Anti-muslimism and Anti-whitevanism

In the past two years two types of discrimination have appeared. The first appeared after Planeattack, and was directed against Muslims, since it was Muslims who piloted the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. People looked askance at them, or anyone of Mideastern descent, because of Planeattack. The second appeared while the DC sniper was terrorizing the Washington-Richmond area and was directed against owners of white vans. Police inspected these vans much more than other cars, and people started to avoid and look wary of white vans.

There are similarities and differences between the two discriminations. They are similar in that they are based on unwarranted stereotypes - the Mideasterner as suicide bomber and the white van owner as a sniper. These stereotypes are frequently wrong; it was for the sniper case, as the snipers did their killing from a Chevrolet Caprice instead. The two discriminations are also based on the same human emotion: fear. It is different in that a person's religious beliefs are much more integrated with the person than what kind of vehicle he drives. The anti-Muslim beliefs also are more like to turn into hate, as they are directed against people, while the white-van fear was directed against things.

The white van discrimination makes it clear that discrimination of other types frequently is based on fear. This makes it important that community groups be organized once in a while to allow people to experience each other as for a common cause. This could go a long way to alleviating the fear.

Bomb Iraq with...

One of the more interesting pastimes I found on the web is to hunt in Google for a famous phrase with one word changed. Take, for example, "Loose lips sink ships." If I want to get the entire phrase except the word "lips", I enter "loose * sink ships" -lips, telling Google I want "loose" followed by any word (the wild character *) followed by "sink ships", and that I don't want the word "lips". The first entry I get is "loose chips sink ships", which may be appropriate for today's cybernetic world. "Give me liberty or give me *" -death yields "Give me liberty or give me, um, a Game Boy", and then "Give me liberty or give me Microsoft". Have it your own way. If I star the liberty instead, I get "Give me pixels or give me death." They probably mean the Blue Screen of Death. "Read my lips, no more *" -taxes yields "science" first, then "terror" and "Bush". The choices get better all the time. I tried "Bomb Iraq with *" and got this list:

Ballots
Food
Lots of smart bombs
Blair's backing
our a*hole smart technology
Prayer
Sh*loads of DU
No provocation
Love
Really bad jokes

As you can see, some interesting alternatives.

Election Night

It seems the Republicans have the advantage tonight. That could have been predicted in advance, in my opinion. If the election had been held in July, Democrats would have swarmed into power in both houses. The reason why the Republicans have the advantage is that the economy seems to be doing better. The stock market is consistently going up; the days of the ebearient plummets of July and August are gone. The economy is the dominant determiner of elections by far. How else can you explain a popular victorious war president with a 90% approval rating losing to someone who had extramarital affairs, especially after the Gary Hart affair of 1988? The economy was in recession in 1992, and that cost George H. W. Bush the election. Good economies explain the victories of Reagan in 1984, Bush in 1988, and Clinton in 1996, and bad economies explain the defeats of Ford in 1976 and Carter in 1980. So who's going to win in 2004? I predict a booming economy in 2004, so I think Bush will be reelected. However, there may be an electricity shortage then due to lack of power plants, and if that occurs, a Democrat will be elected President. Elections ultimately reduce to bread and butter.

Media Ambiguity

Today CNN came out with an article entitled "Saudis: No Bases for Iraq Strike". CNN, that has two meanings! The Saudis could mean either. It depends on what "bases" is the plural of. If it is the plural of "base", it means that Saudi Arabia will not allow use of its territory for a US strike on Iraq. If it is the plural of "basis", then it means that the Saudis feel there that there are no reasons why the US should invade Iraq. Both sound reasonable, so CNN needs to reword its headline to tell which one is meant.

OK, so CNN took down that ambiguous headline from its web site. Then they come up with another ambigublooper just a few hours later! "Election 2002 hours away", screams the headline. Assuming the election begins on 2002 November 4/5 midnight, they are saying that right now is 2002 August 13 at 1400 hours, 2 in the afternoon. Obviously it is not. What they really mean is "Year 2002 Election hours away", meaning "Year 2002 Election is hours away". Let's hope most of their news is more recent than 2002 August 13.

Metaphors in mathematics

I attended a mathematics conference over the weekend. One of the more interesting talks I attended was one by Jennifer Bergner of Salisbury University, who illustrated by example the use of metaphors to illustrate mathematics. A math professor says, "Let P be a point". What are you thinking of? A point. Right. But what do you imagine when the professor says "point"? Most people, she finds, think of something that is round, like a circle or ball. Theoretically, a point is a one-element set, an infintesimally small extent at a specific point in a line or plane. But we don't think like that. We need to imagine something, so rather than imagining a tiny five-pointed star, or even a tiny square, we imagine a little filled-in circle. According to one book I read, indeed a circle is a fat point.

Here are some other metaphors that come to mind when I hear words:

bird - a passerine bird, such as a warbler (NOT a duck or an ostrich, in other words).
rodent - a mouse.
building - a moderately tall brick edifice
forest - a mid-latitude deciduous forest
vehicle - a minivan
car - a Toyota sedan

and so forth. This shows that we may think of general or abstract concepts by imagining something
that is concrete.