Friday's Wall St Journal. Front page color photo. Heartwarming shot of Senator Tammy Duckworth bringing her new born baby into the Senate chamber for a vote on something. All the adults in the photo have fond smiles, everyone likes small children.
It's cute and all that, but is this the most important thing happening the world on this Friday?
Friday, April 20, 2018
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Probably a bad idea.
Florida Republican Rep Ron DeSantis, and ten colleagues sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking for criminal investigation of Obama people Loretta Lynch, James Comey, Hillary Clinton, and Andrew McCabe.
Much as all these low lives deserve some criminal investigation, trial and jail time, doing so is a bad idea for the country. We don't want to criminalize loosing an election. If politicians understand that loosing the election will put them in jail, they will fight all the harder, and use even dirtier tricks to stay in office. Even the Russians let Krushchev retire to a dasha on the Black Sea and write his memoirs, rather than executing him they way they did Beria, Trotsky, and perhaps Stalin.
American politics is so difficult, demanding and dangerous that few first rate people go in for it. First rate people go into business, high tech, the military, doctoring, Hollywood, lawyering, and professional sports, rather than politics. If we make politics even less attractive by adding the risk of going to jail when you loose the election, even fewer decent people will go out for it.
It's best for the country in the long run to let those who are defeated in the election go on about their lives in peace.
Much as all these low lives deserve some criminal investigation, trial and jail time, doing so is a bad idea for the country. We don't want to criminalize loosing an election. If politicians understand that loosing the election will put them in jail, they will fight all the harder, and use even dirtier tricks to stay in office. Even the Russians let Krushchev retire to a dasha on the Black Sea and write his memoirs, rather than executing him they way they did Beria, Trotsky, and perhaps Stalin.
American politics is so difficult, demanding and dangerous that few first rate people go in for it. First rate people go into business, high tech, the military, doctoring, Hollywood, lawyering, and professional sports, rather than politics. If we make politics even less attractive by adding the risk of going to jail when you loose the election, even fewer decent people will go out for it.
It's best for the country in the long run to let those who are defeated in the election go on about their lives in peace.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Civilization[s]
New PBS TV show. Kind of a remake of the Kenneth Clark show of a similar name from back in the late 1960's. This one goes way further back in time, this first episode starts off with cave paintings. They showed some cave art that was new to me, and a lovely ivory figurine that I had never seen before. The voiceover commentary was less than satisfactory. They didn't show where these and other like works where from. They did opine about the age of the pieces, but did not mention the type of dating used, the uncertainty of the method, or recent revisions of carbon 14 datings of great age.
Then they went globe trotting, to some ancient recently discovered bronzes in China, to the Mayans, couple of other places.
Not as good as the original Kenneth Clark show, but watchable.
Then they went globe trotting, to some ancient recently discovered bronzes in China, to the Mayans, couple of other places.
Not as good as the original Kenneth Clark show, but watchable.
Junk Science
Headline of op ed in Tuesday's Wall St Journal, "How bad is the Government's Science?" It speaks to the reproducibility crisis in science, where a large number of published scientific papers simply cannot be reproduced by other workers. Which says that the published paper was just plain wrong. A 2015 study estimated that $28 billion a year was spent on wrong science. Which is a terrible waste of both money and the time of scarce and hard to train scientists.
I ran into the reproducibility problem myself back when I was developing a portable heart monitor. I needed a way to compress the sampled EKG so that the device could store more EKG data in its limited memory. I researched the literature, and bingo, I found a paper discussing compression of EKG and offering a method that claimed much higher performance than the standard technique. I read the article thru, and then programmed the new algorithm into our prototype monitor. It worked, it did compress the data, and the decompressed EKG was of good quality, but, I could only obtain one half the amount of compression that the author claimed. I troubleshot and debugged and finally telephoned the author to ask for help. The author rather sheepishly, admitted that he had left out a key factor in his paper, and that yes, the compression obtained would be only half of what he had claimed. I managed not to express my dismay over the waste of two weeks of the project's time.
One thing legislators could do about this. Require that all government financed researchers publish all their raw data. Right now, a lot of researchers keep their data private, hoping to either use it for another publication, or to prevent skeptics from going over it looking for faults. Far as I am concerned, if the taxpayers are paying the freight, the taxpayers own the results. This policy would go far to squelch the likes of leftie greenie "climate scientist" Michael Moore, inventor of the global warming hockey stick.
Another thing, someone ought to keep score. Any scientist who publishes unreproducible results should be barred from future government research grant money. That will make them a bit more careful.
I ran into the reproducibility problem myself back when I was developing a portable heart monitor. I needed a way to compress the sampled EKG so that the device could store more EKG data in its limited memory. I researched the literature, and bingo, I found a paper discussing compression of EKG and offering a method that claimed much higher performance than the standard technique. I read the article thru, and then programmed the new algorithm into our prototype monitor. It worked, it did compress the data, and the decompressed EKG was of good quality, but, I could only obtain one half the amount of compression that the author claimed. I troubleshot and debugged and finally telephoned the author to ask for help. The author rather sheepishly, admitted that he had left out a key factor in his paper, and that yes, the compression obtained would be only half of what he had claimed. I managed not to express my dismay over the waste of two weeks of the project's time.
One thing legislators could do about this. Require that all government financed researchers publish all their raw data. Right now, a lot of researchers keep their data private, hoping to either use it for another publication, or to prevent skeptics from going over it looking for faults. Far as I am concerned, if the taxpayers are paying the freight, the taxpayers own the results. This policy would go far to squelch the likes of leftie greenie "climate scientist" Michael Moore, inventor of the global warming hockey stick.
Another thing, someone ought to keep score. Any scientist who publishes unreproducible results should be barred from future government research grant money. That will make them a bit more careful.
Monday, April 16, 2018
Friction? Would you believe real hostility?
Front page of Monday's Wall St Journal. "Friction between the president and Comey resurfaced after details from the former FBI director's new book reopened the debate over his firing. "
If that's "friction" I'd hate to see real hostility.
If that's "friction" I'd hate to see real hostility.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Graduation from College, and College Guidance Councilors
You can graduate High School by merely attending classes until you make it thru 12th grade. College is trickier. You have to have enough course credits to get your degree. Just attending classes for four years isn't enough. You have to have all the required credits in the required courses. Missing just a single credit in physical education can deny you a diploma. And tie you up for another year, and another year of tuition payments. Nobody wants this.
The number and type of credits you need depend upon your major. At my Alma Mater, engineering majors required about 15% more credits than education majors or liberal arts majors. And each major required different course credits for graduation. So, you need to pick your major early on, like freshman year. Early in freshman year. Before Christmas for sure.
To pick your major, you have to have some idea of what your want to do with your life after you make it thru college. You need a major that makes you employable in your chosen field. Don't have a chosen field? Do some serious thinking, talk to your parents, friends, relatives, get some advice, cause this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life. Colleges offer a fair number of interesting sounding majors that are totally worthless when you go job hunting. Avoid them. Gender studies, ethnic studies, anything studies, art history, sociology, anthropology, and some others won't get you a job anywhere.
Then, get the college catalog, and make a list of all the courses you need to take for your chosen major. The senior level courses will all require you take some lower level courses, prerequisites they are called. Make a spreadsheet, enter all the courses, in the order you have to take them. Add up all the credits and see if it is enough. Check for booby traps, like courses that are only offered one semester. Miss getting into that class when it is offered, and you can loose a whole year. Neaten up the spreadsheet and print it out.
Now you are ready to meet your college guidance councilor. He will be a junior faculty member, who has about a hundred other students assigned to him, and courses to teach, research to do, and papers to grade. He cannot afford you much time. He views the job of his department as training new professors to teach in his department. When discussing majors, he will probably push you toward majoring in his department. Listen politely, but you don't have to take his advice. Show him your spreadsheet and ask him if it looks correct. If he offers suggestions or criticism, take notes. Check your notes against the college catalog. Make sure you have the current version of the catalog.
One further thing you have to do, namely get into the courses you need. Popular courses are mobbed and not everyone gets in. The college has a day when course registration opens for each semester. Know that day. Get down to registration first thing on the first day and you improve your chances of getting into the courses you need.
The number and type of credits you need depend upon your major. At my Alma Mater, engineering majors required about 15% more credits than education majors or liberal arts majors. And each major required different course credits for graduation. So, you need to pick your major early on, like freshman year. Early in freshman year. Before Christmas for sure.
To pick your major, you have to have some idea of what your want to do with your life after you make it thru college. You need a major that makes you employable in your chosen field. Don't have a chosen field? Do some serious thinking, talk to your parents, friends, relatives, get some advice, cause this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life. Colleges offer a fair number of interesting sounding majors that are totally worthless when you go job hunting. Avoid them. Gender studies, ethnic studies, anything studies, art history, sociology, anthropology, and some others won't get you a job anywhere.
Then, get the college catalog, and make a list of all the courses you need to take for your chosen major. The senior level courses will all require you take some lower level courses, prerequisites they are called. Make a spreadsheet, enter all the courses, in the order you have to take them. Add up all the credits and see if it is enough. Check for booby traps, like courses that are only offered one semester. Miss getting into that class when it is offered, and you can loose a whole year. Neaten up the spreadsheet and print it out.
Now you are ready to meet your college guidance councilor. He will be a junior faculty member, who has about a hundred other students assigned to him, and courses to teach, research to do, and papers to grade. He cannot afford you much time. He views the job of his department as training new professors to teach in his department. When discussing majors, he will probably push you toward majoring in his department. Listen politely, but you don't have to take his advice. Show him your spreadsheet and ask him if it looks correct. If he offers suggestions or criticism, take notes. Check your notes against the college catalog. Make sure you have the current version of the catalog.
One further thing you have to do, namely get into the courses you need. Popular courses are mobbed and not everyone gets in. The college has a day when course registration opens for each semester. Know that day. Get down to registration first thing on the first day and you improve your chances of getting into the courses you need.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
$75 million worth of cruise missiles.
That's just the replacement cost of the ordinance expended. About 100 cruise missiles at $750,000 apiece. Does not count fuel costs, dollars per flying hour, pay for the troops, operating costs of all the warships used, etc. etc.
Let's hope the Syrians get the message better than they did the last time we did this.
We cannot make idle threats. Once we make a threat (draw a redline) we have to mean it, and carry out the threat. If we are not prepared to back up our threats, we should not make them. The Syrians used poison gas, and so we had to follow thru on the threats we made the last time the Syrians used poison gas.
Let's hope the Syrians get the message better than they did the last time we did this.
We cannot make idle threats. Once we make a threat (draw a redline) we have to mean it, and carry out the threat. If we are not prepared to back up our threats, we should not make them. The Syrians used poison gas, and so we had to follow thru on the threats we made the last time the Syrians used poison gas.
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