Wishing you all good luck—keep warm, dry and safe…
This morning at 7:30 the Weather Channel on the computer had temps at minus 11 where I live. Birds are really going through the seed. Since first of Jan we have had about 15 in or so of snow. Making up for the first part of Winter where we basically had none.
Front Range CO. N of Denver. Thank God not Boulder Cty.
Another victory for “Global Warming” (AKA “Climate Change” AKA “Anthropogenic Global Warming” AKA “Anthropogenic Climate Change” AKA “Anthropogenic Climate Disruption” AKA “Whatever…”).
The answer to virtually everything. What a great theory!
(Maybe we should just call it GUT and call it a day….)
I feel sure the legacy media will shortly have stories about how this ice storm is really caused by global warming.
The official Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization suspended online fundraising on Wednesday after being warned by the California Attorney General that it faced revocation of its charitable status after failing to file required annual reports.
– – –
The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday:
Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.
“Lack of financial transparency.” Ha! Would people be happier if they knew that BLM was ripping donors off transparently? Unfortunately, governmental regulation of charities is a cess pool. Not that there aren’t many excellent charities. But I’ll guess that the number of rotten ones is greater.
Speaking of Global Warming (and COVID, and Ukraine, and the southern border, and the Mullahs, and CRT, and the supply chain, and the supply of oil and natural gas, and Hunter, etc.), “BIG GUY” pretty damn clever!!
“…The Dollar Is Monopoly Money Supported By A Ponzi Scheme”— https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/peter-schiff-dollar-monopoly-money-supported-ponzi-scheme
Key grafs:
“We are going to inflate the debt away.”
. . .
“If you take the unfunded liabilities and add them to the funded debt, you’re at nearly $200 trillion.
“As Peter said, this [national debt] is completely unplayable.
“It’s not going to be paid. And so what’s going to happen? Well, it’s going to be defaulted, either honestly or dishonestly.”
“The honest way to default is to admit you’re broke and simply not pay.
“Of course, it’s not going to do that. No one in Washington is willing to be honest with creditors. So, the other way is through inflation. And that’s what’s going to happen. We are going to inflate the debt away.”
“That creates a whole new set of problems. Peter said the realization the US government is simply going to keep inflating will cause a run on the US dollar and US Treasuries….”
– – – – – –
Just a “reminder” on Hunter:
“Classified State Department email declared Hunter Biden ‘undercut’ U.S. efforts in Ukraine
“Withheld from public for five years, memo conflicts with Democrats’ official narrative that president’s son had no impact on U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.” https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/classified-state-department-email-declared-hunter-biden
I have home movies from 1948, when I was 10 years old. My father got a movie camera as a gift. It was the wind up type but took pretty good home movies. Not as old as 1902, though.
Speaking of cold, it was 27 degrees in Tucson last night. Yesterday, we had a routine service call on our furnace which was working fine. The young tech forgot to turn the gas back on when he left so we froze last night. The senior tech just came out and discovered why we had no heat. At least we are in Arizona.
Stay safe in that ice storm. Just got back from 9 holes and 75 here..big contrast obviously.
Covid: 2 days in a row now that new active cases has decreased; -75k yesterday, 140k today. First time in 2months this has happened. I assume Biden will start crowing about “defeating the virus” next week.
Made it to work safely, and although it’s supposed to turn to snow and go all night the roads should be well treated by then.
I feel sure the legacy media will shortly have stories about how this ice storm is really caused by global warming.
Kate:
WaPo has gotcha covered!
_____________________________
These near-record snowfall totals continue an astonishing run of historic storms to impact the Northeast in recent years, probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change.
I have home movies from the mid-1920s. From both sides of the family. Very unusual; very precious. Also one of my parents’ wedding in 1940. Some of it in color. It’s quite amazing.
I have home movies of my father and uncle when they were probably 2 and 3 years old in 1939. We had them converted to digital when my Grandfather passed in 2014 at 101 years old.
I love old movies, can’t imagine playing in ocean or lake fully dressed but times have changed.
Skip:
To them, they were half-naked, comparatively speaking.
We have somewhere in the vicinity of 100 home movies from roughly 1948-1972. The task of figuring out what to do with them is overwhelming, so they are just sitting in storage. We will probably just digitize them en masse onto DVDs or some other format, which will probably cost over $1000, and which still leaves the problem of dating and identifying them, and then figuring out what is worth saving, which will take hours and hours. Then there are the photographs….
Barry Meislin…dollar against a basket of other major currencies doesn’t really show a decline:
…likely indicates that those other currencies are also inflating (or expected to inflate) at roughly the same rate.
SHIREHOME, Mike K: 22 deg this morning in St George. No precip, but some wind. At least the sun is out. Ya gotta love that global warming.
David, as I understand it, then (though I probably don’t), “Biden” will just have to find a way to make sure that the American dollar inflates (i.e., devalues) far “more” (or at a much faster rate) than the currencies of those countries to whom the US is indebted….
A race to the bottom?
(Or am I missing something? Hey! perhaps a war will “come to the rescue”…)
Wow, that WAPO quote is certainly wondrous—a genuine testament to the current lamentable state of woke journalism…
“…probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change….”
Yep: “probably”…”in part”….
Can’t get much more convincing than that!…
“…probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change….”
Wow, that WAPO quote is certainly wondrous—a genuine testament to the current lamentable state of woke journalism…
Yep: “…probably….”…”…in part…”
Talk about persuasive…
Shout out to Zaphod and huxley,
On yesterday’s open thread they got into a discussion of Calculus (or, “the Calculus” as us Newtonphiles refer to it as) and mentioned “Calculus Made Easy” by Silvanus Thompson. I found a pdf and started reading it… My goodness! That is a wonderful book! Thank you so much for sharing! I have only read about 7 pages but can already tell it will be one of my favorite books. It is wonderful! I also found pdf’s of the “Practical Man” series they discussed* and will check those out.
*huxley linked to an article of Dr. Richard Feynman’s notebooks from his study of the “Practical Man” Calculus work. It reminded me of a Latin dictionary I once made. I was so looking forward to attending High School so I could fill in the gaps in my education from my mediocre grammar school**. My sister was 3 years older than me and when she returned from her Freshman High School orientation I grabbed the course catalog to dream about what classes I would take once I could attend. What?! I read it cover to cover again… No Latin! I was confused. I found my sister and she gave me the bad news, Latin was not offered as a language. I spent a few days depressed and then decided I wouldn’t let that deter me and got to work writing my own Latin dictionary.
“Yesterday, we had a routine service call on our furnace which was working fine. The young tech forgot to turn the gas back on when he left so we froze last night. The senior tech just came out and discovered why we had no heat.”
Why I NEVER EVER have any “routine maintenance checks” done.
These people are dangerous!
If it ain’t broke–don’t need no fixin’.
Barry Meislin @ 12:36pm,
About 15 years ago I came to the same conclusion. It was possible to do it less drastically, but I didn’t imagine Congress would get practical enough to do what was needed. Barring default, the only other option (besides a massive collapse) is inflation.
For all of our technological progress, the argument can be made that they lived in a better time.
@Rufus:
Silvanus *is* a Pretty Good Book!
Somewhere in storage I’ve got a pre-WWI 8vo calculus text full of sample entry exam questions for the Cambridge Tripos, Royal Engineers, etc. IIRC it used Newton’s dot notation rather than that of Leibniz. A bit like seeing the Long S.
That book was my introduction to the Witch of Agnesi which appeared in a problem list. In pre-Google world, an immediate WTF and no chance of instant gratification.
If I were China, I’d be complaining that Israel gets all the Kudos.
But that’s just me.
Rufus T. Firefly:
How nice to get a shout-out!
When I decided to look at calculus again, a decade or so after college, I started with good ol’ Silvanus Thompson. He does a good job of demystifying the subject, conveying the basic gist and keeping the new student out of the weeds.
I daresay a Silvanus reader would be likely to remember more of the big calculus picture than the kids in my current class, whose recipe memories are likely to decay quickly without a solid sense of what calculus is about.
I barely remember the college courses I’ve taken in the past few years. I mostly remember the massive cramps in my middle back from the harsh deadlines and late hours. Maybe my age is part of the problem.
In any event, I feel like it’s the worst of two worlds — I don’t enjoy learning this way and I don’t remember what I learned.
So this term I’m only taking calculus and I’m taking the time to learn it thoroughly with excellent notes, so this will be the last time I study first-year calculus.
BTW, there’s a better book than Silvanus T’s for self-study — “Quick Calculus” (1985) by Kleppner and Ramsey. It’s a programmed learning text, which means one interacts with text by solving problems then flipping to a page based on the solution. Thus the reader does calculus as well as reads it.
huxley,
Interesting. I have been living vicariously through the comments you share about returning to school.
I have a lot of gaps in my education and have thought about signing up for in person classes for formal instruction to fill them. The three areas I’m most interested in are; Chemistry, Physics and Music composition. I’ve studied a lot of Astronomy independently and in school, including 400 level classes, so I’ve stumbled into a fair amount of Physics and Chemistry, but I have a lot of gaps. I know the history of Physics better than any Engineer I’ve met, but I know far too few formulae and almost no practical Chemistry.
Your comments about attending class, studying in coffee shops… you had me thinking I would enjoy the same.
However, as admirable as Silvanus, Kleppner and Ramsey are, their books do not substitute for a college calculus course.
After Silvanus, I surveyed college texts, discovered that the Thomas 3rd Edition of “Calculus” was from MIT and legendary. I got the then current 7th Edition, which had nicer paper, color, and wider margins. I did a decent job studying calculus on my own, when I could grab a spare hour or two in my free time, while working as a programmer.
Then came 2016 — about thirty years later. Again, my calculus had largely washed away. I had left San Francisco and was staying with my cousin in Tucson, Comey had just whitewashed Hillary’s illegal server, and I was looking for a less chaotic, more pure world in which to live.
Somehow I chose calculus. I amazoned “Quick Calculus” and Thomas’s 3rd Edition and got to it.
I’m not sure why except I seem to have a calculus rendezvous with destiny I must fulfill.
huxley:
You just haven’t reached your limit, yet.
Your comments about attending class, studying in coffee shops… you had me thinking I would enjoy the same.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I think that’s great!
I’m partly inspired by a retired electronics tech, who had worked at Fairchild. He was always poring over a calculus textbook in my breakfast crepe cafe in San Francisco. He worked his way up to differential equations.
I asked him why.
He said he wanted to read Einstein with the math.
I thought that was great.
I also have an idea of reading the Feynman Physics Lectures after I get calculus squared away.
You just haven’t reached your limit, yet.
om:
Limits! Aieee!
We just finished limits. May I never have to learn them again.
That’s how I learned calculus when I was fourteen, I could help the seniors with their physics homework. I believe that the University of Utah also tried using it for business majors with some success.
Barry Meislin on February 3, 2022 at 12:36 pm: reference the Schiff post. I have been saying the same thing for the last 3 or 4 years. But I also voted for Perot in 1992 because he was campaigning for fiscal responsibility under basically the same argument. Back then I didn’t really appreciate how that would lead to Clinton getting into office – Neo was not yet posting to alert me/us.
Not sure how that forced inflation plan will work out, given a lot of people are wise to the situation and will be/are investing in inflation hedges of one kind or another – at least if they “guess” correctly. But they won’t be relying on SS or Medicare, either.
neo on February 3, 2022 at 2:27 pm: “one of my parents’ wedding in 1940.” So you have firm evidence that you and all that you do and write here are legitimate. 🙂
Rufus T. Firefly on February 3, 2022 at 5:29 pm: “… and got to work writing my own Latin dictionary.” Well, that is what we expect fireflies to do; just keep on blinking and blinking and blinking and … Is there a Latin version of Wordle?
Haven’t had time to listen to all of it yet, but could be of interest to oldies wishing to hear things from youngsters down at the coal face.
Not even sure what I think of Fuentes — except that he can troll with the best of them. But he’s stirring the pot and getting a following by being different. Doesn’t seem to be owned by anyone yet as far as I can tell.
How nice to hear about your adventures, huxley and Rufus! I’m actually getting back into sitting down with basic physics again myself, having recently found that I had a copy of Giancoli lying around in one of my boxes. I decided to begin from the beginning, building from basic mechanics. What I really want to get to is electromagnetism, but I’d rather build up to it. Thompson’s calculus might be a good companion.
re Calculus….the late and brilliant blogger known as Neptunus Lex remarked that he had not done terribly well at math in high school and the first two years of college:
“It was not until my junior year at the Naval Academy, when we started to do differential equations, that the light came on. Eureka! Drop a wrench from orbit, and over time it would accelerate at a determinable pace, up until the moment when it entered the atmosphere, where friction would impede the rate of acceleration at an increasingly greater rate (based on air density, interpolated over a changing altitude) and that wrench struck someone’s head at a certain velocity, that any of this applied in the real word. By then it was too late, I was too far gone, and an opportunity was lost.”
There is a group at Marshall University that has constructed a mechanical differential analyzer and believes that the direct mechanical analogy to differential equations can be a very useful educational tool. See my post here:
I guess I was lucky as I had first read about Newton and Leibnitz and the problems they were trying to solve that led to the “discovery” of Calculus. Areas under curves and “fluxions” as they called them. So when it came time for the math I understood the necessity and purpose.
When my kids struggled with a mathematical concept I always started by walking them through a reason for the process and, when applicable, a little history about how humans discovered it. “Let’s say you’re an Egyptian stone quarry foreman and you need to know how much stone you need to build a 50′ tall pyramid…” People tend to remember tangible, visual examples.
It strikes me that a lot of the ‘word problems’ used in K-12 math texts could be made more interesting & realistic with a little thought. For example, the common question:
“Sandy and Bill leave from their homes 15 miles apart at 10 AM. Sandy walks 5 mph, Bill walks 3 MPH. Where do they meet?”
…could be made a lot more interesting if the book substituted:
“You are a train dispatcher for a railroad. You have two trains leaving from cities 90 miles apart, a 60mph passenger train and a 45mph freight. Single-track line. You have various sidings along the way where you can have one train wait for the other, so you need to know where they will meet (and collide) if you don’t turn one of them off into a siding. Where is that point?”
You could even show them the way real dispatchers sometimes did this, using strings and graph papers, vividly illustrating the mathematical concept of Slope.
My parents shot a *lot* of home movies, first on 8mm film and later on videotape, with a brief interval in-between using the 8mm sound-film technology. Some of the 8mm films they later put onto videotape, sometimes adding audio narration about what they remembered was going on.
My mom located a product she could use with her computer to transfer videotape onto DVD, and did that for a lot of them. I now have the whole collection, and am (slowly) getting them into digital/shareable form.
I also have the photo collection…much harder to understand the context of a particular photo when I don’t remember it, since it’s not part of a continuous image stream.
david foster:
Who remembers the 60s New Math? The big brains at Stanford put together a hot new textbook, so students would understand algebra based on set theory from the ground-up.
Here are the third and fourth problems on the very first problem set of the New Math textbook I had in the 9th grade of a forward-thinking Catholic school:
__________________________
3. Find U, the set of all whole numbers from 1 to 4, inclusive. Then find T, the set of squares of all members of U. Now find V, the set of all numbers belonging to both U and T. (Did you include 2 in V? But 2 is not a member of T, so that it cannot belong to both U and. T.) Does every member of V belong to U? Is V a subset of U? Is V a subset of T? Is U a subset of T?
4. Returning to problem 3, let K be the set of all numbers each of which belongs either to U or to T or to both. (Did you include 2 in K? You are right, because 2 belongs to U and hence belongs to either U or to T. The numbers 1 and h belong to both U and T but we include them only once in K.) Is K a subset of U? Is U a subset of K? Is T a subset of K? Is U a subset of U?
__________________________
Are we having fun yet?
I read this now and I’m perplexed. I mean, I could work it out with some diagrams, taking it slowly. But this was literally my first math assignment in my first week of high school.
Ah, good old Tom Lehrer! Not just an entertainer either — a college professor who taught math, as I’ve no doubt neo knows. Wiki says he’s 93, still alive and kicking in the Santa Cruz area.
My high school text came from SMSG (School Mathematics Study Group). It was part of the post-Sputnik educational reforms. I make fun, but it was a noble undertaking, albeit deeply flawed:
____________________________
Almost half the nation’s high school teachers of mathematics attended at least one such [SMSG Training] during the 12 year life of SMSG; but an equivalent seeding was impossible for elementary school teachers, who outnumbered the high school math teachers ten to one. While there were some Institutes for elementary school teachers, these were mainly for experimentation. The SMSG books themselves achieved unexpectedly wide circulation, and were indeed, as Begle had urged, enthusiastically if often ignorantly imitated, even (or especially) at the more elementary levels. And the research literature produced in the colleges of education, and the journals of classroom practice written and read by teachers, were for the entire decade of the sixties dominated by obeisance to the SMSG program.
The result, after twelve years, was total failure. By any reasonable measure, and measures were taken, school mathematics was worse off in 1975 than it had been in 1955. The idiocies of the older curriculum had in most places been removed, but often to be replaced with new ones. Tom Lehrer’s 1965 song New Math, lampooning the pretentious language used to justify an inability to calculate, had the mathematical community itself laughing at the follies committed in the name of promoting a better understanding of mathematics.
It wasn’t just Stanford. I recalled one SMSG working group there. Authorities from Harvard, Yale and others were involved.
Great rundown on where the New Math came from and how it ended.
In case anyone is losing sleep over the set theory problems mentioned above. I found the Teacher’s edition of the SMSG textbook online:
________________________
3. U = {1, 2, 3, 4}
T = {1, 4, 9, 16}
V = {1, 4}; yes, V is a subset of U; yes, V is a subset of T; no, U is not a subset of T, since 2 is not an element of T
4. K = {1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 16}
K is not a subset of U; U is a subset of K; T is a subset of K; U is a subset of U (by definition of subset).
________________________
I feel sad about New Math’s failure. There was some hubris to the undertaking, but otherwise it was a good faith attempt on the part of mathematicians to improve math textbooks at the time.
Today’s Common Core seems like a straight power grab/graft move on the part of Bill Gates and Friends to run American education their way and not coincidentally make money.
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Massive ice storm in progress here. I’ll be leaving for work over an hour early and I hope that’s enough.
Related:
https://www.foxweather.com/live-news/weather-wire-2-000-mile-area-of-snow-ice-continues-to-crawl-east-creating-major-impacts
Wishing you all good luck—keep warm, dry and safe…
This morning at 7:30 the Weather Channel on the computer had temps at minus 11 where I live. Birds are really going through the seed. Since first of Jan we have had about 15 in or so of snow. Making up for the first part of Winter where we basically had none.
Front Range CO. N of Denver. Thank God not Boulder Cty.
Another victory for “Global Warming” (AKA “Climate Change” AKA “Anthropogenic Global Warming” AKA “Anthropogenic Climate Change” AKA “Anthropogenic Climate Disruption” AKA “Whatever…”).
The answer to virtually everything. What a great theory!
(Maybe we should just call it GUT and call it a day….)
I feel sure the legacy media will shortly have stories about how this ice storm is really caused by global warming.
Hope y’all stay warm!
From the “Asking the wrong questions” Department:
“How can the same industry that wants to cancel Joe Rogan for daring to question Covid orthodoxy be happy to lionise the paedophile Michael Jackson in a Broadway musical?”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10472619/DAN-WOOTTON-industry-wants-cancel-Rogan-happy-lionise-Jackson.html
Black Lives Matter Suspends Fundraising …
The official Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization suspended online fundraising on Wednesday after being warned by the California Attorney General that it faced revocation of its charitable status after failing to file required annual reports.
– – –
The Washington Examiner reported Wednesday:
Black Lives Matter shut down all of its online fundraising streams late Wednesday afternoon, just days after California threatened to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable over its lack of financial transparency.
“Lack of financial transparency.” Ha! Would people be happier if they knew that BLM was ripping donors off transparently? Unfortunately, governmental regulation of charities is a cess pool. Not that there aren’t many excellent charities. But I’ll guess that the number of rotten ones is greater.
Speaking of Global Warming (and COVID, and Ukraine, and the southern border, and the Mullahs, and CRT, and the supply chain, and the supply of oil and natural gas, and Hunter, etc.), “BIG GUY” pretty damn clever!!
“…The Dollar Is Monopoly Money Supported By A Ponzi Scheme”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/peter-schiff-dollar-monopoly-money-supported-ponzi-scheme
Key grafs:
“We are going to inflate the debt away.”
. . .
“If you take the unfunded liabilities and add them to the funded debt, you’re at nearly $200 trillion.
“As Peter said, this [national debt] is completely unplayable.
“It’s not going to be paid. And so what’s going to happen? Well, it’s going to be defaulted, either honestly or dishonestly.”
“The honest way to default is to admit you’re broke and simply not pay.
“Of course, it’s not going to do that. No one in Washington is willing to be honest with creditors. So, the other way is through inflation. And that’s what’s going to happen. We are going to inflate the debt away.”
“That creates a whole new set of problems. Peter said the realization the US government is simply going to keep inflating will cause a run on the US dollar and US Treasuries….”
– – – – – –
Just a “reminder” on Hunter:
“Classified State Department email declared Hunter Biden ‘undercut’ U.S. efforts in Ukraine
“Withheld from public for five years, memo conflicts with Democrats’ official narrative that president’s son had no impact on U.S. anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine.”
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/classified-state-department-email-declared-hunter-biden
I have home movies from 1948, when I was 10 years old. My father got a movie camera as a gift. It was the wind up type but took pretty good home movies. Not as old as 1902, though.
Speaking of cold, it was 27 degrees in Tucson last night. Yesterday, we had a routine service call on our furnace which was working fine. The young tech forgot to turn the gas back on when he left so we froze last night. The senior tech just came out and discovered why we had no heat. At least we are in Arizona.
Stay safe in that ice storm. Just got back from 9 holes and 75 here..big contrast obviously.
Covid: 2 days in a row now that new active cases has decreased; -75k yesterday, 140k today. First time in 2months this has happened. I assume Biden will start crowing about “defeating the virus” next week.
Made it to work safely, and although it’s supposed to turn to snow and go all night the roads should be well treated by then.
I feel sure the legacy media will shortly have stories about how this ice storm is really caused by global warming.
Kate:
WaPo has gotcha covered!
_____________________________
These near-record snowfall totals continue an astonishing run of historic storms to impact the Northeast in recent years, probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/01/northeast-snow-storm-climate/
Mike K:
I have home movies from the mid-1920s. From both sides of the family. Very unusual; very precious. Also one of my parents’ wedding in 1940. Some of it in color. It’s quite amazing.
I have home movies of my father and uncle when they were probably 2 and 3 years old in 1939. We had them converted to digital when my Grandfather passed in 2014 at 101 years old.
I love old movies, can’t imagine playing in ocean or lake fully dressed but times have changed.
Skip:
To them, they were half-naked, comparatively speaking.
Also, it kept them from getting sunburn.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/amnesty-to-toi-no-double-standard-in-accusing-israel-but-not-china-of-apartheid/
I haven’t the patience to wade through what this pair of poseurs had to say to The Times of Israel.
3 Minutes of pure gold. The masking of children is just plain evil.
https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1489328159493443591
We have somewhere in the vicinity of 100 home movies from roughly 1948-1972. The task of figuring out what to do with them is overwhelming, so they are just sitting in storage. We will probably just digitize them en masse onto DVDs or some other format, which will probably cost over $1000, and which still leaves the problem of dating and identifying them, and then figuring out what is worth saving, which will take hours and hours. Then there are the photographs….
Barry Meislin…dollar against a basket of other major currencies doesn’t really show a decline:
https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/TVC-DXY/
…likely indicates that those other currencies are also inflating (or expected to inflate) at roughly the same rate.
SHIREHOME, Mike K: 22 deg this morning in St George. No precip, but some wind. At least the sun is out. Ya gotta love that global warming.
David, as I understand it, then (though I probably don’t), “Biden” will just have to find a way to make sure that the American dollar inflates (i.e., devalues) far “more” (or at a much faster rate) than the currencies of those countries to whom the US is indebted….
A race to the bottom?
(Or am I missing something? Hey! perhaps a war will “come to the rescue”…)
Wow, that WAPO quote is certainly wondrous—a genuine testament to the current lamentable state of woke journalism…
“…probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change….”
Yep: “probably”…”in part”….
Can’t get much more convincing than that!…
“…probably attributed, in part, to anthropogenic climate change….”
Wow, that WAPO quote is certainly wondrous—a genuine testament to the current lamentable state of woke journalism…
Yep: “…probably….”…”…in part…”
Talk about persuasive…
Shout out to Zaphod and huxley,
On yesterday’s open thread they got into a discussion of Calculus (or, “the Calculus” as us Newtonphiles refer to it as) and mentioned “Calculus Made Easy” by Silvanus Thompson. I found a pdf and started reading it… My goodness! That is a wonderful book! Thank you so much for sharing! I have only read about 7 pages but can already tell it will be one of my favorite books. It is wonderful! I also found pdf’s of the “Practical Man” series they discussed* and will check those out.
*huxley linked to an article of Dr. Richard Feynman’s notebooks from his study of the “Practical Man” Calculus work. It reminded me of a Latin dictionary I once made. I was so looking forward to attending High School so I could fill in the gaps in my education from my mediocre grammar school**. My sister was 3 years older than me and when she returned from her Freshman High School orientation I grabbed the course catalog to dream about what classes I would take once I could attend. What?! I read it cover to cover again… No Latin! I was confused. I found my sister and she gave me the bad news, Latin was not offered as a language. I spent a few days depressed and then decided I wouldn’t let that deter me and got to work writing my own Latin dictionary.
“Yesterday, we had a routine service call on our furnace which was working fine. The young tech forgot to turn the gas back on when he left so we froze last night. The senior tech just came out and discovered why we had no heat.”
Why I NEVER EVER have any “routine maintenance checks” done.
These people are dangerous!
If it ain’t broke–don’t need no fixin’.
Barry Meislin @ 12:36pm,
About 15 years ago I came to the same conclusion. It was possible to do it less drastically, but I didn’t imagine Congress would get practical enough to do what was needed. Barring default, the only other option (besides a massive collapse) is inflation.
For all of our technological progress, the argument can be made that they lived in a better time.
@Rufus:
Silvanus *is* a Pretty Good Book!
Somewhere in storage I’ve got a pre-WWI 8vo calculus text full of sample entry exam questions for the Cambridge Tripos, Royal Engineers, etc. IIRC it used Newton’s dot notation rather than that of Leibniz. A bit like seeing the Long S.
That book was my introduction to the Witch of Agnesi which appeared in a problem list. In pre-Google world, an immediate WTF and no chance of instant gratification.
Per Art Deco’s link:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/amnesty-to-toi-no-double-standard-in-accusing-israel-but-not-china-of-apartheid/
If I were China, I’d be complaining that Israel gets all the Kudos.
But that’s just me.
Rufus T. Firefly:
How nice to get a shout-out!
When I decided to look at calculus again, a decade or so after college, I started with good ol’ Silvanus Thompson. He does a good job of demystifying the subject, conveying the basic gist and keeping the new student out of the weeds.
I daresay a Silvanus reader would be likely to remember more of the big calculus picture than the kids in my current class, whose recipe memories are likely to decay quickly without a solid sense of what calculus is about.
I barely remember the college courses I’ve taken in the past few years. I mostly remember the massive cramps in my middle back from the harsh deadlines and late hours. Maybe my age is part of the problem.
In any event, I feel like it’s the worst of two worlds — I don’t enjoy learning this way and I don’t remember what I learned.
So this term I’m only taking calculus and I’m taking the time to learn it thoroughly with excellent notes, so this will be the last time I study first-year calculus.
BTW, there’s a better book than Silvanus T’s for self-study — “Quick Calculus” (1985) by Kleppner and Ramsey. It’s a programmed learning text, which means one interacts with text by solving problems then flipping to a page based on the solution. Thus the reader does calculus as well as reads it.
huxley,
Interesting. I have been living vicariously through the comments you share about returning to school.
I have a lot of gaps in my education and have thought about signing up for in person classes for formal instruction to fill them. The three areas I’m most interested in are; Chemistry, Physics and Music composition. I’ve studied a lot of Astronomy independently and in school, including 400 level classes, so I’ve stumbled into a fair amount of Physics and Chemistry, but I have a lot of gaps. I know the history of Physics better than any Engineer I’ve met, but I know far too few formulae and almost no practical Chemistry.
Your comments about attending class, studying in coffee shops… you had me thinking I would enjoy the same.
However, as admirable as Silvanus, Kleppner and Ramsey are, their books do not substitute for a college calculus course.
After Silvanus, I surveyed college texts, discovered that the Thomas 3rd Edition of “Calculus” was from MIT and legendary. I got the then current 7th Edition, which had nicer paper, color, and wider margins. I did a decent job studying calculus on my own, when I could grab a spare hour or two in my free time, while working as a programmer.
Then came 2016 — about thirty years later. Again, my calculus had largely washed away. I had left San Francisco and was staying with my cousin in Tucson, Comey had just whitewashed Hillary’s illegal server, and I was looking for a less chaotic, more pure world in which to live.
Somehow I chose calculus. I amazoned “Quick Calculus” and Thomas’s 3rd Edition and got to it.
I’m not sure why except I seem to have a calculus rendezvous with destiny I must fulfill.
huxley:
You just haven’t reached your limit, yet.
Your comments about attending class, studying in coffee shops… you had me thinking I would enjoy the same.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I think that’s great!
I’m partly inspired by a retired electronics tech, who had worked at Fairchild. He was always poring over a calculus textbook in my breakfast crepe cafe in San Francisco. He worked his way up to differential equations.
I asked him why.
He said he wanted to read Einstein with the math.
I thought that was great.
I also have an idea of reading the Feynman Physics Lectures after I get calculus squared away.
You just haven’t reached your limit, yet.
om:
Limits! Aieee!
We just finished limits. May I never have to learn them again.
@Huxley:
“We just finished limits.”
Zeno: “How did you manage that?”
Zaphod:
Zeno is a disease.
Calculus is the cure.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nevF8hSDn9Q/TKOKNkP5gtI/AAAAAAAADR8/cOJKxEsjboM/s1600/COBRA+POSTER.jpg
Well-played.
That’s how I learned calculus when I was fourteen, I could help the seniors with their physics homework. I believe that the University of Utah also tried using it for business majors with some success.
Barry Meislin on February 3, 2022 at 12:36 pm: reference the Schiff post. I have been saying the same thing for the last 3 or 4 years. But I also voted for Perot in 1992 because he was campaigning for fiscal responsibility under basically the same argument. Back then I didn’t really appreciate how that would lead to Clinton getting into office – Neo was not yet posting to alert me/us.
Not sure how that forced inflation plan will work out, given a lot of people are wise to the situation and will be/are investing in inflation hedges of one kind or another – at least if they “guess” correctly. But they won’t be relying on SS or Medicare, either.
neo on February 3, 2022 at 2:27 pm: “one of my parents’ wedding in 1940.” So you have firm evidence that you and all that you do and write here are legitimate. 🙂
Rufus T. Firefly on February 3, 2022 at 5:29 pm: “… and got to work writing my own Latin dictionary.” Well, that is what we expect fireflies to do; just keep on blinking and blinking and blinking and … Is there a Latin version of Wordle?
Goldman / Spengler channeling Cardinal Richelieu again:
https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/richelieus-ghost-almost-solves-americas-problems/
As always worth reading!
Ed Dutton interviews Nick Fuentes:
https://odysee.com/@JollyHeretic:d/The-Jolly-Heretic-Welcomes-Someone-Who-is-a-Fountain-of-Many-Things:2
Haven’t had time to listen to all of it yet, but could be of interest to oldies wishing to hear things from youngsters down at the coal face.
Not even sure what I think of Fuentes — except that he can troll with the best of them. But he’s stirring the pot and getting a following by being different. Doesn’t seem to be owned by anyone yet as far as I can tell.
How nice to hear about your adventures, huxley and Rufus! I’m actually getting back into sitting down with basic physics again myself, having recently found that I had a copy of Giancoli lying around in one of my boxes. I decided to begin from the beginning, building from basic mechanics. What I really want to get to is electromagnetism, but I’d rather build up to it. Thompson’s calculus might be a good companion.
re Calculus….the late and brilliant blogger known as Neptunus Lex remarked that he had not done terribly well at math in high school and the first two years of college:
“It was not until my junior year at the Naval Academy, when we started to do differential equations, that the light came on. Eureka! Drop a wrench from orbit, and over time it would accelerate at a determinable pace, up until the moment when it entered the atmosphere, where friction would impede the rate of acceleration at an increasingly greater rate (based on air density, interpolated over a changing altitude) and that wrench struck someone’s head at a certain velocity, that any of this applied in the real word. By then it was too late, I was too far gone, and an opportunity was lost.”
There is a group at Marshall University that has constructed a mechanical differential analyzer and believes that the direct mechanical analogy to differential equations can be a very useful educational tool. See my post here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57194.html
david foster,
I guess I was lucky as I had first read about Newton and Leibnitz and the problems they were trying to solve that led to the “discovery” of Calculus. Areas under curves and “fluxions” as they called them. So when it came time for the math I understood the necessity and purpose.
When my kids struggled with a mathematical concept I always started by walking them through a reason for the process and, when applicable, a little history about how humans discovered it. “Let’s say you’re an Egyptian stone quarry foreman and you need to know how much stone you need to build a 50′ tall pyramid…” People tend to remember tangible, visual examples.
It strikes me that a lot of the ‘word problems’ used in K-12 math texts could be made more interesting & realistic with a little thought. For example, the common question:
“Sandy and Bill leave from their homes 15 miles apart at 10 AM. Sandy walks 5 mph, Bill walks 3 MPH. Where do they meet?”
…could be made a lot more interesting if the book substituted:
“You are a train dispatcher for a railroad. You have two trains leaving from cities 90 miles apart, a 60mph passenger train and a 45mph freight. Single-track line. You have various sidings along the way where you can have one train wait for the other, so you need to know where they will meet (and collide) if you don’t turn one of them off into a siding. Where is that point?”
You could even show them the way real dispatchers sometimes did this, using strings and graph papers, vividly illustrating the mathematical concept of Slope.
My parents shot a *lot* of home movies, first on 8mm film and later on videotape, with a brief interval in-between using the 8mm sound-film technology. Some of the 8mm films they later put onto videotape, sometimes adding audio narration about what they remembered was going on.
My mom located a product she could use with her computer to transfer videotape onto DVD, and did that for a lot of them. I now have the whole collection, and am (slowly) getting them into digital/shareable form.
I also have the photo collection…much harder to understand the context of a particular photo when I don’t remember it, since it’s not part of a continuous image stream.
david foster:
Who remembers the 60s New Math? The big brains at Stanford put together a hot new textbook, so students would understand algebra based on set theory from the ground-up.
Here are the third and fourth problems on the very first problem set of the New Math textbook I had in the 9th grade of a forward-thinking Catholic school:
__________________________
3. Find U, the set of all whole numbers from 1 to 4, inclusive. Then find T, the set of squares of all members of U. Now find V, the set of all numbers belonging to both U and T. (Did you include 2 in V? But 2 is not a member of T, so that it cannot belong to both U and. T.) Does every member of V belong to U? Is V a subset of U? Is V a subset of T? Is U a subset of T?
4. Returning to problem 3, let K be the set of all numbers each of which belongs either to U or to T or to both. (Did you include 2 in K? You are right, because 2 belongs to U and hence belongs to either U or to T. The numbers 1 and h belong to both U and T but we include them only once in K.) Is K a subset of U? Is U a subset of K? Is T a subset of K? Is U a subset of U?
__________________________
Are we having fun yet?
I read this now and I’m perplexed. I mean, I could work it out with some diagrams, taking it slowly. But this was literally my first math assignment in my first week of high school.
Didn’t work, neo. Oh well.
More Spanky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGZhV0hn80
huxley; david foster:
Ah, good old Tom Lehrer! Not just an entertainer either — a college professor who taught math, as I’ve no doubt neo knows. Wiki says he’s 93, still alive and kicking in the Santa Cruz area.
My high school text came from SMSG (School Mathematics Study Group). It was part of the post-Sputnik educational reforms. I make fun, but it was a noble undertaking, albeit deeply flawed:
____________________________
Almost half the nation’s high school teachers of mathematics attended at least one such [SMSG Training] during the 12 year life of SMSG; but an equivalent seeding was impossible for elementary school teachers, who outnumbered the high school math teachers ten to one. While there were some Institutes for elementary school teachers, these were mainly for experimentation. The SMSG books themselves achieved unexpectedly wide circulation, and were indeed, as Begle had urged, enthusiastically if often ignorantly imitated, even (or especially) at the more elementary levels. And the research literature produced in the colleges of education, and the journals of classroom practice written and read by teachers, were for the entire decade of the sixties dominated by obeisance to the SMSG program.
The result, after twelve years, was total failure. By any reasonable measure, and measures were taken, school mathematics was worse off in 1975 than it had been in 1955. The idiocies of the older curriculum had in most places been removed, but often to be replaced with new ones. Tom Lehrer’s 1965 song New Math, lampooning the pretentious language used to justify an inability to calculate, had the mathematical community itself laughing at the follies committed in the name of promoting a better understanding of mathematics.
–“Whatever Happened to the New Math?”
https://people.math.rochester.edu/faculty/rarm/smsg.html
____________________________
It wasn’t just Stanford. I recalled one SMSG working group there. Authorities from Harvard, Yale and others were involved.
Great rundown on where the New Math came from and how it ended.
In case anyone is losing sleep over the set theory problems mentioned above. I found the Teacher’s edition of the SMSG textbook online:
________________________
3. U = {1, 2, 3, 4}
T = {1, 4, 9, 16}
V = {1, 4}; yes, V is a subset of U; yes, V is a subset of T; no, U is not a subset of T, since 2 is not an element of T
4. K = {1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 16}
K is not a subset of U; U is a subset of K; T is a subset of K; U is a subset of U (by definition of subset).
________________________
I feel sad about New Math’s failure. There was some hubris to the undertaking, but otherwise it was a good faith attempt on the part of mathematicians to improve math textbooks at the time.
Today’s Common Core seems like a straight power grab/graft move on the part of Bill Gates and Friends to run American education their way and not coincidentally make money.