Scuba Diving

I felt the cold water go down the back of my shorty wet suit. I should pay someone else to do this. Do my work outs, sleep with my wife…Why do I always get sick on vacation? If you can’t equalize your ears at the surface, then you can’t equalize your ears. Holding my nose through my mask, I equalized my ears. As I descended, I felt pressure on my ears. Don’t force your ears. Ascended to where my ears where clear, equalized again. Up and down until I reached 40 feet. At the ledge I crossed my legs and by inflating and deflating my buoyancy compensator was able to reach the state where I raised and lowered slightly with my breathing. Crossing my legs kept me from compensating with my feet. Over the edge I dropped to 80 feet facing the wall.

I took my mask off and rinsed my eyes in the ocean. Put my mask back on, cleared it, checked my depth. 120 feet, not good. Went back up to 80 feet. Elmers’s watersports had set me up with lenses in my mask. I was on an Elmer trip to Bonaire. Bonaire has lots of different little fish. Elmer had instructed me on the ears and buoyancy. Kicked off gently against the current along the wall. Following the dive plan, when I was half knocked, out of air, I went back up to the ledge. Holding my gauge so it wouldn’t drag through the coral, I hung upside down above the coral and let the current drag me back to the boat. My face was about a foot from the coral.

The best stuff is often under the boat, or maybe the nitrous oxide buzz kicks in. There were tiny worms sticking out of coral. When I put my finger on them, they disappeared into their tiny holes. They came back when I lifted the finger. 

I felt the nitrous oxide bubbling out of me pushing everything in front of it. I took my mask off, put it back on, cleared it, and repeated. My tear ducts whistled. After a while I started my ascent to the boat. I kept having to remove and clear my face mask. Before I got on the boat, I made it a point to rinse my face in the ocean. I didn’t want to have long ropey streamers of pressurized snot hanging out of my nose.

I was surprised everyone else was back on the boat. I had lasted the longest. Not that it’s a competition.

Bonaire is surrounded by the ocean but even the air around the island seems dry. It felt wonderful. My head felt physically light on my neck. Years later I heard the reefs are dying. I’m sorry, it was the collected thirty years of Chicago mucus.

Condescending Saviors

 

I wrote this shortly after the Democratic Convention:

This recent convention solidified five deficiencies of the Democratic Party. Rather than addressing these well-known criticisms, the liberal elite, the party owned them with a nice helping of Jingo.

One is their use of the term middle class. Looking down from the upper I suppose what they see is the middle class. I wrote about class in my book, Another Data Processing Book. In US land we have nine classes, a tic tac toe board, upper, middle and lower both ways:

Upper upper	Middle upper	Lower upper
Upper middle	Middle middle	Lower middle
Upper lower	Middle lower	Lower lower

 

 Most of us are middle-lower and lower-lower. There is a big bulb at the bottom with a long tail stretching out into the distance. Somewhere on that tail you can parse out a small segment that contains the population middle-middle. We aren’t in it, and we know that. I haven’t found the middle class all that amenable to my company and I’m okay with that. Democrats use the term middle class as aspiration. Perhaps they are squeamish, if there is a middle, then there must be an upper and lower, but those terms are too offensive. It is disorienting to use the word middle without lower and upper. The disposition of wealth does not fall into a bell curve and that should be an advantage to Democrats. The middle-class votes for Orange Jesus.

Second is the use of the term workers. When we think of workers, we think of unions. For most of us, unions mean we can’t get jobs. We aren’t in the 11%.  To raise wages, you must reduce hiring. Occasionally we get sucked into organizing efforts that end disastrously. Boycotts, wildcats and new trade unions are illegal. Companies are fined and unions imprisoned. Again, Democrats aspire; we live here. Union people are often middle class.

Third is the argument that we should do it for mom. MAGA base hates its mom. I’m not saying they are wrong. Mom didn’t think much of them. When mom doesn’t make you special, you find other justification.

Fourth is the subsidies. I’m not talking about services but subsidies. If everyone got something, no one got it. Mortgage interest deduction is a good example. The deduction means banks charge homeowners more interest. As Adam Smith explained, if ministers get free tuition, there will be too many ministers for churches to hire. Subsidizing home buying makes housing more expensive. If tips were tax free, we would tip our lawyers. If everyone has a college degree, it is not a distinction. We all know this.

Fifth, we need to end our empire. It’s too great a sacrifice and too expensive. Take Gaza, please. US and Qatar interest in Gaza is preventing the development of Gaza Marine, Thirteen something trillion something cubic something times whatever. Qatar is now our junior partner selling natural gas to Europe and neither of us want a large gas field selling to our market. Texas is giving natural gas away and Europe is buying. That is why the US is recovering so well. That is why we blew up the pipeline.  US and Qatar favor any policy that delays development. Stooge is a subset of chump. It is cunning, it is also dumb. US produces the most oil, we won, we’re the OPEC. Why should it be US ruining the world to make a buck? All empires fall. Let’s go out with more style. If you don’t share, no one will play with you.

This doesn’t mean we should hire an idiot to run the country. The first time the babbling baboon ran they didn’t bother with a platform. Since there were no stated objectives and who would want to work for him, they just made a mess. The Project 2025 document begins by acknowledging the mess. This time Republicans created a ridiculous and defensive platform, they hate immigrants, trans and poor people. Republicans hire the undocumented. They put on a big show, but they hate the documented immigrants who will someday vote. Abortion is only illegal for poor people in stupid states. Republicans know that they are so hateful that people become trans to avoid being gay. Hateful and rich doesn’t make it legitimate. Republicans don’t understand they are giving away the game. You can’t govern without legitimacy.

Bobs court is an embarrassment. Each decision is worse, with no pretense of sense or justification. Cleaning up this mess will require constitutional amendments. Most idiotic in the history of courts is giving the president free reign. Mealy mouthed as it was, the court did not write an opinion to restrain the president. The decision provides a silly framework to justify any executive decision. In principle, our president could order Bobs killed. Bobs is corrupt, it’s in the national interest and it’s an official act.

There was a US citizen running around Yemen running his mouth. The president ordered him killed. Then we killed his sixteen-year-old son. The first two were killed with missiles. Then the next president ordered a ground operation to kill his five-year-old daughter and the family taking care of her. Presidents have little fear of prosecution. There is no reason to make that official.

Government is all in the wrist. It almost doesn’t matter what the policy is if it is executed well and conversely how good it is if executed poorly. Democrats mean well, or at least profess good intentions. A president must come in with about four thousand people or at least 400 who can each bring ten. Even if fat and furious made sense, he doesn’t have the people. Would you work for him? Look what happened to the ones that did. Six months doesn’t give much pension. Do you want Island of Misfit Toys on your resume?

Obama handled three epidemics. El Pompadour couldn’t get an appropriation for the vaccines. Instead, they drained the government research budget. Government research is where the future comes from. That set us back at least ten years.

Troll in chief privatized government intelligence. Our government intelligence is temps.

When someone announces they are an idiot, they are a one issue voter, or undecided they give away the argument and they can’t state their true reasons. Hope they are not registered. There is nothing wrong with being either liberal or elite if you deliver. If only more poor people voted. If only more poor people voted in the primaries. The harder it is to vote, the more it matters.

Voting for the gibbering gibbon won’t keep black people out of your neighborhood. You know that. Persecuting poor women in stupid states doesn’t stop abortion. This is a democracy. Eventually abortion will be unequivocally legal; we’re sick of your shit. Ending abortion doesn’t stop women working. No one wants to marry your stupid ugly kid. You know that too. You are not going to bring down the American empire. The American empire will end when it’s good and ready and it won’t be because of losers like you. All you have done is make another mess that everyone else will have to clean up, just like every time before.

Rock is dead.

Kind of fun. But then I wonder if I was telling you anything. Would this have any effect? Would it be positive?

It is yet another vestige of slavery that such a small plurality, less than 2,500,000 votes, produces so dramatic an advantage. There were only about 6 million registered voters that didn’t vote.

When training a police officer or prison guard someone has the responsibility of explaining to them that if they are taken hostage, it is possible that they will be the first target of the police sniper. This policy became obvious at the Attica Prison uprising. This minimizes casualties. Porky’s 47 cracks about Hannibal Lecter are a juvenile reference to the Isreal Hannibal directive that informed the Israeli people that they are all prison guards. Juvenile slyness targets a demographic.

Incels affect a depraved exploitative homosexuality. Orange Julius fellatio references was for their benefit.

There is no reasoning with MAGA. Biden cut bait in Afghanistan, not Don John. Big Greasy jailing children and sending their parents back to die insulted the Mexican undocumented and they quit coming. The fruit rotted, stores closed on Mondays and there are more jobs. That combined with Double O zero raising oil prices and Covid supply shocks without the undocumented to cushion them, brought inflation. Admittedly Mexico doesn’t seem to have street gutters, and they use adobe not brick, wait till they are arguing in front of the Supreme Court. It is wrong to let Cubans run Catholic charities. East Orthodox handled their federal money. We haven’t quite made it, but if we can survive the Irish, we can survive anything. Except for 9/11 Muslims are Irish lite.

MAGA likes undocumented. The undocumented work for MAGA. MAGA is not going to round up and deport its own undocumented. It is the people in the system, paying taxes, workmen’s comp, social security, that will someday vote who MAGA targets. Whatever rationalization MAGA offers, it ends with voting for His Hugeness.

MAGA doesn’t care about any of this. They don’t care about the price of eggs. They hate women, blacks, and themselves. Whatever talking point they throw, there is no way that Rumbo will deliver, except for keeping a woman out of the White House.

You can’t change people’s minds. What you can do is bring in new constituencies. My mom helped win an aldermanic by registering students in 1959. Big Cheeto’s success in 2016 was bringing his audience into the Republican party. Kind of like converting the King of the Khazars.  Jews quit proselytizing after that. Bidens victory was due to the Democratic snap back, more new Democrats registered than Republicans. Each election registered more voters. This election the Republicans found incels and enough women want their pussy grabbed. Besides running a woman, the Democratic mistake was concentrating all that resource on the existing voting base rather than registering more voters. Taylor Swift and Beyonce can’t overwhelm the incels by themselves. Someday we may run out of unregistered, but for now even Democrats should have found constituencies amongst the more than 80 million. Showing voter registration should be obligatory at concerts, events, demonstrations and family gatherings.

The Business School at University of Chicago just made the argument that we vote for Democrats when times are bad and Republicans when we feel prosperous. This is in line with Adam Smith’s view of the constant cycle between ruination and salvation in democracies. It was said that Democrats must be bought, and Republicans are already there. Everybody is bought. The difference is that Democrats seek consensus, and Republicans think they are right.

It is almost impossible to believe that “can you get me 11,000 votes” and electric Musk didn’t steal the election. There is the Adamowski argument. Adamowski was the Cook County States Attorney in 1959. Daley got Republicans to trade him away for Nixon votes. Since the States Attorney is supposed to police elections, if he can’t do his job he doesn’t get to keep it. If the election is stolen from incumbents, they are incompetent. Again, Democrat incumbents want an obvious plurality. Democrats are hurt that misogyny beats ability.

As to registered voters. I am going to state the obvious. During an election voters have power. The voters are deciding who to hire. We used to go door to door canvassing precincts to determine how people are going to vote. There is a quantum problem. Someone might say:

-I was going to vote for your candidate.

Canvassers should be short, elderly, and like your pet. One tactic is to ask people if they want to volunteer.  They don’t, but if they looked guilty, they were probably a plus. Once we contacted you and determined your preference, we did not contact you until election day. If you hadn’t voted we would helpfully remind you. If you were a minus or a zero, we didn’t want to remind you to vote. If you were a plus any further contact might change your mind.

Once we had experience in the precinct, we didn’t have to canvass everybody. There was the legendary Mrs. Isenberg of East Hyde Park who had five precincts. Voters knew when she was available to ask her how to vote if they weren’t sure. She may have occasionally canvassed if it was expected.

As I explained in an earlier post, I vote against anyone who robocalls me. Once you know I am voting for Harris and I am not donating money, any further contact may discourage me, even texts. The message Harris gave is that her campaign did not know who I am and has too much money. Just because I am voting for you doesn’t mean I should be pestered. Harris is the first candidate who wanted my donation more than my vote. Would you solicit money on a job interview? I would like to see a list of donors who did not vote.

The Democratic Party did fine out of this, everybody made money. Now they can stand back, and watch Republicans make another stinking mess. Grifter in Chief is already shaking the tariff money tree, looking for his taste, just as before with a wider scope. Please don’t ever say managed trade again. We need the free trade amendment. Put that on the list with ending the presidential pardon, abortion is legal amendment, dropping the second amendment, ERA, making federal election law an amendment, ending the Department of Labor, legalize drugs… The Democrats expect to come roaring back. After Big Bill Thompson Chicago is a Democratic city. Assuming there is another election. Mr. Microphone and the right wing Yippees denying legitimacy while owning the oil market invites a coup.

Co-op College

 

According to their web site, 2024, at University of Chicago 43% of the teachers are professors. This is better than most schools. By third or fourth year an undergraduate will be taking instruction from a professor. Again, the site says the average pay of a professor at University of Chicago is $165,000. Nonetheless, most tuition money does not go to instruction.

At the old Columbia College in Chicago graduation was a great shame. Nowadays Columbia is more collegiate. It used to be more vocational.  The instructors were professionals in their fields. Graduation meant you hadn’t been hired. If schools are training professionals, their graduation rate should suffer, just as in sports. Conversely why take training from people who can’t find work? Corporate training can be adversarial: how would you train your competition?

I propose a new form of institution. Rather than a degree I propose an open transcript. Everyone can see your grades. Enrolling in the Co-operative College means sacrificing the privacy of your transcript and the student course reviews. If it takes you three tries to pass Calculus, that will be recorded. If you write a critical review of a great professor, everyone will know. Likewise, if Professor Kokoris gives you an A, everyone will know what that means and recognize the achievement.

This will be a return to Adam Smith’s Scottish model, instructors will post their rates. A teacher can refuse a student. Some instructors may bundle various courses together to give certificates. The institution may rent temporary space for certain necessities. The teacher, not the school, will be the brand.  

At the risk of mysticism, who taught you signifies more than what you were taught. The information is available. What you get in school, that you don’t get in real life is a grade. Real life is pass/fail.

Schools justify privilege. People are disappointed to realize that a degree doesn’t entitle the position and the position alone doesn’t get advancement. Privilege will find its way. Let us deny it institutional escort.   Our natural quest for autonomy inevitably leads to endowment. Once the cooperative college achieves endowment, it is time to found a new one.

How Hillary Lost

 A ridiculous amount of effort is spent criticizing Hillary Clinton’s character. When elections are that close, every infraction is magnified. There is a much simpler material explanation.

It is pathetic how cheap Congress is. Most of their time is spent on phone banks raising money. There was a moment when it looked like Chicago’s alderman Vrdolyak would be sent to Congress. Imagine:

-This is a billion-dollar appropriation? I get more than this for a zoning variance.

Occasionally money rains on Washington. World War II was cost plus. Johnson unleashed Taiwan. When Nixon made the China deal, they had so much cash they were shoving it into filing cabinets. Reaganauts were Nixon wannabes. Bush Sr. held up the Saudis for Kuwait. Hillary Clinton was queen. She shook down healthcare so hard their teeth rattled. Everyone in Washington should love Hillary Clinton. The Saudis had to sit down, and Ross Perot complained about the service. Insurance and Pharmacy were in a bidding war to see who could shut it down fastest.

Healthcare was not going to allow Hillary the presidency, either time. Obama, lawyer that he is, crafted a compromise that has held. Healthcare was still frightened of Clinton. Who could they pay? Orange Julius is unreliable. Would you give money to Rumbo? Healthcare paid Putin. Healthcare didn’t have to report it. Putin used the marketing tactics we taught him for His Hugeness:

-Oh, we wouldn’t interfere in your elections.

Cambridge Analytica had a pass because they were doing god’s work. Everyone looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica, a creature of England’s security service, violated privacy protection. Cambridge Analytica was identifying the goofs. If a goof was heading to Syria say, we would know who they were. When Bannon’s boyfriend, Mercer, got hold of Cambridge Analytica he said:

-Show them where the polls are.

Cambridge Analytica shared lists with the Russians. The Russian problem was that they had no one reliable to coordinate with. Would you work for El Pompadour? Fat and Furious had to shout over the top.

It was just enough. As Joe Kennedy said:

-I’m not paying for a landslide.

I have an entry in this blog on Brexit where I speculate that healthcare paid Putin for that.

The Supreme Court is going to twist constructionist into a pretzel arguing that the 14th amendment is unconstitutional.  How can you argue original intent if you won’t respect the letter of the law? They just ignored the 9^th amendment in their “argument” against abortion. The Supremes took that original intent from the inquisition. The definition of fascism is ignoring the law in favor of popular will. Given that the law is so brazenly flaunted, our only hope is crossing over to vote for Haley in the primary.

14th Amendment

 Back when Chicago had winters, I once dragged myself through the slush into a travel agency and said:

-Get me out of here.

I hate to travel. There is some remarkable geology. In Lacrosse Wisconsin there are bluffs. There is a fun mix of prosaic and profane seeing people living on and around the bluffs.

There are also the plaques. In Pennsylvania there is mention of Jumonville. George Washington at the age of twenty murdered Jumonville causing the French and Indian War which lead to the Seven Years’ War, which lead to our revolution. The revolution was not popular, ask the Tories, who respected the king, paid their debts, and opposed slavery. 

The Evanston Illinois light house, built in 1873 after the North was freed of the South’s hatred of boondoggle. Why of all the stretches of sand along Lake Michigan was the light house built here? The light house was an emotional reaction to the sinking of the Lady Elgin in 1860. In Milwaukee there is a wonderful plaque explaining that the Irish on the Lady Elgin had it coming. The Germans wanted to secede from the Union in opposition to slavery. The Irish wanted to stay in.

The site of Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg.

I hate the St. Louis Arch. They try to warn you: claustrophobia, acrophobia, and ochlophobia. They tell you don’t go up there. Due to construction we had to buy tickets in the museum. There was a plaque there explaining that there weren’t many Blacks in St Louis before the Civil War. The Irish were taking the work. It was cheaper to hire an Irishman for a day than keep a slave for life. Dred Scott was pissed that his owners were sending him out to find jobs.

When the Supreme Court uses arguments like natural law or constructionism, they are saying they don’t have anything else. This wasn’t the case with slavery. All stupid Taney had to say was that slavery was in the Constitution. It would have been nice if Taney had ruled that if you didn’t have work, you were no longer a slave. Taney would have been discovering a right under the 9^th amendment. The 9^th is kind of a fun meta-amendment. When the Supreme Court argues that a right isn’t covered under the Constitution, they are ignoring the 9^th. We fought a war to remove slavery from the Constitution.

The slave breeding border states would have hated such a decision. They made money selling slaves south.

Keeping the Union was not popular. It was not the peoples will. Lincoln got in on a three way, another example of the Voters Paradox. After the putative end of the war, Republicans dragged the army up to vote and dumped the territories into the count. Fortunately, the Southern raids infuriated the border states. The Democratic platform was to concede the war to the South. The South didn’t vote, we had won by force of arms and freeing the slaves. When the Southern property walked off, their financial value collapsed. The Northern banks were furious with Lincoln, they thought they were going to collect on their loans. McClellan got 45% of the vote in the North.

Rather than lining the rebels against a wall and shooting them as a sovereign nation ought, goofy Johnson followed Ceasar’s advice and pardoned them. Even so, the 14^th amendment said the rebels could no longer run for office. There was no folderol about process, popular will or which office. A sovereign state should not allow traitors to hold office, regardless of the peoples will. If you want to change the Constitution, we have process for that. Please don’t argue that an amendment is unconstitutional.

I despise the 2^nd amendment. It is ambiguous and confusing. The Supreme court shouldn’t rule against it. We should amend the Constitution to explicitly return that power to the states.

The first amendment was too mealy mouthed about government supporting religion. It seems obvious that tax money should not go to religions. Stop faith-based grants. Faith-based worked fine when it is Greek Orthodox taking care of Ukrainians. It shamelessly falls to pieces when it is Catholics serving Venezuelans. The Cruz and DeSantos Catholics are happy with undocumented immigrants. Undocumented don’t get Social Security, Minimum Wage, Unemployment, or Workmen’s Compensation. MAGA is opposed to refugees, people with status who don’t do as they are told, and who may someday vote.

Catholic “charities” is also taking tax money to oppose the rights of equality and privacy.  

MAGA isn’t fascist. Fascists had ideals. Maga is a pseudo nihilist, sometimes antiimperialist, pro-Russian belief in slavery and forced pregnancy. Maga wants crippled orphan children working 12-hour shifts in packing plants.

Popular will overriding the law is a fascist argument.

The only way individual Democrats can fight for Reconstruction is to crossover to the Republican primaries and vote for Haley. At least Haley hasn't shipped immigrants.

Friends With the Mayor

Brandon Johnson has just been elected mayor of Chicago. Except Byrne we have always elected lawyers, even prosecutors, in the hope that they would avoid indictment. So far, they have. Johnson is the first schoolteacher. As a teacher Johnson is trying to approach crime from a Confucious perspective, systemically. Here are some obvious concerns:

A court clerk just made the mistake of self-publishing a book about a recent case. In general police, prosecutors, judges and even clerks should be cautious publicly expressing opinions that could be thrown back at them, endangering testimony, and convictions. It is unfortunate that people closest to issues are precisely the ones constrained from public discussion.

Police are not screened for clerical aptitude. Clerical tasks are a major part of police work, especially investigations. Back in the 90’s the federal government confronted domestic violence. Their solution was the development of a form that must be filed if the husband was not arrested and removed from the incident. This had the consequence of saving a lot of men’s lives. The legislators understood full well that police will do anything to avoid filling out a form.

You may be puzzled that police sometimes ventilate suspects. Imagine you are a responsible person training police. You are not training multi $100,000 SOCOM warriors who wound their opponents to entice their comrades into further casualties. Hopefully, it is unlikely that a police officer will ever be in a gun battle. You train to the exception. Your officer will undergo inquiry and may lose their job. Your objective is that the officer survives. You will train said officer to start shooting the moment they clear the holster, correct as they go, keep shooting and don’t stop till they drop. It is not common, but there are people who when shot pull out their gun and kill you. It is not a good look, but police should also receive baton training. Police should have options.

It used to be that police were the biggest street gang, they coordinated with each other, set it up and take it down. Just as Catholic school graduates make the worst public-school teachers, military are the worst police. Warrior mentality is dangerous to police survival. Running to the gun fire didn’t work against one way glass at the Tennessee bank shooting.

I don’t know if they are intentionally disingenuous, but the best argument for gun control is the You tube video channels Garand Thumb and She Equips Herself. If you have any critical faculty watching man children play in the desert, shoot hogs from helicopters, and practice with grenade launchers should give pause. I don’t mind people who are raised having guns. Trained isn’t raised. Stavroula from She Equips Herself may not be raised but she is being trained by people who were. She considers serious issues. At some point you may wonder why you need to conceal carry:

-Everyone else is.

Hmmm.

The underlying justification for all this is crime. Why are people so prejudiced against criminals? You may need a criminal someday. Boosters get shot; gangsters pardoned.

In Chicago, teachers won against police in the mayoral election. This is another click in the Officer Krupke cycle from West Side Story.  They are even considering sending social workers instead of police. Department of Children and Family Services does not have a good reputation. Every time a child dies, a social worker should be killed. It is true that criminals are created. Once they are created, they are dangerous.

Crime is intrinsic to society. Take the Barbary pirates. British and American tribute stopped any other competition with their trade. Saudi ransoms to Somali pirates encourage instability and forestall oil development. Developers encourage street gangs to clear neighborhoods. Without crime there would be no police. Wildings could not occur without police encouragement. The various prohibitions are gang subsidies. Recently Oregon tried drug legalization with dubious consequences. I was disappointed. The lesson is that legalization alone is not sufficient in America. The snap back is too great.

Most people are not carrying cash. The only people worth sticking up are poor people who can’t qualify for credit. Using stolen credit cards gets you caught. The only way violent personal crime can be profitable is if it is receiving subsidy.

I am terrified of nostalgia. In the past minority populations were deprived of police services. Even when minorities were arrested, they would likely be released unless they had violated social order and murdering each other didn’t qualify. If you didn’t deal justice on the spot it didn’t happen. I don’t want to return to two-gun Pete, and we stomp drunk drivers. I have seen social justice; I am not a fan.

Part of the difficulty is that we have seen the man behind the curtain. I don’t know how many have been freed because of DNA, records aren’t kept, but they are coming out of jail like popcorn. Circumstantial evidence, ha, eyewitness, chortle, confession, horse laugh, doesn’t leave much. In Oak Park IL most murders are unsolved. Just don’t park wrong.

People like charter schools because they don’t want their kids in class with Huck Finn. It has little to do with parental control, values, uniforms, quality… Huck Finn is a nuisance. There is no charter school for the bad kids. We used to kid Huck Finn along until he was 18 and his brain had slightly congealed. We had social promotion, outposts, tracking… He probably didn’t get a degree, but we had kept him somewhere. Now, not only is Huck Finn out on the street but we told him he was worthless. Please don’t be shocked at the consequence. From the news reports it would appear that it is often the shining kids, college bound, athletes, adept who get shot. Think Huck might have a grudge?

Whenever you get confused, ask yourself:

-What would happen if those kids were white?

Resources would be found. The children would be placed in structured environments. Chicago has an abundance of lawyers. Huck is making videos. His sponsors are violating laws against delinquency and RICO. Put the lawyers on commission.

The right has suddenly discovered mental health. It is fun to see the ill take umbrage. The right wants mental health without national health care.

We are a military imperial nation. Violence abroad reflects as violence at home. Rather than excusing military adventures we should have treated terrorism as a police concern. FBI is far more vicious than marines.  

This is a lot to put on a mayor. It would be good to get our mental health centers restored.

Quotas

 

In Another Data Processing Book I have an essay on affirmative action. I also have a blog entry In Defense of Privilege. In light of recent events, I am revisiting them here.

Most people seem to believe that affirmative action meant that we simply instituted quotas. Affirmative action law was passed by whites. If you could demonstrate merit, and not very strictly, you didn’t have to have quotas. So, case by case, company by company, school by school, it was proven in a court of law that they had legacy, employees’ kids, preferences, that they did not select on merit. They had quotas and now the question was how big those quotas should be. This maximized work for the lawyers. That is why there are law firms devoted to civil rights law.

Current arguments against quotas have a misplaced notion of fairness The arguments of the time focused on institutional autonomy. They used phrases like “academic integrity”. Invariably these institutions receive federal money. They recognize everyone else’s patronage. We the people decided to use our patronage in this way.

Affirmative action is why all these institutions have requirements and tests. They provide screens to justify the decisions they want to make. When I was hitting for programmer trainee jobs, if you could make it past reception and the initial interview you were then tested. Reception and the initial interview weren’t all that easy. Reception wants to minimize the work load. At Sears the first interview question was about High school. I had gone to Kenwood; we don’t talk about Kenwood. Or rather when we do, nobody believes us. You were supposed to say:

-It was just like Leave it to Beaver, only better.

One common screen was a low starting salary.

The tests had several dyslexia questions and then the washout question. No one got the washout question. Then the company could pick and choose as they always had while satisfying the legal requirement. Sometimes the question looked doable but the answer was none of the above or cannot be answered with the information given. Unless you recognized the point was to wash everyone out it is difficult to pick those. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail there is a joke about swallows. At Time Inc. I was looking down at the test and I recognized a swallow question. I am one of the few who got the washout question. Now the company was in a difficult position, I was not one of the intended. They did their best to discourage me. Being dense I figured that was more of their selection process. Thanks to affirmative action I was the merit hire. This was not common. The class was white. The first thing the instructor told us was:

-Anyone can be a programmer.

We all laughed.

The essential function of middle management is to avoid responsibility. Affirmative action gave middle management a handy dandy all-purpose excuse for difficult personnel decisions. Whites accepted when they were told:

-We had to take a black guy.

There might be one black in the class, but that is not why you didn’t get in, laid off, or terminated. The perception of quotas was far greater than the reality. Imagine the white resonance when every bad thing that happened to them and theirs was quotas. White rage means black people get killed.

More blacks were hired. It was still racist. A fellow student was a double major in mathematics and physics, on the dean’s list. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He then got his MBA from University of Chicago. When he interviewed, he was offered human resources jobs. He decided to work for his dad. I saw some of those black human resources retiring decades later as vice presidents and directors, wasn’t that bad.

Obama, with all his qualifications, practiced civil rights law.

It used to be that the aspiring young man with the good degree started in the mail room.  He wasn’t always a relative, but sometimes there just wasn’t anyone else, what can you do? The point of such a job was that he met everyone in the company. Everyone understood why he was there and they took him under their wing and mentored him. He was given further responsibility. Someone from reception who knew everyone coming through the front door was selected for his secretary. If they worked well together, they were a team that moved up in the company. This reinforced corporate culture, although sometimes he would take the company in “a new direction”.

The new requirements mean that the young man has to pass a clerical aptitude test. Those kids are often dyslectic, mom drank. Instead, they get an MBA degree. This means they are coming into the company as middle management and much less approachable. They even select their own administrative assistant. They believe, with their year of accounting, they are experts in business. This corruption of status is the worst consequence. We had an MBA president:

-I am the decider.

Now that the supreme court with their defiant rejection of quotas have returned to privilege, we see the end of all the various requirements. Your degree will be considered rather than required. As will whatever other abilities and references. In Chicago an alderman is a good reference. Companies and schools are no longer required even a pretense. If you think blacks were the only beneficiaries of quotas, wait for it, wait for it. Bosses hire people like themselves. The confirmation bias is that homogeneity is more comfortable. This means you ladies. There are women who resent working. If you hate your job, try full time work for a husband.

The great logicians, Russell and Whitehead, selected the wealthy applicant, Wittgenstein, over the one who tested higher. Endowment is logical.

Chicago Chokes

 

Christine asked:

-Why is Canada burning?

Without hesitation I responded:

-Lumber companies planted the wrong trees and it got warm.

Seems glib, but in this case my cynicism was correct. If you go out on Google Earth, it is clear that the arboreal, original Canadian forest did not burn. Lumber companies proffer all sorts of rationalizations. Whatever they say, it didn’t work.

If they take refuge in regulation, consider the Exxon Valdez. Exxon Mobil went into court and said that Alaska did not require double wall tankers. Everyone laughed because the reason for that was because Exxon had lobbied against it. Covering North America in soot is a lot worse than dumping oil on beaches.

Lumber companies have no refuge. This is their game. They ran it. Lumber companies don’t own all the land, but they did the cutting. They didn’t know it was getting warmer? The cutover areas flamed. Arboreal sometimes burns, not like this.

Please prevent these boobies from planting trees. They barely harvest the forest. They clear the forest so they can plant the trees they want. Nothing burns as well as a tree farm.

-Look how fast they grow.

If they grow fast, they burn fast. If nothing were done, a varied understory would have to develop, that holds more moisture. From that understory there will come a greater diversity of forest.

-That is not profitable.

That doesn’t matter. The only use remaining for these companies is to pay out settlements. Whatever they did, it failed. Lumber companies have always mismanaged forest, so it has been, so shall it be. Whenever there is cutover there are severe fires. A conservatorship should be established. Hopefully, someone can be found who knows what they are doing to manage the forest.

Stop rescuing the forest. The lumber company solution is to build more roads so they can better manage the fires. Please don’t. Forests manage fires fine. It is the replanted cutover and fire control areas that are dumping the smoke.

Why are Canadians nice? Canadians are the ones who had to leave the USA. Those nice Canadians should nicely tell the lumber companies to get the nice out.

If Canada fails, Chicago has no shortage of lawyers. Some of those lumber companies are US. This is a class action suit. What can’t a Chicago lawyer do? I can see the lumber companies trying their smug and stupid in front of a choking jury. The lumber companies will say that this was caused by a lack of lumber demand that kept them from harvesting enough before it burned.

-Fly my pretties, fly.

Alfred Doolittle Gets SNAP

Small segments can have disproportionate influence in politics. Lenin’s conscious cadre works. The reality TV segment awakened the fascist segment and the Russians. Brexit and Trump satisfy the agenda of ending their respective empires.

Republicans threatened to use the debt ceiling to bring down the empire. Because they were upset that Alfred Doolittle, the undeserving poor, was in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The Republicans were mad at all sorts of things, they coalesced on their antipathy towards Doolittle. As Doolittle points out in My Fair Lady, being poor doesn’t improve character. We all have a Doolittle in the family. Our families Doolittle hates welfare. He qualified for disability. He has Multiple Sclerosis from dealing crack. So, he can’t work, except for the side job disassembling cars. You can’t live on just disability. Doolittle is a good son; he got his parents on disability as well.

Take Ella. This was a while ago. Ella started as Ella Fitzgerald, born in Chicago. Her man threw her down the stairs and she became Ella Mae, born in Mississippi. Ella wanted to work; you can’t live on just welfare. There was no day care, so Ella Mae checked her children into school early. She told the school she didn’t have birth certificates for them because they had been born in Mississippi. The dumb school believed her. The school put the children into EMH, Educational Mentally Handicapped because they were obviously immature. Years later, the school figured it out, but that damage was done.

Ella would wait until after the checker had totaled her groceries to pull out her food stamps. Food stamps only paid for food. The poor checker would have to pull all the groceries back and separate them while Ella would holler:

-I need those.

Ella considered herself an activist. President Nixon liked her and used her as an example of the working poor.

The Doolittle’s and Ellas are Trump supporters. They have no comprehension of altruism or solidarity.

In their defense, they are not boing-boing or lock-head.  Doolittle and Ella didn’t drop planes, blow up Challenger, or start wars. Another issue for Republicans is that they are worried the IRS is going to make them pay taxes.

Don’t be too concerned. Some people will be cut but the Doolittle’s and Ellas will qualify for SNAP, agriculture wants SNAP. Rich people will avoid taxes. The war machine will get its money. The British have an annual ceremony where they make a big show of knocking on the door. US’ns like to have more drama.

This drama undercuts legitimacy. Rather than geographical remnant of slavery our two legislative bodies should divide on popularly elected representatives of function. One body should decide our international functions: trade, empire, mineral rights, military… the other should be domestic. We could put national plebiscite in charge of approving the budget, that the two bodies came to.

AdSense Sucks

Roller Derby was the most popular show on television. Then advertisers realized the demographic had no money. Hill Street Blues had lousy ratings but the demographic was management. Now they can target ads to individuals rather than shows. But the current marketing is pathetic. Given all the individual demographic that advertisers have I should be soft putty in their hands. Instead, they parrot my own history back at me. Why tell me about a site I have already visited or a product I have just purchased? Tell me something I don’t know.

Amazon tries. “If you like this, you might consider that”. If I were an advertiser, I would want to screen out the people who know about me. When Harold Washington, mayoral candidate, was passing in front of the CO-OP grocery store, the bagger yelled to him:

-Harold, go somewhere they don’t know you.

Washington was smart enough to listen. When I see poorly targeted ads, I suspect the company is bad at everything else. There is a fine line between reminders and nagging.

Likewise click bait and product placement. The advertiser is screening out anyone whose intelligence is insulted. There is an argument that people are reassured by dumb ads. Smart ads awaken critical faculties and postpone purchasing decisions. I see dumb ads or marketing as foreswearing good faith.  A lot of ads seem to be pleas for legitimacy:

-We’re a real company, we advertise.

Coupons and discounts tell me the product was overpriced. Admittedly people buy chips, pop and fentanyl. The people who travel are often the people who travel. Still, if I were American Airlines, I would want to target people who had just flown Delta, my own customers already know about me.

Sewer Valves

Many people in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, are installing sewer valves for their homes. Some years back we had an impressive deluge and this is a reaction. Your stack or stand pipe may drain directly out to the street sewer. Putting a check valve or flapper in the way means that when the system hits load those houses refuse service and the overall pressure on the system will increase precisely at the time it is stressed. If you don’t have a flap then super tough on you, the effluent has to go somewhere. A product that creates its market. Once everyone has flaps there should be popped flaps or broken pipes.

Flaps are necessary on flood plains. As flood plain construction is common it is difficult for other municipalities, such as Oak Park, to deny their use. Chicago used to require a basement floor drain. You were expected to share your suffering with your neighbors.

Most people have their stack drain into their own sewer that then drains into the street sewer. This is a nice feature that gives the system some bounce and durability. Typically, however, the new flap is inserted between the two sewers. This creates the same shock on the system as above. I think the next deluge will disappoint those homeowners. As I remember it, I heard the sewer cover on the home sewer bounce. There was, for a moment, about a foot of water in the yard. It was the yards’ water coming into the home sewer that went up the stack and flooded the basement. Blocking the street sewer alone will not protect your basement. Maybe a sewer lid gasket on your sewer along with the flapper would work. But then it wouldn’t take the normal drain from your yard, increasing the chance of seepage.

It would be better to place the flap between the home and the home sewer. This would give the street system some bounce and also protect your basement, if not your yard. Unfortunately, if you examine your sewer, you will see that this is a deep connection. At that depth the pressure might overwhelm the flap. If you do not mind advertising that your house floods, you could break through your foundation to put the flap near the stack. Might as well put in the sump pump while you are there.

While you may disdain allowing the sewer unfettered access to your home, consider placing the flap between the stack and basement source. The flap would deny sewer water the exit of your basement without threatening system integrity. Water seeks its level; it can’t go higher in your house than it is outside. It’s just a matter of boundaries. Again, you will have to break the foundation.

The real secret of the Victorians was their plumbing. Failing all else perhaps install a new water closet somewhere upstairs, move the washer and drier up there as well, close off the basement plumbing and then you won’t need a flapper.

Philosophy of Logic

 

One of the questions of mathematics is are we uncovering the ideal structure of reality or creating language. Yes.[i]

I think of mathematics as a collection of tools or techniques.

Socrates argued that all knowledge is innate. He took a young slave boy and interrogated him as to a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Since the boy kept agreeing with Socrates, he must have known of this proof already. Socrates described a right triangle, then showed a square constructed from 4 of these identical triangles, then set the area of the square to the areas of the 4 triangles and the square contained in them. Then he solved for the Pythagorean theorem.

Socrates was in the impossible position of arguing for ethics and logic in a polytheistic world, surrounded by the arbitrary gods. By proving that a slave had the same innate knowledge as the rest of us he was calling into question slavery.

Euclid hated this proof of the Pythagorean theorem. The proof requires that you already know what a right triangle is and how to calculate area. Euclid wrote an entire book showing how to derive the Pythagorean theorem from postulates. Euclid had to choose the postulates that would prove his theorems.

Thousands of years later, propositional calculus was created to describe the process of proof. They had operators for or, and, and if then.  Their conceit was that they dodged causality. Simply because I can create a truth table for these operators does not give me inference. The sky is blue, there is sand in the earth, connect them as you wish and so what? There will always be a point in an argument where you challenge the other party.   What else could it be? What’s a better argument?

Frege compares the morning star to the evening star. Let us take when the moon and sun are both in the sky. You can see the reflection of the sun on the moon. Everything is kind of round, why was this so difficult? Notice that the reflection of the sun on the moon does not correspond to the position of the sun in the sky. Why is everything so complicated? How do we figure out anything?

I asked my tutor the Chicago question about language: is supporting a large block above you equivalent to telling you to move? The tutor failed me. Who won that argument?

Thankfully, Gödel using Cantor’s technique, argued that even if you could construct such a propositional system there would be undecidable results. Of course, you already knew that.

 

---

[i] No?

Bear Act

There is no recording of this. There was no videotape. It was Chicago.

I think I was four years old, which would put this at 1956. A group of kids from the Neighborhood Club, that was the name, went to be on television. I had never seen a television.  Lee Phillips was the producer. There was a bear act. The trainer grabbed me out of the group of kids to ride behind the bear on a scooter.

The bear had silver curly hair. I didn’t smell anything. I held onto the big massive wall of curly hair. There were extremely bright lights. I squinted at the cameras and looked away. I wondered what the cameras were. I waved to the kids. Then the dog showed up. The dog perched its paws on my shoulders while we rode around in a circle. The dog’s big head was next to mine; I could smell the dog.  I didn’t know from bears or scooters, but I was afraid of dogs.  Perhaps the bear was affected by my fear because it roared, which also startled me. I had a feeling like:

-uh oh

The trainer called the dog off. The dog was like:

-What? I’m working here.

The trainer took me off the scooter.  I went back to the kids. One of the kids said:

-You rode behind the bear!

I nodded. I felt I had let down the act. Later I saw the trainer smoking and he glanced at me.

We got to all run into a cave and each get a present. I opened mine and got a dolly. A girl got a Tommy gun style squirt gun. Lee Phillips made us switch.

Mullet Architecture

I thought of this term while visiting Indianapolis and seeing their library and a nearby church converted to residential. Mullet refers to a hairstyle that is:

-business in the front and party in back.

A mullet is a type of catfish. Mullet head is a derogatory word implying poor and therefore stupid. This word became associated with the hairstyle a few decades ago. While I claim credit for Chicago Facade, peeling the facade off an old building then pasting it on a new one to satisfy nostalgia, the Mullet Architecture term already exists.

Examples given are Frank Lloyd Wright’s Winslow house in River Forest and modernist houses built in Nazi Germany which maintained a severe front. I am extending the term to Mullet houses that meet the requirements of historic districts while allowing large family rooms and kitchens.

This type of restoration arises from envy of the Ranch styles with their dramatic living/dining and open kitchen areas. People living in Craftsman, Victorian, Four Square, Elizabethan, Georgian, Italianate, etc. homes want to have the suburban open pit television aesthetic. Since they can’t capture the spaciousness of those cheap unincorporated lots, they compensate with fancy kitchens.

The kitchens are remarkable. Consider a restaurant line chef’s work station. It is quite snug, in part because space for guests represents revenue but also because chefs are on their feet. Some pastry chefs may maintain a piece of marble, but I have yet to see any of the popular counter tops in a restaurant kitchen. These home kitchen Hestia shrines are an atavism representing a lost mythical past. One giveaway is the lack of a smoke hood above a ridiculous industrial stove. I have seen paintings hung in a kitchen.

The Indianapolis Library anchors a large park designed in the image of the National Mall. Centering of the Sales Force tower at the opposite end of the park has already subverted the nationalist image.

Losing the original pleasant library building at the end of the park would be wrong. I fail to see why keeping that building required that they add on to it. A separate new library building, even at a different site doesn’t seem to be more expensive.

I am not a fan of repurposing churches. I understand nostalgia for the buildings. But the cheery appropriation of the sacred for the profane is annoying. Indianapolis wanted to maintain the look of their park while building condominiums. The mullet is easier than attempting an architecturally appropriate modern building on the site.

  

Subversion

I doubt that most of you still read newspapers. This Sunday we read the Tribune in bed while drinking coffee.  Christine did have her laptop, which she used to plan our bike trip.  Then she spoiled the day by dragging me bicycling in the forest preserves.

It is not surprising that the Tribune has endorsed Rauner a Republican for the position of governor over Quinn a Democrat.  It would be remarkable if they had chosen the opposite.  The Tribune has always been a Republican paper.  I suspect that their decision has far more to do with association than ideology or tradition.  Their justification for the decision is that they regard Rauner as the more subversive candidate; that he will:

-Shake things up.

Illinois recently suffered another governor embarrassment when it was determined that we had elected a flat out crook. The embarrassment was that while Blagojevich was eager to sell, he didn’t have anything worth buying.  That is how irrelevant the governor’s office is.

The Tribune is of the opinion that Rauner’s wealth will somehow make the office useful.  I can only suppose that he is personally going to buy the legislature. If that is the plan then I fail to see why he needs the governor’s office.   Perhaps it is a cost saving measure.

The Tribune puts me in mind of serfs living under the Duke or Baron:

-Yes, my first child is his, but I know he has our greater good at heart.

Given that there wasn’t much choice this attitude was understandable. Nowadays it is pathetic.  Everything Rauner has done has been to his profit.  Why would he suddenly become altruistic?

His opponent Quinn is dismissed as a go-along hack.  I can remember when he used to be dismissed as an idealist.  Dismissing Quinn is dismissing the whole political process. Poor Quinn was always the good kid who did his homework and never got in trouble.  

Speaking of political process the Illiana toll way project seems to have everybody jumping in different directions.  New roads seem to arouse the strongest feelings.  I was surprised that Quinn had taken a position on it.  Normally smart politicians talk about boards and process that is they duck. But that is the kind of wonk Quinn is.  I’m sure he has given it his earnest consideration evaluating all the aspects and decided that this road is good for the state without considering that his view isn’t likely to have much impact and can only cost him votes. Rauner hasn’t said a word about the project.

Apparently trucking firms want the toll way and farmers don’t.  In the past sentiment may have favored farmers but nowadays agriculture is an industry just like trucking, and both vote.

I admit to having sympathy for subversion.  But subverting the political process is subverting the means we have for making these decisions collectively.

Before Christine and I went bicycling we visited Adlai Stevenson’s home in Mettawa, Illinois. One of the mean things Jake Arvey did was switching Stevenson with Douglas.  Stevenson was supposed to be Senator, Douglas who understood state politics was supposed to be governor.  Instead Stevenson’s first political office was governor of Illinois.  The major problem Stevenson had running for president was that he seemed unable to make specific promises. This may have been because as governor of Illinois it was difficult to actually deliver anything.  Both Rauner and Quinn are having the same problem.  

Museums

Trip Advisor recently picked The Art Institute of Chicago as its best museum. I like museums that have a flavor of subversion to them.  The worst museum in the world might be Epcot Center.  It doesn’t claim museum status but it is supposed to represent Future World, sort of a perpetual exposition. There is nothing subversive about Epcot. Drained of content it is nothing more than a people containment facility, which may well represent their view of the future.

My current favorite is the Door County Historical Museum in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin. It is jammed with the usual historical knickknacks. They have a discussion of fish boils. There is also a fascinating wildlife diorama constructed by a true obsessive. In the middle of the museum is a leftover jail cell with the key.  While I was there a girl locked her little brother in it. What little girl hasn’t wished to do that?  That is what a museum is for.

My favorite exhibit is the Mathematica Exhibit. It has moved around a bit.  Originally built by IBM, I saw it when it was at the Museum of Science and industry in Chicago.  You might pass through thinking it hopelessly arcane. The fun part is when you see a child suddenly become distracted and stare raptly at one of the displays.  I have no idea if the little darling is actually getting anything or just trying to get a rise out of their parents. Maybe they are just watching the little car going around the Mobius strip.  The parents get agitated. It disturbs them that their child might actually have an interest in the exhibit.  They try to distract the kid, draw them on, and practically drag them out.  That is what a museum is for.

The Adler Planetarium in Chicago has a Christmas show, Star of Wonder.  After they have gathered the rubes in and ensconced them in their seats, they roll the stars back to the way they were around the birth of Christ.  Then they patiently explain to them that the most likely explanation of the “Christmas Star” was a conjunction of planets in the Persian Zodiac.  I doubt that most of the patrons are going to consider why the Biblical authors glossed over a zodiac event as the precursor of Christianity. But still, that is what a museum is for.

George Lucas is going to build another museum on the Chicago museum campus, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.  It will house his Star Wars and Norman Rockwell collection. Museums are, of course, the expression of the egotism of their benefactors.  Any city that features the Rubloff Paper Weight collection at the Art Institute can’t turn its nose up.

The Lucas project has all the indications of a disaster. The more fascinating the museum’s building, the less interesting the exhibits.  The new Lucas building looks to be a humdinger.  There is Opposition of Friends of The Parks, and Better Government Association.  To his credit Lucas is proposing 3000 underground parking spaces.  Scary that they will be built in a waste dump dating from the Chicago fire.  Old waste dumps are not always safe waste dumps. An outside architect has been brought in all the way from China.  This is probably payback for all the work China has given our architects. But the only time our architects are that generous is when they are afraid the project is going to hurt their reputation and future sales. We have a history of fall guy architects being brought in for difficult clients with disastrous projects: Benjamin T. Wood from Boston for Soldier Field, Moriyama & Teshima from Toronto for 10 S LaSalle. If they are far enough away people will know that the fall guy had a big project in Chicago and not that it is loathed.

My greatest fear is that the museum will be popular.  I don’t want the museum campus to feel like Epcot.

Termination of Pregnancy

At the end of 1971 the draft had ended and my school no longer had any ethical reason to keep me and I flunked out.  At the beginning of 1972 I obtained employment as a medical records clerk at University of Chicago Hospitals.  The mother of a girlfriend quit her job as an admitting clerk in the hospital and recommended me as a replacement. So part way through 1972 I became the night admitting clerk working from midnight to 8 in the morning at Chicago Lying In, the obstetrics and gynecology hospital at University of Chicago Hospitals.

Termination of pregnancy was illegal and every few weeks I would admit from one to three emergency patients for botched abortions.  I suppose the illegal operation would do all its patients on those particular evenings.  After a few months it dawned on me that those I admitted were the ones who had made it to the emergency room and if there were these many botched procedures there must be others who had not made it to the emergency room.

At that point I prayed. I’ve prayed twice in my life and the second time was selfish and stupid.  But the first time I prayed for abortion to be legal.  My argument was that it is better to lose one than two.

There was a miracle and abortion became legal.

Chicago Lying In had five floors.  The top floor was surgery, labor and delivery. The fourth floor was unscheduled admissions, 14 beds. The third floor was 33 beds of moms. The second floor was 22 beds of scheduled admissions.  The first floor was administration and clinics.  We operated pretty much at capacity and there were nights when we refused emergency admissions because we didn’t have a bed.

When abortion became legal the second floor was empty for a month.  Then we used it for second trimester terminations.

Countable

In second grade our teacher Ms. Bowers introduced us to Cantor’s diagonal proofs.  You are already familiar with this, of course.  The rational numbers, the fractions, are listed with 1/1, ½, 1/3… on the top row, 1/1, 2/1, 3/1… in the first column and the diagonals always equal to 1: 1/1, 2/2, 3/3… and all the fractions in between. Then Cantor counts them by going up and down diagonally, zig-zagging between them.  All the second graders accepted that.  Then she showed us that the real numbers, say all the real numbers between .0000… and .9999…., were uncountable because no matter which way we listed them, she could generate a new one by going down the diagonal going on to infinity and generating a new one.  Cantor liked diagonals.

I may have lost some of you.  I think the reason we got this as second graders is because we knew that if Ms. Bowers was explaining this to us, it couldn’t be that complicated.  But adults believe that this stuff should be difficult.  So if you don’t get this, don’t feel bad, it just means you are old.

She then told us that it is impossible to prove that there is not an order of infinity between the countable and uncountable.  It turns out that almost anytime you can’t prove anything in mathematics it is equivalent to this continuum hypothesis.  So after all this work, we are left with yet another metaphor for life.  Which seems like a lot of work to get there and it isn’t like there is a shortage of metaphors for life.

Back in second grade a kid came up to me and said:

-If you take all the real numbers of one decimal place, .0 through .9, there aren’t any others. You can’t insert any.  Then if you go up by number of decimal places, .00 through .99 and so on, you will get to infinity which makes the real numbers countable.

-Those aren’t numbers, they are parts of numbers.

I told him.

-Then I will pad them with zeroes.

-Then I will insert a new one.

-Not if you follow my rules.  It is just a matter of definition.

-Is not.

-Is so.

If you want to make a mathematician uncomfortable, tell them about this assertion made back in second grade. Part of the reason that they will be uncomfortable is that the foundations are shaky. I believe that this assertion is not equivalent to the continuum hypothesis, because it obviates the hypothesis. I suppose it would be boring if the real numbers were countable.

If one day this assertion is proven, proven would mean that most mathematicians agreed with it, which might happen if countable real numbers solved some other problem. If that happened it doesn’t mean that something else isn’t uncountable. But another reason that they would be uncomfortable is that it suggests that most of the high level mathematics done in the last century was a huge waste of time.  My girlfriend Christine could have told you that in the first place.

Plasticene Porters

When you’re talking about police and soldiers, you’re essentially talking about a lot of guys who like to play Call Of Duty and Halo. It is difficult to appreciate the level of hypocrisy they confront and the depth of compartmentalization that this requires. Most of us at some fundamental level believe that there is some equitability or justice that plays its way out. This deep human desire is one of the foundations of religion.  Whether it is reincarnation, heaven, rapture, eventual human development, fatalism or just the naïve joy at seeing the downfall of the wicked and horror at the victimization of the innocent, we all want the world to confirm our human perception of right and wrong. Justice, as any other ideal, is found as common or as rare and beautiful as your perception of it.   The police dilemma is more extreme than the accommodations that we all make.  Because of their situation, they stare into this moral disjoint every day and it can drive them mad. A good day for a police officer might be five driving under the influence arrests.  They may have saved lives, or ruined someone’s career, pondering leads to folly.

They are essentially a clerk with a gun, collecting data for their bosses spread sheet and power point presentation. As Mayor Richard J. Daley said:

-The police are not here to create disorder; they’re here to preserve dis order.

We are all in the vise between judgment and obedience. Usually the consequences are not as extreme.

Normally police are about making the case.  Once they have identified a crime and a perpetrator, they gather, secure and present the evidence for the purpose of conviction and sentencing. It gets trickier when they attempt to be preemptive.

People dismiss the National Security Agency PRISM operation because they do not consider the implications of surveillance.  Imagine, for whatever reason, that you have become worthy.  It could be your actions, your associations, or error, but for whatever reason, you have made the list.  Your surveillance is not inexpensive; at the very least it involves administration, audit and review.  At some point it becomes cheaper to send around a person.

That person writes a report.  That individual is now an informant. You are their subject.  Their activity may be as innocuous as calling to see if you are at the same address.  They may strike up an acquaintance with you. They may be a friend or business associate.  They may be a date.  They may be family.

A business may hire you. This is perhaps the most effective and efficient means of surveillance.  Your employer has the right to all your personal records.  They can account for all your activity during your work time. Conversely employment, or promotion, may be denied you. Obviously your academic career can also be determined for you.  If you want to know about someone you can’t passively watch them.  You have to be involved in their life.

Do you have a life?  Have you made any decisions?  Have you dated? Quantitative change leads to qualitative change.  Defenses against paranoia collapse against multibillion budgets.  As to intent, consider COINTELPRO, the FBI program descended from Elliot Ness who learned his tricks from Irish policemen.  Since the data is there it would be silly not to collect it.  Once you have the intelligence it would be irresponsible not to use it. Perhaps this errant young person needs a job, or perhaps they should lose one.  Maybe a little match making would distract them.  Maybe if these groups fought each other, it would take some of the piss out of them. The example of Linus Pauling being denied a visa to visit England, preventing his participation in DNA research comes to mind.

Imagine you were the one charged with tracking a group of subjects, your very own Sims.  What lives would you choose for them? Forget big brother, this is big mother. Do you want to increase your budget by provoking radicalism? Or demonstrate your efficiency by frustrating it?

I can see all the wealthy, influential, famous or even attractive readers raising their two fingers in sarcastic violin bow serenades. Deceit and swindle is of course common. It is human nature to be manipulative. Even ownership of a digital device can make you fair game. There are many with black marks on their permanent record: DUI, sex offender, felony conviction, bankrupt. Why should subversives get legal dispensation even if they have yet to be convicted of a crime?  Whether they have alerted some data mining analyst through their multiple degrees of separation, patterns of consumption, ill-considered observations, or mean spirited informants, they share many companions amongst those who have lost their privacy and legal protection.

The difference is one of scale.  People Magazine and Equifax, for all their spite, do not have the resources of the National Security Agency, although they may share them. More to your self-interest, how do you know that you are not one of the subversives?  It was asked how many American citizens are under surveillance.  The question was refused as classified.  The correct answer is, of course, all.

How do you build democratic controls on a totalitarian process? It is difficult for Americans to have an ideology, although it may occur implicitly. We have rounded up various groups in our history: Japanese, union organizers, Native Americans, Confederate sympathizers, runaway slaves, Tories. Cost cutting is a possibility. At some point it may occur to the committees that it is cheaper to remove all these irritants rather than follow them.  The metadata allows for more efficient scrubbing.

More likely, eventually some practical person will make the point that crime and corruption are far more dangerous to our nation than mere terrorism. When analysts are able to find obvious criminal activity, perhaps in some cases aiding and abetting terrorism or in the enormous grey areas of overseas business activity, for instance, it would be a shame not to tip off investigators. Could NSA be of use in a kidnapping or murder investigation? Can they cross reference IRS data? Comparing reported income to expenditure comes to mind. In general the trend has been to ignore constitutional niceties in the aid of effective prosecution.

 When I first wrote this, the DEA use of PRISM was not known.  The DEA very practically came up with parallel construction in order to conceal their information source.  I now predict some prosecutor is going to subpoena PRISM data, probably from a phone company, for a local investigation. Once you realize that phone companies use bit compression to transmit conversations then it becomes obvious that all these conversations could be saved.  If they can do it, then they have done it.

Could we at last have accurate financial models?