Have you had your π Today?

Happy Pi Day everybody!

When I say Pi, I am, of course, referring to the date, which, if written like a decimal and ignoring the first two digits of the year reads like this: 3.1415.

This is an approximation of π, pronounced Pi, which is the Greek letter used to stand for the irrational number you get if you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter – supposing your circle is very round and your instruments are very good.

This year, Pi-loving geeks are going all-out to celebrate this Pi Day of the Century. Because, at 9:26:53 in the morning – whenever that was or will be where you are – it can be read as 3.141592653, which is Pi to nine decimal places. Yep, you get a whole second to celebrate. Well, I guess two seconds, if you celebrate in the AM and PM. I suppose you can celebrate the PM as well. I certainly won’t tell. After all, it’s a Saturday night!

Here in most of North America and elsewhere, we just lost an hour to Daylight Saving Time. In a sense, we are celebrating the Pi Second an hour early. Does that mean our Pi will be underdone?  Not to mention the whole time zone question.

Pi is a big deal. Books have been written about it. People have memorized it to hundreds or thousands of digits. There is a great Youtube video, available here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r3cEKZiLmg&feature=youtu.be, showing pi printed out to one million digits. The length of the paper is more than a mile long. They unrolled the paper on an airport runway. That video has had more than a million views. Here is a video showing how that video was made, which contains additional facts about Pi. That making-of video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Welatppzk.

My good friend Steve Buchanan informs me that there is a movement afoot to take some of the importance off of π, a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter, and celebrating the irrational number beginning 6.28305… which represents the circumfrance of a circle divided by the circle’s radius. See the Youtube videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN-AiU.    

Also, see “Pi is Wrong” at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ.

This movement give that number, equal to 2π, the name of the Greek letter Tau – τ. There are a lot of reasons for putting emphasis on Tau rather than Pi, among them is the fact that many commonly used formulas use the radius of a circle, rather than the diameter.

So, will we celebrate Tau Day on 6/18 (June 18)? Why not?

Have you had your π Today? Maybe τ should wait for a few months and enjoy twice as much.

However, Pi has historical relevance, and I don't think it will be unseated from its place of importance in the minds of mathematicians and nonmathematicians anytime soon. 

For the reason stated above today is Pi day of the century. Or is it?

I would like to point out that next year's Pi day can be read 3.1416. That is as far as most people who use the number in calculations bother to travel right of the decimal point. Next year we can have the Pi day of the century -- not just for a second (or two seconds twelve hours apart) but all day!

Think about it. You have an entire year!

When We Said "Neglected" We Meant It. But, about "The Interview"

Now you know the meaning of "Dan's Neglected Blog."

So, it's not like nothing happened in 2014. But, somehow, I didn't find time to do even one post. 

There is so much I could have commented on: The relative success of Obamacare, the Ice Bucket Challenge, the bloodbath that was the 2014 midterm elections. 

I am sorry that all of these subjects went neglected. Maybe I'll pick one or two and write about them in the future ― as a matter of fact, you can probably bet on it.

But, the one development that came closest to making me beat down the inertia causing me to not post was the hoopla over the comedy The Interview.   

Somebody hacked Sony's computes and stole and distributed gigabytes of secret, confidential, and personal data, as revenge for Sony Pictures' producing and planned distribution of the film ― not a critically-acclaimed documentary, or controversial work of art, or anything of that earthshaking variety ― but a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. Just a little comedy about the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who seems to lack the capacity to step back and laugh at himself, the way the rest of the world spends so much us its time doing.

Should Sony have been storing so much information about its employees and former employees on its servers? Probably not, but that is beside my present point.

Threats ― threats of the nasty terrorist-style variety ― were made against moviegoers and theater-owners who dared show the movie. Corporations controlling  theater chains and shopping malls  made the decision to forgo, not only the Christmas Day release of what would have certainly been a record-breaking opening, but showing the movie at all. It still was presented at a few independent theaters and has been put up for online streaming. So far, no North Korean missiles  have hit anyone's Netflix streaming device ― unless such streaming device just happened to be floating in the middle of the ocean, perhaps thrown overboard by an angry cruise passenger who didn't realize how much the cruise ship's WiFi costs or how creakingly slow it is ― when North Korea launched one of its less-than-spectacular missile tests. It could have happened at some time.

And to think, all of this ruckus could have been avoided if Sony had quickly called back the film and re-shot parts of it and reedited the finished product to include frequent shots of Dennis Rodman. Had they had the forsight to do that, Kim Jong Un would not have known what to do. Why his little head might have exploded, leaving that fez-like hairdo (or hairdon't) of his to spin wildly into the air ― possibly landing in the middle of the ocean on top of a floating Roku box. 

The one thing that I find most interesting about this controversy is the total lack of controversy among people I know who generally can't agree on anything else.

Nearly everyone I have talked to said they would have at least strongly considered taking some time out of their Christmas day activities to support Free Speech by seeing The Interview. This goes for people who love Seth Rogen and for those who hate his raunchy comedies.

President Obama criticized Sony and the movie chains for backing down to the terrorists and almost nobody criticized him for stepping up and making the statement. This may be the first thing Obama has done that has not caused the red states to call for his impeachment. We were united as a country on the issue of freedom of speech.

is this what we need as a nation? More attacks from annoying little dictators on our basic rights to make us stand together?

Kim Jong Un may have done us a favor of sorts. A very small favor. A very small favor with a funny hairstyle.

11-22-13

Fifty years ago today, I was eight years old and in the second grade. I had been suspended from the school cafeteria for two weeks for "Talking back" to a lunchroom worker following a fight with another kid.

So, I returned after lunch to find a classmate  named Rusty telling everyone how the president had been "shot in the head!" 

Most of us thought Rusty was just making  stuff up. 

When we got into the classroom, a very sober Mrs. Behunnen told us what had happened and what a terrible thing it was for our country. She told us the flags would fly half-staff. 

My parents were sad. My grandmother cried. I was annoyed because some of my favorite TV shows were cancelled. I did see part of the funeral on TV. 

However, even at the time, I was old enough and aware enough to know that something had changed for all of us, and not for the better.

It was not until weeks and months had passed that I learned what an understatement that was. 

The Cruz Missile that Shut Down Our Government

The extreme Right Wing of the Republican Party has effectively shut down most of Washington.

Ted Cruz is has been the Tea Party’s most visible miscreant in the past several weeks. He has led the fight to defund the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, and intends to do so, no matter who it hurts or how much it costs.

No matter that the Republican Party has tried to do away with Obamacare more than forty times to no avail. No matter that the ACA has passed and both Houses of Congress and been upheld by the US Supreme Court. No matter that Obama was elected by a sizeable margin, and that the ACA is his flagship piece of legislation. 

Well, wait a minute. Maybe that last bit does matter. Maybe that is the reason for the whole dustup. This is Obama’s baby, and they don’t like Obama, and just can’t get over the fact that he was elected — twice!

Ted Cruise even Filibustered before the Senate for more then twenty hours to try to get his way. He even read Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham aloud to the Swnate, which is rather ironic, don’t you think? Green Eggs and Ham is about how silly it is to be against something new that you haven’t even tried. 

Maybe Ted Cruz is not as much as a Grinch as we make him out to be. Maybe he has another reason to stop Obamacare. Maybe he is dong it to prevent cancer among the working people of our great country. How would this work? 

Well, remember the old joke about a surefire way to treat hay fever. It involves taking a whole lot of laxatives before leaving the house in the morning. How does that cure an allergy?  Well it won’t, but after taking all that laxative, you won’t dare sneeze. 

That’s right, those people who can’t afford to buy insurance won’t dare get cancer or heart disease or be involved in auto accidents — nothing which could bankrupt them. 

Somebody needs to convince Senator Cruz and his friends that this plan will not work.

Some republicans argue that the Democrats just won’t compromise. The fact is that the ACA is a compromise, and a big one. The problems which we are now undergoing, including the insurance exchange computers being inundated with applications and with companies threatening to lay off large numbers of their workers so they don’t have to give them insurance —  all of these wrinkles and growing pains are the result of the fact that Obama and the Democrats have already compromised. 

Most of the problems we are now having, and will have in the months ahead, with the ACA, would not happen if the country had chosen to try a single payer plan, something similar to the kind of plan which has worked so well in Canada and several European countries. 

Obamacare is the law, and the current state of shut-down the government is undergoing, is not the result of a simple disagreement in Washington. No, it is because of a tantrum on the part of a subset of the Republican members of Congress. 

I like President Obama. I think he is doing the right thing to stand up for the people of this country. I have not always been so very pleased with him. He has caved in to Republican demands in the past. See my post for Thursday, December 9, 2010, "Obama Calls it a "Compromise" – I Call it a Surrender"

(http://dansneglectedblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/president-barack-obama-has-chosen-to.html).

 

They are holding the American people hostage. This is an a act of terrorism. I hope that Barack Obama will remain strong enough to refuse to negotiate with terrorists.

December 21 is Past and We’re All Still Here — Well, Most of Us

The Mayan calendar rolled over — or whatever that phenomenon was that took place on December 21, 2012 — and there was no planet-wide apocalypse. If you are disappointed, you might need to have your meds adjusted. All of the doomsayers will, I suppose, just have to pick another date for the world to end.

The world did end a week before that projected apocalypse for 20 little children and six school employees at Sandy Hook Elementary, in New Town, Connecticut. And a large amount of the joy was taken out of the world for their family members.

This has once again caused the great debate over guns and gun laws to surface and take on shrill tones. Some say it is too early to have this discussion. Some mourn the fact that most people ignore the discussion altogether, except just after a gun-related tragedy.  

I spent most of my first two decades in a Western Red State. My friends and relatives owned guns. My grandmother had a gun. When I was in Junior High School, we got a couple of days off from school for the start of deer hunting season. I didn’t hunt, but was glad to have the days off. I think everyone appreciated the break, except perhaps the deer, but nobody was asking them.

In school I took an NRA gun safety course. If you had asked me at that time for my opinion of the National Rifle Association, I suppose it would have been pretty high. After all, guns could be dangerous if used improperly, and here was an organization, working to prevent the misuse and mitigate the danger of firearms. Sounds like a pretty good mission statement to me.

But, in the wake of the New Town slaughter, the NRA, which had been silent on the matte for a few days, has issued a statement. Wayne La Pierre, the leader and spokesperson for the NRA, has stated that the solution to school violence is not the banning of slaughter weapons, or the elimination of clips that hold a large supply of ammunition without reloading, but more guns in the schools. The NRA solution to school shootings is to put armed guards in schools or to suggest teachers bring guns with them into the classroom.

This seems to me like telling a guy he is an alcoholic and then telling him the solution is to visit more bars during Happy Hour. I don’t get it.

The mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter’s mother was also a victim. It’s too bad she didn’t own a gun or two to defend herself. Oh wait, it was her guns that were used to kill her and all those little children. Her death brings the count to 27, and Adam Lanza’s suicide brings the total to 28.

 

If the NRA really wanted to preserve some shred of respectability, it would admit that we really don’t need large clips or AK-47s to hunt deer or to defend our homes from buglers. They lose credibility by maintaining their inflexible stand against limiting some of the privileges of gun-enthusiasts. I suspect that they will lose some members over this stand. I hope it will lose them a Congress member or two.

America Avoids Romney Apocalypse

Congratulations to Barack Obama!

Congratulations to all of us who rooted, worked, contributed, and / or voted for his re-election.

We watched the returns come in until after Midnight, East Coast Time. We made popcorn. [Note to self: If I am going to keep mentioning popcorn in these blogposts, I really should see about getting a popcorn manufacturer as a sponsor.] I have to confess, I was a little bit worried, watching the early returns. That blue line was shorter and was growing more slowly than the red line. Not to worry, we were told by the people on TV, this was the early reports from the red states coming in early

Florida remained grey (or yellow or white, depending on which network you watched) until Saturday. I am so very happy that the election did not depend on Florida for the final result. The 2000 convention earned us the nickname Florida-Duh and may be one of the reasons Florida residents are called Floridiots, Actually, I think both names were earned once again when we allowed Rick Scott to buy the governorship a couple of years ago. Even without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, Barack Obama was re-elected president, and that suits me just fine. In the final count, including Florida voters, Obama won by 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206.

Mitt Romney was the first Mormon nominee. I thought that might trigger a backlash from some anti-Mormon fundamentalist Christians. I am suppose there were some snake-handlers that thought considered Mitt to be the spawn of Satan, but most of them might have kept quiet because they considered Obama to be the devil himself! I thought Romney would have basically tied up the Mormon vote. But, as it turned out, a smaller percentage of Mormons voted for Mitt Romney than had voted for George W. Bush in 2008.

This was not a pretty presidential campaign. Lies were told. There were those who insisted that Obama was not born in the US. The sellers of bumper stickers that said “Don’t Re-Nig in 2012” tried to bring political discourse down to a new, disgusting, low.

There is a lot of political talk going around now about how Romney and his GOP cronies didn’t appeal to Hispanics or to African Americans, or even to younger voters. All of these things may be true, but I don’t think it suits anyone for any candidate to focus primarily on playing to factions of the population or to complain that they didn’t get their support afterwards.

The president, once duly and legally elected, is the president of all the people. For the GOP to be licking its wounds and comforting itself with thoughts such as, Obama won just because of the Latinos or —just because of the poor really doesn’t help anybody’s cause.

I believe that the GOP and Romney failed, not because they appeared not to be benefiting any one slice of the American voting population pie chart, but because they did appear to be primarily benefiting an even tinier sliver of that same pie chart — the one percent of Americans that control an ever-increasing share of the nation’s wealth, currently about 40 per cent. Because of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling (something I am hoping that an Obama Supreme Court appointment will someday undue) these wealthiest of all Americans can funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the race for president and into races across the country.

This tine it did not work. We, as an electorate, did not allow Mitt Romney or Sheldon Adelson or the Koch Brothers to buy the election.

And that is one of the greatest things about our country.

I am sure the Romney’s are disappointed. But, Anne Romney can be can console herself with the knowledge that she doesn’t have to move into a smaller house, in public housing no less.

But, I still wonder, if Tagg Romney wanted to take a swing at the president before the election, what’s he fantasizing about now?

The Final Push

Tuesday is Election Day.  

That means that Wednesday morning we will all wake up and learn whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will take the Oath of Office in 2013.

Or will we?

Some of us still have echoes of the presidential election of 2000 echoing around our heads.

With the efforts by some to keep others from casting their rightful ballots, and the confusion over early voting rules in some battleground states, and with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast — not to mention this election looks like it might be as close as the king and queen of the prom during that last dance of the night, — and we might not know for days or weeks.

All of the annoying TV and Internet ads will stop, and that alone is a victory for everyone.

If you live in any of the states that allow early voting and have already voted, I salute you. You have exercised your right to take part in the flawed, yet stabilizing process we call representative democracy. If you voted for Barack Obama, and for Democrats in the US House and Senate to support his continued efforts on behalf of the middle class of this country, I not only salute you, but heartily applaud the choices you have made.

If you have not yet voted, I hope you do decide to go out and vote. The lines may be long, but it is worth the time and effort.

If you plan to vote for Obama, then I think we are on the same page, here. I would only remind you to keep in mind that the president will need forward-thinking men and women in the House and Senate to keep the improvements coming.

If you are leaning towards Mitt Romney, or are undecided, I can only commend you for reading this far and ask that you read on a bit more.

I will not try to list all of Obama’s accomplishments in the first four years. He has signed legislation which would guarantee equal pay for women and men doing the same job. He signed a middle-class tax cut which has cut the taxes of the average family by over $3,500 over the past four years. He also cut taxes for small businesses.

Obama’s Recovery Act saved or added millions of jobs, and probably prevented a depression. He revitalized the Student Loan Program, eliminating banks as middlemen, and cutting the cost of borrowing for college. He successfully saved the auto industry and got it back on its own footing again. He has ordered streamlining of thousands of pages of contradictory, redundant, or unnecessary regulations, while putting in place mechanisms to help ensure that useful regulations are followed, thus making food products, manufacturing processes, and work environments safer for consumers and workers.

Obamacare and the Healthcare Reform, which has been a favorite target of Romney and other Republicans, offers tremendous benefits to millions of Americans who were priced out or otherwise kept out of the healthcare insurance market. It wasn’t that society wasn’t providing some sporadic medical care for these citizens, its just that we were paying an incredibly high price for it. So much easier to offer affordable healthcare insurance to everyone and save most Americans money in the process. Eleven million children, who otherwise would have had no healthcare coverage, will have it because of action taken by President Obama.

Obama and the Democrats deserve your support for heeding the warnings of nearly one hundred percent of the world’s climate scientists, by taking unprecedented action to reduce carbon pollution from our vehicles and promote clean energy production in the United States. I don’t think we are doing all we should , but at least they first steps are being taken. He has also created historic international agreements to curb carbon emissions from other nations as well as the US. Again, it’s a start, and one the Republicans will not even acknowledge as necessary or beneficial.

Obama has shown he has the maturity and the knowledge to deal with ever-changing issues. Foreign issues will continue to be a very important part of the job of president. Obama ended the war in Iraq, is bringing troops home from Afghanistan, and has taken action against some of our greatest enemies. If you see any Osama Bin Laden tapes on the news, you will know they are reruns.

There are more things I could list. There are probably more things you could list. But, you can see that Romney’s claim that Obama’s four years has been a failure is an untrue statement, shouted just to convince members of the middle class to vote against their best interest.

Romney and Ryan, on the other hand, offer a plan that is based on the failed idea that, if we help the rich and superrich make even more money and pay even less in taxes, somehow, some of those crumbs will truckle down to the middle class and make them more well-off. This has not worked in the past, it will not work now.

Their plans to privatize Social Security, turn Medicare and education into voucher programs certainly aren’t good for the people who will depend on those services, our elderly and our children, and they won’t help those in between, either.

Obama has spent four difficult years digging us out of the hold that two wars and the Bush Tax Cuts put us into. It has taken longer than expected, because he has had to fight the Republicans in Congress, who have made it their prime directive to make sure he fails — no matter who gets hurt. So, It is a wonder that he as accomplished as much as he has. It makes absolutely no sense to go back to the policies that caused those problems in the first place.

It is so very hard to know where Romney stand on any issue. His responses have seemed to be generated by what he perceives a particular audience wants to hear on a given day. He much more resembles a weathervane than a qualified candidate to lead the United States of America.

If you are still not convinced, I will let Romney himself convince you that he is not fit to be your president.

Mitt Romney has refused to release his tax returns for the past ten years, as requested by many members of both parties. Yeah, old story, I know. He did release his 2010 and 2011 tax returns as promised. In 2011, Romney paid 14.1 per cent of his income in taxes. Had he claimed all of the deductions due him, he would have gotten away with paying an amount much closer to nine per cent. Wow, good guy, right? Loves his country, patriotic, right? Putting aside the fact that he has years to file an amended return and get those millions back from the IRS, quietly, secretly.

However, Romney himself said in July, "Frankly, if I had paid more than are legally due, I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to

follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires. "I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more," He has also said, "I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes."

I don’t see why we wouldn’t want a candidate to pay more into the coffers of the country he loves than he legally owes, but if Mitt Romney sais this action makes him unqualified to be president, then who am I to argue with him?

Vote for Obama. It’s the least you can do to help poor Mitt Romney keep what shred of integrity he has left.

 

Dan J. Hicks