Regionalism, here we go again.

Gematria Coincidences?

According to the calculations I made with the help of this website, it appears that Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, have more in common (from the perspective of Gematria) than one might think. Not only did the two die within four (4) days of one another, but the gematria of גראלד פורד is 528, half of which is 264. Now 264 is exactly 16 (that is 4*4) more than 248, the gematria of סדם חוסיין. In other words, Saddam is 4*4 less than half the man Gerald Ford was and note the significance of the number four here. Can this be mere coincidence?

Why is this not a joke?

On Miriam's urging I went to the site No Santa Clause for Hazleton and poked around. At first I was convinced, particularly after watching the sorry TV spot, that the website was satire, poking fun at the crusade against illegal aliens. After a little more study, however, I realized that they were serious. My question for the moment is what about the site (e.g. language, presentation, etc) convinced me that the author of the site is earnest about his or her beliefs? What properties key us into the intended meaning?

Update: Because it is a joke. Shumli 1 Zev 0.

Here is an obvious example of evolution at work. 

S'iz Shver Tzu Zein a Yid

If I can't look pretentious, I will have to look pretentiously. Mmmmmm, baby squid and fried chickpeas.....

Seriously tough, the number of artistic pleasures denied to orthoprax Jews is quite large. Restaurants, for starters, the vast majority of wines, architecture of great churches and the great art therein, fashion (as it relates to men looking at women), opera/musicals. I wonder what people with taste do in the afterlife?

Never Happened

What a wonderful publicity stunt for the State of Israel. Generally I tip my hat to the crafty nature of Ahmadinajad for his carefully balanced political act, but I think he has made a true miscalculation here. Israel, to a large degree, exists because of the crimes of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitic rhetoric of the 19th century panned out in the worst way and the Nations of the World understood, for a brief moment, that the Jews needed Israel (I am waxing poetic, and will desist shortly). By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust, you are setting yourself up for every survivor, every historian, every archivist with a passion for mid-20th century affairs to dig up every shred of support to the myth (and there are quite a few such shreds). This is not like the heliocentric model of the universe, it is the most well documented genocide in the history of the world.

By calling into question the myth of the Holocaust you only cause that myth to grow and entrench itself into the consciousness of the welt. Those who forget or become dispassionate suddenly see a call to action. There can be no greater aid for the State of Israel than to give cause for the world to reexamine how truly awful that episode really was.

Coincidence?

Is it sheer coincidence that Milton Friedman's death and Pinochet's death occurred within a month of each other? I'm betting that several such stories will come out in the coming weeks.

Doesn't anybody appreciate a good Cleon-bashing monologue these days?

Snortle

I thought I invented a word today. Apparently not (#2). Well had I, it would mean:

Snortle (v)- a snorted chortle.

Although Answers.com defined a chortle that way from the get-go, I do not find sound basis for such a liberal definition.

ION (in Other News) a first for me, impressing RFS (Random friendly Stranger) by association to Herbert Hauptman. To all those NS (Nay Sayers), ha! Random mathematicians/crystallographers do carry currency!

Also, kudos to NPR. When they say, "Go to NPR.org to find out more." they really mean it. Linking to arXiv would be about all the More one could ask for.

Profound

I found this on Facebook today. What a wonderful insight.

Reg=Ministry of Love

posted by a William Clark. It is the Ministry of Love, isn't it.

BD"H

Milton Friedman passed away today. He was 94. There are many jokes which can be made about free lunches and optimizing markets. I will not make any.

A Thumpin'

What constitutes a thumpin'? According to Pres. Bush today:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You just described the election results as a "thumping."
THE PRESIDENT: I said the cumulative -- make sure -- who do you write for?
Q The New York Times, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, that's right. (Laughter.) Let's make sure we get it -- the facts. I said that the elections were close; the cumulative effect --
Q Is a thumping.
THE PRESIDENT: -- thumping. (Laughter.)

I will, for the moment, have to respectfully disagree with the President. My dispute with Mr. President lies in my hypothesis that elections tend towards the mean. That is to say that people like close elections, and when polls spread candidates too far apart, you will generally see a correction of sorts. Generally. That being said I do not believe that given a long enough X(time) the curves will intersect. There seem to be districts which poll very close, but have a very large lean towards one party over the other. That is not to say that a heavily Democrat district will ever swing red, but it might correct itself so as not to thump one candidate over the other.

That being said, the President's remarks seem to indicate a different view on election results, some sort of randomness. Let's say, for the moment, that in the contested races the average victory was +/-2% which we can approximate to an equal likelihood for either candidate to win, given enough events. When the President said that, "Look, this was a close election. If you look at race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping." What he must have been saying was that every race was close, but given the number of events, which are in themselves 50/50, we just saw a run of one particular outcome. It's like flipping a coin 1000 times and getting 8 heads in a row; it does not mean that your coin or probability is broken.

But the President conceded in his remarks that the electorate was sending a message, which means that the aggregate effect was related to the individual events. It only appeared close because of the hypothesis I stated above. The President could only be correct if he truly believed the Democrat swing was a random series of events.

Groove pointed out to me that the President might have meant that it was only a small portion of the vote that actually swung the election. 45% are going to vote one way or the other every time, so it is the 10% which actually mattered, and they collectively combined to a large aggregate effect, but that it does not necessarily culminate to a democratic "wave." My answer to this is just that every election is defined by the middle. A thumpin' then must be defined by the context of elections which are fought at the margins. Thus for one party to win the majority of the middle in every election ipso facto constitutes a thumpin'.

Thank you President Bush for using such an awesome word and allowing me to write this post about thumpins'.

Wide...Center???

Figuring that Tom Toles was originally from Buffalo, Norwood's kick must go through his mind when he sketches this stuff.

Two great cartoons for your viewing pleasure:

Just Kidding

Apparently, Thomas Jefferson should have penned, "We hold these truths to be self evident...most of the time, but some times, when we think its a good idea, they're not so evident."
I was just reading through the text of S. 3930 otherwise sited as the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" when I came across the article §948b(g) which stipulates that

17 GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF RIGHTS.—No alien unlawful enemy combat-
18 ant subject to trial by military commission under this
19 chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source
20 of rights.

...most of the time.
Or as the ever amusing Keith Olberman puts it: Why does Habeas Corpus hate America?

Note: For those with a legal eye in the audience, I am not making a truly legal argument. Yes, I recognize that for instance, the Geneva Conventions are not constitutionally guaranteed. But there is still a discussion to be had regarding these "issues."

Crescat Sententia

Crescat Sententia lives. And although it has changed from a suffix of .org to .net I have full faith that it will retain its impeccable insight despite the move.

But why the move? Because the free market is filled with poopheads. But maybe they are just optimizing the market, what do I know?

Another strike against Penn

Clifford Geertz died Tuesday of complications following heart surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was 80.

Geertz was one of the first texts I read in college that made me go, "Oh, my God, he's right!" I hope heaven is full of Balian cockfights, for your sake.

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The best day of the year

What is the best day of the year? I am sure that many of you think that this is up for contention or a mere matter of opinion. Nope, it's not. It is the day which is more of a day than any other day. The Last Sunday in October-day, of course! That is the most marvelous of days in which the regular 24 hour day magically becomes 25 hours long! So for all of you complainers, workaholics and procrastinators carpe that extra hour on Sunday and use it well.

Consider this a throw-down of the gauntlet to all those other scant 24 hours days to beef themselves up a bit...oh yeah, and change your clocks back one hour this Sunday morning, or you will be really early to everything.

Hard Candy

This has got be one of the darkest, bleakest movies I have ever seen. I will leave it to you to watch it or not (though be warned, it is very gruesome) but the thing that bothers me about the movie is the appearance of moral equivalence. The producers of this movie want to give the appearance of a dilemma when really there is none. The movie is very finely acted (and I would be very surprised if Page did not get a best actress nomination out of it), but at it's core is numbing and slightly boring. After a half an hour, you have basically seen all there is to see.

All I need is a soundtrack

I saw A Beautiful Mind last night. It was a solid movie, with the best part being that I stopped the movie half way through, kind of disappointed, only to realize that I was just at the fulcrum of the whole flick. I have decided that if you put James Horner (or any relatively adept score composer) to anyone's life it would be interesting. I think Saturday Night Live has spoofed this idea before, but it is quite true.