First Blog

Note.   It is difficult to avoid politics.  I have fallen victim to my own disclaimer of "no politics."  Here is an account, in the abstract, of how campaigns operate. This piece is made non partisan, but is fully adaptable to whatever your preference is. I read about it everywhere, but still I was going around in circles trying to figure President Obama’s and Governor Romney’s campaign strategy, until it hit me. Their campaign strategies are going around in circles – in a clever way. Let me explain… The wrapper, or model, proposed here is as easy as ABCDE. These are Achievements, Blame, Central Issues, Distrust, and Excellent me. It does show how the campaign can be contained, classified, categorized, understood, and interpreted. Each candidate positions themselves in these, the “Big Five.” A – Achievements - what have I done in this world. How have I made it better. B – Blame.  Blame the previous administration on whatever happened. They are the bad-guys, the

In learning a new topic, or designing a curriculum, decisions must be made.  How much time is available for the learning tasks?  What is the scope of what is to be learned?  That is, the content and curriculum.  But just as important is to learn according to a balance between understanding, procedure, and skills .  These can be divided by time and effort devoted to each. As shown in Figure 1 all three are shown as equally balanced. Figure 1 Each of these is important almost in a competitive way.  Avoid any one or two of them and essentially nothing of value can be learned.  As a math professor, I often hear the lament, “I understand the material; I just can’t solve the problems.”  Imagine if your doctor says something similar, “I understand you have an intestinal problem, I just don’t know how to treat it.”  Or the airline pilot who says, “I have my pilots license, I’ve just never flown this kind of plane.”  In each of these the learning was not balanced as it should be.   How s

Too much law generates lawlessness.  In an environment of too much law or regulation, there emerges in secrecy an under-culture to thwart it.  Too much law generates a challenge to break it.  A super-culture too clever for the laws spontaneously ignites.  The leaders of too much law must spread resources thin, implying not all of it can be carefully monitored.  A new order emerges living in the cracks of the highly patrolled legal grid. Consider this.  If you generate 80,000 pages of regulations/laws each year, how large must be the infrastructure to monitor it?  It must be big. It will be inefficient. It could become corrupt.  Finally, the quality of the people managing these laws and regulations will plummet - if only by statistical arguments.

My salutations and congratulations are owing to the world astronomers. What a bunch of politician/scientists they are. Astronomers. There is no group I know of that works together so well to extract massive funding from their respective governments.  It seems that "we" are tremendously interested in events that may occur, have not occurred, and the consequences of which are so remote in time, we should scarcely be in touch or concerned with them.  Yet, they achieve funding way out of proportion to their numbers and impact. They are masters of  imagery, animations, and purveyors of fear.  Cosmological demogogues are they!   Do you know what a gamma ray beam from an exploding star means to us?  Or a neutron star exploding every 100 million years? Or very own sun going supernova?  There are limitless shows on TV of what this means.  Most, probably all, of this is absolutely beyond our intervention. Indeed, our own sun will become so hot in the next several hundreds of mi

I've been all over the world and have seen many of the great monuments left behind by ancient civilizations.  The great pyramids, Aztec and Inca cities, cathedrals and churches, ruins from the ancient Greeks and Romans, tales of the seven wonders, and more.  Naturally, I'm impressed.  Who wouldn't be?  Why do they exist?  One reason is they exist as a testament to the day.  Another is that they were the high tech of their age.  What peasant coming in from the bush to see these structures would not endure shock and awe at seeing them.  They were so very far beyond their conception and ability they were shocked into believing in the power, the potency, and the scope of the priests and kings maintaining them.  They were in such awe as to submit to the superiority of this class without question. Nowadays, this kind of shock and awe is not available.  Most people are numb to technology.  They endure it, use it, live with it, but are not shocked or awed by it anymore.  It is

Did you know that if you're a completely average person, in personality traits, memory, and intellegence, there are about 145,000 people just like you on planet earth, or about 13,000 here in the USA . Identical!! Like a twin, and even more. This sounds like a lot, but it is really quite a small proportion, about 36 in one million. Here we look at the numbers - some very tiny and some astronomically big. Preamble – Do you want to live forever?  You will, but perhaps not in the way you think – or want. In a previous report, The Immortality Paradox,  ( http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/06/immortality-paradox.html ) it was demonstrated from a human viewpoint, that immortality is rather problematic simply from mental capacities consideration.  But there is another way.  (Note, we leave of religious, deist, theist, considerations that identify an immortal soul, as they take us far afield of our point here.)     Have you ever said something like this. “You know that Karen is just li

Premise: The US performs poorly international math tests, TIMSS and PISA The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. TIMSS is used to compare over time the mathematics and science knowledge and skills of fourth- and eighth-graders. TIMSS is designed to align broadly with mathematics and science curricula in the participating countries. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009001 Overall, the US came in tenth among four graders and ninth among eight graders. On the PISA test, the United States came in 25 out of 35.   China , which did best on the test, cited “ China also raised teacher pay and standards and reduced rote learning, while giving students and local authorities more choice in curriculum.” Comments from the big shots. Education Secretary Arne Duncan , “The results show that U.S. students must improve to compete in a global economy. … This should be a massive wake-up call to the entire country.” Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill

In this note we are most interested in a singularly important aspect of American education, that of our corps of mathematics teachers.    We look at numbers.   Included in this report are the numbers of new teachers and the all important retention/attrition rates.    Teacher Certification – New Teachers As reported by the Texas State Board for Educator Certification, we consider numbers of candidates who received initial Mathematics and Science certifications over the ten fiscal years, 2000-2009.   Important conclusions are Mathematics teachers remained predominantly female and white in all the years under consideration, despite substantial year-by-year changes. About 70% of all newly certified math teachers are female correspondingly 30% are male. By ethnicity, the data reports that 8.76% are African American, 68.33% are white, 16.48% are Hispanic,    5.10% are Asian, 1.05% are Native American, and 2.12% are Other.   The percentage of white Mathematics teachers declined pr

Our purpose is to develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of political power and control in a social system. The significant feature of social systems is that they are neither purely competitive nor cooperative but some of each. Therefore this model must exhibit both qualities and balance them. It must also permit socio-political phenomena such as coalitions, alliances, anarchy, and revolutions and apply rather generally to various types of political systems. Using generalized logistical models we are able to encompass all these requirements for the case when the system is closed; that is, when all forces are internal to the system. The models developed also apply to shared market economies. Motivation for the model. One of the major historical difficulties in describing the notions of power and control is the inherent difficulty in describing the nature of the human being from this perspective. Interpersonal relations are impossibly complex. There are few if any general rules

Using Analogies We all use analogies to explain the concepts we want to impart, to convince, to help understand, and to reduce to a simpler more physical and familiar level of understanding.   Analogies have been used over the great span of time, even in Plato’s Phaedo , where the philosopher’s soul of reason should not do and redo arguments as with Penelope’s rug 2 . (Plato, Phaedo ) Research says indicates that using analogies assists in concept development. This is something we’ve all suspected. It is interesting to note that it is somewhat established in the literature 1 .     To be effective, analogies must be familiar, and their features must be synchronous with those of the target. Reasoning by analogy indicates the target concept is like something else.   You can argue it, but it is still only an analogy and may prove nothing at all.   The real problem is that the analogy may be false, and worse still is that your audience may interpret your intended concept throu

 Shakespere has suggested "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78   How unfair! From the Washington times we learn that "Once the surest path to a six-figure salary and a life of luxury, a law degree in the aftermath of the Great Recession comes with far fewer guarantees, leaving many graduates with mountains of debt while confronted by a rapidly changing legal landscape."   Only 86% of new law grads have jobs.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/17/unemployed-lawyers-sue-schools-over-promises-of-jo/ Oh, what a shame. What a great bunch of folks can't practice their chosen profession of extracting from poor people from all they have left, and billing rich people more than is just. These people, with their (legal) license to steal have an average annual earning of about $110,000.  Considering the numbers making really big salaries, there must be quite a group just scratching out a livi

Some years ago I began writing my thoughts in small notebooks. They were entered as I considered them.  It was not daily, weekly or anything on a time schedule.  When I returned to them months or years afterwards I was amazed.  I came to understand my thoughts, how my mind worked, and how my thinking had changed.  Working definitions:  A diary is a record of events, indications, and particularly feelings made daily or at least regularly.  A journal is more like an account of events, thoughts, or ideas made intermittently.There are lots of these: Travel journals, Diet journals, Workout diaries, Sleep diaries, Tagebuch, War diaries, Fictional diaries, and Unusual diaries.  Some are just newsy, a sharing with friends.  Naturally, many if not most politicians keep diaries and/or journals of their encounters with other politicians, in person or by phone. Have I created a diary?  Not quite.  My notes are more like a journal.    People make them for a variety of reasons.  Some are for