Religion-crippled reason

I guess God hates logic

Noah Hutchings is the superannuated leader of the Southwest Radio Church. His radio broadcasts are replete with numerological arguments (God the Master Mathematician) for various wacky Christian dogmas and earnest warnings about the imminent apocalypse. Hutchings isn't quite crazy enough to set dates in the manner of Harold Camping, but he demonstrates his lack of basic reasoning skills in virtually every radio program.

The July 6 installment of Bible in the News took President Obama to task for having issued a proclamation that designated June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.” Hutchings quoted a line that was actually from Obama's 2009 declaration: “I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions.... These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants.”

Hutchings draws the obvious conclusion from the president's statement: “In other words, President Obama says that homosexuals are better than heterosexuals.”

Yeah, I can see that. In a world where “equal rights” immediately equate to “special rights” when certain minorities are concerned, it makes complete sense that praising the qualifications of gay individuals is tantamount to proclaiming them better than straight people. If your brain is sufficiently god-rotted, you can follow this line of reasoning, too.

Hutchings went on to say, “ He has indeed appointed, according to reports, over 150 to high government positions—many more than heterosexuals.” Oh, yes. The president has fewer than 300 government positions to fill by appointment, so 150 LGBT appointments constitute a clear majority of Obama's administration.

I think the statements by Mr. Hutchings are as stupid as any I've ever heard. Perhaps he will now declare that I am therefore claiming he is more stupid than anyone else. ... Damn. This time he might be right!

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Punctuation for thee and me

Bringing reason to a full stop

The back page of a recent Answers Update (Vol. 18, No. 6) carries a bright little apologetic nugget by Ken Ham himself, the strikingly australopithecine leader of Answers in Genesis. Ham is talking about the earth's effing magnetic field. How does it work?

[G]eophysical and archaeological evidence indicates that 1,000 years ago, the magnetic field of the earth was 40% stronger than today. This field is actually decaying at a rate of 5% per century.

The decay rate may not sound like much, but it's a very important factor in determining the age of the earth. Using the current rate of decay, it's been calculated that just a million years ago, the magnetic field would have been so strong that it would have melted the planet! ...

Creationist physicists declare that the magnetic field is a very strong indicator that our planet cannot be any older than 10,000 years. This, of course, confirms the roughly 6,000-year timeline in the book of Genesis.

Please don't be distracted by Ham's use of amusing little oxymorons like “creationist physicists.” We can easily detect what he is up to. There's a useful word to describe the theoretical foundation for Ham's argument:

Uniformitarianism.

Obvious. Right? Ham is assuming that conditions affecting the earth's magnetic field have remained exactly the same throughout history. What else is that besides uniformitarianism? Of course, Ham might beg to differ. Let's see how he described uniformitarianism in the 1987 edition of his book The Lie: Evolution:

Geologists have the idea that the processes we see operating in the present world have been going on for millions of years at essentially the same rate, and will probably go on for millions of years into the future as well. The technical word used in geology for this belief is “uniformitarianism.” For example, the desert museum in Tucson, Arisona, not only has a display for people to see what supposedly has happened over the past millions of years, but it also has a display of what many scientists believe will happen to Arizona over the millions of years yet to come!

Evolutionists, atheistic and theistic, use the phrase “the present is the key to the past.” In other words, they say that the way to understand the past is to observe what happens in the present.”

Bingo! Ham's magnetic-field argument for a young earth is a page ripped right out of the uniformitarianism playbook. He stands self-accused.

One imagines that Ham might wish to quibble. He could claim that he was using a reductio ad absurdum argument—or proof by contradiction—having demonstrated that the assumption of uniformitarianism leads to an impossibly high level of magnetic flux in the prehistoric past.

Sorry. That won't work. He is not just arguing that an old earth is impossible. Ham explicitly declares that some simple computations provide evidence consistent with a young earth. He is making a “pro” argument for his position every bit as much as he is making a “con” argument against his opponents (which constitute 99% of the scientific community).

Ham may not like uniformitarianism, but he is certainly willing to use it when it suits him. Perhaps he needs to create a new label for it. May I suggest “punctuated uniformitarianism”? He can use it to argue that physical laws and natural processes are uniform between occasional catastrophes—like his magnetic-field argument.

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A bag of tricks

Stop making sense!

I remember when “Massha” enrolled in my algebra class. Recognize the name? She's a character created by Robert Lynn Asprin in his Myth Adventures fantasy series. He introduced her in the third volume, Myth Directions, well before the long string of pun-obsessed novels became rather labored.

My student lacked the bright orange hair or heroic girth that characterized Massha, but she reminded me of Asprin's creation because of the way she preferred to do algebra. The fictional Massha was described as a “mechanic”—or even “no-talent mechanic”—by other characters in the novels because she used amulets and other physical trinkets to cast her spells. She possessed no actual magical talents, but relied entirely on magical devices.

The Massha in my class drove the point home time and again whenever I tried to explain a procedure and she would counter with a memorized algorithm, as if that pre-empted any further discussion. It was an occasional irritant, but she was entirely sincere in her approach. She had found success in treating math as a collection of miscellaneous tricks and she resisted any attempt to explore below the surface. As far as our Massha was concerned, that was just a dangerous distraction.

A particularly clear case arose while we were discussing the solution of rational equations. These are nothing more than equations that contain rational expressions. For example,

is a rational equation. One of the glorious principles of algebra is that you can do just about anything to one side of an equation as long as you do the same thing to the other side. In the case of a rational equation, you can use this principle to eliminate all of the denominators. Just multiply both sides of the equation by the least common denominator of all of the rational expressions! For the given example, the least common denominator is x(x − 1). Multiplying both sides results in massive cancellation and simplification:

Since algebra students seem to regard operations involving division with more trepidation than anything else, I can usually engage their enthusiasm for a process that destroys all denominators. It has its moment of messiness, but the results are clean and rational (no math joke intended). I leave it as an exercise to the reader to complete the demonstration that x = −2.

Massha was not content with my demonstration. She wanted to rephrase things in her own way, which I'm normally inclined to encourage, as it indicates the student is assimilating the knowledge. What she said, however, disturbed me:

“Do we have to show our work and cancel things or can I just do it the way I learned it? I was taught that you compare each term to the LCD and give the term the part of the LCD that it's missing. Is that all right?”

I looked back at the problem on the board. Massha knew the LCD was x(x − 1). She would consider 3/x, observe that it lacked the x − 1 and “give” it that factor. At the same time, presumably, she would drop the factor x, which it did have in common with the LCD.

“And you drop whatever it already has in common with the LCD?” I prompted.

She nodded her head. “Just do that to every term,” she said. “It's faster!”

Massha had a magic amulet from her bag of tricks. She had memorized a procedure that saved her from writing the messy cancellation step because it algorithmically led her to the same result without actually justifying it. The juice had been squeezed out of the algebraic process and the dried husk preserved the result if not the rationale.

I pondered.

“Since this is our first encounter with rational equations in this class, I want everyone to show a step-by-step justification for our simplifications. Later on, when we return to rational equations in terms of applications, I'll let people reduce the amount of work they show. For now, though, always write down the LCD and show the step of multiplying through by it and reducing.”

Massha scowled at me.

“But I already know how to do this!” she complained.

“I am confirming that your short-cut is a valid algorithm,” I replied, “but I will be holding everyone to the same standard of completeness in presenting solutions.”

Massha was unhappy much of the semester. She had a keen memory, had had algebra before (so why was she in my class?), and retained quite an array of solution gimmicks. I was happy for her (sort of), but her view of mathematics had been reduced to the rote application of algorithms. It was enough for her to do well in class, but she chafed at every requirement to justify her solutions. She would have found a kindred spirit in the algebra student who had been in one of my previous classes. When I finished demonstrating the derivation of the quadratic formula, that student rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, Mr. Z, are you explaining things again? Why didn't you just give us the formula?”

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Hit bottom, kept digging

Conservapedia finds new lows

When P.Z. Myers shared the happy news that Conservapedia honored him with its article of the week, I naturally had to see for myself how he was being celebrated over at Andrew Schlafly's Fortress of Ineptitude. It was a fun-filled visit, punctuated with peals of sudden laughter at the many pages of inadvertent humor.

These guys are funny.

While I was there, I had to revisit the Conservapedia entry on President Obama, which I cruelly mocked in a post last year, just before the presidential inauguration. Naturally, I was curious to see whether it had been improved in any way.

The answer depends on whether your metric involves laughter.

Here is the opening paragraph:

Barack Hussein Obama II (birth name Barry Soetoro,[1][2][3] allegedly born in Honolulu August 4, 1961[4][5][6][7][8]) is the 44th President of the United States, and the first President who is biracial. He previously was associated with several radical causes[9] and served less than four years as a first-term Democratic Senator from Illinois (2005-2008).

Try to remember that this is supposed to be a source of reliable information (“The Trustworthy Encyclopedia,” they claim). Were you able to spot any mistakes? I admit I wondered how the president's birth name could be “Barry Soetoro” given that Lolo Soetoro was his step-father and was nowhere on the scene when Barack was born. Both birth announcements in contemporary Hawaiian newspapers reported that the father was Barack H. Obama. The president's birth certificate (I know, I know; Schlafly and his crew refuse to accept Hawaii's official document) gives his name as “Barack Hussein Obama II.”

No Soetoro.

After a flub like that, I'm surprised that Conservapedia got his presidential number right. Yes, it is 44. They also noticed that he did not serve out his term as U.S. senator. Good catch! (Getting elected president does that to you.)

Upon taking office Obama promised relief for unemployed workers and warned failure to pass his proposed stimulus scheme would turn a “crisis into a catastrophe.”[10][11] The unemployment rate has hovered in the 10% range throughout his presidency, up significantly from the 7.8% rate in January 2009. Since passage of the president's stimulus package, 2.4 million Americans have been added to the unemployment rolls.[12]

Conservapedia loves post hoc, propter hoc insinuations. The stimulus package passed and then unemployment soared. There are two reasons for that which most sane people are able to identify: (1) the stimulus package wasn't big enough (and Paul Krugman warned us, too!) and (2) the collapse of the U.S. economy under the Bush administration still had plenty of momentum in January 2009, right when its chief enablers scrambled out of town. Who knows how much worse off we might be without the cushioning effect of the stimulus package (which, once again, was not large enough).

After the “War on Terror” was abandoned during his first year in office the rate of terrorist attacks on the United States has gone from zero per year during George W. Bush's last year, [13] to at least four.[14][15][16][17][18].

Such careful choosing of time periods! (Cherry-picking, anyone?) Why not compare Obama's first year with Bush's first year. Oh, yes. September 11. Too bad about ignoring terrorist threats until it was too late (and then exaggerating them for political benefit and war justification). I will admit, however, that I like the quotes around the “War on Terror.” Is Conservapedia admitting that the president is merely avoiding some of the cant phrases and reducing the bully-boy rhetoric that characterized the Bush-Cheney years? That's certainly a relief. In the meantime, in terms of reality, Obama is aggressive against terror in ways that may or may not pay off. You know, little things. Little things like tripling the number of drone attacks against targets in Pakistan. I have my doubts about it, but the Conservapedists should be yelling their heads off in support.

The president is not anything close to a pacifist, but his actions are not loud enough or indiscriminate enough to please the troglodytes who live in the dark caverns of Conservapedia.

President Obama authorized offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico[19] and has been widely criticized for mishandling the “worst environmental disaster in US history.”[20][21] Obama declared, “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”[22][23][24]

Well, generally they don't cause spills. There's only one that really causing trouble right now. Of course, it's a doozy. That's the catch. One big spill can do gigabucks of damage. That's why many people reacted negatively to the president's comments about authorizing more oil drilling. However, the drill that spilled was in place long before Obama said anything. The disaster was a legacy of Bush administration neglect and lack of enforcement of safety standards and procedures.

The Gulf spill might, of course, have been mitigated if the Obama administration had promptly ramped up safety inspections and enforcement of maintenance regulations, but I can easily imagine how Schlafly and his minions would have reacted. “Anti-business!” (I think it was Stalin—or was it Hitler?—who was really keen on state enforcement of safety regulations.)

Did you notice the sly post-hoc implication of the paragraph's initial compound sentence? (1) Obama authorized drilling. (2) Worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Sentences like this don't get constructed by accident. Schlafly really wants readers of Conservapedia to think that BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster was the direct consequence of Obama's statement about offshore oil drilling.

The president's words are powerful.

The initial paragraphs of Conservapedia's entry on Barack Obama is all of a piece. A piece of propaganda. The article deliberately misleads. That's curious, isn't it? The overtly religious perpetrators of such mendacity are evidently so full of good intentions that they regard themselves exempt from the commandment about bearing false witness.

The morality of the people at Conservapedia is very much like the God they purport to follow. There's damned little evidence for the existence of either.

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Dad endorses conspiracy theory

Masters of the universe

My politically benighted father has shared with me yet another classic of the forwarded-wisdom genre. Although I have told him (many more times than once) that one is unlikely to find trenchant political wisdom in poorly formatted, multiply forwarded e-mail screeds, he cannot resist sending me some of the iron pyrite nuggets that drop into his AOL mail box. The latest example is fairly typical of the right-wing spam with which he favors me. It's a tribute to the power of politicians. It's really much greater than you might imagine. No, really!

They control everything.

Yeah. Sure.

I'm always conflicted about the proper way to react when these chunks of nonsense show up in my in-box. Initially, I'm insulted that he thinks I could be persuaded by such lame manifestos. Then I'm embarrassed that my father swallows such tripe without blinking. Finally, I simply ash-can the message or—if I just can't resist it—I zing back with a tart response.

This was one of those zinger occasions.

It didn't help that Dad included his endorsement instead of merely forwarding the spam:

“This really got it right. This is what is happening to our country and I do not like it!!!!”

No, Dad. Multiple exclamation points do not add to the weight of the argument. They just don't.

This is part of what followed:

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?. . . .

Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day. Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years. It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!

EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE..

545 vs. 300,000,000 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them...Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered: If all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees. We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper. What you do with this article now that you have read it.

No one should be surprised to learn that the editorial supposedly written by Mr. Reese of the Orlando Sentinel is not quite as advertised. It has been severely “improved” by clumsy hands as it's been passed from one right-winger to another. I omitted the extensive coda in Dad's version that included a long list of taxes, all of which are horrible crimes against humanity. I especially enjoyed the breathless claim that “Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.” Why was that amusing?

The list included the Telephone Federal Excise Tax, the Gasoline Tax, and the Recreational Vehicle Tax.

I think I have a clue why none of those terrible taxes existed in 1910. I also doubt that their non-existence was a key factor in the nation's prosperity back then. (It didn't even prevent the panic of 1910-11.)

As I previously admitted, I could not resist sending Dad a slightly snarky response.

Dear Dad:

The original version was published by Charley (not “Charlie”) Reese in 1995, when the Republicans ran Congress. He pointed out that the GOP only pretends to want balanced budgets, since they never pass any, even when in power. This version was edited with a right-wing slant to blame Democrats alone and also stuck in some nonsense about the supposed absolute power of the 545 senators and representatives to control the universe. To my knowledge, Reese never wrote anything as silly as

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Any political reporter who wrote that would apparently believe that Congress could have passed a law abolishing the Depression or mandating peace on earth or banning flash floods and earthquakes. Would that the world were that simple.

The “improved” version of Reese's editorial that you forwarded to me can be rebutted much too easily. Like this, for example:

• Every member of the House of Representatives is elected by the voters in his or her district. If a person is in the House, it's because the people in that district want that person in the House.
• Every member of the Senate is elected by the voters in his or her state (except for temporary interim appointments). If a person is in the Senate, it's because the people in that state want that person in the Senate.
• The Congress is elected by the people of the United States. Therefore the Congress is the representative body that the people want.

Above all, do not let anyone con you into thinking that there exists some disembodied political forces like “radical liberals” or “environmental extremists” or “ACORN” or “George Soros” that prevent voters from electing the people they want in office.

And then, of course, these people control the universe.

The state of the world? It's all the fault of the masters of the universe. Yeah. We can blame it all on He-Man.

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The job satisfaction metric

Too much of a good thing?

California community colleges are a mixed lot, lacking the kind of central authority enjoyed(?) by the University of California or the California State University. Instead, the Golden State's 112 two-year colleges are broken up into 72 largely autonomous districts. The colleges have various reporting requirements to the state chancellor's office, but the chancellor has minimal direct authority over any of the individual colleges or districts.

That makes things more exciting. Community college districts don't march in lock-step. We wander in all directions. Sometimes the results aren't pretty, as when Compton College ceased to exist. (It lost its accreditation and was reduced to an educational center under the administration of neighboring El Camino College.) Or you can be like Sierra College and suffer from a fractious board of elected trustees who fire the president and spend as much time on political posturing as setting educational policy. Then there's Solano College, which played a game of brinksmanship with the accrediting authority for community colleges until a state-appointed trustee was imposed on it and an interim president was brought in to kick butt and stabilize the situation.

And I think we've all heard of San Francisco City College's shot-down trial balloon to allow corporate sponsorship of class sessions.

Normally, the less excitement you have, the better.

My friend Steve is mild-mannered and usually doesn't brag about how boring things are at his school, but it's difficult to remain modest when other school districts are cutting programs to the bone and yours is hanging in there. He has enough seniority now to fear no lay-offs, but Steve tells me they're not in the works at American River College and the other Los Rios institutions. (Apparently Los Rios did something weird and socked away a bunch of money in a contingency fund, into which they are now dipping. Unheard of!)

Steve admits that even the Los Rios colleges have to deal with reality in the Governator's dystopia, cutting back on class offerings and reducing (or eliminating!) teaching loads for part-time faculty and limiting overload teaching by full-time instructors. The lengthy budget crisis is taking its toll and now Los Rios faculty and staff are looking at creative remedies: pay cuts!

Faculty salaries are a big-ticket item at any college, of course, which is why cuts have already been imposed on UC and CSU campuses—generally by means of mandatory unpaid furlough days. Sierra College has similarly trimmed work schedules and salary costs. According to Steve, the idea for pay cuts in the Los Rios district actually came from a faculty member, not an administrator.

Hmm.

It appears the idea is that a voluntary pay cut would free up cash to support retention of class sections and adjunct faculty. (I hope the faculty gets a written guarantee that's where the money would go before they cough up part of their salaries.) Some members of the Los Rios community are willing to argue they are overpaid, so it would be easy to give up a little of the “excess.”

Fascinating.

Steve forwarded to me the most compelling argument in support of the claim that he and his colleagues are too richly remunerated. His cover note suggested that Steve was not entirely persuaded by the message writer's logic. Behold:

Subject: RE: Pay cuts are the answer!

I must agree with Professor C. I have been an adjunct instructor at ARC since roughly 1963 and I still love it. I have said that I would be willing to teach for nothing. Actually, I did teach one class for nothing and believe my students felt I was worth every penny of it. It is the only class I ever taught where I had more students at the end of the course than at the beginning.

I believe a 5%-10% pay cut is fully justified. When a colleague died at Sierra College a few years ago, I taught one of his classes for 20% less than ARC pays me and was happy to do it.

One way to tell that "the talent" may be overpaid is by considering the turnover rate. When an instructor quits at ARC, it is talked about for years. One professor at Sierra College told me that in the years from 1996 to 2004, exactly two professors had quit. One joined her husband who had been hired at Chico State and the other was hired by the Air Force Academy. How does this compare with the turnover rate at almost ANY other business?

You follow that line of reasoning? Excessive job satisfaction is evidence that monetary compensation is too high.

It makes a cruel kind of logic. Surely it would be more cost-effective to churn the faculty regularly by setting salaries as low as possible. Instructors would always be leaving and a big fraction of the faculty would always be on the first steps of the entry-level salary scale. Savings galore!

This concept could undoubtedly be extended to the banking industry, where we can tell that salaries are currently too low because the top executives in the financial sector don't stay in their jobs very long.

QED!

By the way, Steve pointed out to me that the above message was written by one of his colleagues in the econ department.

Maybe I'll sign up for a class when he teaches it for free.

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The Rite of Confirmation Bias

How golden is your rectangle?

Catholic adolescents in the United States typically go through the rite of confirmation in their early teens. The diocesan bishop comes to your local parish and randomly quizzes some of the confirmation candidates to verify that they have been properly catechized (I say “randomly,” but no bishop goes out of his way to create an incident by calling on the visibly clueless). For many young Catholics, the confirmation quiz, whether they were called upon or not, is a kind of exit interview. Attendance at both catechism and mass drops dramatically after achieving confirmation. All done! (Except maybe for Christmas and Easter. And weddings and funerals.)

In my day (45 years ago), after the quiz and the formal administration of the sacrament, the bishop would also give each candidate a limp little slap on the cheek in token of the pain of human existence. Perhaps it's still done, but I haven't been to a confirmation in decades.

Two years ago, I read Dan Brown's DaVinci Code. It is a very silly book, loaded down with distortions of Catholic history and dogma (which I wouldn't have thought needed any additional twisting or distortion). Brown likes to titillate his readers with revelations of supposedly factual esoterica. It's the old “based on a true story” marketing gimmick. Not content to confine himself to religious fiction, Brown also dabbles in mathematical fiction. After reading The DaVinci Code, I wrote a post about the golden ratio nonsense it contains. In Phi: Good to the last decimal, I explained in some detail that Brown's main character offered many demonstrably untrue statements concerning the golden ratio as if they were recognized scientific facts. The golden ratio, or “phi,” is supposedly deeply embedded in our esthetic sensibilities, but it's all a crock.

Nevertheless, like any popular myth, the golden ratio canard continues to have plenty of believers. An anonymous commenter posted his testimony in a response to my original article. Read it closely. It is a marvelous example of confirmation bias.

I use phi alot. Not because it somohow magically looks good, but because it WORKS ON PEOPLE. Just look at ALL apple products. Open your photoshop, tak some golden ruler made of golden rectangles, blend it and start some measuring. Old ipod is best for this, not iphone. You will see very quickly how they do their GREAT design, which looks easy on the first look, but many people says, there is some hidden beauty in their products. And yes, there is. All their measurements are based on phi. Sometimes not exactly to spice it up, but many times yes. Check spaces around keyboard on the new macbook pro, just check it. And don't tell me now, that phi doesn't work. It works if you know how to use it and where. My opinion is that phi in art is redundant. Nothing more, nothing less. I could live without it in art. But in graphics which is supposed to make me some money? - Here is the right segment for it

Anonymous declares that golden rectangles (those whose sides have the proportion 1 to 1.618) “works on people” in some mystical (though not “magical”) fashion. Presumably this exact proportion elicits involuntary appreciation from viewers and is Apple's secret weapon. Secret weapon, that is, if one considers the iPod, not the iPhone. (Pity, that!) Does Anonymous care that Apple strays from the golden ratio even in its iPod family?


Anonymous is already busily filtering the data. “All their measurements are based on phi,” he says. Unless, of course, they're not: “Sometimes not exactly to spice it up but many times yes.” And therefore many times no.

Martin Gardner famously debunked the same sort of nonsense about the Great Pyramid in Giza by whipping up a similar whole-cloth mythology for the Washington Monument in D.C. It always works the same way: One collects huge amounts of data and then filters out anything that doesn't fit. If the original collection is large enough, the residue is certain to be quite impressive to those who don't know any better.

Anonymous made his task easier by laying claim to golden ratio efficacy even in the absence of the golden ratio. That really opens things up. Consider what happens, if we are allowed to fudge the ratio in a golden rectangle by 5% or 10%. We get an impressive array of rectangles that are “close” to golden. With a loophole that big, it becomes easy to generates lots of compliant examples. The variation comes perilously close to turning even the iPhone golden. Behold!

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More Republican logic

It's a mother lode

Thanks to the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, we have another brilliant example of Republican reasoning. It is a wonder to behold. This display of erudition is from the Letters to the Editor (with a bit of added emphasis from me)

It's McCain, folks

Editor - So, according to The Chronicle, the Democratic candidate will win the election. Really? Gee, I hate to disappoint you folks, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Republican candidate will win the election for a very simple reason: He is perceived as a good guy—that's all. And right now, the people want a good guy in the White House.

Considering how the current president is universally hated, and how out of favor the Republicans are in general, one would think that the Democratic candidate would be at least ten to fifteen points ahead in the polls, but the exact opposite is the case. Indeed, as election day looms, the race becomes ever tighter. Why is that? Because increasingly, people see that the Democratic candidate is a completely unknown quantity whereas the Republican candidate is completely known. Why the Democrats ever nominated their man for the presidency is beyond me, when Sen. Hillary Clinton was not only deserving of the nomination but, quite frankly, is the only candidate who could have prevailed to the end and won the race for her party.

A.J. BUTTACAVOLI
Walnut Creek

---

The “exact opposite”? You mean that Obama is ten to fifteen points behind? That's what opposite mean, A.J.

Say, what are they putting in the water in Walnut Creek, anyway?

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Republican logic strikes again

Let's do the Time Warp again!

Like George Herbert Walker Bush confronting a supermarket price scanner in the 1992 political legend, cartoonists live in a bubble of retarded time, only they're acutely aware of it. There's not much they can do about it. The panels they draw today, the dialog they letter today—none of it will appear until having been properly aged. The lag-time is built into the process of cartoon publication.

As the Los Angeles Times reports this morning, Garry Trudeau has cast caution to the winds and declared Barack Obama the winner in his Doonesbury strip for Wednesday, November 5, the day after the election. While comic-page editors at newspapers across the country scratch their heads as they decide whether to run the presumptuous strip, Trudeau is not wringing his hands over his reputation if he turns out to be wrong. As he told the press, “I'd be a lot more worried about the country than the strip.”

Naturally, the news media contacted the McCain campaign for a reaction. The Times published a snarky comment from McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, who said, “We hope the strip proves to be as predictive as it is consistently lame.”

Are you laughing yet? Please recall that this is the campaign spokesperson for John McCain, the candidate who three weeks ago said in Virginia Beach, “We're six points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes.... My friends, we’ve got them just where we want them!” Apparently Bounds is merely reflecting the kind of logic that is pervasive in the McCain campaign. (But who, of course, could blame them? Much of the national media spun every incident as “good for McCain” during the first months of the election year.)

Let's gently parse the statement of Mr. Bounds. He said that the campaign would like the Doonesbury strip predicting Obama's victory to be as predictive as the strip has been “lame.” We can take it as read—can't we?—that Tucker and his buddies really regard Doonesbury as a lame comic strip. Therefore, by Tucker's own statement, lame = predictive. It predicts Obama. Oops!

Nice thinking there, Tucker!

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Men in dresses defend marriage

Do as I say, not as I do

Religion was simpler when I believed in revealed truth. Unfortunately, revealed truth was often manifest stupidity. That makes it more difficult to cling to, so perhaps we should be impressed by those whose faith can overcome the sheer inanity of it. After all, don't we admire people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for a sacred cause?

Yeah. Not so much anymore.

The Catholic Church is trying to throw its weight around in the battle over Proposition 8 on the California general election ballot in November. If it passes, Proposition 8 overturns the state supreme court ruling establishing same-sex marriages by placing a ban in the California constitution. That would trump the state supreme court and end the Golden State's experiment with marital equality. The Catholic Church is an enthusiastic fan of traditional marriage and its celibate priesthood is girding for the fight to pass Proposition 8.

Yes. Unmarried men in dresses are among the Church's shock troops in the war to enshrine the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage. Clever.

Bishop Allen Vigneron of the Oakland diocese is one of the generals trying to lead Catholic voters into the polling stations to cast their ballots for Proposition 8. He issued a pastoral letter in the wake of the supreme court ruling that politically minded Catholics are citing as an inspirational blast of the trumpet of traditionalism. Vigneron warns his readers of the consequences of losing in the attempts to re-establish monogamous heterosexual marriage as the only sanctioned marital union:

If such efforts fail, our way of life will become counter-cultural, always a difficult situation for Christians—one our forebears faced in many ages past, one that the Lord himself predicted for us.

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“Counter-cultural”? Does His Excellency actually think that old-fashioned man-woman marriage will be abandoned in the wake of Proposition 8's defeat? No doubt society will rise up in opposition to the marriage of straight couples. Heck, the fifty percent failure rate shows that it doesn't work very well anyway. May as well give it up. Counter-cultural.

And what's this “our way of life” business? Vigneron's bachelorhood is part of his career; the wedded way of life is entirely foreign to him. (Of course, he can see married couples from his vantage point in the episcopal see of Oakland, sort of like Gov. Palin can see Russia from her perch in Alaska.) It seems we must construe “way of life” broadly if it is to include bishops.

Finally, Vigneron points out that Christ himself predicted that the Church would fall into the “difficult situation” of opposing the dominant culture. Does His Excellency think he can avert Christ's oracular pronouncement? Maybe Catholics can learn a lesson from the Protestants who cheer every report of famine and disaster and war because they consider catastrophe a prerequisite for the Second Coming. Embrace same-sex marriage (though not too literally), Your Excellency. Otherwise you risk making Jesus a liar.

Vote No on Proposition 8!

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A political angle

When math teachers go astray

We math teachers are a relentlessly logical and thoughtful cohort of people. So why don't we agree on everything all the time? Anyone who has witnessed the knock-down and drag-out battles of the math wars knows that we don't. It depends on your initial assumptions. Most math teachers will cheerfully agree on whether a conclusion is the logical consequence of a set of axioms, but then they'll fight to the death over the axioms.

Courtesy of the McClatchy Company's newspapers, we have a stunning example of political logic from an old math professor. Shall we see if we can identify the axioms from which his logic flows?

Palin: A home run for McCain

Wow! Talk about a bombshell? Talk about thinking outside the box? Talk about going off the reservation? Let the game begin.

And all the so-called pundits thought John McCain was too old and over the hill to make important strategic decisions in a timely and impactful fashion. This could be a major-league home run; it puts a shot right over the bow of the Democrats and will haul them up short in their effort to bring disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters and independents into the Obama fold.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has the right politics. She is a reformer who has stared down Sen. Ted Stevens, she is a maverick, she is a hockey mom, she is very comfortable in a man's world, she is a hunter who knows the difference between the business end and the butt end of a weapon, she has been to the Middle East and has a son serving in the military, she is pro-life, she is articulate, she is younger than Barack, she is compelling, and she has a strong, comprehensive energy position. In the words of an old math professor, she is a running mate who complements and supplements John McCain to a “T.” Enough said.

—Walter Andrews, Folsom

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Passing lightly over the disdain-worthy “impactful,” we must consider whether the choice of Palin “will haul [Democrats] up short in their efforts to bring disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters and independents into the Obama fold.” First of all, we're already there. Former Clinton supporters are not looking for an anti-choice, anti-science alternative to Sen. Obama. By what magic are we supposed to be inveigled into voting for a right-wing conservative? Are we suddenly no longer pro-choice? Second, independents are not necessarily charmed by Sarah. She stoked up the base; she didn't expand it.

Palin “faced down Sen. Ted Stevens”? I guess that came after she headed one of his 527 campaign committees and her support of his “bridge to nowhere” earmark. (She really used to like earmarks, you know, but she's over that now.)

Palin can fire a gun. I did not know that was a requirement for the job, unless the vice president is expected to shoot hunting companions in the face.

She is younger than Barack. That's a positive thing? Goodness! Until recently, the GOP insisted that Sen. Obama was a callow youth. Now Gov. Palin's tender years are a campaign asset. The rules of the game keep changing.

Palin “has a strong, comprehensive energy position”? I guess that “drill, drill, drill” is comprehensive because Sarah wants to drill everywhere. Yes?

Some wicked angles

My favorite part of the math professor's letter is the cutesy bit about how Gov. Palin “complements and supplements John McCain.” As you may know, complementary angles add up to 90°, while supplementary angles add up to 180°. The letter-writer is sending a discreet shout-out to his fellow math teachers. As one of his innumerable mathematical colleagues—albeit a liberal one—I cannot resist going off on my own tangent here. Let's puzzle out the possible significance of Gov. Palin being both a complement and a supplement to John McCain.

I begin by schematically indicating where the nation needs to go. It's just an arrow, pointing to the conventional “east.” (Self-described wits might wish to observe that the arrow points to the right, but don't try to make too much of a simple mathematical convention. That's my job.)

Then we note that McCain is not planning to go in the right direction. He's significantly off.

If Palin is his complement, then McCain-Palin together must go off in the 90° direction, at right angles to the nation's best interests. Oops!

Even better: If Palin is his supplement, then McCain-Palin must be heading in the direction exactly opposite to where we should be going—off by 180°. This may an even more accurate representative of McCain-Palin policies.

To be even-handed, let's consider Sen. Obama's political direction. There he goes, doing the best he can for his country, trending strongly toward all that is good and decent.

Why don't I, the slavishly devoted Democrat, show him heading due east toward the promised land? There's some fine print in the Obama illustration. Let's zoom in to see what it says:


Oh, that's right. Obama ended up supporting a very slightly amended FISA bill (not nearly amended enough!) and he has failed to disavow Bush's motley crew of faith-based initiatives. He may even expand them!

Well, you can't have everything. Any logical person knows that. (I'm not as sure about the letter-writing math professor, though.)

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Xmas in Bizarroland

Heaping helpings

I arrived at Mom & Dad's on Christmas Eve. They were holding their customary holiday open house, a casual business involving drop-in visits by family members and friends. Some of them were delivering gifts, while others were just saying hello. I missed my cousin and his wife, who left minutes before my arrival, but I was there when Dick hobbled in.

Dick had a fancy new cane with multiple feet and was walking under his own power. As he came slowly up the sidewalk, Dad shook his head and said, “Too much booze and too many cigarettes. That'll do it to you.” Dad was sympathetic about his old friend's condition, but still indulging his censorious tendencies. We had a nice visit with Dick, commiserating over his physical frailty and complimenting him on the successful physical therapy that had him back on his feet. Dick regaled us with tales of his travail and described the joys of using the new Rascal scooter that Medicare had purchased for him:

“The government paid for most of it, but I got a bill for $800. I don't think I'm going to have to pay it, though.”

Dick was also getting some of his prescriptions by mail order from Canada because Medicare Part D doesn't cover everything. Mom & Dad were delighted to hear about Dick's scooter, but indignant that its cost and the costs of his prescriptions were not fully covered. Wasn't it just like the federal government to create problems like this? (I bit my tongue and stayed quiet.)

As Dick's visit ended and he hobbled back toward the door, another of my cousins arrived to deliver gifts to my parents (who are her godparents). We all segued smoothly into a discussion of her woes and complaints. She had been getting phone calls from marketing companies and political campaigns that addressed her in Spanish because of confusion over her Portuguese last name (which is identical in spelling to a common Spanish name). “This is America! Speak English! I don't talk Mexican! No one helped me learn English when I was in school. I had to learn it myself!”

My cousin had hit a subject particularly dear to Dad's heart. He had been complaining earlier in the day over his discovery that local PBS stations had added a Spanish-language channel to their digital TV broadcasts. I had restrained myself from mentioning that his late mother would have been delighted, since she never learned English and could follow Spanish dialog quite comfortably. Over the years, I have heard quite a few of my fellow Portuguese speakers complain that Spanish speakers are coddled while we Luso-Americans were ignored. Dad is especially vociferous on the topic:

“That's all crap,” said Dad. “They shouldn't be spending our tax dollars on people who should be fending for themselves—like we did!”

The chair where Dick had been sitting was still warm from his visit, but Mom & Dad had done a full reverse and were now outraged about supposedly extravagant government services. Even though they had clucked their tongues and shaken their heads over Dick's dissipated ways, his use of Medicare programs was no more than his just due. My head was spinning.

Left to my own devices later in the day, I noticed a gleaming slime trail on the bookcase unit I had built in the family room back in my college years. As I suspected, it was oozing out of the latest book by Ann Coulter. My mother collects them assiduously and defiles my cabinetwork by thoughtlessly shelving them in my bookcase. She has apparently yet to notice that her copy of Godless is missing. I borrowed it several months ago because I wanted to peruse La Coulter's insane chapters on evolution without contributing a single penny to her royalty statements. Perhaps Mom does not refresh herself at the font of Ann's wisdom as often as one might expect. Does she even notice that her favorite author just rehashes the same insipid claims over and over again, pausing merely to sprinkle in a few new insults?

A new day—but not really

Christmas Day offered the distraction of about two dozen family members and guests. There was a lot of nattering about all of the twice-a-year Catholics who had shown up for the Christmas service. My family (except for me, of course) is dutiful and punctilious about their Sunday obligation—and proud of it. All those other people are bad Catholics. Heck, they're hardly Catholics at all!

One of my nieces is hugely pregnant and due to pop any day. She already has two children. Mom said, “She actually wants four.” Once again I was as good a boy as I could be. I did not say, “‘Wants’? What does ‘wants’ have to do with it? I was at the wedding. I heard the part about accepting children lovingly as God saw fit to provide them. What is a good Catholic wife doing talking about the number of children she wants? It's not her call, is it? At the rate she's going, she could crank out a dozen more before her system gives out!” Nope, I didn't say that.

The name of another of my innumerable cousins came up. He and his longtime companion have split up after a couple of decades together. My folks showed commendable hypocrisy in expressing their concern over the trouble in gay paradise. While they won't hesitate—especially not Dad—to express their disgust with those nasty gay people (and to glance nervously askance at their middle-aged bachelor son), of course none of that applies to their sweet nephew, whose situation they had long since grown accustomed to. Dad actually referred to the estranged partner: “He seemed like a nice guy.”

It's all grotesquely inconsistent with everything they purport to believe, but it gives one hope that they're not completely insane.

Another of my nieces brought a new boyfriend with her, a young man brave enough to face the mob that is my family. He acquitted himself well at Christmas dinner and during the after-dinner social hour. After he left, however, Dad turned to Mom and said, “Boy, he's really not much to look at, is he?” Having been so much of a good boy for the better part of two days, I let a remark slip: “Gee, Dad, you're right. He's kind of plain. Too bad your granddaughter didn't concentrate on getting a knockout piece of eye candy. She should have given a lot more priority to looks.” Mom raised her eyebrows and said nothing. Dad pretended not to hear me, so the opportunity for some wry banter slipped away.

Later we were assembled in the living room amidst a welter of gift-wrapping and discarded boxes. Some people had received DVDs as presents, which jogged Dad's memory about a promotion he had seen on the Discovery Channel for a school supplement (from the American Museum of Natural History) titled Understanding the Universe:

“I saw that and I lost my temper. What the hell do they mean, ‘understanding the universe’? You can't understand the universe! Only God can do that. It would have been okay if they called it Trying to Understand the Universe. That would have been all right.”

Yeah, that would be catchy. I'm sure that Trying Hopelessly to Understand the Universe Although You'll Fail Until and Unless You Die in a State of Grace and Jesus Himself Explains It to You in Heaven would be even better. (It's a wonder I didn't bite my tongue in two.) But Dad wasn't finished.

“That's the way scientists always are. They think they know everything! They say you can't get matter from nothing and then they come up with the Big Bang. What do they think that is? And they never talk about what came before the Big Bang, maybe because they're afraid if they look there they'll see God getting ready to create the universe! The scientists keep saying that there's no God when all you have to do is look around to see that there is!”

Ah, yes. Proof by credulous observation. Air-tight reasoning, that. Dad loves the word “always.” He is the master of the categorical statement and prefers to deal in absolutes. He kept whining how every space mission was billed as a quest for the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. (It's forty-two, Dad.) His cartoon image of science has its practitioners speaking a language that they never actually use: This is the answer. This is the ultimate solution. Sometimes he talks about how things have changed during his eighty years of life, but then he completely fails to recognize the progressive and incremental nature of scientific research and discovery.

It's like I've failed him in some crucial manner. He and I are so much alike in so many ways, but I absolutely cannot communicate with him about these things. Is it that I bite my tongue too much? That's actually more a symptom of exhaustion. I used to try much harder. He dismisses anything I say almost instantly. He retains none of my refutations of his faulty arguments and recycles his favorite fables word-for-word the next time he sees fit to dust them off. He doesn't rebut my arguments—he ignores them.

Christmas morning had been foggy, but it was bright and clear in the afternoon. Both of my parents were dismayed:

“That means it will be foggy in the morning,” Mom said. Dad chimed in with his agreement. Bright sun in the afternoon was an infallible harbinger of morning fog. They were concerned because I would be traveling the next morning. I tried to set their minds at ease:

“But what if it's just the first clear day of a sunny streak?”

They looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

Two days at Mom & Dad's is about all I can handle without going insane. They keep the house too hot and all the windows are festooned with closed drapes. I can try to open them to get some natural light, but they're whisked shut again within seconds. (Some of the windows have both drapes and blinds, just to be doubly safe from actinic radiation. Do we spring from vampire stock?) Dad's hearing is bad (which he sometimes exploits to ignore arguments he'd rather not hear even when he was following a conversation perfectly adequately a moment before), so the television is always blaring (and always on). And the nuggets of wisdom come from an inexhaustible lode:

“Becky's going to have a girl. This man who's never wrong about these things told her.”

“That's nice, Mom. He has a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

“Oh, no, he's much better than that. He's predicted sixty-one babies correctly.”

“What? Out of one hundred and twenty? It's nonsense, Mom. I'm not going to swallow that kind of foolishness. You don't even know his name, do you?”

“Well, I don't, but he saw Becky and he could tell she's carrying a girl.”

“From outside the mother, all babies look alike. He's got a fifty-fifty chance. If you really want to know the sex of your baby, talk to your doctor.”

Mom got huffy: “Doctors don't know everything!”

“Yeah. But if they use a sonogram or amniocentesis, they can get right up there to ninety-plus accuracy.”

Mom subsided at that, because she knew I was right about what doctors could do, but she was still scowling in irritation at my refusal to believe so well-attested a seer as the stranger who had spoken to her granddaughter. Exasperated, I said, “I swear, Mom, sometimes you are just like your mother.”

I regretted it the moment I said it, true as it was. My late maternal grandmother was often the butt of family humor because of her total credulity, paranoia, and superstition. It was a palpable hit and my mother was wounded. I repented of my rebuke and quickly moved to more neutral territory.

Dad, fortunately, was not at a loss. He wanted to crow about the huge jump in holiday retail sales:

“The liberal media kept saying it would be a bad year because it's a bad economy. Shows you what all those so-called experts know! Holiday retail sales are up fifteen percent!”

My father does not smoke dope or use other hallucinogenic drugs (apart from listening to Rush Limbaugh too much), so I was puzzled how he had come up with a conclusion that was so clearly wrong. Even the Wall Street Journal agrees that this has not been a stellar holiday season for retailers. Sifting through the evidence turned up a clue: Internet sales are up. More people are buying more stuff on-line. Even that increase, however, was not as sharp as in past years. Dad's mental filters had successfully seized on the one sector of the retail market that showed significant gains and happily touted it as if it were representative of the whole. My father needs to get a better grip on synecdoche. (I'm still not sure where he picked up the “fifteen percent” claim.)

The tacked-on bittersweet feel-good ending

Late on Christmas night, my parents sound asleep in their room in accordance with their early-to-bed philosophy, I dug out my laptop and reached out to the world I know. I plugged it into their hinky old phone line and managed to get on-line via a dial-up connection. I've never managed to achieve 56 Kbps down on the farm. This time it was an anemic 24.6 Kbps. It didn't matter. I was back in touch again. I painfully waited for my e-mail to appear. Fortunately, I had not missed any deadlines for mail-order degrees or herbal supplements for sexual potency (nor had any of my friends written me). I even waited for the front page of Pharyngula to download, where I was treated to a message by PZ berating anyone for being on-line on Christmas (due, no doubt, to the holiness of the occasion). My thirst temporarily slaked, I logged off.

As I tiptoed through the darkened house to my bedroom, I was feeling somewhat better. Then it occurred to me how unusual everything was. How many people my age still have both parents and can visit them in the same home in which they grew up? Sure, it doesn't much feel like home to me anymore, but it surrounds me with reminders and images from my childhood. Mom & Dad are both quite healthy and still married to each other after more than fifty years. I'm going to miss it when it's gone. How much longer can it last?

I ended up making one small resolution, although I usually don't bother with such year-end nonsense. I'm going to count my blessings. And, although I often feel contempt for the views and contradictions that my parents dispense so readily, I will not feel contempt for them.

A holiday postscript

My niece Becky delivered her child after the first of the new year. It turned out to be a boy. So much for the man who is “never wrong” and his confident prediction of a girl. His failure pleases me more than it probably should.

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