I think I would have to be pretty hungry before I attacked a crocodile.

See more pictures and find out who won at Zooillogix.

Very funny video, Even for people who don’t know any chemistry.

[This one got stuck in the 'drafts' bucket because I enjoyed his book so much that I want to write a worthy review. Sorry, Steve Grand. I have moved on.]

If I became suddely independently wealthy, I would be doing what this guy is doing:

One of the things I often find myself talking to the public about, for example, is the increasingly inescapable evidence that we are machines; that a human mind in all its glory is a mechanical consequence of the lawful interactions between trillions of very simple moving parts, and not some kind of vitalistic magical essence attached by a silver thread to a body. For most people this is very hard news to take, and they rebel against it. “What about culture?”, they say. “What about free will?” “How dare you suggest I’m some kind of jumped-up pocket calculator!” But as an engineer I have a huge respect for machinery and see things differently. Recognizing that we are machines doesn’t demean us at all; it just shows us what astounding and beautiful things machines are capable of. I find it awe-inspiring.

Read the interview.

Read the book.

Both outstanding.

Anyone play his game?

[another half finished post. no idea what it was about or who said it]

Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “elite opinion” to dismiss the near unanimous opposition of economists to her proposal for a gas tax holiday was a landmark in the use of elite to attack expertise supposedly beyond the comprehension of average Americans. One might as well say that there is no point in consulting musicians about music or ichthyologists about fish.

[every now an then I go back and hit publish on half-finished drafts. Today is such a day.]

It’s the high numbers in Azerbaijan (42%) and Nigerian (60%) that scare me.

My understanding of the second amendment has gone through several phases.

In my first phase it made no sense at all to me.

Then I heard about Miller vs USA in which the Supremes of the day said

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ’shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”

and subsequent opinions that quoted Miller like Renqhuist’s in 1972

“The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia - civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.” Id., at 178-179. Critics say that proposals like this water down the Second Amendment. Our decisions belie that argument, for the Second Amendment, as noted, was designed to keep alive the militia.”

My second interpretation was, then, that it is an archaic time capsule from a forgotten age. An age when a bunch of guys with muskets could hold off a professional army for long enough to rouse up a force to evict them. That age has passed, I thought.

But that was around the time that my son was learning about founding fathers and the constitution and the birth of this country and such in school and I wanted to learn about those things too. I learned that in a lengthy list of individual rights, the second amendment was the only one that explicitly called out the  needs of the States  (I’ll come to the 10th in a moment). I also learned that the people who wrote that document were afraid of a strong central government and wanted to distribute the power between the state govermnents and the federal government. The 10th makes that point clear stating

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Eureka, I thought, those people were geniuses. My new understanding was that the second amendment was a states’ right. State governments could regulate their militias, but the federal government had no business doing so. The federal government could not regulate arms, but state governments could. If Montana wanted lots of guns for their well-regulated militias, but California preferred to live in the modern era…fine!… T2A allows for that. If people from California drove up to Montana to get their guns, we’d throw the Intersate Commerce clause at them.

I had a brief moment of doubt when I learned that the 14th made the Bill of Rights apply to State goverments as well as the federal government. But I soon got over that because, clearly, 2nd was a State’s right so the 14th didn’t apply.

My interpretation of State’s rights is unwelcome in certain circles. Some of my liberal buddies think the civil rights advances of the 50s and 60s would never have happened without federal intervention. For my part, I expect that would have taken longer to come but they would have come eventually.

I also agree with the standard conservative - intentionalist - view of the constitution. We do best to interpret it as the authors intended it to be interpreted. It’s not a living document and should not be interpreted as one. Once you start seeing emanations and penumbras you are a short trot away from allowing animals to sleep in beds with sheets.

In today’s NY Times, Stanley Fish claims that all the decision in the second amendment went 5-4, all of the opinions were based on an intentionalist reading of the amendment. The majority opinion, written by Scalia, said that the words

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

were very clear as long as you ignore the first thirteen. If you skip over the first clause, as Scalia did, you’ll note that the right to own a gun is unrelated to militias. If you skip the second clause too, the amendment clearly says that the government (originally the feds, but since the 14th, the states) is not allowed to pass any law restricting the right to bear arms.

As Fish says,

For Scalia, that meaning is that Americans have “an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

Meanwhile, the minority opinion, written by Stevens, claims

the Second Amendment “was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a well-regulated militia,” and he finds no “evidence supporting the view that the amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate the civilian uses of weapons.”

So, both opinions are intentionalist. They both claim that they are interpreting the literal words and  intentions of the authors but one side claims that when the founders said ‘well-regulated militia” they meant “well-regulated militia” but the other side claims that they meant “unconnected with service in a militia”.

Rather than intentionalism, the idea that the words can mean whatever we want them to mean seems closer to deconstructionism. If they can mean anything. They mean precisely nothing.

Scalia adds more support to the idea that words can mean anything at all when he says that the term arms

was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.

and that the adjective “well-regulated”

implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.

which make me want to count his legs. I’ll confess that I did not read the whole opinion so I must’ve missed the bit where he said that US vs Miller was not relevant.

Since I love paradoxes so much, I love the idea that, as the UK and US trend ever more egalitarian in their approaches to education, they see ever greater gaps between low and high and achievers. Meanwhile, Finland has a two tier system that results in one of the smallest achievement gaps in the world.

Of course, I’d love it more if the education system here were as successful as Finland’s.

This article mentions just a few of the things about the US education system that Finland manages to do without:

While there is little grading and in essence no tracking in Finland, ninth grade does become a divider for Finnish students. Students are separated for the last three years of high school based on grades. Under the current structure, 53% will go to academic high school and the rest enter vocational school.

Using that format, Finland has an overall high-school dropout rate of about 4%. Even at the vocational schools the rate of 10% pummels America’s 25% high school drop out rate.

There is no silly “college for all” mantra and there certainly isn’t a push to have all students sit through a trigonometry class if that is not relevant to the student. More importantly, there is also no negative connotation to the concept of vocational school.

When I was a lad, it was the law that every school had a religious assembly and, at my primary school especially, we used to sing 3 or 4 hymns every morning. In the assembly hall, we had two enormous (to a 10 year old) contraptions that dangled enormous hymn sheets from the ceiling.

One of the occasional duties of a 10 year old at my school was Hymn Sheet  monitor. There were two monitors to each hymn sheet contraption and, when the music teacher said ‘Hymn number 127′, one of the monitors would undo the rope from the cleat and lower the contraption from the ceiling. The other monitor would then rummage through the giant (to a 10 year old) sheets of paper looking for hymn number 127. After lots of searching and then hefting of hundreds of sheets - each bigger than a 10 year old hymn sheet monitor - the first monitor would heave on the rope to return the contraption to the ceiling and then hang on with all his strength while the other monitor belayed the rope to the cleat.

Then the singing would commence.

The singing was fantastic. I remember one time, we had a visit from the Mayor of Bexley in all his mayoral robes and he pronounced that “he would always remember this as the singing school”.

We sang every one of those hymns. There were the hymns that every one knows like What a Friend we have in Jesus and All Things Bright and Beautiful and Onward Christian Soldiers but there were also a few pop-songs-turned-hymns like Lord of the Dance, Morning has Broken and Any Dream Will Do from the latest (and first) Rice/Weber blockbuster and plenty of obscure songs that I have never heard before or since.

I was reminded of one of those obscure songs last week - my absolute favourite - when I read the most beautiful passage in the New Testament in Luke while camping at Sunset Beach.

36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

I loved that song. I wish I remembered all the words. I have the melody down on my harmonica but my memory, and Google fail me for the lyrics.

Here’s what I have:

Said Judas to Mary, “O what will you do
With your ointment so rich and so rare?”
“I’ll pour it all over the feet of the Lord
And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”
She said.
“And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”

Said Judas to Mary, “O think of the poor.
Think of all of the riches you can give to the poor
Something something something
If, your ointment, you sell it today.”
He said.
“If your ointment, you sell it today.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll think of the poor.
Tomorrow.” she said. “Not today.
For today I must think of my only true Lord.
For my Lord who is going away.”
She said.
“For my Lord who is going away.”

It’s funny how memory works - for that song to spring back into my mind so nearly complete after 30 years. I wish I remembered the rest.

It’s funny too how our collective memory works. So many of the most vivid, rich scenes spring from throwaway one-liners like

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

and

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

The whole nativity is only 20 verses of Luke, less than that in Matthew and not covered at all in Mark and John. Matthew and Luke made those little bits up but, in 2000 years, we did the rest.

Ever wondered why there are 360 degrees?

Constellations make a circle throughout the year — ever see the Big Dipper upside down sometimes? (Never fear, it’ll be rightside-up in 6 months). Here’s a theory about how degrees came to pass:

• Humans noticed that constellations moved in a full circle every year
• Every day, they moved a tiny bit (” a degree”)
• Since a year has about 360 days, a circle had 360 degrees

But, but… why not 365 degrees in a circle?

Cut ‘em some slack: they had sundials and didn’t know a year should have a convenient 365.242199 degrees like you do.

360 is close enough for government work. It fits nicely into the Babylonian base-60 number system, and divides well (by 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 15, 30, 45, 90… you get the idea).

According to Better Explained, degrees are subjective but radians are objective.

A degree is the amount I, an observer, need to tilt my head to see you, the mover. It’s a tad self-centered, don’t you think?

…

Much of physics (and life!) involves leaving your reference frame and seeing things from another’s viewpoint. Instead of wondering how far we tilted our heads, consider how far the other person moved.

Nicholas Kristof is asking each of the presidential candidates to commit to a Truth Commission (modelled after South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee) early in the next administration. This commission would be to investigate claims like

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing.

We all know that the people responsible will never be held accountable but perhaps, by making public what they did, we can prevent them from happening again.