The Square Root of Two (part 1)

Pythagoras taught that every number can be written as a ratio. Consider a man's arm and his height. One can certainly write the ratio of the length of his arm to his height. Can't one?

Pythagoras was, of course, very familiar with the square root of 2, which is the length of the diagonal of a right triangle with sides that are both 1. But then one of his students proved that the square root of two could never be a ratio. Pythagoras figured his student was a) irrational; and b) a heretic.

I'm not sure if it's true, but they say that Pythagoras had the student murdered by his more devoted followers who would never question his teachings.

As it turns out, if one could measure the length of a man's arm perfectly, and if one could measure his height perfectly, the length of the man's arm would NOT be some perfect ratio of his height. A very small infinity of numbers can be written as perfect ratios, and a very large infinity cannot, so the length of a man's arm is never a perfect ratio to his height.

This is an important part of basic logic: one cannot say that something does not exist without a proof (like the one Pythagoras' student gave that no ratio can exist for the square root of two). Some say that anyone claiming that something does not exist has no burden of proof, those who say it does exist have all the burden. This is wrong. If no one cannot prove that something exists, and no one can prove that it does not exist, then logicians are forced into agnosticism: they must agree that no one knows if it does or does not exist.

Of course, the square root of two exists, but there is no way to write it as a ratio. It's the ratio that the student proved does not exist.

That's about all there is to say about Pythagoras and the square root of two.

Socrates used the square root of two to prove that reincarnation is true, but I'll leave that one for another day.

Thrasymachus and the Truth

In grade school, every American child learns that George Washington never lied. Not once in his entire life. The story was written years after Washington died, when no one was alive who knew if he had or did not have a lifelong reputation for veracity, and the author provided no sources for his report, and no sources have been found in more than a century of searching. So it appears the life without a single lie was a posthumous gift to Washington.

Today, things go the opposite way. Thrasymachus came up with a definition of 'Justice' as whatever the strongest power says it is. Socrates found inconsistencies in that definition, and so ruled it out. But Socrates (though he didn't know the term) was looking for a prescriptive definition of justice, one that satisfies some theoretical demands (e.g., absolutely consistency). Thrasymachus (though he didn't know the term) was giving a descriptive definition.

As the most powerful person on earth, the US president can not only define what justice means, but also what is true, so, for the US president, TRUTH is as Thrasymachus would have described it if he'd thought of it.

So, when President Johnson said he hated war, that he did not want to go to war, but the North Vietnamese had attacked, without any provocation, a US Navy ship in International Waters, and this was as bad as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, every American newspaper confirmed that what Johnson said was true, and the US had no choice but to go to war against North Vietnam.

After Johnson died, newspapers reported that, in fact, the well documented attack by the North Vietnamese had never happened.

When Bush, jr said he did not want to go to war in Iraq, but Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction, including a nearly complete nuclear arsenal, all the Western newspapers agreed that their reporters had confirmed the existence of the WMD, including a nuclear arsenal. This was NOT like the faked attack on a US Navy ship by the North Vietnamese, and it would be a horrible mistake to blame Bush, jr for Johnson's lies, a mistake that would lead to an inevitable nuclear attack on the US.

But after Bush, jr left office and was no longer President of the US, most newspapers reported that the nuclear arsenal, the existence of which they reported had been irrefutably proven, never existed. (There are still some Bush, jr supporters who said the US military found those missiles, with nuclear warheads and fuses lit, and they managed to snuff the fuses just in the nick of time, but this information was classified so as not to frighten the American people, and Bush, jr was telling the TRUTH. But where the believers in the nukes were a large majority of Americans while Bush, jr was President of the US, now they are a small minority of Americans.)

Today, when Seymore Hersh wrote that President Obama was less than truthful about Osama, the Libyan Ambassador's death, and Syria, every Western newspaper condemned him as a racist, tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Hersh's impressive credentials and the fact that the official White House releases suffer from internal and external inconsistencies do not matter. President Obama is the President of the United States, so whatever he says is TRUE, by the Thrasymachus definition of TRUTH. Proof and evidence notwithstanding, whatever President Obama says is the absolute TRUTH.

How long that TRUTH will last after Obama is no longer president remains to be seen.

The price of oil

Basic economics says that increased prices reduce demand, and decreased prices increase demand. When things are normal, increasing the price decreases total sales. Not just unit sales, total dollar sales, because demand falls by so much that the increased price does not produce increased (or even steady) sales in dollars (or whatever currency one uses to measure).

Oil is different. A person buys a home in the suburbs with no public transportation, and buys a car to get to work. If the price goes up, it's not possible to stop driving to work, or to sell the house and the car and move to a flat on a bus route. So one muddles through.

And if the price falls, one cannot immediately buy a house in the suburbs and a gas-guzzling SUV.

But, with lower prices, people buy bigger cars and more move to the suburbs and buy cars, so eventually, demand rises, just not right away.

Also, with lower prices, supply is supposed to fall. But, with oil, the cost is in finding the oil and drilling the wells. Once drilled, it costs little to pump, and not pumping causes the well to collapse, losing all the money already spent drilling it. So supply does not drop right away, but there is less exploration and less drilling, so eventually, lower prices will mean less supply and more demand, just not for a year or more.

So, for now, some are predicting a world price of $20 a barrel. Or $15. Or $10. On Friday, oil broke through the support at $30, and looks like it's heading down. If the UN says Iran is in full compliance, it can sell a lot more oil. So lower prices for now.

So more houses in the suburbs, more SUVs, less exploration, and less drilling. But all this will take years before it has any effect on the price of oil.

But when those houses get built and those SUVs get bought and the existing wells get depleted, which will take years, it will mean $100 a barrel. Or $200. Or more.

Counting the number of letters in the Arabic alphabet

Since leaving the US, I have met many people for whom English is a second language (if they don't speak any English, that limits my ability to interact with them to just about nil).

I asked many of them, 'How many letters are there in your alphabet?' since I'm always curious. And the answer I always got was '26'. Which seemed strange to me. How is it these alphabets have the exact same number of letters as the English version of the Latin alphabet?

The answer is that, when native-English speaking children go to their first day of school, the teacher always says, 'We are going to learn to read and write English. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and 5 of them, a, e, i, o, and u, are vowels.' Then the teacher writes the alphabet, and the children all learn the alphabet song.

In English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, the teachers start in a similar way: 'We are going to learn English. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and 5 of them, a, e, i, o, and u, are vowels.' The students probably don't know the English words 'letters' or 'alphabet' or '5' or 'vowels,' but those who pass the ESL course had better learn that, in the English version of the Latin alphabet, there are 26 letters, of which 5 are vowels.

(The teachers usually don't tell students the number of consonants, but given that there are 26 letters and 5 vowels, simple arithmetic shows there are 19 consonants. And if my maths seems strange, that's because English and maths don't mix: the English alphabet has 26 letters, of which 5 are vowels, and 19 are consonants!)

In most other languages, on the first day of school the teacher says, 'Today we are going to learn to read and write. This is the alphabet:' and then the teacher writes the alphabet and the children memorise the alphabet. But usually, the teacher does NOT teach the number of letters in the alphabet.

So the only language for which many ESL students know the number of letters is English, and, when asked the number of letters, most answer '26'. After all, in their own language, letter isn't 'letter', so just the word 'letter' makes them think, 'English letters, 26.'

When I went to Arabic classes, the teacher was terrible. He said, 'You must learn the Arabic alphabet,' then recited it quickly, and said, 'Now you know it. So you can start reading NOW.'

For more than 1,300 years, children who were fortunate enough to be able to study reading and writing Arabic were taught TWO alphabetical orders for the letters. One was the original order the Phoenicians came up with when they invented the Phoenician alphabet. Then, early Islamic scholars came up with a different alphabetical order, but those who already knew the Arabic alphabet in the Phoenician order found it very hard to learn the new order, so they kept using the old order, and told their students the old order was much easier to learn, so the alphabet they memorised was in the old order. Sometime in the past 50 years or so, most schools in the Arab world stopped teaching the old order. The teacher of my Arabic class gave us the old order (not in the textbook) and said we'd find it MUCH easier to learn the Arabic alphabet in that order instead of the proper alphabetical order (meaning, he didn't know anything about teaching or learning).

Of course, I counted, and there are (now) 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. But Arabic is nothing at all like English, so there are letters that are not in the alphabet (Arabs use completely different words for letters in the alphabet and letters not in the alphabet, and think English should have different words for the different kinds of letters, but it doesn't).

It gets better. Arabic once had just 18 symbols. Kind of like English carved in stone, where one finds MVSEVMs and COVRTs OF IVSTICE, back when English used just 24 symbols for the 26 letters. In the early days of Islam, some Arabs wrote with marks called 'nukta' which makes it clear which of the 28 letters is intended by the 18 symbols. Without nukta, many different letters, e.g. the R and Z, are identical. During the first Islamic century, some Arab scribes used nukta, and some did not.

By the end of the third Islamic century, to make the Noble Koran as easy to read as possible, scribes started adding nukta and tashkeel, making it much easier to know how to recite the words. And today, Noble Korans for reciting also come with a colour code to show reciters the rhythm and meter of each phrase.

Today, for Arabic writing like newspaper articles, Arabs always write the nukta, but not the tashkeel, and no code for the rhythm and meter. So it's hard for a non-Arab who learned the alphabet to know how to pronounce the words in newspaper articles.

Job Interview

I was invited to a job interview (many years ago) by the University of Chicago Circle (sounds like University of Chicago, but it isn't, it's the university where the author of a book about Zen and Motorcycles was teaching when he decided Zen and Motorcycles would be a MUCH better career).

I was met my an Indian (NOT of the Red variety). He said he had to take me to dinner and watch me eat. I said, 'I can't eat while a hungry person is sitting, not eating, and staring at me.'

'What we do, then?'

'Why, exactly, are you going to take me to dinner and watch me eat?'

'Boss say I must take you to Steakhouse. I Hindoo. I not eat meat. So I watch you eat. OK?'

'No, not OK. Take me someplace we can BOTH eat!'

'My boss say I must take you Steakhouse.'

'OK. I'll say we went to the Steakhouse. Now take me somewhere we can BOTH eat.'

'But place I can eat, you cannot eat.'

'Try me.'

So we went to a Hindoo restaurant. He ordered something bland for me, and bindhi massala for himself. 'Bindhi' is Hindoo (or Urdu) for okra. As it says in the Iowa farm journal (or so I was told by a Texas newspaper article), 'Okra is a very important fodder crop. You won't believe this, but in some very primitive cultures, okra is used for human food.'

As it turned out, I ate most of his bindhi massala, and he had to eat whatever it was he ordered for me.

The next day, I met the staff. I already hated them for the way they'd treated the poor Indian (whose name I've long forgotten). Their Phd in Computer Security made a bunch of statements that, while I'm sure they've been published in bad journals, were 110% false. The usual, 'Make users pick passwords that are random sequences of characters and make them change their passwords every week.' Either the users will forget and lose access to their accounts, or they'll write down their passwords where anyone can find them. Bad idea.

They wanted me to teach Pascal. I went to a lecture by the idiot who invented the Pascal language, and he convinced me no one would EVER use Pascal to write a program that actually did anything. They knew I didn't know Pascal, but needed someone with certification to teach it for a semester (they had to have someone with accreditation, or they'd be in big trouble), and then they planned to lay me off. I declined their generous offer.

The Myth of the Deadbeat Dad

Type the title of this post into Google, and 14,500 web pages turn up (now, I suppose, 14,501). All by father’s rights groups (some of them second wives), or by individual bloggers.

However, in the mainstream news media, the Deadbeat Dad is not a myth, but is one of the world’s worst problems, worse than AIDS, terrorism, and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

According to Charles Blow of the New York Times , 60% of divorced Black fathers and 45% of divorced white fathers are deadbeat dads, and, in the process, are doing irreparable damage to their children. Mr. Blow lists his source as “Charting Parenthood: A Statistical Portrait of Fathers and Mothers in America”, Child Trends, 2002.

Blogs such as that of the Alliance for Non-Custodial Parents Rights write that they are posting an article that Kathleen Parker wrote in The Orlando Sentinel, Jan 24 1999. According to that blog, Ms. Parker obtained the statistic from the U.S. Census bureau that only 10% of all divorced fathers are deadbeat dads. If we limit the term ‘deadbeat’ to only those fathers who pay nothing, excluding those who manage to make a partial (even a miniscule payment), Mr. Blow says that the numbers are 20% of divorced white fathers and 42% of divorced Black fathers.

There seems to be a disconnect here, and the disconnect would appear, prima facie, to be in Mr. Blow’s favour, since the Census Bureau does not seem to have any easily obtainable data on child support payments. I was only able to obtain statistics on deadbeat dads from Child Trends, and they support Mr. Blow.

This reminds me of the old story that, if one puts a frog into hot water, the frog will jump out, but if one puts the frog into cold water and heats it gradually, the frog won’t notice and will cook up into a nice lunch. Frogs are actually too smart for that, but American men aren’t.

Before Clinton, there was AFDC, which officially stood, in an Orwellian fashion, for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In fact, it was Aid for Single Females with Dependent Children, with an emphasis on single. A more accurate title would have been, Tax on Poor Families, or Act to Discourage Poor Families.

Families headed by two parents with meagre salaries were eligible for food vouchers.

However, single mothers were not only eligible for food vouchers, but were also eligible for medical vouchers, rent vouchers, and a small cash payment. For the 10% of men with the lowest salaries, their families would have much more total benefits from AFDC, provided the men were absent. The most responsible of these fathers found themselves accommodation elsewhere, and tried to send cash and to see their children if possible but there was a risk: if a man was around or sending money, the woman was not eligible for AFDC. Visiting his children or sending them money risked their welfare. The caseworkers were required to inspect regularly, and to terminate AFDC benefits if they found evidence of a man around, as in men's clothing or other artefacts in the apartment provided to the single mother and children. And, of course, the mother had to say the father had abandoned the family, or she would not be eligible for AFDC.

And, of course, this system affected a much larger percentage of Blacks than whites.

Conservatives hated AFDC, giving money to women for having children out of wedlock, especially Black women.

Reagan, back in the mid-‘80s when the US did not have the technology to enforce the law, signed a bill requiring fathers to pay 100% of the AFDC payments, beginning in 1995. The fathers of AFDC children, for the most part, did not earn 100% of the AFDC payments, but Clinton signed the enabling legislation, and abolished AFDC.

Under the new law, women who had been collecting AFDC, or who wished to apply for AFDC, must name the father or fathers of their children. A judge must then set the amount the fathers have to pay, based on state guidelines, guidelines that vary widely from state to state. In some states, the judges must asses a portion of the father’s pay check. In other states, the guidelines require the judge to award at least as much as the former AFDC payment, and also must require the father to reimburse the government for all AFDC monies already expended.

So, in 1996, even though 100% of the awards were garnished from the fathers’ salaries by the tax assessors, 45% of white fathers and 60% of Black fathers still refused to pay the full amount. How could they refuse? Only by failing to earn as much as the judge awarded. The tax authority could only take whichever was less, the full amount of tax plus the support awarded by the court, or 100% of the man's pay.

Since garnishing their pay had been insufficient, in 1998 Clinton made it a felony to earn less than the full amount of the award, an act wildly popular with liberals, conservatives, and the mainstream press. But even throwing more than 10% of divorced fathers in jail hasn’t been enough to get them to pay the full award, so clearly, much harsher methods are needed. Waterboarding, perhaps?

The other part of the myth is that many fathers run off, abandoning their children, and never make an effort to see them. This ignores the fact that, in many jurisdictions, the woman receives a much larger cash award in a divorce if she alleges abuse.

In some courts, the abuse must be proven, and the woman will be punished for perjury if she makes such allegations without any evidence. However, in other jurisdictions, it is believed (and I have personally observed judges act on this belief in several states, including Arkansas and West Virginia), that most men know how to abuse their women and children in ways that leave absolutely no proof or evidence of any kind, and the criminal justice system is helpless and unable to bring these demons (and I am not being figurative when I write ‘demons’) to justice. The Divorce Courts have no such limitations, but can find these men guilty of demonic abuse that left no evidence, and issue restraining orders that the man must never see his children again, issued along with (to be fair) a visitation order for bi-weekly visits. Should the man fail to exercise his visitation rights, he will be punished. Should he attempt to exercise his visitation rights, he is in violation of the restraining order, and will be punished. Since these men are preternatural demons, such punishment only seems fair.

And it's their own neglect if these fathers decide not to incur immediate imprisonment by violating the restraining order, even though their ex wives would have dialed 911 and ensured that they never saw their children. They still should have tried, even if it meant going to jail for life, and even though they would never have succeeded in seeing their children. But most don't, instead using the restraining order as an excuse not to wage futile attempts to see their children.

Divorce, American Style: A Perfect Storm

In the UK, John Mortimer wrote a book, Felix in the Underworld. It was about the Labour policy that abolished the UK equivalent of AFDC. Instead of the government providing for single mothers with dependent children, no payments would be made unless the woman named the father. Once she'd named the father, the payments would be collected from the named father. As Mortimer wrote, there was absolutely no need for the woman to name the biological father, as long as she named some male who would be responsible to make the payments and largely allow the government to abolish government payments to women with dependent children, thereby saving the taxpayers money.

Clinton read about the UK system, and, as a legacy passed in his last year in office, decided to press for adoption of this system in the US. He succeeded at the Federal level.

The US, however, is a Federal system, unlike the UK. In 38 states, no payments can be required of the father after the children are 18. In the other states, which include Clinton's Arkansas, the support, once ordered, can never be reduced for any reason. In Arkansas (and my state) fathers of 30 year old children are still paying.

In many (but certainly not all) states, the courts watch Lifetime television. On Lifetime, viciously beaten women have no recourse to the criminal justice system.

This myth appears in most published novels. Grisham wrote that most judges refuse to get involved when a man beats his wife or girlfriend. Dick Francis wrote that, when a man beats his wife, the case does not come to trial until after all wounds have healed, and the defence lawyer says, 'M'Lud, the prosecutor says this man beat this woman. Does M'Lud see any evidence of this abuse?' The jury sees no such evidence, and finds the guilty man innocent.

In real life, I went with a police patrol called by a neighbour. 'I heard hitting and screaming,' said the neighbour. The constable, who had a warrant, demanded access to the apartment inside which the fight had been heard. He saw a woman with abrasions, cuts, and bruises who said, 'I fell down the steps. My husband isn't home now.' The constable forced his way in, and found the husband cowering in a closet. The wife was photographed. At the trial, she was not called by the prosecution, who used the photographs and the testimony of the neighbour to get a conviction.

But real life never appears in any Lifetime 'documentary' about domestic abuse, or in any novel.

So the Divorce Court is advised to remedy the deficiencies of the Criminal Courts in the US, and to demand that, if accused of abuse, the man named as father pay at least 140% of his income.

So my judge, hearing that my wife said she was viciously abused, but the police would not help, found me guilty of 'vicious, bizarre, occult abuse.' He said that I had used occult means to beat my wife and children almost to death, but then used occult methods to conceal such abuse from the police.

Under the Clinton law, I cannot ask another judge to review the case.

If I do not give my ex the 200% of my assets and income as I was sentenced, I must go to gaol for life without the possibility of parole.

Before Clinton, most men in states that demanded more than 100% of their income left the state where they were convicted. The conviction was strictly civil, not criminal, and was therefore not extraditable. The few fools who remained in the state where they were divorced were gaoled, then, since the judge didn't want to be responsible for the costs of the incarceration of these men, the judge would set up some delayed schedule of support payments, forgive the unpayable payments, and, after a few weeks in gaol, release the man named as father. Usually, these fools figured out that they had to leave the state where they were divorced. Some went to judges in other states and got a more reasonable settlement.

Clinton changed all that. 1) Not one penny may be forgiven. 2) Not one penny may be re-scheduled. 3) Once the woman has chosen a court, no other court may hear the case. 4) Crossing state lines after a divorce is a Federal offence for the man (if the women still feels threatened after the divorce, she is allowed and strongly encouraged to leave the state).

So I left. Not just my state, but the US. Only, I had a question, and, when I went to ask, the embassy shredded my passport.

So now I am a mojado in this country, with no visa, no passport, no papers if any kind.

Which is highly illegal, and I have no idea what I can do.

I went to a local lawyer who took $450 from me. I said, 'What is your advice?'

'We are required by law to turn you in, but we don't want to hurt our clients, so we have to ask that you never come by or call us again, and we won't tell anyone here about you.'

So I just have to hope I'm not asked for my papers.