Collatz Conjecture, or the 3n+1 Conjecture

I randomly remembered this interesting idea (I didn't want to call it a problem, because readers would think it needs to be solved immediately, or that it is like math homework, or something; it's not that sort of problem at all!) back from when my daughter was in Middle School.  She had just been admitted to what we used to call special activities in our school district, and was really a Title IX program.  We were invited to a seminar at Marywood University, for students and parents entering into special activities, just to show us something different and interesting.  Since then, being in the mathematics racket myself, I have come across it many times.  There are explanations for those who aren't math specialists, but I felt they weren't clear enough, so I'm going to try. 

The Process

The idea is to put a number into routine calculation; then the number that comes out is put through the same calculation, and the result of that calculation is subjected to the same procedure, until the result is 1.

Are we going to get 1 sooner or later??  This is the million dollar question!  Every number they've started with so far has ended up yielding a 1, and computers have repeatedly subjected every number less than—I don't know, some huge number—to this process, and sooner or later, they do end up at 1.  But this does not mean that no matter with which number you start, you will always end with 1.

An interesting side issue is: how many steps does it take, for any number to get to 1?  One article, at code, a website in France, evidently, has set out this information in a clever way; it is at https://www.dcode.fr/collatz-conjecture

At the bottom of that page is a table.  Along the left of the table—the first column of the table—are the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on. 

The next box contains all the numbers that end up at 1 in a single step, and that would just be the number 2.

In the second row, the box at the left contains 2.  The box on the right contains all the numbers that lead to 1, in two steps.  One such number is 4, and that's the only one. 

Here is the first eight rows of the table:

I'm going to stop here, and read it carefully, to see whether I can make it more readable by tinkering with the post.

Caitlin Clark

Thefirst time I saw Caitlin Clark, I got a very strong impression that she was unspoiled.  I got the impression that she cared about basketball, cared about her teammates, and hardly at all about the cameras. 

But now they're making such an awful fuss about the young lady that I fear it isn't going to end well.  Very few people of high school age have the strength of character to resist this level of scrutiny.  It's sort of unavoidable; the Media has to make its money, and (to them) Caitlin Clark is the Golden Goose.  We can't expect them to have the delicacy of a psychologist; they're sports reporters, the roughest, crudest people there are.

Thoughts and prayers for CC; but the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't often listen to me. 

Arch

Kiri

Kiri was a good friend, who died recently.

My wife and I traveled to towns near Pittsburgh, to attend his Celebration of Life, put together by his family.  He left behind three devastated immediate family: two children, a son and a daughter; and an ex-wife.  Some of the circumstances of the breakup of the family--not to mention other complications---made the celebration arrangements particularly difficult, but the resulting event was really dignified, and warm, and I was happy to be there.  It impressed me so much, that I plan to use it as a model for when I do hand in my chips, and there will be an event---I don't want to call it a celebration, exactly; it's more likely to be a sigh of relief---and I don't want to make any of the surviving family have to use up any tiny bit of cash I might have left them for the purpose, especially if predatory lawyers have carved out large chunks of my estate under the guise of apportioning it fairly, or appropriately.  (Having a really good will is a good way to prevent a lot of the estate being squandered by legal expenses.)

My family and my friends are foodies; this means that a good feast will not go amiss.  Compared with the volume of food I would put away in my prime, what I can consume now is a mere nothing; so I would plan for something modest, but I'd bear in mind that the younger attendees---even those who never knew me personally---might have better appetites than the older ones.  A good variety of menu items is always a good thing; the criteria running through the heads of people could vary widely (Where can one get dinner in this area?  Will I---or the kids---mess up their clothes?  Will I look too ethnic, eating this stuff?  Will my breath smell of garlic?  Does this stuff give me gas?) and providing a variety is a good idea.

Nobody can be completely selfless; we all have times at which we want to take care of ourselves first.  But then our thoughts go to the spouse, the kids, the wider family that might rely on us during uncertain times.  (Don't forget that the Uncertain Times are caused by various unscrupulous parties looking out for themselves, whereas we expect them to have wider concerns: the legislatures, the businesses, the law, the lawyers.)  Some of us will take stronger steps to take care of these people than others of us; it's impossible to lay out what is proper.  In Kiri's case, I would think that he did better than the average guy.  In any case, it's impossible to have a complete idea of what was going through the mind of someone, who is now dead.

Our feelings about the deceased are strongest, and in some ways, most distorted, right after they die.  So it makes a lot of sense to delay a celebration for at least six months, as they did in Kiri's case.  The arrangements were announced in a graded way: first the date, then the rough location, then the details of the event.  The loved ones were polled for Kiri's favorite songs; photographs were collected; thoughts about Kiri were invited.

Bear in mind that the deceased takes on the nature of the elephant being described by the several blind men: he or she often ends up being an almost completely different person to each of his friends.  I often thought of Kiri as being tactful and polite, almost to a fault.  But it is entirely possible that he was an authoritarian to his family; we'd never know.  Kiri was a fun-loving guy; almost in an outsized way.  He'd look for experiences of the most outrageous kind, so I'd expect that he took his family through some of the most wild trips that were available to them!  (I, myself, was more modest in the choice of experiences.  But my only child---I hope she never reads this---has the genius of making the most mundane experience into something really huge, but she also has a poor memory, so that she has probably forgotten most of the fun things that we did.)

Let me close with an urgent plea to anyone who has elevated blood pressure: the consequences are impossible to know, and none of them are good.  Treatment is usually easy and inexpensive, so commit to preventive treatment when you can.

Arch

A Major Health Alert

I'm diabetic (Type 2), but I found that most of the things I have to worry about are things that everybody should worry about.  In the long run, high blood sugar (essentially the definition of Diabetes) affects almost all the body's systems: kidneys, heart, liver, nerves, circulation.  I was surprised when my primary care physician wanted to lower my blood pressure. 

"What does diabetes have to do with blood pressure?" I asked.  He didn't answer the question; he proceeded to checkout all my systems, leaving me to figure it out.  (He knew my colleagues called me Dr. de Silva, and made a common mistake, assuming that I was a specialist in some obscure health field.)

Well, there's an article in the New York Times about high blood pressure; why it's important, why it's often undiagnosed, and why (even when diagnosed) it goes untreated.

In 1999, I had visited my hometown, to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary.  The enormous pile of medication I was carrying with me was mostly intact, except for my blood pressure medication.  It had sort of exploded!  (It's a phenomenon called efflorescence, where some substances abandon their crystalline nature and revert to a powder, when exposed to high humidity.)

I got dragged around to my brother's PCP*, who agreed to see me as a matter of courtesy for my brother.  I explained about the misbehaving pills, and he got very serious.  "Can't play around with blood pressure," he said, and immediately prescribed the equivalent drug, stabilized for the tropics, and dug out a single dose to take immediately.  [*Primary care physician.]

I'm still not one of those doctors, but I'm picking up bits and pieces here and there.  Blood pressure control is a big deal.  Once you are put on it (usually because you really, really need it), you don't want to unilaterally decide to go off it.  Fortunately, some of the most effective maintenance drugs now cost hardly anything. 

Why does high blood pressure matter so much?

1. If you have a potential aneurism in your brain, it could pop.  A good friend of mine was resisting going on BP medication.  He went to a conference in New Orleans, and died of an aneurism.  Any shock could kill you. 

2. The higher your BP, the harder your heart has to work.  All the time.  It just ages your heart more than it's supposed to age; you might be 50 years old, with an effectively 60 year old heart. 

3. The higher your blood pressure, the harder your kidneys work.  This is particularly bad for diabetics, because either diabetes, or diabetes medication, puts a load on your kidneys.  (There is some belief that heavy use of Tylenol will also be a burden on your kidneys.)

I'm sure I knew of other reasons to have your blood pressure screened regularly, but I have forgotten.  Until a better plan emerges, once you get on BP medication, just stay on it.  It's not expensive, and giving it up is dangerous.

 Archimedes.

Classic Putdowns

In the culture I come from, a lot of humor is of the putdown variety.  This morning, I realized that a lot of this comes to us from witty people who have been admired for a century!

This was posted in Facebook, a compilation ɓ Erika Hackett.

These sayings/insults are incredible gems from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words! I hope you delight in them as much as I have. 😅♥️

1. "He had delusions of  adequacy.” Walter Kerr
 2. "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
3. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. - Clarence Darrow
4. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
5. "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
6. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.” - Moses Hadas
7. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” - Mark Twain
8. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” - Oscar Wilde
 9. "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.”   -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
10. "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one.” - Winston Churchill, in response
11. "I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here” - Stephen Bishop
12. "He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” - John Bright
13. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.” - Irvin S. Cobb
 14. "He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” - Samuel Johnson
 15. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. -  Paul Keating
16. "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” - Forrest Tucker
17.  "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” - Mark Twain
18. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” - Mae West
19. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
20. "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.” - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
21. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music.” - Billy Wilder
22. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I'm afraid this wasn't it.” - Groucho Marx
23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison." He said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."
24. "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln
25. "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -- Jack E.  Leonard
26. "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." --  Thomas Brackett Reed
27. "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." -- James Reston (about Richard Nixon) —Robert L Truesdel

Conservatism in Celebrity Women

In the absence of other information, we have to assume that the political inclination of any person is a considered choice, based on objective and reasonable choices.  But my prejudices urge me away from this belief.  I've expected that women tend to be more progressive in their thinking, I thought, because they have greater frustration with poverty in others, regardless of the race or the social class of the person.  Men, for decades, earned the money for the family (and whipped on their employees to greater efforts) and paid the taxes, and—it would seem, at least to fellow affluent men—were reasonably frustrated with low-earning, or even unemployed men.  And furious at having to pay taxes. 

Many of the celebrity women I have admired seem to be conservatives.  Why is this?  Ginger Rogers was the first one I noticed; and I believe, so was Debbie Reynolds.  Jane Fonda has been a progressive for decades, so has Lily Tomlin, and Susan Sarandon, bless her!  But, keeping informal statistics, the celebrity women—obviously, not those themselves running for election, or we'll get confused with all these Bobert's, Taylor-Confused-Greens, and other witless admirers left over from Trump's of glamorous days running about—seem to outnumber the progressives.

What is it about the lives celebrity women lead that seems to encourage conservatism?

Arch

Good Friday / Maundy Thursday

Though I'm a firm atheist, and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, my belief in the historicity of Jesus is a little difficult to shake off, and perhaps it is not necessary to do so.  Over the decades, the events in the so-called New Testament, and the personalities of Jesus's disciples seem too fully painted to be mere fictions. 

Though I continue to believe that Jesus was never alive again after he was executed, the horror and the fear of the group in the hours leading up to the crucifixion seem very real.  And if I do believe in the devastation of Jesus's friends and supporters in those pre-crucifiction hours, that should not detract from my qualifications as an atheist.  And atheists need not feel obliged to ridicule 'believers' as the latter ponder the horrors of those two days.  If it were the case that Jesus had not a speck of divinity, the horror of that group would have been all the more real. 

There is no doubt that Jesus was a great leader and teacher, which alone makes his execution a tragedy.  So were the executions of Stephen, Paul, Peter, in fact the deaths of all those first century christian martyrs were tragedies.  Atheists tend to laugh at those who mourn those tragedies; it's somewhat inexplicable.  But not sacrilegious, as we atheists can agree.  I mean, when a friend dies, we comfort his widow and his children; we hardly ever ridicule them saying, well, he wasn't the Messiah; curb your excitement!

I blogged on Bach's Matthew Passion recently.

With The Hands: 3rd World Wisdom

Today I want to head in a new direction.  My readers may not know that, until I was 26, I grew up in a Third World country.  In contrast to the prejudiced views of certain people, these countries were not—and are not—the trash heaps that they're accused of being.  It is rather alarming how large a proportion of journalists in the media are from India, for instance; these countries seem to grow very highly motivated individuals.  But, having grown up in Sri Lanka—just think; being as old as I was, I was very much a Sri Lankan when I arrived here, and still am, to some degree—there are a few patterns of thought that are stuck into my brain, like they're glued on. 

Having a dishwasher at home, for instance, gradually creates patterns of behavior quite different from those in someone who washed their dishes by hand.  Dishwasher people tend to collect dishes inside the dishwasher, until there's enough of a load, and then run the machine, which chugs along without any interference. 

People who have been the designated dish washer (in their dishwasher-less homes) in the past, seem to want to pile up dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, until having to wash them is inevitable, at which point they wash the whole lot, and put them in an enormous draining-rack.

The problem I have with this plan is that they sometimes toss things like bread knives in there, too.  If you've only got one bread knife in the house, (and most homes are this way,) you've put the bread knife out of use until the stuff in the sink has been washed.  This is true of any really large knife. 

To anyone who grew up in the wilds of Colombo (I'm being flippant; Colombo was a bustling city by 1700), this is a crazy way of doing things.  I would—carefully—wipe the knife clean, and put it back near the bread board.  If someone has used it to dig out the last bit of strawberry jam—as you do—well, hold it under the tap (a.k.a. faucet) and then clean it off with a paper towel.  No need to hit it with the enzymes (or hormones, or whatever they put in detergent these days).

Many of the things we own—and love—could serve us well for years, and even decades.  Ten years from now, we could be looking at something we own with fondness, thinking that the successor to that tool (or whatever it is) is nowhere near as well made as the one we have!  Lots of old things are more robust, and made of sturdier materials than their more modern counterparts.  It's common sense, therefore, to be ultra careful with the things we own, and which we enjoy the most.  Clothes.  Shoes.  Furniture.  Pens!  Some of our favorite things are really given a lot of rough use. 

A screwdriver, for instance.  This humble device can give good service for decades if you never let it slip while tightening (or loosening) a screw.   This is especially true of Philips-type screwdrivers. 

Now, it could be argued that, this sort of tool is intended to take rough usage, and once the bit is worn smooth, so that it doesn't work anymore, you just buy a new one.  Ah, but will the tool you buy in ten years be as good as the one you have now?

Shoes are an excellent example.  Sometimes the only problem with a fantastic pair of shoes is that the sole is unevenly worn; perhaps the sole of the left foot is worn down on the outside.  If your town has a shoe repairman (a cobbler), he can easily re-sole that shoe (or the pair of shoes) so that they're as good as, or better than, they were when new.  Sadly, shoe repair is a dying art, so it behooves one to patronize a shoe repairman before they give up the occupation.

I ought to explain the use of the phrase "with the hands"!  When you eat with your fingers—as we did when eating certain foods—you normally wash your hands once you're done.  The phrase  "With the hands" means: while you're washing your hands at the sink, you may as well wash your plate, too!

Arch

 

Trump's Party

The Trump family has decided to infuse new blood into the GOP political machine.  What will happen?  Will they get to paint their headquarters in gold, or go into bankruptcy?  Well, the GOP people must come to its aid.  Jump in with your checkbooks, or go down the drain with the Trumps.

Gene

 

Well, Kate and I just got back from the funeral service for a recently deceased close friend.  The funeral service was held in a small Evangelical church.  A little into the service, we found ourselves singing a hymn, whose refrain was

Trust and obey,

For there's no other way,

To be happy in Jesus

But to trust and obey.

This remarkable hymn managed to encapsulate all that I find disappointing in Christianity as it is practiced in the US: if you want to be happy with Jesus, you have to switch off the critical parts of your brain.

Much of the congregation consisted of our colleagues, who were college professors.  Some of them, doubtless, are comfortable with Trusting and Obeying, but higher education for many years has been engaged in a battle to fight against all sorts of dogma, which is why the conservatives and the GOP is so determined to get rid of "wokeness", one aspect of which is not Trusting and Obeying.  But is there truly no other way?

Arch

Great Advice from Feynman

This is wonderful advice, all the more poignant for coming from Richard P. Feynman.  Some of you are cautious about whose advice you take—only to be expected after so much gaslighting—so read up about Richard Feynman.  He was brought up in Brooklyn, and eventually found himself working at the Manhattan Project.  He cracked the safe in which the reports of the several research groups were kept, left a note saying "Guess who?" and locked up the safe again. 

He wrote a 3- volume work that encapsulated all his notes, called The Feynman Lectures on Physics. 

To get back to the advice in the photo, his main trust (to young people) is:  find what you like to do, and really get into it. 

There is a message here for parents.  The kid who finds something she is enthralled by in their core curriculum is very fortunate.  You have to hedge your bets by providing a wide variety of activities for your kid. 

If your family is suspicious of higher education, your child can learn to downplay it.   It seems as though being well-educated is something a person should be proud of; and indeed he or she ought to be proud of it.  But in these times, a person can often be more effective as "an influencer," but not a cheap commercial influencer who has a huge following on social media, for the sake of getting rewards from companies; but to encourage people to think in rational ways, that science isn't bad, that vaccination is usually good; that politicians don't always do as much as they claim to do.  And maybe he or she (your child) could be a better influencer if her or his academic credentials are down-played.

Regrettably, once a youth gets into college, getting more and more qualified often depends on focusing on less and less, until people with the highest qualifications often know just a huge amount about a very narrow number of things.  This does not have to be the way it is.  Richard Feynman himself knew a huge number of things; he was widely read, he certainly knew how to crack a safe.  When he was alive (he might still be alive, but I think I remember hearing that he had died) people in society respected educated people.  People with wide knowledge and experience (that doesn't automatically come with a college degree; you have to go out and get that sort of knowledge and experience) were respected.  But we didn't know how resentful certain sectors of society were, and how suspicious of, college-learned people.  Bank loan officers, people with whom farmers had to do business, were often college educated, and these people did not usually have the customer's interests at heart; it was no wonder that many people thought of educated folk as ripoff artists. 

Well, we could be, I suppose.  When I looked in the eyes of certain of my students, I could see a certain question taking shape: "do we need to know all this, just to rip a few people off?"  I had been thinking how helpful they could be, with the additional information.  But some of them were focused more on knowing just how little they could get away with.  Being other-directed is something one absorbs from one's parents.  Unfortunately, some parents would just as soon their kids did not learn to be too altruistic. 

Arch

Thinking About Immigration

The problems with immigration are closely tied to our attitudes towards social welfare.

Politically, people's attitudes towards social welfare are numerous, ranging from "We don't need any sort of welfare at all.  Each man for himself!"  to  "Everyone should be provided with the basic necessities of life."  Those who haven't thought about this sort of issue might be shocked, but instead of 'everyone' if we were to say 'children', bearing in mind that even penniless families can have children, it takes on a different color.  Imagine a young couple, where the man was the breadwinner, and the woman was a homemaker, and then a mother; they get divorced, and now the woman must get child care while she looks for a job, or works.  Our perspective must change from: "I don't think I'll ever need the state to take care of me!" to: "There certainly are people who may need help from the community."

It isn't a huge leap to make the assumption that everyone believes that every citizen has to be taken care of, to some degree.  We are a nation that takes care of its citizens.

Some of us believe that we ought to take care of even non-citizens who live here.  It may be that (1) we give non citizens certain basic services to keep everyone safe.  (2) We give the kids of noncitizens certain services out of sheer humanity.  (3) Sometimes it is too burdensome to insist that our social service providers should verify citizenship of every individual before services are given.  And so on.

Well, once we establish the principle that we're a nation that looks after its citizens, or even its residents, it becomes clear that allowing open immigration is impossibly difficult; we would be taking on a great expense when we admit people through our borders.  Presence here has to be understood as a membership in all sorts of services.

Why not deny all immigration?  This sounds good in theory, but each of us has some categories of wannabe immigrants who we feel should be allowed in.  The question is how to do it in a fair and consistent way.

Transitioning Caution

There's a lot of evidence to believe that those who work in the area of guiding young people through the process of gender transitioning—getting ready for a sex change—have been a little too enthusiastic in advocating for it. Often, these strongly pro-transition advocates are reported to not offer more options to the young people they're counseling.  Bear in mind that the youngsters who come to be counseled concerning their gender dysphoria—discomfort with their assigned gender—often have other psychological burdens than just unhappiness with their gender.  But too often, the professionals who are assigned to counsel them are (reportedly) too focused on the route of gender transitioning.  This trend is confirmed by a substantial number of cases in which, the transitioned individual request reversal of the process: de-transitioning.

I am not an expert; I have just been unhappy with presenting very young children with the option to transition gender.  Kids often don't know their own minds, and other psychological problems they're facing complicate and interfere with the situation. I don't think writing about gender transition can be left to the experts. 

Political conservatives have opposed any gender transition for a long time.  For that reason, anyone who raises concerns about the ethics of gender transition are often accused—by pro-transition people—as being politically motivated conservatives.  No, I'm not raising a GO SLOW flag here because I'm a Christian conservative, or Tea Party-type Republican; I just think there are far too many people who want to support and affirm the interest in a youth who is merely interested in gender options, to follow through with actually transitioning.  Transitioning is difficult and painful, but detransitioning is even more painful.  This is far too delicate a problem to allow politics to interfere with it. 

Please read up on the matter yourselves:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html

Setting an Example

The last few days I have been thinking about what sort of example have I been setting for the people around me?

If I had lots of kids, that's one way a person could expect to have a large influence on the younger generation.  But I have just one kid!  Unfortunately, on one hand—in terms of humor, and speech, and music—I think she does follow my example.  And also in less positive ways: e.g. she tends to be a hoarder, like I used to be :(

One way in which I would have been gratified to be followed, is to have as small carbon footprint as possible.  * We have very fuel-efficient cars.  * Our home is entirely electric; at the moment, that means that our home heating is only as energy-efficient as the electric company, so we've put our efficiency in one basket, so to speak.  We use as many LED lamps as we can, and so on.  * My child went to the public school.  It's a free country, so we have the right to send kids to any school.  But by sending our child to the public school, we were investing in a resource that was publicly available, rather than a private resource.  On the other hand, my kid revealed that she was relentlessly bullied while at school, (something that—one hopes—does not happen in a Catholic school, for instance; but who are we kidding?  It probably does happen in most schools.)

* I commuted to work using a bike, or a bus,  for a while.  But that takes planning; I was running late so often, I had to race to work in my car. 

I can't think of too many other things I could report to you without it sounding like bragging.  I don't think I'm cut out to be an influencer.  That seems to be a role at which women are more successful, anyway.  I don't know whether women are interested in influencing their followers to maintain any sort of smaller footprint; their success seems to be measured by the size of their footprint; the larger, the better!

Anyway, I urge any of my readers who are influencers even in a small way to keep an eye on positive influences they could model. 

Arch

I used to write diatribes against Donald Trump

Donald Trump was, and continues to be, a pain in the a$$.  Many trumpees claim to believe him (though sometimes they qualify their belief by saying "He tells the truth in a certain sense").

The main point is that they want Trump as president.  Possibly because they want someone who can lie to the enemies of the USA; they obviously forget that Trump's lies are like those of a school kid. 

Better writers than I have written entire books about the unreliability of President no. 45, many of them also indicting the GOP for providing a home for Trump (in a manner of speaking).

Anyhow, there are far more fun topics to write about!

Arch

Is School Attendance Optional?

That was the headline of a New Yorker article just this morning.  Apparently school attendance was bad during the COVID pandemic (and, I assume, even after adjustment for school closings), but has stayed low ever since. 

Parents decide to home-school their kids for various reasons, foremost among them cultural and religious reasons; I am not seeking to complain about that.  But it appears that parents are sometimes complicit in absenteeism.

OK, let's face it: why is education compulsory, wherever it is so?  In Pennsylvania, for instance, you have to attend school up to 8th grade.  Why?  Well, an educated electorate is important for democracy, because so much public information is dependent on an understanding of summary information, not to mention text (bills before various legislatures, etc.)  This is why Trump, being just marginally educated, is a poor citizen, let alone a good choice for president.  Do parents send their children to school simply for the convenience, or because they believe in the value of it?

Many parents who have reservations about the value of community schooling (kids learn bad habits; kids learn to swear; the teachers are no good; learning math is irrelevant,  we have calculators; there's bullying; teachers are all atheists; it's just an unnecessary expense), still could have a strong pro-education conviction or bias, but not be comfortable with the school environment or culture.

Talking about culture, it's more in keeping with the American cultural environment to negotiate a reward for attending school, than to assess a penalty for not.  We could award some sort of medal for diligent school attendance, that most students could win, which employers would want to see; potential employees with that medal would be considered preferable to those without.  At the moment, playing hooky is frowned upon, but not really penalized. (I don't know, maybe it is?)

I, of course, am a strong believer in school.  I learned great stuff in school, and my mother, who was a school teacher, would ask me: did they teach you such-and-such?  Just the fact that she was interested made a difference in how seriously I took my classes.  It really pains me to see grade school kids who look cross-eyed when asked about something they should be familiar with.  And worse, adults who defend them, saying, oh at her age, I couldn't have told you much more than her!  Hee hee!  (Trumpies are probably delighted to hear of incidents that upset educated people.  Piss off the Dems!  I love it!)

This probably comes across as though I hate all conservatives.  That's not quite true—yet, but I'm getting there. 

Arch

Pygmalion

Most everyone knows that the hit musical My Fair Lady (and the movie of the same name, from around 1964) was based on one of George Bernard Shaw's famous plays, Pygmalion.  I was thinking about the words of Higgins, commenting on Alfred P. Doolittle's remarks: "Listen to his native wood notes wild: 'I'm willing to tell you, I'm wanting to tell you, I'm waiting to tell you!' "

I was wondering how much of that was Shaw, and how much Lerner and Leowe.  I reasoned that, by this time Shaw's work must be in the public domain; I looked for the play in The Gutenberg Project, and there it was!  And much of the straight dialog was right in the original, including the 'Wanting ... willing, and waiting' bit!

The words—the libretto—of the musical are nothing short of hilarious, and well worth obtaining a print copy to follow along with, in my humble opinion.  I remember bringing the booklet home with me, when I was around 17, and laughing, all by myself!  Brilliant.  And they did trim some of the text down, to improve the rhythm of the words.

Well, what a pleasure and a blessing it has been, to have been alive at the time when movies such as My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, The Court Jester, Ben Hur, and The Ten Commandments were made (not to mention 2001, A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and ... OK, I'll fill this gap pretty soon)!  Mel Brooks's movies alone deserve a mention.  Ẅhat a great life we have led, eh?

Arch

Stuff My Mother Taught Me

Last April, I  put up a long post about my mother, Kamala Philips, on our companion blog—Archie's Archives.  She was a musical powerhouse, and a lot of what I remember of her was her interest in music, and her interest in my interest in music!  But she was a multi- faceted person, who if she were alive today would certainly have been well-known in her community.  In her community, though, she was famous. 

She taught me a lot about music—mainly advanced harmony, and a lot of music history—but she taught me a lot more.  My siblings were difficult to wrangle, and couldn't easily be made to sit down and listen, whereas I would sit down and listen pretty well. 

Four of my female relatives taught me one interesting skill: ironing clothes.  It was partly the fact that I would iron their clothes without any bullying at all.  For those among my readers for whom the concept of ironing is outside their experience: in the early part of the last century, we had only natural fabrics—cotton, linen, silk and wool—with which to make clothing.  We would wash them by hand, hang them out to dry, especially in the tropics, and then we would have to smooth them out with gadgets called smoothing irons.  These were heavy metal things with a smooth bottom, with which you flattened out the wrinkles in your clothes.  We still have them, of course, but kids are generally kept away from them.  In fact, most of the ironing is handled by dry cleaners, as a sort of side- hustle. 

Being from the Indian Sub-Continent, and being a teacher, my mother and her sisters (and my grandmother) wore sarees, which are basically long rectangles of fabric, 45 inches by 6 yards.  Ironing one of those initially seems a daunting project, but actually you fold a saree in half, iron the folded saree, then fold it again, iron the four thicknesses, fold again, iron the eight thicknesses, and by the time you've finished, it's all done. 

Pants were the most interesting things that I learned to iron.  In addition to being made of cotton, they were often heavy material that took a lot of ironing, and lots of wetting down with a spray bottle.  A major principle of ironing, generally, is that small pieces of fabric, such as the cuffs at the bottom of the legs, could safely be ironed first, with no fear that they would be crushed by subsequent handling.  Same with shirt collars, or waistbands.  Or cuffs of long-sleeved shirts.  So there; even if you don't remember anything else I've said here, that's a major takeaway. 

My sequence for ironing pants, to this day, is

• The inside of each leg.  (Lay the leg with the two seams one on top of the other.)
• The outside of each leg.
• The waist band.  You're done. 

Shirts were the trickiest, and least useful:

• The cuffs of the sleeves.  The collar.  In either order. 
• The front placquet (or placket), where the buttonholes are. 
• The sleeves.  (They aren't as small as the collar and cuffs, but they're smaller than the rest of the shirt.)
• The back, and finally
• The front.
  

 You might not believe this, but my mother also taught me bookbinding!  I had been given a subscription to a boy's magazine (Eagle), and I collected the issues.  We put them together in two volumes—it involved a straight- backed chair, and special waxed binding thread—which were then taken to a printing press, who machine-trimmed the edges; then we made cover boards, glued them on (yes, we had binding tape and everything), hammered the spine into shape, and when it dried, it looked fabulous!

These days, Staples or Alpha Graphics, or Kinko's have the ability to bind your magazines into a volume, if you think the magazines are worth the effort to preserve them.  Most of them will use spiral-binding, which is a lot less trouble and less expensive. In my opinion, comics are probably worth binding, but then you can't sell them, if that's what you want to do (unless someone wants to buy the whole volume.)

Well, happy New Year, all my readers!  I have a feeling things are going to get better, but I have been wrong before!!

Arch