You Could Save a Man's Life: Write the Governor of Mississippi.

In a few hours, the Great State of Mississippi will execute Willie Manning, a man who they insist must be guilty of two brutal murders, in spite of a few minor flaws in the "conclusive, overwhelming evidence" against him. But there's good news: the FBI has done the right thing and informed Mississippi of problems in their part of the conclusive overwhelmingness. Moreover, they have looked over the conclusive, overwhelming ballistic evidence and found flaws in that.

Not feeling quite so conclusively overwhelmed as they perhaps did before, the FBI have offered to perform DNA testing that could exonerate Mr. Manning—or possibly confirm that the case against him is solid enough, after all. Not quite as sure as death, perhaps, but hey, nothing's as sure as that.

So, the Great State of Mississippi has eagerly accepted the FBI's offer to perform this vital DNA test, right? After all, you can't undo an execution.

Well, no. You see, the other evidence against Willie Manning is conclusively overwhelming. Sworn testimony by convicted felons that he said he did it. Oh, wait. One of them recanted. Well, there's hair and fiber analysis by the FBI. Oh, wait. The FBI now says the evidence given by their analyst exceeded the limits of the science. Well, there's ballistics. Oh wait. The FBI says the ballistics evidence is questionable.

Well, never mind all that. The victims were white and Willie Manning is…conclusively guilty. The Great State of Mississippi don't need no DNA when it comes to good old fashioned Southern Justice.

Here is the text of my note to the Governor. Feel free to use it, if you like, but you might want to dress it up a little. I tend to be rather informal:


 Dear Governor Bryant, 

I'm curious to know what evidence could conclusively overwhelm DNA evidence. Or do the majority on the Mississippi Supreme Court and the DA's office mean only that the DNA evidence is bound to confirm the other evidence. Yes. That must be it. But it does raise another question: In that case, why refuse to allow the FBI to perform a test which must clear the Mississippi justice system of any suspicion of lynching or incompetence? It is bound to do that, right? What with the other evidence being so conclusively overwhelming and all.

Sincerely,

You can write to Governor Bryant here. 

Update Mere seconds after I posted this entry, Twitter lit up with the news that the Mississippi Supreme Court had voted 8-1 to block Willie Manning's execution. Conclusively overwhelming proof of the effectiveness of blogging and sarcasm.

How Capitalism Self-Corrects

In a capitalist economy, each choice you make is a vote. The following are some tips every responsible consumer should follow:

• When your car accelerates uncontrollably and kills you, don't buy that make any more.
  
  
• When the banks wreck the economy, take what's left of your business elsewhere—a sock, or a shoebox, perhaps.
  
  
• When the health care oligarchy organizes mobs of bellowing idiots to cripple reform, write a blog post.
  
  
• When Appalachia is turned into Mordor; when every stream is poisoned; when every city reeks; when the ice-caps are melting; when the biosphere is collapsing, ride your bicycle to work. Put a bell on it.
  
  
• When you are run over by an SUV, ring the bell.
  
  
• When General United owns everything…um…
  
  
• When all wealth and power are concentrated in a ruling elite; when the courts, prisons, police, spies, and military serve them alone; when due process has gone the way of habeas corpus; when the walls have ears; when you will confess, accept your chains. (Only $19.95) 

Always remember: capitalism works best when each of us works to be the invisible hand's little helping hand.

Tony Baloney

Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah
Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah
Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah
Tony Baloney
Tony Baloney

Tony Baloney
Thinks that pepper spray's all right
Tony Baloney
peaceful women scream tonight:

Why did he mace me?
Has he no heart?
Police and the law are
so far apart.

But Tony Baloney
knows why
I cry
Tony Baloney.

Dum-dum-dum-capsicum spray
will burn your freedom away.
Strafing a woman's OK
to Tony Baloney.

Tony Baloney
has a hate-on, that's for sure.
Tony Baloney
knows his spray is premature.

Maybe Viagra
makes him that way:
Vicious Niagras
of fuming spray
you've got to take—
it's another outrage
from Tony Baloney.

Dum-dum-dum-where is the law?


(The latest news on Anthony Bologna, the NYC deputy inspector who pepper-sprayed peaceful female protesters at an Occupy Wall Street rally appears to be this. As you can see from the video, I do not prepend the adjective "peaceful" out of partisan habit. The women were complying with the restraint cage held up by Inspector Bologna's fellow officers and were no threat to anyone. It's true they were shouting to be heard, but in a democracy it is permissible to be audible)

The Good Guys

This morning I was thinking the plot of the Fox television series "24" is always a ticking bomb, and in every season, Jack Bauer is forced, forced, to torture someone, but that's OK, because there's this ticking bomb, and besides, we're the good guys. Aren't we?

Why do we think we are the good guys? Just because? For no reason, no matter what we do? Or do we think we are the good guys because we have boundaries, because there are things we would not do? If it is the latter, then at what point, if any, do the crimes we excuse on the grounds that "we're the good guys," cause us to to cease to be the good guys?

The Drat Equation

In the spirit of the Drake Equation, I offer the Drat Equation: an attempt to estimate the number of future "China Syndrome" nuclear power plant meltdowns:

N=Y·(E+G+H+S)

N is the number of meltdowns we can expect during Y, the total reactor-years until we shut down all fission reactors. To estimate N, Y is multiplied by the sum of all the risk-factors inside the parenthesis. We would like that total risk to be very, very small; if we plan to use fission as a bridge out of carbon, thus makng Y very big, we would like the total risk to be something like k × 10^-macy's —a zero and a decimal with a Thanksgiving Day Parade of zeros trailing after, and all of the floats decorated with brightly colored zeros, then, at the very end, a small car full of klowns.

E is the probability, per reactor-year, of a catastrophic engineering failure—the chance that a properly built, maintained and operated nuclear power plant was unfortunately designed by a team of lunatics, and the design checked by an independent team of interior decorators who failed to notice that a giant propeller beanie, while certainly a brilliant use of space and color, is not a proper containment dome. We will set E to zero. As we shall see, it makes no difference.

G is the act of God factor. Any unforeseen circumstance, such as a 9.0 earthquake and a tsunami when you were expecting pizza and beer. Thanks to Fukushima, we can estimate G: As of December 30th, 2004, total reactor-years was 11,695. Since then @440 reactors, and two new reactors coming on line added @3,090 reactor-years so, rounding up a bit, G≅3/15,000 or 0.0002, but as we shall see, it does not matter.

H is human error—not a bad hair day, but someone saying, "Hey, let's see what this baby can do!" We can derive it from Chernobyl: H≅0.00007, but as we shall see, it does not matter.

S is the sociopathy factor, the probability that somewhere, sometime, swinish self-interest will overrule sanity, or cut one corner too many. It represents the number of sociopaths, on average, involved in the design, construction, and operation of nuclear power plants, weighted by their authority—their ability to do harm. For instance, a sociopath interior decorator might equal 0, while a sociopath CEO could equal 1,000 or more.

It might seem that S must be pretty small, since we've had only a few teensy incidents in all of the 15,000 reactor-years of nuclear plant operation. The trouble is, S varies by culture, and culture varies over time. A lot. So the past may not be a reliable predictor of the future.

Especially important is the number of sociopaths in positions of authority. Since the inception of nuclear power, average CEO pay has skyrocketed. In 2010, the CEO of GE received nearly $10,000,000 in "compensation." Chumming the water with money like that is not how you attract people who love the work (observe that they must be "compensated"). It is how you attract sharks. GE's chief bean-counter (who is paid to cut corners) was "compensated" even more. $14,000,000 is a lot of corner-cutting. 

We can infer from the "so-far-we've only had four catastrophes" safety record of nuclear power that when we began to build our first nuclear power plants, most people in the industry were responsible and careful. But the companies involved weren't chumming the waters for sharks in those days. The USA™ of 2011 is a very different place. The USA™ of 2011 is a kleptocracy. In a kleptocracy, the majority of people in power are sociopaths. In a kleptocracy, S could be huge. Frankly, I think it less dangerous to build a nuclear power plant on top of a giant pile of banana peels than to build one in Bedrock, Kansas, USA™, circa 2011.

In a kleptocracy, S swamps every other risk factor, all of the preceding calculations become meaningless mathisms, and the Drat Equation reduces to

N=Y·S

As the US continues to descend into kleptocracy, S will approach 1.0.

I would like to suggest to GE's CFO that a great deal of time, effort and, most-of-all, money could be saved if, instead of trying to shave another corner off the next Mark I, GE simply hired the Chinese to build a pool of radioactive slag. In that way, the Chinese could choose the location, and it would save the President of the United States an embarrassing phone call:

"…Well, we're not sure, but we think…Beijing…" 

It's a win-win.

If we could leave the dratted S out of the equation, maybe we could use nuclear power for a short time to shut down coal plants while we transition to a renewable grid. But we cannot do that. Not in this country. Because this country is a kleptocracy, and in a kleptocracy you cannot leave the S out of any equation.

Of course, in a kleptocracy, the people don't get to decide whether nuclear power plants get built, or by whom, nor how long or safely they might be operated, so all of this has been an exercise in pure mathematics: Unlike the Drake Equation, the Drat Equation has no practical application.

On the bright side, as S approaches unity, reactors will be melting down faster than new ones can be built, so the end of nuclear power is in sight.

How Can You Tell if There's an Elephant in Your Math Club?

By the pi on it's breath? 

I don't understand it. Whenever I casually remark that pi contains an infinite number of elephant jokes, I get pitying looks. Since the prospect of endless elephant jokes would surely delight anyone, I can only suppose that I am not believed. Let me explain: 

3.14159265… 

Those three dots at the end of this expansion of pi, the "ellipsis" aka "marks of elision" aka "naughty bits" (I suppose, since they are customarily left off) are what I'm talking about. That's where the elephant jokes are. In there, the "and so-on, ad infitum" of pi. 

“And so on” what? 

You know. Forever. Not lover's vows forever, but the real thing, the big lazy eight, infinity. Out of which, absolutely anything that can happen must happen, infinitely many times. 

Moreover, if you try to guess the next digit hiding in that ellipsis, you have exactly one chance in ten of being right. and that's not just because you're guessing. Humans are good at recognizing patterns, if any exist. Almost as good as elephants. 

Statisticians say we are right; there is no pattern. No, the elephants did not intimidate them. (OK, a little) They counted. Any digit 0-9 has an equal chance of being the next to pop out of the ellipses. It's as if there was a random digit generator in there. 

Except there isn't. It's pi. The unpredictability disappears as soon as you know that and where you are in the sequence. But you have to know where you are, or no dice—I mean, yes, dice. Die. One ten sided die. But not—I want to emphasize this—made out of ivory. 

I understand that among mathematicians it is good form to say “pi is normal,”(meaning the digits in pi are normally distributed) because if you say “pi is random” it's apt to start a food fight. On the other hand, one time I said “pi is random” and got laid.

Since pi is random and endless, we can very easily answer such questions as, “Does 0123456789 appear anywhere in pi?” The answer is yes, infinitely many times. “Oh yeah? Well, what about a hundred zeros in a row?” Same answer. And, before you ask, 314195265… is there, too, in sufficient length to have mathematicians biting their nails until some digit finally strays and there is a great sigh of relief. Infinity is like the old joke about a totalitarian country: anything that is not forbidden is mandatory. None of the above is forbidden, just highly improbable.

To go from digits to the all-important elephant jokes, we could make up a substitution cipher. But we don't need to make up our own. Let's use the one you're looking at now. We can easily expand pi in binary and, voila! Gibberish…and some of it not printable. OK, let's expand pi to the base of the computer's unicode character set. Still gibberish. But printable.

An infinite string of printable pi, and somewhere in that gibberish will be the treasure we seek: elephant jokes! Not just one or two, nor thousands nor millions, but an infinite number of elephant jokes! Elephant jokes in every language on earth, living, dead, and yet to be. Elephant jokes in Klingon. (The Federation could avert tragedies…or possibly cause one) And since we have them in a form computers can work with, we can seek them out efficiently. World—nay, universal—peace would ensue. 

Would it surprise you to learn that I have already written a program that does this? Of course, by the time an ordinary supercomputer—or even a game box—could find even one elephant joke in pi, politicians would have stopped lying, so I had to build a quantum computer. Off to the hardware store.

Writing the software was the worst part  I don't recommend quantum debugging at all. Still, one night last week, the reward for my all my hard work was nigh. The program produced its first output:

I just flew in from Nairobi, and boy are my ears tired.

This wasn't even the correct form, but the algorithm is heuristic. It learns. I pressed the punishment key and it tried again. 

Take my wife's fleas.

Punish.

Knock, knock…

Punish! Punish! Punish!

How can you tell if there's a fruit bat in the bath with you? They hog the soap.

Classic, as to form, but fruit bat? Still, I pushed the reward key.

How does a fruit bat hide in the jello? Are you kidding? It's a fruit bat!

This "fruit bat" fixation might be leading it astray. Reward, punish.

What did the elephant say to the fruit bat? Nothing. Fruit bats can't talk.

Hm. Reward, reward, punish.

How does an elephant get in touch with its higher power? By ringing it up. 

Weak. But a real elephant joke. Success at last! Reward, reward, reward! I celebrated appropriately. The next day, appropriately hung over, I looked at what the program had been churning out.

How can you find an elephant in pi? Follow its tracks.

Can elephants calculate the millionth digit of pi? They don't have to. They'd just remember it.

Wow. How many digits of pi can an elephant remember? About 314,159,265.

OK. But could an elephant calculate pi? Sure. It would just use circular reasoning.

I could see a judicious application of the punishment key might improve the output, but a pattern was beginning to emerge…

Are elephants good at math? Weren't you paying attention just now?

How can you tell if there's an elephant in your math club? Ask it to recite pi. If it's still talking at the end of the meeting, its an elephant. If it says nothing, it's a fruit bat.

So, are elephants good at math? To a degree.

Then I suppose they must be educated? To a degree. Quite a few, actually. It's why they're good at circular reasoning.

How do you keep an elephant from walking in circles? Move the decimal.

How do you keep two elephants from walking in circles? Move it two places.

Can you tell if there's an elephant in your house? Yes. There will be one elephant circling your house. Unless you moved the decimal, then no.

Where do elephants go when they die? To the elision fields.

How do you know if an elephant is saintly? By the radians.

Do all of the elephant jokes in pi reference it in some way? You should ask an elephant. They're good at math, you know.

You see the pattern. It led me to an unexpected and exciting result, mcwbr's first, last and only  theorem:  

All of the elephant jokes in pi allude to pi.

Theorem, I say, because I have found a simple and elegant proof of it, which, however, is too large to fit in the margins of this blog.

America’s Nut Factory

Faith had just explained to her class that—even supposing fossils are real—which they aren't—whenever a new fossil is found, that would just mean that now there are two gaps in the so-called fossil record. She paused, savoring the neatness of the argument. The kids were a little young, but they were looking up at her attentively, and none of them seemed puzzled—except, of course, Clara, who raised her hand.

"Yes, Clara. What is it?"

"But, Mrs. Bottom, wouldn't the gaps get littler and littler?"

"Well, I suppose so, but there would always be gaps, wouldn't there?"

"Yes, but…" Ten year old Clara struggled. There was something wrong, but what? "When I walk to school, there are gaps between my steps, but I still get here." Dissatisfied, she bit her lip.

"But footsteps aren't fossils are they, Clara?" Faith looked around the class for support, and several of the kids dutifully snickered. More turned to stare at the heretic in their midst.

Clara knew better than to press on, but she couldn't help it. "Well, what about when we play connect the dots? If they are close together, you can see what the picture is going to be. Unless you just pretend you can't."

"I think you are the one who pretends she can." More snickering. "Besides, it doesn't matter, Clara. Satan put fossils in the ground to deceive us."

Knowing she should just shut up, Clara wailed, "But why would God let him?"

"Now, that's enough, young lady. Are you questioning the will of God? Should I speak to your parents?"

Miserable and terrified, Clara gave in. "No, ma'am." After class, when the other kids were sing-songing "Clara's going to he-ell," she resolved, not for the first time, never to ask any more questions.

Where do they come from, the people who seem ready to promote a point of view by any means, foul or fouler? Fundy school, of course. Compulsion of some kind, and deceit of every kind, are essential to the fundamentalist community. Irrational beliefs cannot be sustained otherwise.

When children are taught such nonsense as creationism, they don't just learn the nonsense. They also learn the bogus arguments offered in support of it. They learn about straw men, equivocation, appeal to authority, to the stick, to the crowd, etc, not as counterfeits to be rejected, but as sound coin of the realm of thought, accepted in all the commerce of their synapses. They become as if brain damaged, almost physiologically incapable of grasping why such argument is worthless.

Such is the fate of those to those who, unlike Clara, are not naturally bright enough to suspect something wrong with the "truths" their preacher, their parents, their Fundy School teachers insist upon. They are the lucky ones. Clara's future could be darker.

It isn't enough just to repress the normal curiosity of a child and stop asking questions. The fundamentalist community cannot brook mere acquiescence. Clara must give service of word and deed to ideas she doubts. She is terrified of hell, and wants to believe, but a sane person cannot believe something merely because she is afraid of the consequences of disbelief. Only a crazy person can do that. If the strain is too great for her, Clara may have a psychotic break—become delusional—just to convince herself she believes what she does not.

There is another possibility: If Clara is smart enough and can bear the strain long enough, she may discover that hell is a lie, that all the things the adults in her life insist she must believe—or else—are lies. By learning, precociously, to think for herself, she can escape their delusions.

This may seem a liberating step, but if Clara would also escape whipping she cannot let anyone know what her real beliefs are. She must be a conscious hypocrite. She must tell people, not what she thinks, but what they want to hear. When you do that, people don't treat you cruelly. Better, they can be talked into doing things for you. The isolation of a child in such circumstances is profound, and her contempt grows with her skills at manipulation. She is a nascent sociopath.

I hope Clara will escape both these evils, with no damage worse than years of therapy can manage. Many do. Many more, I fear, do not.

Fundy School is child abuse. Its product is damaged and dangerous adults, ready to lie for Jesus, or against global warming, or for a faith-based capitalism that would privatize everything but privacy. The only guide to "truth" they can conceive is authority. They admire what they perceive as strength—not character, but wealth, power and thuggishness—and are contemptuous of those they think weak. They are capable of atrocities in the name of Jesus or Mohamed, and incapable of perceiving the contradiction, or caring if they do. Like many abused children, they have grown up to become abusers, with an inner rage that longs for violence, providing they can feel righteous as they kill. So they wait, impatiently, for the Leader to tell them who the Jews are, this time.