Neil DeGrasse Tyson Chooses not to Label Himself an Atheist

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Quite honestly, this could make a lot of sense.

There are two reasons I can think of why people label themselves, e.g. calling themselves an Atheist, or an Agnostic, or a Humanist, etc.

The first is to clarify for themselves which of these labels makes the most sense for them.  A lot of folks have put in a lot of thinking into this business, and —and this is important— and worked out all the implications of every label.  Bertrand Russel, an intellectual of the turn of the last century, wrote a brief article Why I am not a Christian, and I am embarrassed to say that, though Russel is a hero of mine as a mathematician, I never read the entire article, which is just a few pages.  Even if you don’t buy into all the assumptions of whoever makes the argument, at least you will be a lot further ahead than if you hadn’t thought about the issues.

The second is to make it easier for others to relate to you, and not make annoying assumptions about you.  Any assumption about one is annoying to some degree, but bearing in mind that for anyone who interacts with us occasionally, we are unlikely to be their entire preoccupation.  They have their own concerns, and if they can interact with you moderately tactfully, so much the better, but some assumptions are going to be made, and they may as well make informed ones.

Some of us are philosophers, and get a lot of excitement in worrying about these labels, and that’s fine; the logical consequences of adopting a particular position relative to “Religion” in the broad sense, including those systems of belief that explicitly exclude supernatural phenomena —after all, theists do not own the word Religion— are important to the individual, and often to their friends and acquaintances.

I can’t quite say why Neil DeGrasse Tyson has chosen to back out of the labeling option, but I think I read that he is not particularly interested in making life particularly easy for those who are interested in discrediting him, with a view to eliminating his influence in important debates about education and policy.

Read the article, and make up your own mind.

Arch

Is Algebra Necessary (in US schools)?

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I don't know quite how to take this: Is Algebra an unnecessary stumbling-block for American students?

Arguments Against (Algebra):
*  many kids don't do well in 9th grade algebra.
*  bad for self-esteem.
*  not needed by the vast majority —almost 95%— of students.
*  The way the curriculum is structured, if a kid hits a block at algebra, he/she can't move forward.

Arguments For (Algebra):
This is harder.

Many scientific professions are based on higher-level mathematics.  These are the very professions that we are interested in not outsourcing to Asians and Europeans.  Programming, technological jobs, jobs designing advanced devices: these require the ability to quickly solve problems using algebra; Algebra is therefore a gateway to many jobs.  But it is clear that not every student is mentally equipped to deal with algebra, and still fewer are psychologically equipped for it (and even fewer still have parents who can negotiate the psychological quagmire created by the complex combination of teachers, kids, and their sly friends, and their sly parents).  Many self-made people are interested only in diplomas, and not in education.  They know that they can hire foreign, math-capable workers for practically peanuts to do the really messy mathematical spadework.  The last thing they want is for Junior to be hired for peanuts to do messy spadework.  They want Junior to get a management-level position doing little work for a lot of pay.  That means math not required!

Many courses and subjects that kids are taught have indirect benefits.  Music, History, Philosophy, these all have benefits that go far beyond knowing notes, dates, and famous Greek philosophers.  Algebra is also like this.  It is something that teaches patterns, abstract reasoning, complex relationships.  You can go only so far learning the difference between profit and loss.  Today's investment geniuses and white collar criminals know an enormous amount of higher mathematics.  If you aspirations for junior are either of those, stick with the math.

All the time, the number of entry-level jobs that require programming, or coding, or using formulas is gradually increasing.  Even if your child is destined for administrative greatness, it is invaluable to know enough mathematics (and programming, incidentally,) to be able to spot when an employee is making an error repeatedly.  The difference between seeing a discrepancy right away, and seeing it 3 years later could be measured in thousands, even millions of dollars.  Even such a simple thing as deciding how much capacity a company Internet line needs to carry can be easily solved using Algebra, or solved using a lot more effort using a Spreadsheet.

Of course, there is the primitive argument that foreign kids know more Algebra than US kids, so we have to step up our game.  This is a sort of Little League approach to education.

This is a silly argument.  We don't need to dive for oysters, even though foreign kids somewhere are sure to be better at it than we are.  Every country need not send a baseball team to the Olympics just because those crazy Yanks are going to do it.  Of course Americans are insanely competitive, so they try to beat every nation at everything.  I personally don't think that makes a lot of sense.  But it may be economically feasible to teach all kids a little Algebra, just to make sure that the kids who really need it get the basics in time to follow up with more math.  It may also be worth it to identify the mathematically talented kids early, so that they can be tracked, and encouraged to take enough mathematics for those more technologically sophisticated jobs (on the off-chance that they may pay a lot better in the future).

It's a no-win problem for parents whose kids are strong-minded, and who push back.  Mathematical handicaps should not hold kids back from everything.  For instance, the insistence of medical schools that their applicants have a lot of mathematics (e.g. Calculus) on their transcripts is, I think, a sneaky way of eliminating kids who are likely to whine in medical school.  If you can subject to the discipline of learning calculus, you're probably not going to be a pain in the ass as a first-year medical student.  People who are enthusiastic about teaching every kid all the possible mathematics, ready or not, are a problem.  But where I teach, I find that even kids who have declared a mathematics major are uninterested in actually learning too much mathematics.

In some ways, the US is becoming decadent.  We can't have everything.  We've got to take the rough with the smooth, and for some people, Algebra is probably part of the rough.

Arch

Good Things All Around us that Make Me Cry With Frustration

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The last few days I have noticed numerous things: people, events, objects, conditions, which are wonderful.  As I get gradually ground down with the dumbness and stupidity (check with Lewis Black for the difference), these positive things keep slowing down the almost inevitable entropy which will almost surely send me to an early grave.

As I have written, I have just gotten back from being briefly hospitalized for a ‘Cardiac Event’—basically a small heart attack, and so my outlook was pretty gloomy to begin with.  But there were numerous happy flies in my ointment of misery.

There were a variety of nurses, Physician’s Assistants, Lab workers (‘phlebotomists’, as they were occasionally careful to announce), and doctors, who came in for various procedures.  They were all regular folks (in contrast to the Catholics who work in the hospital on the other side of town), but who were thoroughly professional, knowledgeable, informative and articulate.  There wasn’t the other-worldly sweetness of the Catholics, but there was an earnest eagerness to make me feel better that was unexpected, but welcome.

When my colleagues at work found out, I was moved by how concerned they were about my health, but also their concern that I might be taken off the active list for too long.  In an educational institution, if one of the teachers is taken sick, there is a concerted effort to try and make sure the students do not suffer: substitutes are called in (or, in a tertiary institution, people take on additional loads).  But if the invalid is sick for too long, the attitude is, well, it’s only education, for heaven’s sake; they don’t know even their 7th grade material, so what’s the diff?  But there’s a ripple effect, and stuff has to be cut out of the curriculum for their next four or five follow-on courses, because they missed some topic due to someone having been sick for half a semester.  But my colleagues covered three days for me, learning difficult material some of them had not looked at for decades.  One of the most recent recruits, who had been one of my students, expressed the determination that I should be with them forever!  Let me tell you: there is nothing that can reduce one to tears faster than learning that one is wanted and missed!

Because of this recent crop of conservative presidential candidates, who make GOP presidential hopefuls as far back as Nixon look like absolute angels, our spirits have been worn down.  Even watching Comedy Central, where it used to be that Jonathan Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and now Trevor Noah, can put an amusing shine on even the most depressing news, it didn’t always raise the spirits as much as I often desperately hope.  But last week, one of the funnier episodes was about Brits, who had been polled for a suitable name for a certain research ship, and the popular choice that had floated to the top was Boaty McBoatface!  I sincerely wish I had thought of that name!  Bear in mind that our friends the Brits are trying to deal with a conservative Parliament that makes our conservative Congress look like a pinata party.

When I came home, I was welcomed by four pets: two dogs, and two cats.  They had no clue that I had been out sick; they only knew that I had been away for some time.  Oh, the love that was showered on me, licking, getting rubbed on, woofety woof, and miaouws and other distinctive sounds that only the animals in our house seem to make!  The animals all belong to my wife and her children, but they are so well-behaved, and so affectionate, that my belief in the theory that the pets take on the characteristics of the owners is confirmed.

A cardiac event is frightening to one’s family.  My daughter called me and chatted to me, obviously trying hard not to convey too much of her anxiety, and describing how her various projects were coming along, in particular, this event in which various bands performed covers of Fleetwood Mac songs.  Their band had evidently been a smash hit!  We had been over there for Spring Break, and I had to agree that they were fabulous.  (Junior does a really good approximation of Stevie Nick’s stage presence.  Here’s a link to a clip of a rehearsal of Edge of Seventeen.)

But, across the country, there are those who are worried about the political scene.  There is a lot of vicious humor, but also a lot of gentle poking fun at the Republicans.  We liberals don’t want the Republicans gone; we only want them back, and sane.  For three decades, Republicans have been trying to give Business what they want: lower taxes, and more freedom to operate.  But it appears that despite accumulating unprecedented profits, individuals, even those among the most wealthy in the world, have not been as happy in recent times as they were thirty years ago.

For instance, Bill Clinton signed into law (a Bill that was passed in a heavily Republican Congress) a relaxation of the rules that used to limit the number of radio stations in any market that could be owned by a single entity.  As a result, Clear Channel Communications bought up a mind-boggling number of radio stations which now broadcast essentially the same material throughout the US, at the same time (except for local commercials).  This means that they control the popularity of particular songs and performers, which means that performers in any locality have lost the ability to gain a local following, and thus to gradually increase their popularity.  Clear Channel, being the home of Rush Limbaugh, can be assumed to be a conservative organization, so that they can effectively use the stations to broadcast Republican values.  But the Conservative sector of the population is clearly a lot less happy, and arguably a lot angrier than they have ever been.  It is hard to believe that Obamacare has caused all this fury.  Have the lower taxes caused this anger?  So, what, is it Mexican immigration?  Abortion?  Gay marriage?  The conservatives are making themselves unhappy.  That’s a clear signal that they should be pushed out of government for another eight years, and intelligent conservatives can be depended upon to see that.

Another theory is that those who support the overachieving Trump campaign are mostly elderly, uneducated white Americans.  (A few years ago one could never say that; the very thought that uneducated white Americans existed was considered UnAmerican.)  So all we have to do is to wait until they die off.  Giving them free alcohol and cigarettes might hasten the process.

It is difficult to see these little sparkles among the gloom as a trend.  But it is important to call out: Do you believe in fairies? like Peter Pan.  It is easier to believe if others believe too.  Unfortunately, in social media like facebook, we are connected to others who think more or less the same as ourselves.  But progressives have long believed that they were in the minority.  That may not be the case.  We're just lazy to go to the polls.  This is part of the reason why superior liberal candidates are hard to find: we don't have any faith in our fellow-liberals, that they'll actually help us get elected, and that we won't look like total idiots.

Arch

The First Day of Spring, Bach's Birthday, and Forty Fun-filled Hours in Hospital!!!

Well, guess what.

After a huge meal on Sunday night, I got heartburn.  By around midnight, the heartburn was so acute, I began to suspect that it could be a heart-attack.  (The symptoms are very similar indeed.)  So I woke up my wife, and with great embarrassment said I wanted to be taken in to the Emergency Room.

We drove up the mile or two to the hospital, and while my wife parked the car, I staggered towards the E-R admissions desk.  When I was upright, the pain often went away briefly, but it always seemed to come back.  I filled out a very short piece of paper, not a complete registration form.  I said "chest pains", as a safe compromise, and took a seat, hunched up with the pain, which came back as soon as I sat down.

Pretty soon I was taken inside and made to lie down.  They listened patiently to my claims of having acute heartburn, and how big that meal was, but in retrospect I seem to remember that they had a sort of long-suffering look on their faces, which seemed to say, you're not the only idiot who has thought that.  Let's pretend it's a heart-attack, they said, because if we're wrong, well, heartburn treatment isn't time-critical.

So they hooked me up to an Electrocardiograph (or Electrokardiograph, in German, hence EKG), which involved putting all sorts of stickers on me with little nipples on them, which make me look like a nursing alien mother-dog, and found essentially nothing.  I was given a full array of blood tests, which meant I got poked in the inside of my elbow.  Then, about half an hour later, another blood test--just one tube.

As time went by ... about two hours in, I complained about the pain, and they first gave me a little Nitroglycerin pill, to keep under my tongue.  There was no relief.  Then another, and then yet another, but no relief.  Then they gave me Morphine!  That gave me relief for about 10 minutes.

More Nitroglycerin.  By about this time, the pain had lessened to about half strength, but it was still painful enough to keep me from falling asleep.

My poor wife was seated in the room, helping me to the toilet and back, texting the relatives, answering questions, listening to my raving!  She isn't an incredibly patient person, but in the early hours of Monday morning, she was the very soul of patience.  She guessed, faster than I did, that it was some sort of heart problem.  II think the Nitroglycerin had actually worked every time, but not enough to register on my agonized senses.)

It was now about 6 in the morning, and I was admitted to the hospital.  They took me up to a room on the floor where they keep people who have trouble with locomotion, and other motor problems.  They had no room in the cardiac area; in fact we were diametrically opposite to the cardiac area.  The physician for the hospital (in contrast to the Emergency Room doctor) came in, talked to me about all the issues, and I was ordered a special "gastric cocktail."  If it was heartburn, this cocktail would fix it right up.

The pain was only slightly reduced.

Then there was another blood test.  At this point, a doctor came in and said that, though the EKG had not revealed anything significant, the blood tests had.  A certain enzyme is released by the heart when there is a blockage in a heart artery, and this enzyme had been steadily rising in level from the time of the first blood test.

This was the first I had known about this fabulous blood test.  So I finally said, ok, let's call it a heart attack if it makes you happy.  They put me on some aggressive blood thinner; I think it was a combination of Heparin and Nitroglycerin.  No one was allowed to smoke in my room, for fear of detonating the Nitroglycerin.  Gradually, as the heart found it easier to pass the blood through its arteries (the problem vessels are those that siphon off some of the blood into the walls of the heart muscle itself.  The main outgoing arteries (and the pulmonary vein) are not easy to block, being the size of the New Jersey Turnpike.  But if you really try, you can block those, too.

[In case you're interested, here is at least one web page on the enzyme, called Troponin.  In the past they used an enzyme called Myoglobin, but apparently Troponin is a superior flag; it kicks in sooner.]

It was the next afternoon before I was taken into this lab, where they do the angioplasty.  It is a clever procedure where they send in a wire through an opening in the artery of the right arm, which can disgorge an x-ray -opaque dye.  They watch the thing on a highly magnified x-ray screen, on which the wire looks the size of a coffee-mug.  We see the dye shooting out, intermittently.  Then, they inflate a balloon that has been threaded onto the wire, and a sort of collapsed wire exo-skeleton around the balloon.  The inflated balloon (very tiny, of course, being inside a blood vessel) presses the basket against the walls of the artery, compacting the blockage against the artery walls and opening up the blood flow.  The basket gadget is what they call a stent, and now they're coated with something that responds to medication, and sort of repels blood platelets, so that a clot does not form (too readily).

Once the procedure was completed, the surgeon went out and talked to my wife, and told her she had a delightful husband.  I can't possibly imagine how delightful I could have been; I never said a word, except to ask for a blanket, because it was cold.  (They keep it cold, because the surgical team wears all these fancy clothes.  That enormous X-ray machine probably requires that the people wear lead clothing.  I mean, it looks super heavy, like what a Ninja Jedi would wear.)

Once the wire is reeled back out of the artery and that hole in the wrist, they put a pressure dressing on it.  This is a plastic cap which is strapped to the wrist, into which they pump compressed air.  The air keeps the clotted blood at the artery opening from popping out.  All through the night, the nurses kept leaking the air out of the dressing, until by lunchtime the next day, it was at room pressure.  (I related all this to the nurse at my primary care doctor's office, and she was seriously underwhelmed.  "Oh, yes, a pressure dressing.  Uh huh," she said.  As far as I was concerned, the pressure dressing was the most interesting part of the whole thing.

Meanwhile, my wife and I are in touch with the people at work, measuring out the least amount of information they need, to make sure that my workload could be covered.  (Fortunately it's Holy Week, and our highly religious* kids will refuse to attend classes from Wednesday on, even though only Friday is a holiday.)  In spite of all that, concern and good wishes pour in.

At one time, I had [5 ] intravenous ports going at the same time: (1) Saline solution, which keeps the patient hydrated.  A dried-out patient is a dead patient.  (2) Heparin.  This is a blood-thinner which interferes with clot formation.  At this point they did not want clots.  (3) Nitroglycerin.  This dilates all the blood vessels.  At one time, they couldn't find a single vein to use; after the IV Nitroglycerin, no problem. (4) A port from which to take blood, for tests.  This was kept unused by the people who were putting stuff in.  (5) Potassium.  They shot me full of Potassium Chloride; I don't know why.  If you have friends who know about medical things, you could ask them.  Maybe potassium is good for the heart, in which case I could swallow a bit of Potash.  And then, of course, they say: don't soak yourself in a bath when you get home, because the scabs might wash out, and you'll bleed.  If you bleed, call your doctor.  If the bleeding doesn't stop soon, call 911.  Don't try to drive yourself to the Emergency Room!  Oh man, you've gotta go pretty far to hear funny stuff like this.

To my horror and delight, I was discharged in the afternoon, just 24 hours after the 'surgery'.  At first I resented their conveyor-belt approach to these surgeries: I was prepped and on the table while the doctor was still in an adjoining room with another patient, and while they were working on me, yet another patient was being prepped in the other room.  On one hand, they can work on more patients per week, and these are patients in pain.  On the other hand, it would be nice to give more work to other surgeons instead of overworking a few.  But being a private business, the Hospital is at pains to reduce their costs, which means keeping the payroll small.  The payroll is their largest expense, immediately followed by insurance.

But all is well, and Arch's intermittent assaults on your brain will continue.

The first day of Spring, or the Vernal Equinox
Contrary to popular belief, the calendar (for developing which Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory were so heavily criticized) is intended to keep the Four Seasons roughly in the same location on the calendar.  In contrast, the Islamic traditional calendar has Midwinter and Midsummer's days marching around the calendar year in gay abandon.  This never bothered the majority of the Islamic world, which lay originally essentially within the tropics, and never observed the seasonal variations.  But for folks in the higher latitudes, farming, planning for cold weather, all depended on an accurate estimate of when winter was coming.

The seasons cycled round roughly once every 365 days, since the geographic pole of the Earth settled into the direction it points in at present (towards the pole star).  But not exactly 365 days, it was closer to 365¼.  By the time of Pope Gregory, it was realized that that ¼ was a slight overcompensation, because March 21 began to fall about 4 days later, and by Bach's time, well into the Spring, almost April.

It was easy to observe the Spring Equinox; you measured how long the daylight hours were, and it would be the date halfway between the longest night, and succeeding longest day.  Equivalently, you watch for the point on the horizon at which the sun rises; the northernmost point at which the sun rises corresponds to the longest day.  Even the Druids could do it, as witnessed by Stonehenge.  So all they had to do was to divide the number of days between March 21st and the observed equinox (which should have been on March 21st) and divide by the number of years from the last date when the Equinox was on the correct date of March 21.  (This happened at the time of Pope Gregory, when I was too young to remember anything.)

Suppose it was 400 years.  So they figured, we've got 4 too many leap years, though leap years are a good idea generally.  The thing to do was not to have leap years every 100 years.  In other words, you let 25 24 Leap Years go by, and then you go on a Leap Year diet for one year.  [Sorry; fixed this 2016/3/29.]

But of course, that would stop the calendric misalignment from getting any worse, but it wouldn't bring it back into alignment.  So they shortened one particular year by 10 days, and fixed the problem.

(Soon after any year in which the Leap Year is skipped, the Equinox pops back to about March 20th, and gradually creeps towards March 21 for 25 Leap Years, until we pop it back again during one of those Leap Year diets.)

[Added Later:
Here is a chart I made in Excel, and here's what it means.

It starts out with a line going up.  This is the Seasons falling behind the date, for four years.  By the end of the four years, on February 28th, the First Day of Spring would almost be on March 22nd.  Then the Leap Year comes in just in time, and forces the First Day of Spring to be early on March 2oth, and that's the sharp downward line in the chart.
Then the whole process repeats.

But, as you can see, the Leap Day overcompensates, so that every Leap Year, the First D.O.S. falls earlier on March 20th than the previous time.  (In Bach's time, this had continued for hundreds of year, until the F.D.O.S. was around March 10th.)  So, after 24 zig-zags, we skip a leap year.  You can see the graph going up for eight years.

Clearly, though, even the once-every-century-Leap-Year-Diet is too much.  So every four centuries, we do have a Leap year.  That stops that rising trend you see.  To show this adjustment in action, I would have to show you more than 800 years, which is impossible with the resolution we have!!  This is what is being described below.]
[Added still later: well, here's a chart showing the skipped Leap Year Diet in year 400!  This happened in the year 2000, by the way.  The Leap year would have normally been skipped, which would have caused a great deal of amazement.  But it was time to not skip a Leap Year, so only people in the know knew that anything out of the ordinary was happening.  So that long stretch of unbroken zig-zags is 50 years without skipping a Leap Year.  At the end of it, we're almost at the level we started out.] 

There is actually a correction in the third decimal place, and even further down the length of a year.  But every one of them can be fixed by (1) A leap year, (2) skipping a leap year, (3) skipping the skip of a year that would normally have been skipped, (4) skipping the skip of a skipped leap year, and so on.  For errors much smaller than a minute, they simply adjust the National Institute of Standards clock a few seconds forward or backward.  This happens on many years.  So, to the extent that it is possible, it is my belief that the point on the Earth's orbit that corresponds to the Spring (Vernal) Equinox is passed every year since about 1600 within 12 hours of Midnight of March 20.


J. S. Bach Day!
This is just a very rough description of the problem and the solution, and I would not have known about it if not for the fact that I am such an insane admirer of the music of J. S. Bach, whose birthday was March 21, 1685.  Unfortunately, this was according to the calendar of Saxony, a fiercely protestant province of Germany, which regarded Pope Gregory and his popish scientists and astronomers as limbs of the Devil.  It was some years later that the Church and Secular leaders of those parts accepted that it was insane to cling to a calendar according to which Christmas would land in the middle of Spring if it went on long enough.  So it appears that Bach's actual birthday was closer to March 31, or even April 1.

But here's my thinking.  If, instead of dying, Bach was dispatched by alien spacecraft to some advanced planet, where he was frozen and put in hibernation, if he were to be revived today and asked for his birthday, he would say at once: March 21st.  So I figure, if he thinks his birthday is on the 21st of March, that's good enough for me.

*NOT

David Brooks disapproves of Trump

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In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, David Brooks, the political commentator and columnist expresses his earnest condemnation of Donald Trump.

But rejecting Donald Trump is one thing, but suggesting a remedy to prevent this situation happening repeatedly is quite another.

Fifty years ago, the US--and most of the world--was under the leadership of a small, educated elite.  The story of most nations is the story of wriggling out of the control of this kind of elite.  This was the case in China, in the US, in Britain, in Germany and France, in Australia, India, Pakistan, practically every country on the planet.

There were a few advantages to being led by an elite.  Being what they were, they were rarely interested in international political aggression.  Like the Monarchies that had gone before, the Kings and Queens were all "cousins", and war was synonymous with family quarrel.  With the educated elite, they all knew each other, had all attended Cambridge or Princeton or the Sorbonne, and misunderstandings could be quickly cleared up.

But Politics is nothing if there is no participation by the people.  The common citizen may be better off leaving government to the eggheads, but ultimately Democracy--thinking of it as government of the people, by the people, for the people--holds out the promise that the rights of the people have to be backed by the right to vote and be heard, and that the rights  of people should not be left to the whims and fancies of a ruling minority, no matter how benevolent.

That's a lot to absorb.  It seems obvious, until you realize that in the good old days, it was the benevolent Ivy Leaguers who acted as caretakers of the people.  Gradually the people, all over the world, are becoming more interested in presenting their interests and their needs directly, without the mediation of well-meaning experts.

A lot of the civility of old-time US politics can be attributed to the unwritten rules of good behavior in Congress and the White House (not good behavior from the point of view of adultery, mind you; just from the point of view of civil discourse, keeping the welfare of the people front and center, putting the welfare of the electorate above that of one's family, and so on).

Gradually, the people wanted their own champions in Washington, and we have had some very questionable people's champions indeed.  Then, of course, Big Business wanted its champions in Washington, and some of the slimier "People's Champions" were only too delighted to offer their services to Big Business.

But the influx of slime into Washington is entirely legal.  Lobbying is entirely legal.  If lobbying as it stands at present were to be outlawed, other methods of persuasion will be discovered by Big Business, which has a lot of money to spend.

And here's the bad news: because of the sort of clever slime-mongers who we find in positions of responsibility today, and because of how we depend on various commercial sources for our information (and, more dangerously, our thinking) today, those of us who are most intellectually vulnerable will continue to be swayed by slime-mongers.  Just because the rest of us don't like Donald Trump doesn't mean that we can ever find a way of ensuring that such a person will not win the candidacy again.  I am honestly unable to think of a fair way of preventing a huckster such as Trump from winning the candidacy of some party every single time.

The anti-intellectual environment that seems here to stay ("My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" - Isaac Asimov) makes it impossible to educate our way out of this mess.  I teach mathematics at a four-year college, and it requires students to take at least one course in mathematics.  This is well-intentioned, and I am unable to think of an alternative.  But the students who think of mathematics as an unnecessary hurdle that will never benefit them at all are in the vast majority.  In fact, the vast majority of students regard a college education as a mere hurdle, and not an opportunity to learn something.  It is to these people that Trump appeals, in addition to those who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, and lost members of their families to various things that can be blamed on the government.  People resent education, and Trump comes across as the champion of something for nothing, a fellow who is successful despite not thinking very deeply at all.  Thinking is hard, and Trump is a long-awaited, welcome relief.

But what is the solution?  I don't know.  Something very radical will have to be done.

Arch

Democracy or Not? Apparently what we are is a Republic

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Well, what did I know?  Apparently what the US is, is a Republic.  A Democracy is described by various bloggers in a scornful and disparaging tone, as a failed system of government.

A Democracy, I have learned, is government by popular vote.

A Republic, in contrast, is government by popular vote, where, in addition, there are (1) a Constitution, which protects the rights of minorities from being infringed by popular vote, and (2) a college of judges, who rule on whether various actions or decisions are according to the constitution, as they should be.  (I'm not sure where a President comes in; I assume it does not have a bearing on whether a country has a Republican government or not.)

In at least one web article, I found an item-by-item comparison between a simple Democracy, and a Republic.  This article gives the US as the only example of a republic, which I'm sure it cannot be, and gives lots of examples of Democracies.

There seems to be general agreement that what characterizes a Republic, above and beyond the popular vote, is a Constitution, and a Judiciary.  But beyond that, some writers seem to feel that Democracies and Republics are the opposites of each other, or at least are antithetical (a relationship that is not always clear), while others consider Republics as mere improvements on Democracies, whereas Democracies are certainly antithetical to Monarchies or Dictatorships.  (Communist states are dictatorships of the communist party, that is, those workers who choose to join the Party.  So the Party makes the laws.)

The 2016 Elections

Who is qualified to run for (and be) President, according to the Constitution?

You have to be born a citizen.

You have to be at least 35 years old.

You have to have lived in the US for at least sixteen years.

(I don't think generalizations of The USA are enough, e.g. protectorates, or US Embassies or military installations.  But people who have been born in and lived in these places are, understandably, constantly pushing for these places to be considered part of the USA.)

Notice that there is nothing to say that the President has to be a decent person, or of any particular religion or race, or have to pass any test of moral character.  Such a restriction would be practically impossible to enforce fairly.

So now, when vast hordes of voters (or at least, potential voters) want to support Donald Trump for President, it is hard to deny them that right.  For decades we have deplored that the proportion of the eligible population that actually registers and votes is so small.  Now that these folks are choosing to exercise their votes for someone whom the rest of us are not completely charmed by, it is disingenuous of us to deplore it.  If Trump has more supporters than other candidates have, he should  be President.

Nobody is going to like it.  Nobody likes to go on a diet, but some of us have no option (not because we're overweight, but because we might have some endocrine disorder, such as diabetes mellitus, say).  Some of us never liked to go to school, and while there, never liked to learn the material.  I daresay this is most of Trump's supporters.  Sometimes we have to accept that the law as it stands results in conditions that we are not comfortable with.  The Constitution permits a popular imbecile to be President; at the very least it serves to further the interests of imbeciles which may have been neglected for a while.  I, for one, am morally opposed to Donald T as president, as one who appears to be comfortable with inciting violence; taking American back to the days when might was right (which is the secret longing of thugs and bullies who have felt put upon for centuries by 90-pound weaklings who should not be able to push them around, but have gotten voted into a position of being able to push people around.)

They've had enough of being pushed around by those in authority.  They'd like to kick some butt, for a change.  They're sick and tired of the Police giving them speeding tickets.  And all those people complaining about getting bitten by their pit bulls: what's up with that?  Voting for Trump should be just as much of a right as it should be to own a vicious pit bull, or attend a high school prom dressed provocatively.  (Or beating the crap out of someone who is, depending on where you live, or brings someone of the same sex to the prom.  Imagine.)  So there.  Most members of Congress and the Senate are hucksters, but put up a face of being the servants of their constituents.  Donald Trump is refreshing in that he is patently a huckster; he is in it for the ego boost and the excitement, and to taunt the straight politicians.  (And to possibly pass pro-gambling legislation?  We're sort of not sure what he really wants, other than to help America become great again.)  The other candidates are mostly furious at Trump for showing them up for being the fakes that they are.  He's a fake too, but he's proud of it.  He isn't the slave of Big Business; he's his own fake!  Now there's a fake we can all get behind.

Lots of writers who beg the people to come to their senses claim to understand the anger of the people.  I get that you're angry, they say.  But they don't want the people to vote for Trump, because it would be the unkind thing to do to all the rest of the nerds who hate Trump.  But they don't really get it.  There has been a conspiracy against the ignorant rural white poor, and this conspiracy is not working any longer, because for a brief time it suited the conservative media to give Trump a platform, and they unleashed the potential of the habitual non-voter.  The habitual non-participators in politics have found that the Presidential race is just as entertaining as reality TV.  They can understand Trump, whereas they just can't understand any other politician who tells them the truth. 

Reality TV has really changed the political climate.  People have gotten accustomed to voting for the best act, the person who has to be thrown off the island, the best singer, the worst apprentice, and so on.  Well, now they want to vote for President.  The Republicans probably hate the fact that most of Trump supporters have driving licenses, and so can vote.  Blacks and minorities would never vote for Trump, but the GOP has been working too long and too hard to now turn around and make it easy for these folks to help keep Trump out of the White House.

We've all watched the candidates trying to raise funds for their campaigns.  You've probably never wondered where all the money goes.  It goes to the TV stations.

Well, the TV channels have made their money, and they're probably going to get their President.  They've made their candidate; now let them lie on it.

Arch

Politics, the People, and the Puture

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I know; it should have been "the Future."  But the demands of alliteration sometimes override those of clarity.

I was recently getting anxious about the politics of my old school, and began to realize that the recent uncertainty in the future of our institutions, political and educational, are somewhat similar.  People are getting frustrated and angry.

What characterizes the political scene in present-day USA is the large volume of people who have been historically politically inactive who are stumbling into the political arena.  There were the Tea Party folks from around 2009, followed by the Occupy movement, and lots of other angry folks.  Anger and frustration are a significant common component of all these movements.

Some want to reduce taxes.  Some oppose Health Care, especially Obamacare, though we have to wonder how Obamacare has affected them negatively.  (We know why the Republicans don't like Obamacare: it was a success for the other party, that's all.  That's very petty.)

Others claim to want to reduce the budget deficits by cutting services.  Others want to reduce the deficit by raising taxes only on the rich 1%.  Some want to control guns.  Others want to hold back those who want to control the guns.  Some want to head out and confront Islamic terrorists.

Well, what do you think?  Does it look too alarming?  What these groups have not taken into account is people.

There are two basic sorts of people.  One sort gets really angry, and wants a once-and-for-all fix of something.  This is the sort of thing that ends up with tragedy, such as shutting down Social Security, or making a Constitutional Amendment that outlaws Gay Marriage.

The other sort is those who keep working at a problem without giving up.  There are those who are socially conscious, who want (1) equal pay for equal work, (2) a social safety-net for those who are in a bind, such as leave for new parents, or homes for those who have been released from prison; (3) facing down opponents of Choice, (4) those who demand labeling of potentially harmful foods and other products--sometimes going a bit too far, I suppose.

Notice that those who have been against taxes have been largely successful.  But unfortunately they have been more successful at reducing taxes for the very rich, and not for the rest of us.  But that's the sort of success that comes with staying with your objective over the long haul.

But now, they want quick fixes again, and they want to put someone like Donald Trump in the White House.  Unfortunately many of those who support Trump are supporting him for different reasons, and his "coalition" can be expected to crumble, because a lot of the things he promises, he cannot deliver.  So even if there is a horrifying overthrow of many programs we want, the Trumpers are not the sorts who will stay with it.  If they are, well, they deserve what they can get.

Obamacare was not a quick fix.  It was the first step in a long line of steps, whose direction will depend on the leadership of the Health Insurance Industry.  We want all eyes on them, and we want their profits made public, so that both health professionals and the general public can see how much they're being ripped off.  We need a kind of Economics that doesn't take unconscionable profits from what is essentially a public utility as a given.  (There is also a sort of monopoly that insurance companies have, using a variance on the anti-trust laws.  This loophole can be eliminated.)  So we must keep at incrementally improving Health Care, or scaring the daylights out of the Health Insurance business, so that they stop gouging people.

Those who want this next election to be a quick fix will be disappointed over the next few years.  But I wonder whether the rest of us have the stamina to keep pressing over the long haul.

Arch

My Old High School

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This post is going to get me a lot of ill feeling, but it is inevitable.

I attended a Methodist school when I was a kid; it had grades KG-12, and I was there for most of my grade-school experience.

The Methodists, as is well known, were always eager to establish schools wherever they went, and Wesley College was no exception.  But it was located in Colombo, Ceylon (later known as Sri Lanka), which was a British Colony at that time, in the early 19th century.  Half a century or so later, Ceylonese politicians awoke to the disturbing fact that almost 90% of the country did not participate in the political process.  There were several good reasons for this: Government was conducted almost exclusively in English (while the majority of Ceylonese spoke other languages exclusively), and the rural majority was not educated to, and wasn't encouraged to, participate in government.  (The rural population was more educated than in most countries; there was nearly 80% literacy, but their focus was on history, literature and religion.)

In the mid 50s, a small minority of members of Parliament put through a blitz of public education and meetings and rallies, to encourage rural voting, with a promise of making government services available to those who spoke only the indigenous languages.  (This will strike my readers in different ways, but it was an inevitable step in progress; there's no point in deploring the long-term liabilities of it.)

The citizens proposing these innovations formed a party that was swept into power in 1956, and soon afterward, there was a massive move to nationalize Christian schools.  Christian schools were given the following choice: be taken over by the Government, offer education for free, in which case the Government would assist these schools, while the schools had to submit to minimal supervision by the Education Department; or offer education entirely funded by tuition fees.

Many schools were taken by the Government, e.g. Richmond College, a sister Methodist school.  Wesley elected to remain private and free, funded mostly by the Methodist Church, and minimally by the Government.  Yet other schools, e.g. Trinity College, elected to become private.

Over the next half-century or so, Wesley found it almost impossible to overcome its financial problems. Meanwhile, an enormous proportion of Wesley alums happened to have been descendants of European settlers, called Burghers.  They were proud of their Wesley traditions, and took them with them when they emigrated to Australia, when the pro-native-languages policies made Sri Lankan society understandably less comfortable for them.  In Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, declining finances and declining Government spending on non-military items meant that Wesley's finances became desperate.  The Sri Lankan society was evolving frighteningly rapidly; and new, for-profit, Western-oriented (read: schools that prepared Sri Lankan students for foreign examinations) proliferated, and the Sri Lankan Methodist Church found its leadership being far more evangelical in nature, with a few parishes (called Societies) moving towards the media-oriented worship format of US Mega-Churches.  It is difficult to say, but the Methodist Church was in no position to send any finances in the way of its schools, Wesley College for boys, and Methodist College, for girls.

Meanwhile, the mission of schools such as Wesley caused conflict.  Were they intended to supply an education in the tradition of the 1950s, for affluent, fee-paying students, or were they intended to continue to provide a quality education for the disadvantaged minorities that lived in the vicinity of the school?  There was a long tradition of Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems from the area around Wesley College, which had generally been poverty-stricken, finding a quality education at Wesley, despite their inability to support the school financially.  Now, if the school were to continue to provide an educational home for disadvantaged youth, and if the Methodist Church's priorities were different, and focused on retaining its membership, which was increasingly interested in Fundamentalist theology, approaching that of the Charismatic denominations, Wesley would have to find its financial support from elsewhere.  One of the most recent heads of the school looked abroad, and found support among the alumni in Australia and the U.K.  They established a capital fund for the school, and succeeded in raising a significant endowment by Sri Lankan standards, but an extremely modest one measured against the endowments of schools in the US, for instance.

The Australians, having borne what appears to have been the brunt of the capital campaign, naturally expect to have some control of how the money is spent, and how a new Principal of the school will be appointed.  The Principalship of Wesley College is such a burdensome responsibility, that it is well-nigh impossible to get a capable person to take the reins;  and even if one did, he or she is sure to be vilified by any of the several different power-blocks that vie for a say in the future of the school.

Perhaps the answer is in compromise; maybe the school should re-invent itself as a private, fee-levying school on the lines of the lines of the for-profit (and some not-for-profit) new schools that prepare students for foreign exams, as the Australian Wesley Alums want.  Perhaps if at least half the students are fee-paying, it would be possible to extend scholarships to exceptional youth from the traditional neighborhoods whose sons attended Wesley.  After all, the Government has an obligation to educate all the youth, and cannot outsource an entire neighborhood to a Christian school, and continue to insist that fees not be levied.


So, we only have questions, and no answers.

Arch