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.

Halloween

It's that scary time of the year again. So scary that for the first time that I can remember, the head of my work unit let out everyone at 1630 (4:30pm) regardless of their actual work hours, so that people driving home would not have to drive through trick-or-treaters. We had our share of trick or treaters tonight, but it is less than previous years. Perhaps people are being more cautious and taking their children to Halloween parties of having them trick or treat. Here are the amounts per year:

Year	Trick or Treaters
1997	68
1998	84
1999	88
2001	62
2002	49

Apparently I lost the file in going from one computer to another; I recovered most of it but I don't have figures for 2000. Here is how in these five years the trick or treaters broke down as far as half-hour period is concerned (I use 24-hour time; for example, 1800 is 6 o'clock):

1730-1800, 0.9%
1800-1830, 27.1%
1830-1900, 24.1%
1900-1930, 20.9%
1930-2000, 17.2%
2000-2030, 9.2%
2030-2100, 0.5%

This shows that most of the trick-or-treaters come between 6pm and 7:30pm. The earliest I have seen one is 1748 (12 to 6 pm), and the latest 2048 (12 to 9 pm). Some come between 7:30pm and 8pm, but then it really drops sharply after that. This enables one to plan for Halloween, what time to come home, how long to leave the pumpkin and candy out and so forth.

I dressed up as a magician with an Aladdin-type costume, with black with blue silk design on it, with a dreamcatcher on a necklace. I put devil-ears on top that I bought at Busch Gardens this past summer just before Imaginique; some child though I bought it at King's Dominion instead. One young lady said I wasn't a devil because I was dressed in blue and black. Devils are dressed in red. This is an observant and inquisitive girl. She'll probably grow into a prominent mathematician or computer programmer, scientist, or investigator. Others praised my costume. It did win second place and came close to winning first at a costume contest at SUUSI in 2001.

Halloween is gone; next is Thanksgiving.

Some miscellany

Here are some comments I have about words people use. The words very and extreme are used far too frequently. "The revelation is shocking." sounds much stronger than "The revelation is very shocking.", for example. That word shocking carries with it a jolt that gets lost when very is put in front of it. As far as I can see, that is a phrase that can be eliminated. Why don't we ever say "as near as"? It is important to complete applications before the doo-doo date indicated on the form. On the other hand, why not go over the deadline, even though it is a very unique point in time. On the other hand, you can't have something that is "very unique"; unique means there is only one of them, and you can't be oner (pronounced wun-ner) than one. On the original hand, why doesn't anyone say that? Take this quote, which comes from a recent financial article on the web:

The Conference Board's October consumer confidence report -- due a half-hour after the markets open -- is expected to show a significant drop to 90 from 93.3 in September, according to a consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com. The drop may be attributable to a six-week decline in stocks that ran through September, thus not reflecting the recent three-week runup that has seen the Dow gain nearly 15 percent.

Whaaa?? How can runups see? They don't have eyes. I give speeches at Toastmaster club meetings; I do this because I know these speeches are apotamy. I.e., they are a part of me. All in all in all, I say this is a good blog, and I say very goodnight.

Disappointment

I was disappointed to find today that Maryland intends to seek the death penalty for the DC sniper defendants, even to the extent of lifting a moratorium on the death penalty to do it. Maybe Hanover County, Virginia should try him since the victim there was not killed; therefore, no death penalty. But then he could get only one life term, meaning he would be out in the streets in a decade. I still think Maryland should seek six consecutive life terms for all three defendants.

Bugbearisms

A new virus is out, and it can cause mischief that can result in serious embarrassment or consequences. The virus is Bugbear.

Bugbear is like Klez, a virus that has been going around hitting my computer every one or two days, whereupon my antivirus program traps it, enabling me to get rid of it. Bugbear, however, instead of leaving behind a blank email message, leaves an intact message that was intended to go from someone else to someone else, and not to the user of the computer that gets the virus. So far I have gotten one from a Toastmaster and one from a Unitarian-Universalist, and in each case I called them up to inform them that they have a virus. This virus can do things like take your love letter to Sue and send it to your other girl friend Tricia; it can take a file with some of your private financial data on it and send it to an employee of the IRS; it can do all sorts of trickster things like that, some of which is funny, but most of which is not.

The best way to ensure that this type of embarrassment does not happen is to get an antivirus program, make sure it is always up to date, and have it scan email. I see now from the viruses I have received that computers must absolutely have an antivirus program with up to date virus signatures. You are headed for trouble without one.

Try them, Maryland

Yesterday Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said that Virginia is a better place to try the sniper suspects than Maryland because Virginia has the death penalty and Maryland does not as much, especially for Malvo, who is a juvenile. No, Jerry. Maryland is the better place for that reason. The death penalty is an expensive way to deal with a murderer and it duplicates his crime - killing a person. Many organizations (e.g. Amnesty International) have come out against the death penalty because of its inhumaneness and it is forbidden in many countries in the world, especially developed countries such as Australia and Germany. In fact, the US having the death penalty puts it in the same league with many of the developing nations in the world, including all of the Islamic ones. Kilgore wants the death penalty for a juvenile. That puts it in the same league with only five nations in the world, including Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen. It is a blight on our country for it to have the death penalty and sets us off as a bunch of rurale brutes. Maryland, try these suspects. Give them six consecutive life terms so that they spend the rest of the life in a Maryland prison, so that Virginia never gets to try them. An amendment is needed to abolish the death penalty worldwide.

Social Level

Abraham Maslov gave five levels of needs that we humans need to fulfill. They are

1. Survival - food, shelter, sleep, bathroom functions, sex
2. Security - freedom from threats
3. Social - Interaction with people, especially favorable interaction
4. Self-esteem - Feeling good about yourself, being recognized for achieving something
5. Self-actualization - Feeling at one with nature, doing what you want to do

As the levels get higher, they get harder to describe. What I have found is that I feel the people that I most like are those that I interact with on the social level - level 3. This is because with level 1, they say, do this or that or you don't get fed (or paid), and with level 2, it is not enough for a person not to present a threat. So I don't get a good impression of these people. At level 3 people interact with others to get to know and like each other, and I find that I get along the most with people that I interact with on this level. With the higher levels, being recognized for a good achievement is good, but not enough; I find something lacking with people whom I interact with on this level. Finally with level 5, it seems that people go off and do their own thing and live up to their own potential. This makes them aloof.

So I prefer to associate with people I associate with at the social level (level 3). Now the people I would like to associate with the most are those whom I can relate to at the self-esteem and self-actualization levels, but these are really rare.

Well it's over now

I see now all over the place that the serial snipers that have been terrorizing the Washington-Richmond area has been captured. This means we can go back to our normal lives. No more huge traffic jams and zillions of police cars all over the place. We can walk to the store and to the gas station, and our kids can safely go to school. But take notice. The snipers did instill fear in us through acts of violence. According to the definition of the term, that is terrorism. Yes, this was a terrorist attack. But not from al-Qaeda. Terrorists don't come just from overseas. They can be individuals from this country stalking in the woods. Last year our President declared a war on terrorism. This means he wanted to destroy what was causing us to fear. So he invaded Afghanistan and scattered the al-Qaeda gang all over the place. Now he wants to invade Iraq. That will stir up enmity to our nation and lead to increased terrorism. Further, he has paid scant attention to the sniper attacks. According to an article in the Washington Post, people feared the sniper more than they feared Planeattack or the anthrax attacks of last year. If Bush is really serious about getting rid of terrorism, he should have paid more attention to the sniper attacks and less to invading a dictator who does not have much to deal with terror in America. Sure, attacking al-Qaeda and capturing the snipers remove some of the terrorists from our society, but to really make headway in reducing terrorism, he also needs to improve our relations with the rest of the world, and he has not done much of that yet. Until he does, I will feel afraid.

Junk Sparrows

A little while ago I wrote a poem called "Junk Sparrows". I decided to put that on my website, on a new poetry page that I added to my site. I also pointed that page to my other poem "Where's the Way?" and a short story "The Fountain", that were already on my site. "Junk Sparrows" will be a jolt for many people, especially Americans whose ancestors came from another continent, especially Europe. I have also added another non-word, superennery, meaning (usually of a digit) greater than 9.

Woodchucking

At the Outer Banks we saw many sandpipers. I have always thought that was a strange name, but then it reminded me of the woodchuck phrase: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? So is it that way with sandpipers? How much sand would a sandpiper pipe if a sandpiper could pipe sand? The image of a sandpiper piping sand is a silly one to me, but I suppose no more than a woodchuck chucking wood. What's that? Stuffing pieces of wood in its cheeks? Chopping the wood with its teeth? I suppose a sandpiper pipes sand through its long beak.

A long time ago I came up with other versions of the woodchucking question. I call this general pastime woodchucking. The woodchucking I came up with earlier was : How many bears would a bare bear bear if a bare bear could bear bears? Well, how many cubs does a bear usually have, anyway? How much bark would a bark bark bark if a bark bark could bark bark? That one is not so good. Bark is an intransitive verb, although I suppose you could imagine a dog, or if you stretch your imagination, a ship, spewing out pine bark mulch when it barks. I decided to look all over the Internet for woodchuckings by searching in Google for "how much * would a * if *", and by trying to find them myself. Here are some of the entries I got:

How many books would a bookmark mark if a bookmark could mark books?

How many flags would a flagpole poll if a flagpole could poll flags?

How much ground would a groundhog hog if a groundhog could hog ground?

How much wind would a windbreaker break if a windbreaker could break wind?

How much web would a weblog blog if a weblog could blog webs? (how much does this web blog?)

How many kings would a kingfisher fish if a kingfisher could fish kings?

How much chain would a chainsaw saw if a chainsaw could saw chain? (Don't try this one. The saw will buck and chop off your hand.)

How much wocky would a jabber wock, if a jabber could wock wocky? (from http://www.planethalflife.com/features/mailbag/mailbag112701b.shtm)

How much trouble would a noble cause if a noble could cause trouble? (from http://www.rpgageoff.com/news/geoffnews.html)

But the winner I feel is this one, which outdoes all the others by a huge margin:

How much C would a C++ if a C+ could +C? (from http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Cottage/4388/geobook.html)

I'd have to go back to my C++ book to check up on that one.

The Outer Banks

This past weekend I made my trip to the Outer Banks. It was a surreal place. For one thing, the thin islands were a linear place. All the places were along essentially a straight place: Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Pea Island, Rodanthe, Avon, and Buxton. Everything is up and down Route 12. For another thing, it was warm. It was like a return to summer, with temperatures, both water and air, in the 70s. I swam a bit in the ocean in October. The vegetation was unlike what I usually see. It was flat, with sea oats and the like. We were part of a birding trip, Wings over Water. Therefore, we saw lots of birds, including hyperactive sanderlings moving back and forth on the surf hunting for food, herons and egrets foraging the water for something to eat, graceful pelicans in the air, and ducks of many varieties, including a hybrid duck. We lucked out on the weather: clear and warm every single day, with rain on the day before and the day after we came back. The beach piles up in huge dunes, including the monster Jockey's Ridge south of Kill Devil Hills, from which come kites and hang gliders. We saw it on a moonlit night, it looked really out of this world, like something from Chesley Bonestell. But it was Earth; we could tell for we saw the vague outline and eyes of a gray fox galloping along the ridge. The food was expensive but good. I would like to come back again, but I don't know if I will get as good weather as we had this past weekend.

Gamma Ray Bursters

At an amateur astronomer's meeting tonight I saw a NOVA video on gamma ray bursters. These are mysterious bursts of radiation, especially gamma rays, coming from some place in the sky that does not usually correspond to any star, galaxy, nebula, or other visible optical instrument. They are so powerful that if one were to occur 100 light years (that's 600 trillion miles) from here, it would wipe out human civilization; it would be like an atom blast everywhere on the Earth simultaneously. So what are they? The theory that came out in the video was that they are caused by really huge stars that collapse into black holes when they die. There are two objections to this argument. One is that usually huge supernovas in which a star (such as a Wolf-Rayet star) could become a black hole usually produce Type 1b or Type 1c supernovas, which are far less powerful than a gamma ray burster. More importantly, if really huge stars that become black holes produce gamma ray bursters ( also called hypernovas) when they die, certainly something like this would have occurred in the 4.6-billion-year history of the earth. That would have wiped out all life. I am alive, and I see all kinds of life around me - people, animals and plants, and the planet is fertile. Therefore, no such explosion could have occurred near here, and that eliminates stars becoming black holes as the cause of gamma-ray bursters. Then what are they? Like many astronomers, I feel I do not know. It is part of the never-ending quest for truth and meaning. Maybe we will know someday.

Star Collision

I have seen some terrifying, apocalyptic images as of late: the burning towers of Planeattack, the destruction of cities in the movies Armageddon and Independence Day, and in numerous artist renditions of the times billions of years in the future when the sun heats up and becomes a red giant, turning the Earth into a lava ball. I saw some more horrifying images yet in the current issue of Scientific American. The 2002 November issue shows what looks like a bright shining yellow lava asteroid about to collide with a dark, reddish Earth. But it was no asteroid. It was the Sun, distorted into the shape of an elongated bird egg by the approach of a white dwarf star from nowhere. Stars are so far apart that the chance of them colliding is remote, but maybe not that remote, as they attract to each other through gravity. The article says that if a white dwarf star, as massive as the Sun but in the volume of an Earth, were to collide with the Sun, it would ignite the entire Sun and blow it up leaving behind a nebula. There is a painting in this article that shows this. These two paintings are among the most striking I have ever seen. They do leave out a few points; for example, the mere approach of the white dwarf would have swung the planets into weird orbits or flung them out altogether, and the Sun is pictured as a normal-colored yellow object, whereas if this were to really happen, the Sun would have been blazingly bright, as it is now, and no reasonable picture could reflect this.

The article does give an "arithmetic" table for saying what happens if stars of different types were to collide. For example, if two red giants collide, they would throw off their outer envelopes and become a pair of white dwarfs. If two main sequence stars (such as the Sun) were to collide, the result would be a bigger main sequence star, and so forth. This gives an arithmetic of sorts. White dwarf + black hole = black hole (with disk). Red supergiant + neutron star = white dwarf + neutron star (with disk) and so forth. This operation is clearly commutative, since, for example, the Sun and a white dwarf are the white dwarf and the Sun. Is it associative? I thought at first yes, since there are ranks of objects and the same things always happen to them; for example, a red giant encountering any kind of star will turn into a white dwarf. However, (red giant + main sequence) + main sequence is not the same as red giant + (main sequence + main sequence), as in the former, one of the main sequence stars would get annihilated by a white dwarf, but in the second this does not happen.

The Silliness of Evil

The word "evil" is used more often than it used to be. Evil hijackers, axis of evil, Saddam is evil and so forth. I really don't believe there is such a thing as evil, and I believe that more often or not it means what the "other guys" are. The word has even got a connotation of being comical. There's Evil Kneivel, for instance. "Evil Empire" has a silly sound to it, as in "Press Button to Destroy Evil Empire". Synonyms for "Evil" also sound silly, for example, wicked, sin (as in "sinful chocolate"), and misdeed. By far the silliest is the German word böse . I saw one web site, for example, say "Simpson ist böse". The word sounds funny to me, perhaps because when I learned it, it was in a story about children and their parents. When the parents get angry with their children, the story refers to the parents as "böse". So I came to regard the word as similar to "mad" in English, but the difference is that to say someone is angry, informally, in English you say that they are crazy ("mad"), whereas in German you say that they are evil ("böse"). So I suppose Brits and Americans go crazy when they get angry, and Germans become evil. The whole idea of evil is crazy anyway.

Columbus Day

Columbus Day is coming up. This holiday was celebrated on October 12 when I was young, but, like many other holidays, it was moved to Mondays; in particular, the second Monday of October. I don't regard it as an important holiday, especially when many see it as a symbol of colonialism instead of the discovery of the New World. Nevertheless, attendance was low at my workplace today, and we were let out an hour early. This shows that even minor holidays are increasing in importance as of late. I feel the 10 major US holidays rank like this in importance:

1. Yule (December 25)
2. Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November)
3. New Year's Day (January 1)
4. Independence Day (July 4)
5. Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
6. Labor Day (first Monday in September)
7. Martin Luther King Day (third Monday in January)
8. Veterans' Day (November 11)
9. Presidents' Day (third Monday in February)
10. Columbus Day (October 12)

Which President was the Best?

Today Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was well deserved. Jimmy Carter lived much of his life seeking peace everywhere, with the Camp David accords, Haiti, and numerous other places. In my opinion he was the best President in my lifetime. Here is my ranking of the men who served as our President in my lifetime:

1. Jimmy Carter. High regard for people and peace.
2. John F. Kennedy. Started an optimistic new age: Camelot
3. Harry Truman. Was able to say what he meant.
4. Gerald Ford. Served as well as he could for a president that was not elected.
5. Bill Clinton. Able to achieve things with people, but his amorous pursuits did him in.
6. Lyndon Johnson. Developed the Great Society, but the Vietnam War was our biggest failure.
7. George H. W. Bush (father). Won a war but could not bring around the economy.
8. Ronald Reagan. Symbolizes optimism but also "moral majority" and Iran-Contra.
9. George W. Bush (son). Angered world with non-involvement in anti-racism and ecological concerns, too martiocratic.
10. Richard Nixon. Opened China but Watergate was the worst scandal in our history.

To Anacreon in Heaven

Toastmaster Table Topics become blog topics. That's an easy transition. The one from today's meeting is "To Anacreon in Heaven". I was called upon to explain if anyone under the age of 50 knows the words to the Star Spangled Banner. [Warning: this hyperlink plays music.] I don't think it has anything to do with age. Most people know the words to the first verse but not the other verses. They were written by Francis Scott Key, and reflects the relief and joy that people found when they saw, throughout all the fighting at night, that the US Flag was tattered, but still flying over the fort. It seems to have been trivialized in our society to the extent where the last two words seem to be "play ball!"; perhaps we should reread the verses and ponder over their meaning.

Many people don't know the origin of the music. It was once a drinking song! "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung in bars in colonial America in the 1700s. The range of the music is wide, an octave and a half. Not many of us have that kind of vocal range. It was purposely written that way, along with pompous and provocative words, to test the ability of people to sing it when half drunk. It begins "To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee…" and the first verse terminates with "The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine", referring to the ancient Roman god of wine and merriment. So next time we hear that anthem play, think of the drinking song which underlies it.

Quaoar

Everyone knows that Pluto is a planet, or is it? It is so much smaller than the smallest planet Mercury. If Pluto is a softball, then Mercury is a soccer (or foot) ball. But it is so much larger than anything else. Not any more. Pluto is now known to be a Kuiper Belt object, a collection of large asteroids beyond the orbit of Neptune. Other Kuiper Belt objects are known; for example, Pluto's own satellite Charon. There are others, such as Varuna and Ixion. These two worlds are slightly bigger than Ceres, the largest Mars-Jupiter asteroid. Just recently another Kuiper Belt object was discovered to be even larger than Varuna and Ixion; it was named Quaoar and it is 777 miles across, or about the size of the Great Lakes region in the USA and Canada. This is so large compared to Pluto that it is hard to claim that Pluto is a planet. One would then have to call Quaoar a planet; then one would have to call Varuna and Ceres planets, and so forth until we have thousands of planets. It is easier to call Pluto not a planet but a huge asteroid; the biggest in the Kuiper Belt, although what would happen to the claim of Pluto being a planet if a Kuiper Belt object bigger than Pluto were found?

By the way: Quaoar. It is pronounced sort of like you have a speech impediment: kua-o-are. Where did it come from?it differs from quasar in just a single letter. It is from Los Angeles county Native American myth; a good description, from, is: "Their only god who came down from heaven; and, after reducing chaos to order, out the world on the back of seven giants. He then created the lower animals,” and then mankind." I think they mean "cut the world". But the quotation, from www.angelfire.com/journal/cathbodua/Gods/Qgods.html, shows a progression from chaos to order, the opposite of Coyote's direction; Coyote introduced disorder when he scattered the stars all over the place. As such, then, this asteroid represents order, something that Kuiper Belt objects don't seem to have.

Brakes

Today I took my van in to have the brakes repaired. They are soft and you press the pedal to the floor before they take hold. The repair place replaced the master cylinder and fixed some brake pads. The problem returned so I took it back. They said there was nothing wrong with it. Huhhh?? I drove it; I did not really believe it, but if you can't get someone to repair something because that person does not think it needs repair, there is not much you can do. It got bad enough so I felt I had to take it in. So I did, this time to the dealer. They bled the lines and said that when a master cylinder is installed the lines need to be bled in a special way. I wonder if the first place knew this. I hope it is repaired, now. I am a little concerned that they corrected the symptom without finding the cause. What caused the air to get into the brake system? If they simply bleed the lines, the cause will get the air back into the system. I hope it is ready because I have a long trip coming