate is has never been more popular. These days we have… Muslims hate the Infidel. The Turks hate the Kurds. Saudis hate Iranians. The Democrats hate the Republicans. Blacks hate the Whites. Socialists hate the Capitalists. Climateers hate the Deny-eers. Hamas hates the Israelis. Atheists hate the Believers. Walmart hates Amazon. Remember the simplicity of the Kingston Trio lyric? “They're rioting in Africa, They're starving in Spain. There's hurricanes in Florida, And Texas needs rain. The whole world is festering With unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles; Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch, An

Alert.   The value of  p  has been computed by some programmer working at Google to a new record of 31.4 trillion d igits.   Don’t worry, the number of known digits has been gradually creeping up for years.   The algorithms are well established.   But you need some computing power and memory to get to 31+ trillion.   It took 112 days of computation time (with a 96 node computer).   If you typed them out, say at 10 digits per inch, you would be typing a distance of 52 million miles, or 1835 times around the Earth. Or about 99 round-trips to the moon. (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/calculating-31-4-trillion-digits-of-archimedes-constant-on-google-cloud) p  is one of those numbers most numerous among all numbers called transcendental .  This means it's not rational (like a fraction) and it's not algebraic (like square roots or any roots and combinations). The first proof  p  was transcendental took over 100 pages in print.  But now it can be proved to under

A new condition of drunk shopping is here.   It turns out drinking and online shopping really do mix.   Recent results show that drunk shoppers are avid online buyers – to the tune of $39 billion last year.   Hmmm, at least they’re not on the road. (http://fortune.com/2019/03/20/drunk-shopping-2019/) No vindication is ever given by true hate . A peril of 5G technology.* Using 5G technology with block chain and other secure fiscal transfer methods, operators (i.e. bad guys) may be able to move money about in a nonlinear chain of accounts so quickly and so frequently, the real destination may never be determined. Just imagine a large balance transferred one hundred times in a second, and each transfer must be explored individually.   Now multiply by ten thousand accounts.   Indeed, the blur of transfers may never be unraveled. *5G, now coming to a service near you. Probably 2019.  You'd think our Congress would be hot on this topic. Nope.  These guys can't even solve th

Principles of Insufficiency and Sufficiency Don Allen Science or no science, every subject has its principles.   Basically a principle is a rule or guideline.   The principles of buoyancy, behavior, conformity, and democracy are familiar.   In this note, we consider a very special category of principles, those infused with the terms insufficient and sufficient as modifiers. Then, we create a new principle (insufficient action) which seemingly has an appropriate value for our day. As we’ll see, such principles often form the basis of a theory on the strong side or a hope on the weak side. Yet, they offer some truly interesting distinctions, qualifications, or requirements.   Note. As a rule, insufficient usually means not enough , though it can mean that what is thought to be not enough is actually quite enough.   Also a rule, sufficient often implies a need or requirement for some additional components for compliance.   For example, the Principle of Sufficient

If you cheat to enter a college, you’ll cheat when you get there. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Economists make fortune tellers and astrologers look good.   - Author unknown /////////////////// Never underestimate the power of a well-made argument.   \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ To be the best you can be is a journey – of both you and the term.   Your “best” at age 20 is different from your   “best” at age 40 or at age 60. “Best” is at best a moving target when it comes to you and me. /////////////////// Life’s journey is taken in steps, giant, tiny, sideways, backward , forwards, up, down, and stationary. You’ve heard the expressions, all about the steps you take Going Nowhere. Going somewhere. Going Backward. A giant leap... Heading up. Going in circles.

Cheating for college admission is just another form of free stuff. Many young students and millennials have already signed onto the free stuff agenda, supporting any and all. This supports all they think and all they do.   Getting it for free is OK, cheating included. As a college math professor with four decades of experience, I can note today’s students are among the third generation of cheaters. This means they were raised by parents who were cheaters and these raised by parents, themselves cheaters.   Today’s cheater feels no guilt whatever about cheating.   For them it is merely the business of getting ahead.   Their parents and their parent’s parents did suffer some guilt but not enough, in a diminished curve. Make no doubt, the kids of these cheating parents are already in the cheating game.  The parents were caught, but happily they are excused even though most kids knew the system was pay-rigged in their favor. Yet, to their view, cheating for admission only supports

He just finished his PhD work and published it on Twitter.   His committee reported his Tweetsis was shorter than usual but loaded with content. The non-conformist in fact becomes conformist in nonconformity. If you spend your life in the study of truth, the best you can hope for is to write a long book describing the many criteria for and types of truth – no definitive or unique answer emerging. For many of us a thought experiment means you accept what you want, then reject what you want, all in order to conclude what you want. Impressive, no? Seeking truth.   Is the non-conformist actually against society’s norms or does he just reject the use of  soap? For anyone who can read and write, there is a PhD program and campus for you. You can be “Dr. Whatsiwhat” inside two years.   Just pay tuition and fees.   Flash! And if you have enough $$, you can contract to have your thesis written for you, though with the recommendation you actually read it.

Feeling pretty sharp today?  Gray cells a-buzzin'?  I've got some problems for you.  The problems can be approached at all levels.  But they are not easy.   A. Suppose you are asked to contribute to a 100 year time-capsule, with the directive it should be something beyond a picture, joke, or comment of the day.  What will you write?  It can be a prediction, a state of being, world conditions, problems solved or unsolved by then, etc.* B. Suppose you have all the power of congress, the President, and the courts for one day. You can pass one law. Your experiment is to describe the law, its desired future impact, and what could go wrong with your law. C. You journey back in time one hundred years, more or less – your choice.  You can do anything. Pass a law, start a war, cure a disease, kill a person, save a person…  Make your selection and predict how the world will have changed at your now-time. *In many ways you operate your own time capsule(s), not for 100 years ah

Some demand respect simply because they exist. You may as well give respect to a bucket of dirt. ----------- On days like today I must give my salute to Archimedes, and not just because he was the greatest scientist of antiquity.   More importantly, it was he who first wrote about the lever, of which the greatest application is the modern corkscrew.   Cheers! ----------- Did you know the Greenland shark, the world’s largest fish, is very long lived?   One example was recently determined to be between 272 and 512 years old.   How can you do this?   It has no birth certificate or driver’s license.   It was done through carbon dating.   But carbon dating* works only on dead life forms, such as long buried bones or old dead wood.   In the ocean, when anything dies, it is consumed within days or months.   So, you can’t just find dead sharks lying about.   It turns out that within the shark’s eye, there remains some embryonic tissues.   These can be dated, and was.   Amazing. ---