Random Musings

Hate Crimes

2010-08-29T18:41:00.000-05:00

In New York someone attacked a cab driver, allegedly because the driver was a Muslim. There is a question of whether this is a hate crime.

Michael Enright is accused of attacking cabbie Ahmed Sharif with a knife, supposedly upon learning that Sharif is a Muslim. Sharif sustained serious injuries but survived the attack. Enright is being held at Bellvue Hospital, apparently for psychiatric evaluation.

It is unclear whether Enright actually attacked Sharif because of his religion. Enright says no; Sharif says yes. It will be up to a jury at some point to determine what was in Enright's mind - and I would suggest that not even Enright knows.

But my question is, what the hell difference does it make? If Enright can prove he had nothing but respect for the Muslim people, would that make the crime any less serious? Is anyone going to say, "Oh, you like Muslims, so it's not so serious of an attack?"

A crime is a crime. Violence committed upon a person doesn't vary depending on the attacker's feelings towards a minority.

The guy stuck a knife into the cabbie. It doesn't matter how he felt; he was trying to kill him.

The Trouble With Kids These Days

2010-08-26T18:24:00.000-05:00

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

This quote is attributed to Socrates. It may be spurious, but even if it is it makes an important point. People have been bitching about "kids these days" for a long, long time.

I'm tired of hearing about how awful the kids or young people are these days. They're OK. They're not worse than we are, they're only different. And they're no different than we were when we were their age. Every generation wants to distinguish itself from the one that produced it. The older generation freaks out about it.

Kids are going to be different. Get over it. If you can get past the differences, you can meet some mighty fine people who happen to be young.

Burn a Koran Day

2010-08-25T20:17:00.002-05:00

In Gainesville, Florida, there is a Christian pastor named Terry Jones who plans to hold a "Burn a Koran Day" on September 11. The fun never stops.

If Muslims have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, Christians have a right to burn Korans. What Mr. Jones plans is perfectly legal. It is also highly offensive to Muslims.

It is interesting to read some of the objections to Mr. Jones's plans. One of them is that doing this might inspire acts of terrorism. I did not see anyone raise this point when opposing the Ground Zero mosque.

Is Obama a Muslim?

2010-08-23T20:21:00.000-05:00

For reasons that escape my feeble grasp, fully 20% of the people in the United States think that President Obama is a Muslim. I hope these aren't the people who do the voting.

In fact, Obama is a Christian. He attends a Christian church. Moreover, if he were a Muslim, this would have been something his Republican opponents would have harped on during the election.

More importantly, Obama's religion - or lack thereof - is irrelevant. A person is allowed to run for office, to vote, and to be President, regardless of his or her religion.

Ground Zero Mosque

2010-08-15T21:33:00.000-05:00

There has been endless arguing over whether a proposed "supermosque" should be allowed to be built a short distance from Ground Zero. The thinking seems to be that this is some sort of Islamic plot or something. That misses the point.

The point is that there is no legal justification for blocking this project. The law is on the side of the planners. They have a perfect right to build their mosque there, no matter how offended people may be about it.

I agree that these guys are insensitive, perhaps arrogant assholes for choosing this site. There is no earthly reason why their mosque needs to be right there, except to offend. However, they have the right to do this.

I wonder what would happen, though, if someone near this side were to put up a large, offensive picture of Muhammad. This would be perfectly legal, but I imagine the mosque planners would object.

If history is any guide, it is likely that whoever did this would be attacked, as was the cartoonist Lars Vilks. Criticism of Islam tends to result in violence. This is strange behavior for a "religion of peace".

Mayan Calendar

2010-04-11T21:02:00.002-05:00

A lot of people are concerned that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012 (give or take). They reason that the Mayan calendar ends on that day - or perhaps the day before. Once the calendar ends, that's all she wrote. The world comes crashing down around our heads.

This is fucking stupid.

I don't know why I have to point this out, but every calendar comes to an end. That calendar on the wall ends on December 31. When the calendar ends, you get a new one, and the world keeps going.

The Mayans developed a calendar that extended for thousands of years, unlike ours that only go for a year. I suppose when you have to chisel a calendar into stone, you want one that's going to last for a long time. Of course, it's a bitch to hang on the wall... but I digress...

OK, so this calendar has been keeping time for many years, thousands of them. Great. But like all good (and bad) things, it comes to an end. And then, like every other calendar ever devised by human beings, the cycle restarts.

People, get a grip. There's nothing special about the Mayans that they knew the world would end on an exact date and created a calendar to mark off the time. They just made a calendar that had some whopping cycles, and now it's finishing them. That's all.

The world won't come to an end on December 21, 2012.

Put the Commas In

2010-04-05T19:49:00.000-05:00

Journalists, when you're writing largish numbers (that would be numbers with more than four digits), would you *PUHLEEZ* put the fucking commas in? I can't tell the difference between 300000 and 3000000 or even 30000000. Come on, how hard would it be to put in a comma every three digits?

Didn't your teachers ever tell you about that stuff?

Steps to Prevent Foreclosure

2010-03-27T15:15:00.000-05:00

The Obama administration is seeking to find ways to prevent foreclosures among homeowners who have lost their jobs. The feeling is that these homeowners are unable to pay their mortgages through no fault of their own, so should not be penalizsd by losing their homes. A noble, compassionate sentiment, to be sure.

What about me? I don't own a home. I live in an apartment. I am unemployed and unable to pay my rent. Why isn't there some sort of effort to help me keep my apartment? My situation is exactly the same as a homeowner, insofar as being unemployed and unable to pay my monthly fees. The only difference I can see is that I have zero equity in my apartment and derived no tax benefits from paying rent - unlike homeowners, who get all kinds of tax breaks.

Why are we apartment dwellers penalized for not being homeowners?

More Heat Than Light

2010-03-24T22:04:00.000-05:00

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, has allegedly said that global warming skeptics should rub their faces with asbestos every morning. I gather Mr. Pachauri is not fond of global warming skeptics.

Earlier this week I received yet another e-mail expressing an opinion about global warming. This one assumed that it was all nonsense, and had some personality "explain" why it wasn't happening.

These two items, though expressing opposing views, have something in common. They are both heavy on opinion but light on facts. Most of the discussions about global warming are like that. They generate more heat than light.

Part of the problem is that we simply don't have enough facts to make a reasonable decision about global warming.

We don't know that global warming would be the world-wide catastrophe some have predicted.
We don't know that there is a thing we can do to stop global warming.
We don't know whether global warming is man-made or natural.
We don't even know whether there is any global warming to begin with.

None of these questions has been answered satisfactorily. Before you start howling that it's "obvious" that global warming [is | isn't ] happening, or that it's man-made, or that we can stop it, or that it's even bad - before you jump on me about this, ask yourself how you know the truth about global warming. What information do you have that settles these questions, that conclusively proves it [is | isn't ] an issue. If you really have such information, I encourage you to share it with climate scientists, since they don't have it yet.

Certain temperature readings suggest that there may be a warming trend in our climate. If this trend exists, some researchers think it may be related to human activity. If that's the case, then some scientist believe that humans will be able to reverse or at least slow down the rate of warming. And if that's the case, some believe we should do it, because the effects of warming would be disastrous. That's a lot of if's. If some of them don't turn out to be true, then much of what we think about global warming will be affected, and possibly completely invalidated.

We can argue endlessly, but this won't help us. We need to gather more information before we have any hope of making an informed decision.

A Big Fucking Deal

2010-03-24T00:44:00.001-05:00

The media are all atwitter over a comment made by our Vice President. According to one source, Biden told Obama that the Health Care Reform Act was a "Big [Expletive] Deal". Another source reported that Biden "dropped the F-bomb". Using my superior powers of analysis and deduction, I conclude that Mr. Biden said, "This is a big fucking deal".

To which I say, "big fucking deal". People swear. Even vice presidents swear. Hell, our President probably swears while he's out behind the White House sneaking a smoke.

A Ticket For Rush

2010-03-22T18:16:00.000-05:00

A Website called 'aticketforrush.com' is trying to help Rush Limbaugh collect enough money to pay for air fare to Costa Rica. Apparently Mr. Limbaugh said he'd go to Costa Rica if the US ever passed the health reform bill. Now that this bill has passed, the Website has stepped up.

The site's ticket. however, is to be one way. These people may be funny, but they're not stupid.

Don't Be Evil

2010-03-22T17:37:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reports that Google is redirecting Internet traffic in China to uncensored sites, and removing itself from China. Bravo.

Google stands to lose billions of dollars in this move. While it may be argued that this move could have some theoretical long-term benefit, such a case would be untenable. This is a bad business move as judged by just about any criteria. This is a moral decision, not a business one.

I hope that over the long run Google benefits from this courageous act.

Openly Gay

2010-02-05T05:01:00.001-06:00

There appears to be a shift in how the military will be viewing gay people. It may be that instead of the "don't ask, don't tell" rule, the military will no longer reject or punish those who are openly gay. This is progress, but it raises a question. What is "openly gay"?

As far as I understand it, being openly gay means not hiding the fact that you're gay. At least, that's a reasonable guess. So OK, gay people in the military may no longer need to hide it. When does this ever become an issue, though?

I suppose you could say that I'm "openly straight", since I don't try to hide my orientation. But the topic of my orientation almost never comes up. When I meet a new person, I don't explain that I am straight. When I start a new job or move into a new apartment, I don't announce my orientation. If I were to join the army, I doubt they'd ask me whether I was gay. So where does this "openly" stuff ever apply?

In Hot Water

2010-02-04T05:31:00.002-06:00

James A. Ray,whose catastrophic sweat lodge ritual killed three people on October 8 of last year, has been indicted for manslaughter. This might actually be a good thing.

It is clear that Mr. Ray never intended his victims to come to any harm. He probably had their best interests at heart. Even if not, killing your clients is bad for business. But I'm sure Mr. Ray was horrified and saddened by what happened in the sweat lodge.

Mr. Ray is not guilty of malice; but he is guilty of willful ignorance. He did not know how to run a sweat lodge. He did not understand that different people had different tolerance to stress, and that what most people could survive could kill less robust people. From what the reports said, Mr. Ray indulged in considerable macho rhetoric, pretty much like some rabid football coach exhorting his players to fight, fight, fight.

Probably Mr. Ray's most egregious error was to believe, or claim, that people could become "spiritual warriors" in a few days' time. This is complete, unmitigated bullshit. Any kind of spiritual or martial skill takes years to develop. You can't force-feed it over a weekend or even a few weeks. Both the mind and the body need time to adjust, to grow, to strengthen. You have to start out slowly, push the student without breaking him, move him beyond his present level while ensuring he survives the experience.

What Mr. Ray did was to cater to the New Age demand for instant results, a weekend or two to attain satori or nirvana or whatever it was Mr. Ray promised. Harmonic wealth, I think he called it.

The sweat lodge ritual was supposed to let people sweat out whatever spiritual ailments they had. If it were that simple, there'd be fewer therapists, and more saunas. Ray's retreats were useless at best. Now it is clear that they were also dangerous.

Ray is in Sedona. The people there who would be on his jury are likely to be highly sympathetic to Ray's retreats and sweat lodges and such. That should help Ray's case. What may do him harm is the fact that he had two other sweat lodge rituals during which people had medical issues. That makes it harder to claim that this event was an unforeseen tragedy.

Whatever the outcome of this case, I hope that it leads to people using more caution when attending retreat and ceremonies by self-professed leaders. Just because they talk a good game, doesn't mean they know what they're doing.

Lancet Backtracks

2010-02-04T02:19:00.001-06:00

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, MD, published an article in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet, allegedly claiming there was a connection between the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine for children, and the occurrence of autism. Twelve years later, Lancet has retracted this article.

I have long been skeptical of any connection between vaccinations and autism. It would be fairly simple to look back and find it, if it existed. In the so-called developed countries, adequate records are kept that would make it possible to identify a statistical connection.

Dr. Wakefield's article may have made such a statistical connection. I don't have access to the article, so I can't say. Assuming that it did make such a connection, it remained an isolated claim that, to my knowledge, was not verified by other researchers.

As might have been expected, Dr. Wakefield's article touched off a furor. The medical profession tended to dismiss the paper. The lay public accepted Dr. Wakefield' claim, and hailed him as a courageous dissenter. Millions of parents agonized over whether to get the vaccine; many decided it wasn't work the risk.

I'd never have entertained the possibility that MMR vaccine was related to autism, had Lancet not retracted the article. It is common for some research to remain unverified. Mistakes are made all the time. Promising initial results are found not to be confirmed by other researchers. Retractions are rarely made because of this.

Now that Lancet has retracted this article, I have to ask myself, "why?" Surely this is not the only mistaken article they've published over the years. There must have been dozens, perhaps hundreds of other articles that turned out to be unverified, since Dr. Wakefield's. Why was his chosen for retraction, over all the others? What makes his so special?

Could it be that the drug companies "got" to Lancet, persuading them to retract the article? After all, vaccine sales dropped precipitously when the article came out. Drug companies were hurt - or at least, their unconscionable profits were slightly decreased. Maybe they "encouraged" Lancet to retract the article. While this vaccine represented a trivial percentage of total drug profits, the companies may have feared a "slippery slope". If one drug can be criticized, why not others? That could set a bad precedent.

I wonder how much of Lancet's revenue comes from ads placed by drug companies. If they're like other medical publications, their very existence probably relies on these ads. I could not rule out the possibility that Lancet caved in to pressure from the drug companies, perhaps threatening to stop advertising in their journal. That would likely be a disaster.

I hasten to add that it is entirely possible that Lancet is a wholly ethical, objective publication that cannot be subverted by drug companies or anyone else. Lancet is considered one of the most prestigious medical publications in the world - perhaps the most prestigious. They would likely stand firm against pressures that might cause a lesser publication to fold.

The problem isn't that we know Lancet has been bought. The problem is that we don't know that it hasn't. How objective can a publication be, when its existence relies upon the same drug companies that are being discussed in the articles?

In many professions, being paid by those you are evaluating is considered a conflict of interests. If Big Oil is paying for research, your results are likely be more favorable to Big Oil, than if Greenpeace is signing your checks. If you continue to find flaws with Big Oil, they'll stop paying you.

As long as Lancet - and the other medical publications - survive primarily on ads by pharmaceutical companies, there will remain a serious question of whether these journals are objective.

Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T14:51:00.002-06:00

Yet again we consult the mystical rodent known only as Punxsutawney Phil, a rodent who has apparently lived for over 100 years. He, and apparently only he, can tell us whether winter will continue for another six weeks.

I don't know why they call this rodent "Punxsutawney Phil". Why the hell couldn't they have gone down the road just a short distance, to Albion? Albion Phil doesn't have the same ring to it, but surely "Albion Algernon" or something would do.

Every year, legions of journalists have to go look up how to spell "Punxsutawney", because it is such an oddball word, and so infrequently used. This doesn't apply to the fine citizens of Punxsutawney, who of course know how to spell the name of their own town. I apologize to both of you.

Yet again, Punxsutawney Phil has come out of his hole, seen his shadow, and predicted that winter will last another six weeks. I have to say that we probably don't need the services of a prophetic rodent to make this determination.

Groundhog day takes place on February 2. Winter ends on March 19. You do the math. It comes out to six weeks and change. I don't care if Phil comes out wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sun glasses, with a little piña colada to sip. It's still six more weeks of winter.

Saint Obama

2010-02-01T14:09:00.002-06:00

While blundering around on the Internet, I encountered this photo. I wonder whether it was posed...

Kind of reminds me of those religious paintings from the Renaissance with the golden aureole showing behind the heads of the good guys.

Unclear On the Concept

2010-01-28T18:42:00.004-06:00

Scott Roeder is on trial for the murder of George Tiller, M.D. Dr. Tiller was an abortion provider. Mr. Roder claims to be a Christian. He has no regrets at having murdered Dr. Tiller, since the doctor was killing unborn children. Roeder felt he had to take action to save the lives of other unborn children.

According to Mr. Roeder, abortion is wrong. He feels that in the event of the mother's life being seriously threatened by the fetus, an abortion might possibly be justified. Otherwise, not. Even in the cases of incest or rape, abortion would not be justified. As Mr. Roeder said (as quoted by CNN), "It isn't our duty to take life, it's our heavenly father's."

Mr. Roeder felt so strongly about this - that it's wrong to take a life - that he put a gun to Dr. Tiller's head and blew his brains out in a church.

The First Casualty of War

2010-01-28T15:14:00.004-06:00

Reuters reports that Hamas claims it killed Israeli citizens "accidentally", and are therefore innocent of war crimes. Without wishing to burden the discussion with too many technical terms, this claim is bullshit.

Hamas and other Islamist organizations have routinely and almost exclusively targeted civilians throughout their history. To claim that they "accidentally" killed civilians during the Gaza offensive is idiotic. Hamas lobbed missiles into cities without regard to where they might land. It's like me firing a gun into a crowd, and then claiming I didn't mean to kill anyone. I doubt any jury in the world would buy that defense.

The bitter irony here is that when Israel makes a similar claim - that civilian deaths were accidental - public opinion condemns them without hesitation. Israel focuses on military targets, and occasionally - and accidentally - causes civilian deaths. Hamas, as I said, targets civilians deliberately. And yet the world condemns Israel.

Moreover, Hamas deliberately uses civilians as shields, shooting from behind them, compelling Israeli forces to choose between being slaughtered, or risking civilian casualties. Somehow, this detail gets lost in all the anti-Israel hysteria. Hiding behind civilians - even your own - is a war crime.

Hamas has refused to abandon its stated goal of exterminating Israel. That being the case, one can be excused for not believing that the civilian casualties were an accident.

Why Is Obama 'Black'?

2010-01-28T14:02:00.002-06:00

TV host Chris Matthews is apparently in hot water for making the comment, "I forgot that Obama is Black". I'm not exactly sure what the big deal is. As far as I can see, it's just another case of hysterics when some public figure mentions race. In this case, I agree with Mr. Matthews. It's easy to forget that Obama is Black. In fact, I wonder why he's considered "Black".

I don't question that Obama's father was a Kenyan, an African. I have never seen a photo of this man, but I assume he showed the features and coloration of someone we'd call "Black". Obama's mother was White, however. That would seem to put Obama's "race" at half Black and half White. I may not be the best mathematician around, but as far as I know, 50% Black + 50% White doesn't equal 100% Black.

If someon'e father was, say, German, and his mother was French, you wouldn't call the guy German. You'd say half German, half French. How does having a Black father make you Black? And it's not just the father. Having a Black ancestor any time in the past century apparently miraculously turns you Black somehow.

I don't see that Mr. Matthews's comment makes him a racist. Referring to Obama as 'Black' is the racist part. He'd more properly be called a 'Mulatto', a person who has one Black parent and one White parent. I have never seen Obama referred to as a 'Mulatto', even though this is the proper word. There is also 'Quadroon', a person with one Black grandparent (or one White grandparent); and Octoroon, someone with a Black great-grandparent. A person with three Black and one White grandparents is called a 'Sambo'

These words are offensive. They are relics of the slave trade. You might get away with referring to Mr. Obama as a 'Mulatto', perhaps. Referring to his children as 'Sambos' is unconscionable.

And yet, when we refer to Obama as 'Black', we're making an oblique reference to the fact that one of his parents was Black. It's just a dishonest way of calling him a Mulatto. It is both offensive and incorrect to call Obama 'Black'.

More to the point, it is irrelevant. No one harped on George W. Bush's race. No one referred to him as a 'White' president. No one forgot he was 'White'. No one wondered whether Bush would somehow exert a positive influence on the White kids of America. To my knowledge, not one media whore ever mentioned Bush's race. If it happened, it was rare.

Obama has some African ancestry. He's now President of the United States. Get over it and move on.

Paying Off the Taliban

2010-01-26T15:59:00.003-06:00

Telegraph.co.uk published an article that discusses how NATO is going to pay the Taliban millions of dollars for some reason. The logic behind this move has so far eluded my feeble grasp. Call me crazy, but I thought that when you're having a war with someone, you weren't supposed to give them millions of dollars.

I've been having trouble following these wars ever since 9/11. Some Saudis hijack American planes and fly them into various buildings, killing thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians. This is certainly a cause for war. In response to this atrocity committed by Saudis, we attack Afghanistan and Iraq, apparently on the theory that one Arab looks much like another; and even though Iraq is not an Arab country, it will do in a pinch. And it has lots of oil. Somehow the fact that it was Saudis who committed this crime was lost on our administration. No surprises there, considering who was running the show at the time.

OK, so we've been having our wars, happily making billions of dollars for Cheney's cronies and various other Republicans. A small price to pay to keep our economy healthy. But for some reason, now we want to pay the Taliban. I suppose that, since we created the Taliban, we may have some sort of paternal feelings towards them. Unfortunately, these feelings have not been reciprocated. Back in the old days we gave them Stingers and other weapons. The ingrates are now shooting down our aircraft and killing our soldiers with those same weapons. And now we want to give those same people money.

Here's a news flash, in case someone missed it. If you're nice to someone, and they try to kill you, chances are that being nice to them again isn't going to make them like you. Especially after you've spent several years killing their relatives and friends. That tends to make people a wee bit testy.

This is like the schoolyard bully beating up some weak kid. Then, after pounding the kid for a while, the bully offers him his own lunch money.

I am reminded of an old movie called "The Mouse That Roared". A tiny country declares war on the US, hoping to lose and be given all sorts of financial aid. Except in this case, we're the ones who declared war. Go figure.

My guess is that by giving money to the Taliban, we're hoping to get them to stop kicking our asses over there. Then we can leave. We're certainly not going to win that war, because there's no one to surrender to us. Afghanistan is mostly God-forsaken rock, with a bunch of warring tribes who have been living almost the same way for thousands of years. Recently they've acquired munitions, but other than that their way of life hasn't changed much. No one's in charge; no one can surrender.

If you want to get out of Afghanistan, then just leave. Go home. You'll accomplish exactly the same thing as paying the Taliban, but it will be way cheaper. No one is going to follow us out of there, chase us home. It's a bunch of guys with Kalashnikovs and maybe a broken down vehicle; probably not even that.

Instead of paying the Taliban, how about using the money to take care of the veterans who have been damaged by the war, physically or mentally wounded? We promised to take care of them when they signed up; but we've reneged on our promises. Shame on us.

So get the hell out of Afghanistan, and leave the tribes to themselves. Use the money to help heal our soldiers. And next time, learn from history before jumping into a stupid, endless war.

The Number Zero

2010-01-23T16:19:00.007-06:00

The Number Zero

I think the number zero should be outlawed. Zero is not only useless, it is downright dangerous. This number is a nuisance and a blight upon society.

Copyright by Married To the Sea. Reproduced here by permission.

The number zero wasn't always with us. For thousands of years we got along just fine without it. True, some calculations were very difficult without it. Try multiplying with Roman Numerals, and you'll see what I mean. Why does V + V = X? Doesn't really make much sense. Using zero makes calculations much easier.

The first use of zero was apparently by an Indian mathematician by the name of Brahmagupta, who was born about 600 C.E. He somehow conceived the notion that some quantity, minus itself, would equal a number. That number was zero. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was innovative at the time, to treat "nothing" as just another number. Note that zero is not actually "nothing". If you have 10 each of apples and oranges, and you remove 10 apples, you have zero apples, but you still have oranges. You're not left with "nothing".

Zero does have its uses. Our whole way of representing numbers relies on zeroes to hold places that are supposed to be empty. We use an imaginary arrangement of columns that, from right to left are 1, 10, 100, etc. Each column is 10 times the one preceding it. $1,000,000 is different from $1. We can tell the difference because the zeroes show us exactly where the 1 needs to be placed to show the empty columns. So in the context of receiving a check, I acknowledge that the more zeroes after the first digit, the better.

The Malignity of Zero Rears Its Offensive Head

Ah, but there is a fly in the ointment, one little property that zero has, that no other number has. That alone should make us suspicious about its validity. You can't divide with it. This fact is glossed over when they teach us how to calculate. We're told we can do anything we like - multiply, divide, add, subtract - with any numbers at all, except we cannot divide by zero. Division by zero is considered "undefined". It's not "infinity", though often it is said to be that; it is undefined. You can't divide by zero. It has no meaning in mathematics, neither number nor infinity nor anything else. Undefined. It is the only number that behaves in that way. Out of all the infinity of numbers, countable and uncountable, natural, integer, real, irrational, complex, transcendental, and whatever other kinds there are, only one single number can't divide into another number. Zero.

Does anyone have a problem with this? Apparently not. Mathematicians are at ease with zero, as are accountants and everyone else. I'm not a mathematician, so the fact that I have a problem with zero counts for very little - almost zero, in fact. What right do I have to object, when every mathematician in the world acknowledges zero's right to exist? At least here I can complain about it, fat lot of good it does me.

I said mathematicians are OK with zero, but that's not quite true. Throughout all of math, zero lurks around and bites mathematicians in places best left to the reader's imagination. You can't use the logarithm of zero, because that results in a division by zero. You can't take the tangent of 90°, for the same reason. You have to watch out with your equations, to make sure nothing can ever equate to dividing by zero. So you get something like (x+1)/(x-1), and you can have any value for x - oh, except for 1. Because if x = 1, then (x-1) = 0, and you can't divide by zero. So if your equation comes out to look like this, you then have to qualify it by saying "x <> 1" (those funny brackets are how you say "not equal to", when you don't have the right character on your keyboard).

The Theory of Limits

There is another place where zero gives trouble, but that also appears to have been glossed over somewhat. It is with the concept of limits. Take the simple series of fractions, 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ..., The next fraction is 1 divided by double whatever that last number was. You can take this out as far as you want. Each new term is half the previous one, and as you go on the new value quickly becomes very small. You get something like 1/4,294,967,296, and that comes out to be about 0.00000000232, which is really tiny. You can see that as the series goes on, the new numbers become almost zero - but never quite zero. Not in any finite number of terms, anyway. Ending the series with three dots is shorthand for indicating that this is an infinite series.

You might think that since you're adding an infinite number of terms, the end sum would be infinite, but it's not. The number never exceeds 2. In fact, the number never reaches 2, in any finite number of steps. The number 2 is said to be the "limit" of the series, as the number of terms approaches infinity. The idea is that if you somehow could add all the infinite number of terms, it would add up to exactly 2. The way mathematicians approach this difficulty is to say that the series will approach 2 as closely as you like. Pick any number less than 2 - say, 1.99999999. Carry out the sums enough times, and it will be closer to 2, than the number I named. This applies to any number I name that is less than 2. So, if I write 1.999999999, you can always make a number that is larger than that, but still less than 2. Just add another 9, for example. And another, and another. No matter how many nines I write, you add one and cut the distance to 2 to a tenth of its former amount. Over and over and over again, without ever stopping. Still, though the difference is minute - one often says it's "negligible" - it's not zero. It will never be zero.

In this particular series, the limit is said to be 2. The series will never exceed 2. Personally, I don't think mathematicians have really shown that this series ever reaches 2. Common sense says that this must be the case - it's "obvious", in some ways. But is it mathematically true?

This concept of limits is vital to mathematics. It is the basis of much of the calculus, for example. For hundreds of years, the idea of limits has been used successfully to prove many important theorems in mathematics, which in turn has helped advance science - in particular, theoretical physics. Calculating orbits, trajectories of satellites, how stars and molecules move, how to build bridges and skyscrapers, all rely on concepts that are based on limits. And the math works. Our rockets fly (more or less), eclipses and planets move according to our predictions, and almost everyone is happy. Except me. I think something is fishy.
Actually, some others have been suspicious of the idea of limits and of infinitesimal amounts adding up to some specific number. Mathematician Niels H. Abel, for instance, said:

If you disregard the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single infinite series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words,the most important parts of mathematics stand without a foundation.

Another mathematician, Bishop George Berkeley, wrote:

And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the Ghosts of departed Quantities?

I like that guy. Unfortunately, Berkeley died in 1783, and he may have been the last person to feel this way.

These people were certainly in the minority, though. Most mathematicians seem to be able to accept the concept of limits without choking.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope for me in physics. Here is where things actually get interesting. Physicists don't believe in zero, either. Well, they do, but not quite as something having a physical reality. It's something of a long story...

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

About 100 or so years ago, physicists were faced with a bit of a problem concerning black body radiation. Experiments were performed to measure the heat of so-called "black bodies". A black body is a theoretical object that perfectly radiates or absorbs energy. Without getting too technical, these "black bodies" were heated until they glowed, and the intensities of the colors they emitted at various temperatures were noted. Curves of these intensities could be drawn to show where the energy peaked. The following graph shows what the curves looked like:

This image is published under the Gnu Free Documentation License

You don't have to understand the details of the graph, just note that the curve starts out low, rises to a maximum, and then goes back down again. It doesn't keep going up, but returns almost to zero. This is what physicists found when they did the measurements in their labs.

There was a classical physical equation that predicted what the curves should be for various temperatures. It works fairly well for lower temperatures - more towards the red end of the spectrum. Unfortunately, with higher temperatures the equation failed miserably.

This image is published under the Gnu Free Documentation License

Note how the graph of the equation shows the curves going off to infinity as the number of K increases. The prediction doesn't match the results found in the experiments. This is a serious problem, because the equation is basic.

The crux of the problem was that the equation was a fraction, and the denominator could approach zero. The denominator consisted of a single number, the fourth power of the light's wavelength. The equation was predicting enormous amounts of energy when the light was in the ultraviolet range - energies far beyond what were observed. Something was terribly wrong. This problem was referred to as the "Ultraviolet Catastrophe", because the equation tended to fall apart as the light's color moved in that direction. Many people weren't happy about this, because the math is reasonably clear, yet produces impossible results at higher frequencies.

This Ultraviolet Catastrophe was one of the problems in classical physics that led to the quantum theory. Max Planck, while working on a different problem, had conceived of the notion that the wavelengths never reach zero, can never fall below a certain number. He considered this merely a convenient fiction, but when he used this idea in his equations, many problems disappeared. He called this unit of energy a 'quantum', meaning a quantity or an amount. Note that there was no mathematical justification for this move. He didn't arrive at it through careful calculations. He simply made it a requirement. Despite this lack of foundation, the idea works beautifully. Eventually the notion of quanta was applied to the Ultraviolet Catastrophe problem. Doing so caused the equations to yield curves in agreement with experiment.

There was much furor over this and other quantum ideas. There really was no mathematical or theoretical justification for making things have to exist in 'quanta'. It just worked, which may be OK in engineering, but wasn't so great in theoretical physics. Einstein, who was actually one of the early developers of quantum theory, struggled for the rest of his life trying to disprove it somehow. Many classical physicists were outraged over this seemingly ad hoc solution. No one was very happy about it, but applying quantum ideas to classical physics continued to yield stunning, accurate results. Most physicists decided that you can't argue with success, and accepted the quantum theory uneasily.

Werner Heisenberg was an early quantum theorist who developed the Uncertainty Principle. There are several ways of expressing this non-mathematically, but the gist of it is that you can't know the precise location of a particle, and also its precise momentum. The more you know one, the less you know the other - and you can never know either of these exactly. There is always a minumum error. The best you can do is to have a fairly good idea of where it is, and a reasonable idea of its momentum.

"Big deal", you say. Who cares where a particle is, anyway? Well, the point is that, if you can't say where a particle is, you can't say where it isn't, either. So if you try to say that some region of space is empty, you can't know that. In fact, there is something known as a "quantum vacuum", in which particles continually come into existence, and wink out almost immediately. Empty space isn't empty after all - it's boiling with what are called "virtual particles". Meaning, there's nowhere that there are zero particles. No empty space. No zero.

The consequences of this notion of quanta are far-reaching. There are certain physical units called "Planck Units" that represent the minimum meaningful value for that particular quality. For instance, there is the Planck Length, which is about 1.6 x 10-35 meters; the Plank Time, which is about 5.4 x 10-44 seconds; and so on. These are incredibly tiny values. They are so minute that they are irrelevant for almost all purposes. They make even subatomic particles look bigger than solar systems by comparisons. But, and this is very important, they aren't zero. There is no meaningful distance shorter than the Planck Length - you can't say something is 1/2 that length, because that has no physical meaning. Similarly, there is no shorter time than a Planck Time. What this means is, speaking of zero length, zero seconds, etc., is physically meaningless.

Since lengths or times smaller than the Planck Units have no physical meaning, we do not have situations in which zero occurs to mess up our equations. Even if we have a length in the denominator, it's OK - the smallest it can ever reach is the Planck Length, extremely tiny, but non-zero. The equation may yield some spectacularly huge result, but it is at least defined. We get a number, not a 'divide by zero' error. This is a Good Thing.

Into the Wild Blue Yonder

2010-01-16T13:17:00.003-06:00

On January 14th, a bag of cocaine was found in the hangar where the Space Shuttle lives. As might be expected, this has caused some consternation among NASA officials, as well as the hysterical public.

The focus has been that the drug was cocaine - an illegal, dangerous drug. While I agree that a bag of coke at a high-security facility is worrisome, the worrisome part isn't that it's cocaine, but that it's *any* dangerous drug. That would include alcohol and certain legal, prescription medications as well as coke, heroin, or PCP.

Much is said about the horrors of drugs, how they ruin lives and often kill people, how addicts may turn to crime to feed their habits, yadda-yadda-yadda. Drug dealers are viewed as the worst sort of people, the scum of the earth who feed upon the weaknesses and shattered dreams of their victims.

And yet, throughout this country we have drug dealers carrying out their evil activities openly in many cities, and even small towns. Not only are they not arrested, the police often protect these drug dealers from the violence their drugs may cause, assist in preventing robberies or tracking down those who have committed the robberies, and in general helping the drug dealers stay in business. And it's all perfectly legal, because these drug dealers are known as "bartenders", and the drug they sell is alcohol.

Alcohol alone kills far more people than all the illegal drugs combined. All the horrors of heroin or cocaine addiction apply equally well to alcohol addiction as well.

The point of all this isn't to say that it's OK to do coke on the job. The point is that finding a can of beer would have been just as bad, and should be just as upsetting as finding cocaine. The problem isn't that it was cocaine; the problem is that someone was using (or at least carrying) a mind-altering substance, something that could easily affect his performance, at a job where performance is critical.

Dude, whoever you are, get a grip. You really shouldn't be getting high at work, especially if your job requires you to have it together. That's just asking for trouble. And second, we already know you weren't holding it together, because you lost your stash.

Ignorance and Arrogance

2010-01-13T17:12:00.003-06:00

Today Haiti had a serious earthquake that has taken the lives of thousands of people. Some estimates go as high as 100,000 lives lost. Whatever the final toll, Haiti is in a world of hurt right now, people suffering and dying, without shelter, food, clean water, or other necessities. Many word governments and organizations are chipping in to help the people of Haiti.

And then you've got that paragon of Christian virtue, Pat Robertson.

While others are rushing to help the victims of the earthquake, Pat is busy reassuring them that their suffering is a judgement by God for their wickedness. He claims that a long time ago, the country made a pact with the devil, and now it's time to pay up. Is this guy a dick, or what?

I'm pretty sure that Jesus would have responded differently. I believe he'd have offered comfort and healing, helped those who suffered, done whatever he could to ease the hurt. When he encountered people who suffered from sickness, injuries, or demonic possession, he didn't sneer at them and tell them they were being punished by God. He healed them.

Haiti suffered this catastrophe because it is on the Pacific Rim of Fire, one of the most seismically active regions on this planet. Compounding this, Haiti is a poor country. Its infrastructure was fragile at best. Buildings were built cheaply and unsafely. They could not withstand the effects of a quake, so many of them collapsed.

Pat Robertson puts the "duh" back into "Fundamentalism".

Exit the Dragon

2010-01-12T19:58:00.002-06:00

A Washington Post article states that Google is considering discontinuing its services in China. If Google actually follows through with this, it would be the first large company to stand up to China and resist some of its unreasonable demands.

The motivation for this potential move was an apparent attack by someone in China on Google's e-mail servers. The attackers seemed to target the accounts of human rights activists. While the attack was apparently unsuccessful, it was cause for concern.

This is in contrast with the way Yahoo! acted when China asked them for information about activists. At least twice, Yahoo! turned in the activists, who are now serving long sentences in prison. In April of 2005, a dissident was sentenced to ten years in prison. He was convicted on the basis of information that Yahoo! provided the government. In 2003, Yahoo! provided information to help convict another dissident who received an eight year sentence. Yahoo! explained these unconscionable acts as "misunderstandings".

I think I understand. With its billion people, China is a huge economy just ripe for harvesting. Yahoo! and many other corporations are eager to get in there and make as much money as they can. If they have to throw the occasional activist to the wolves, that's a small price to pay for all the money they'll be making.

I'm not sure if Google is bluffing, or whether it will follow through with its decision to pull out of China. If they do, I applaud their courage to face down the Chinese government and refuse to participate in repression. Google stands to lose a lot of money if they walk out of China. Well done, if they do it.

As for Yahoo!, well, shame on them.