But I Digress...

Out of my distant past: Animal Ball.

Some times we would reserve a racquet ball court and go out after work and play Animal Ball. This was played within the completely enclosed court, and was volleyball style with a net across the middle, except that there were no rules. Well, except three hits max, no floor hits. Everything else was allowed, including hits off the walls, the back wall, the net, the ceiling, and so on.

But the fun part was the extra activities that could be brought into the game due to having “no rules”. For example, if the opposite team was about to spike the ball, I would jump up, grab the top of the net and raise it as high as I could, preventing the spike even though I was not in front of it. Plus I would pull the net down on a serve from our side so the ball would fly directly at the head of an opposing player, then raise the net as high as possible. Or, since you could play a ball off the net, it was also acceptable to grab the ball from the other side of the net and hold it captive in the net until you could ground it out.

Or, as I sometimes did, actually change sides in the middle of a play and wreak havoc on the opposing team. Sometimes this involved pulling down their shorts as they were jumping up for a hit. Other times it just involved yelling “mine – I got it”, and then letting the ball hit the floor and running back to my own side again. Or untying their shoelaces while they were looking at the ball in play. Every play was some sort of melee. Sometimes I’d just grab the ball on their side and take it back to our side. Lots of hoorahs and bellowing… and laughing.

It was kind of a rough game, with body blocks and running headlong into the walls, or having the net pulled over your head. I sometimes took a spike to the face, and I remember how the ball – as hard as it was – would wrap around my face from ear to ear yet not bloody my nose.

One tactic was to try to serve the ball so hard and high that it would bounce off the back wall with such a forceful trajectory that it would come clear back to our side again, so that we could stuff it on the rebound. Oh yeah, it was also legal to reach waaay over the net and grab the ball out of the other team’s play, or to down-spike their own spike set-up.

Lots and lots of laughs. Occasionally a person would come to play who couldn’t stand the anarchic deviations from standard volleyball rules. Those types never came back. No loss to us.

Truth Be Known....

Michael Ramirez, investors.com

Real American Women...

...are not victims.

Quote of the Day 11-19-09

This is long, but I couldn't bring myself to break it up or omit part of it.

Victor Davis Hanson:

"One of the oddest things is President Obama’s continuing surprise at the rising unemployment rate. Indeed, we now have a new Orwellianism of “jobs saved”: as jobs are lost, we are told that some of those who do have them were “saved” by President Obama (note the logic: you ignore the stats that quantify reality, but hype fantasy).

"If you were a contractor, a car dealer, a dentist, or an accountant, and if you heard that we may/will/sorta raise federal income taxes, lift the tax caps off FICA, think about a VAT tax, impose a health care surcharge on the “wealthy,” have new mandatory fees for forced medical plans and green energy, and had you just got hit with new raised sales and state income taxes, why would you feel secure about the future and gamble on it by hiring more employees?

"And if you were to read daily that gold is rising, the dollar crashing, the debt and deficit exploding, the trade imbalance surging, and if you collated all that depression with cheap slurs about doctors, the Chamber of Commerce, the insurance industry, etc. as grasping and greedy, and if you were caricatured as a Nazi, astro-turfer, tea-bagger, or racist if you protested, and if you saw the federal government taking over banks and car companies, and shutting down some dealerships, but mysteriously not others, and if you heard of vast new entitlements and programs to come, from a take-over of the student loan program to cap and trade, would you then conclude—“Wow, we have a serious sober President who supports the business climate, and will lead us out of recession, so by golly, I am going to go out and hire 2-3 more people to ride the coming wave of increased business!”?

"Or would you instead conclude, “Hmm, our commander in chief likes neither me nor what I represent. He will take much of my profits and divert them to his own favored constituencies. So I better slow down, retrench, cut back, squirrel away some money to pay for new fees on power and health insurance, and find a smart accountant to advise on curbing my income so I don’t end up giving 70% to the state and federal governments”?

"At some point, Obama may conclude that the vast presidential jet, the opulence of the Presidency, the power and influence at his fingertips, all that national wealth and more were not created by Acorn, community organizing, Michelle’s legal brilliance, Axelrod’s savvy advice, or Emanuel’s crassness, or by claiming that doctors needlessly take out tonsils and amputate limbs, or in general by sonorous tones promising to give someone vast amounts of someone else’s money, but rather through preserving a climate of freedom, respect for continuity and tradition, and government non-intrusion into the market place that encourage people to try to go into business and retain some of their profits—as recompense for getting up on Saturday morning at 6AM to get down to open the dry cleaning store, or borrowing one’s net worth to open a new stationary outlet, or staying late till 7PM to do a crown, or gambling that the new $500,000 crane will pay for itself in 5 years, or going under someone’s house on a Sunday to unclog the toilet when the employee doesn’t show up.

"I expect him soon either to continue as is and face a historic rebuke in 2010, or to begin scrambling to talk about the debt, fiscal sobriety, and American exceptionalism—his Carter or Clinton call.

"These are the most interesting of times: we are witnessing nothing less than an attempt in just 10 months to reinvent the United States at home and abroad into something it never was, led by someone who, the more soothing, comforting, and melodic his speech-making, the more bruising, cut-throat, and ruthless the act that follows.

"So it’s like we’re living in the late Roman Republic…

The Dead Zone

The entrapment of the lower class by the Leftist socialist state is demonstrated graphically below in this graph from the Tax Prof. In what is referred to as a "dead zone" it is seen that the effective income for those making less than $40k per year in real earned wages is artificially bumped up to $40k by means of the largesse of the welfare state. In one sense, the entire class of sub $40k earners is encouraged not to earn more than $10k, or even nothing at all. Why earn it when it is given to you for no effort on your part?


In another sense, it can be seen that the earners of greater than $40k per year are having their money transfered to the sub $40k earners, a massive wealth transfer dictated by the Federal Government. Whether this is justified is not the issue. The issue is that it happens, and it is a levelling of outcome expectations for an entire class of entrapped people, who somewhat ironically vote to perpetuate their own entrapment and breed more humans into that environment.

Subcultures that promote the work and education ethic have found the USA to be a generous and compatible environment. Entrapping an entire demographic into a subculture that encourages not working or getting a real education is an exercise in evil. Dead zone, indeed.

Bad Analogies and Worse Policies

Jake Tapper (ABC News) interviews Obama regarding forced health care insurance.

Obama again uses the false analogy of automotive insurance to defend the (undoubtedly unconstitutional) use of federal force to implement insurance purchase. As has been repeatedly pointed out by the new media, one may opt out of auto insurance by not driving and using mass transportation instead. Many large city denizens do exactly this.

But one may not opt out of the forced purchase of product of the government controlled health insurance industry, or else suffer more time in Federal prison than most murderers do.

Obama's second statement, that there’s a thousand dollar “hidden tax” on private policy holders is correct in its essence: it is a government directive for hospitals that they must give care to every one and turn away no-one regardless of their ability to pay. Which is effectively a government tax on legitimate policy holders who pay for the care of indigents, i.e. and unfunded mandate on individuals. But of course the tax payer pays for prisons and prison-time too. And indigents who go on the government plan are subsidized by the taxpayer (118 new bureaucracies) under “hardship exemptions”. This affords no relief for the responsible, it is an additional burden. The statement fails logic.

“The President said that he didn’t think the question over the appropriateness of possible jail time is the “biggest question” the House and Senate are facing right now.”

Jail time for dissent never is a question for totalitarians.

A Tough Week

It's been a tough week. One friend lost a beloved Dad and an equally beloved 15 year old dog in the same week. Another friend discovered her 14 year old daughter to be pregnant by an 18 year old. And another death in a friend's family. Two neighbors have died in the past month. [I forgot - how could I - a friend's son fell asleep at the wheel and killed several people he crashed into]

But that seems to pale in the light of the House of Representatives' vote for jack-boot socialism late Sunday night. The hidden taxes, the 118 bureaucracies, the 5 year prison term for non-compliance, the rape of Medicare, the unfunded Medicade new mandates, the overt attack on "the wealthy", aka small businesses... The obvious move to entitle illegal aliens to both healthcare and the vote, even while strangling the Medicare entitlement for the American elderly...

And the slaughter at Hood that none dare call Jihad...

And the Cap and Trade vote to transfer wealth from Red States to Blue States, well, it is hard to take.

Locally, talk of secession and outright revolution is becoming acceptable conversation. How to survive the inevitable rampant inflation, and / or financial collapse of the Federal government, and what that will mean in terms of civil unrest.

The gloating jowl-shaking Soros, cursing free markets and inviting China to take over the governing of the world.

The continuing collapse of banks across the country, and the union-owned auto makers coming back for dozens more billions of taxpayer $ because no one will buy cars from failing parasites. Joblessness hits home amongst friends.

But I have farm work to do. Winter is coming and it could be colder than ever. Never mind what the AGW-one-worlders say in their global-tax-to-punish-the-rich-nations conference.

Gargh.

Note: updated editing.

Quote of the Day 11-10-09

"If ObamaCare is so good, why does it come with handcuffs?"
HotAir.com

The Mathematics of Reason: The First Principles According To Boole.

In 1853, George Boole published his treatise, ”An Investigation of the Laws of Thought”, and gave the world “Boolean Algebra”, the mathematics of logic that ultimately made digital electronics and digital computing possible. To me, the most remarkable aspect of Boole’s work is his ability to resolve rational processes into simple equation form, even into tables for determining propositional truths.

His algebra varies only slightly from classical (numeric) algebra. It is necessary to envision sets, their intersection or non- intersection, rather than multiplication or division. For example, xy is the set that contains both x’s and y’s; this might not include all x’s or all y’s... but it could.

While there are other considerations, that one principle leads off to a remarkable conclusion. Here’s how it works:

If two entities are equal sets (identical), where y = x, then,
xy = x. (The intersection of the sets x and y are identical to the set x.)

This is the Principle of Identity.

And if y = x, then,

xx = x,

or
x² = x.

next,

0 = x – x²,
0 = x ( 1 – x).

The sole solutions are x = 1 and 0, where 1 is a full set, and 0 is an empty or null set. Also, (1 – x) is the contrary set to x, where x is not a universal set.

This equation demonstrates several important things.

First, it represents the conjunction of both x and “not x”, making it a universal description. For example it could mean “truth” and “not truth”, covering the entire universe of possible validities. So it is a “universal” equation.

Second, it has only two solutions, 0 and 1. So in the case of “truth” and “not truth”, there is no intermediate value, meaning that only “true” and “not true” exist. This is the Principle of Excluded Middle. (Also called the Law of Duality, the principle of dichotomy in analytical thought.)

Third, it can be seen that x cannot be both 0 and 1 at the same time. This is the Principle of Non-Contradiction.

From just one equation, Boole demonstrates mathematically the axioms that underlie all rational thought.

Further, in order to demonstrate that dichotomy is the limit of human comprehension, Boole writes a trichotomy:

x = y = z (identical sets);

xyz = x;

then,

x³ = x ;

This factors into

x ( 1 – x )(1 + x) = 0;

The solutions are 0, 1, and –1. To illustrate the cognitive disconnect: If x = “all men”, and (1 – x) = everything that is not “all men”, then what does (1 + x) represent? Boole points out that this is surely beyond the comprehension of human minds. So trichotomies are outside the realm of rational thought, at least in this universe, and for human faculties.

As beautiful and remarkable as this is, it occupies only the first three chapters of Boole’s work. He goes on to analyze propositions, including if/then, and then it’s off into probability theory.

Solved: Homer Simpson's Mysterious Equation: P = NP.

Today I solved the Mysterious Homer Simpson Equation.

The Homer Simpson mystery is described in an article by Larry Hardesty at physorg.com:

“In the 1995 Halloween episode of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson finds a portal to the mysterious Third Dimension behind a bookcase, and desperate to escape his in-laws, he plunges through. He finds himself wandering across a dark surface etched with green gridlines and strewn with geometric shapes, above which hover strange equations. One of these is the deceptively simple assertion that P = NP. [emphasis original]

“In fact, in a 2002 poll, 61 mathematicians and computer scientists said that they thought P probably didn’t equal NP, to only nine who thought it did — and of those nine, several told the pollster that they took the position just to be contrary. But so far, no one’s been able to decisively answer the question one way or the other. Frequently called the most important outstanding question in theoretical computer science, the equivalency of P and NP is one of the seven problems that the Clay Mathematics Institute will give you a million dollars for proving — or disproving.”

The article pursues a proposed computing aspect of the equation, and says,

“A mathematical expression that involves N’s and N²s and N’s raised to other powers is called a polynomial, and that’s what the “P” in “P = NP” stands for. P is the set of problems whose solution times are proportional to polynomials involving N's.”

But the proposed solution is actually saying that N is fully contained within P, i.e. a subset of P (wholly owned subsidiary?). That makes the solution trivial on its face, and tautological on inspection. Because if the intersection of N and P is less than P, it cannot equal P; the equation is only valid if N = P. This makes the equation an identity or definition of N = P, merely a tautology without overall meaning. So the solution proposed by the article is less than philosophically robust, and without any dramatic meaning that can be derived from it.

The real answer to Homer’s Mystery Equation comes directly from George Boole (note 1), who mathematically codified human reason in his Boolean algebra. Boole gave us the following definition (note 2):

x² = x

This is the mathematical definition of a universal set. Here’s why:

Factoring, x ( 1 - x) = 0 ;

If x is the set of “x things”, then 1-x is the set of ALL “non-x things”; the union of these sets is the universal set.

So for P=NP, the universal set occurs when N=P: P=PP, or P=P².

Now the relationship N=P has meaning, because as Boole shows, this equation has only two solutions, 1 and 0, and the impact of this is that all three of the First Principles of Rational thought are confirmed mathematically. Tautology / identity has been produced; Non-contradiction is shown (either one or zero but not both); and Excluded Middle is shown (there is no intermediated solution between 0 and 1).

Thus Homer’s Mystery Equation, P=NP, is the universal axiom equation for rational thought and logic, when P=N, and when P does not equal N, the equation is either trivial (N < P) or nonviable (N > P).

What did you do with your day today?


Note 1: A History of Mathematics, 1968; Carl B. Boyer; pages 577 - 581.

Note 2: An Investigation of The Laws of Thought, 1853; George Boole; Ch II, page 22.