new blog

Private Buffoon.

Countdown clock at 0 days 0 hours 0 minutes 00.0 sec...

... I think it's off by about 12 hours!

With many of my fellow citizens, I'll be watching PRESIDENT Obama take the oath of office tomorrow (10 a.m. local time).

Here 'tis:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
[U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1]

Note: the "so help me God" bit was added by Washington, setting a so-far unbroken precedent.

Pursuing W

Yes - it would be easier to forget him & move on.

BUT the damage he has done cannot be set right without a full accounting.

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., said it well:

"I understand that many feel we should just move on. They worry that addressing these actions by the Bush administration will divert precious energy from the serious challenges facing our nation. I understand the power of that impulse. Indeed, I want to move on as well -- there are so many things that I would rather work on than further review of Bush's presidency. But in my view it would not be responsible to start our journey forward without first knowing exactly where we are.

"We cannot rebuild the appropriate balance between the branches of government without fully understanding how that relationship has been distorted. Likewise, we cannot set an appropriate baseline for future presidential conduct without documenting and correcting the presidential excesses that have just occurred."
[Why We Have to Look Back, WaPo, 16 Jan 2009]

One of my correspondents just sent me an email stating that he'd just sent a note to his Representative & Senators urging them to support Rep. Conyers's initiative.

I recall a perhaps apocryphal FDR anecdote:

FDR was, of course, a consummate political leader. In one situation, a group came to him urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.
[Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Man of the Century, an address by William J. vanden Heuvel to the Monthly Meeting of The Century Association, 4 Apr 2002; emphasis added]

President Obama has indicated a reluctance to drag the nation through what would almost certainly be an ugly investigation.
Perhaps if he believed he had been forced to do it - forced by us, his constituents - he would be less reluctant.

Largely plagiarized from my correspondent's email, here's the letter I just sent Rep. Martin Heinrich, Sen. Tom Udall, and Sen. Jeff Bingaman:

I fully agree with Rep. John Conyers's call for a full and complete investigation of Bush Administration misconduct ("Why We Have to Look Back", John Conyers Jr., Washington Post, 16 Jan 2009; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/15/AR2009011503152.html).

We cannot just forget about it & move forward. We cannot just say mistakes were made. Recall George Santayana's quote, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." No one should be above the law. Especially the President of the United States and his administration.

Please initiate or support a full investigation of President Bush's actions as recommended by Rep. Conyers.
And please urge President Obama to allow the Department of Justice to pursue this investigation wherever it may lead.

Thank you.

For those of you in NM1, here's contact info:

Senator Jeff Bingaman
703 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-5521
E-mail: senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov

Senator Tom Udall
B40D DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON DC 20510
(202) 224-6621

Congressman Martin Heinrich
1505 Longworth HOB
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6316
[email contact form at: https://forms.house.gov/heinrich/contact-form.shtml]

Have a nice day.

MLK Day plans: doing my part

I've been informed that Monday is MLK Day.
I'll commemorate it as W's LAST DAY - time to clean house.

Though it's not a particularly public-spirited gesture, I think I'll take the "clean house" bit literally, and clean the house.
The symbolism is worth it.

Have a nice day.

On second thought...

... I may ask for Treasury to take over some "troubled assets".

Contest: can any of my readers suggest a multi-word, multi-syllabic, financial-instrument-sounding name for a PowerBall ticket? Using Enron-esque accounting I can value it at $20Mn - which value I honestly believe to be "impaired". If Treasury could take it off my hands at 10% of valuation, I'd be really happy.

Sing a song.

Just for fun...

... I hit the U.S. Treasury's TARP website today, hoping to find some way to apply for TARP funds... without being indicted for fraud.

It's not clear that this is possible - all the posted deadlines have passed.
Maybe with the new funds (the next $350Bn) now available there'll be a window of opportunity. I'll visit Treasury again after the Inauguration.

My plan is simple: represent my current situation honestly. Use my SSN whenever magic ID numbers are sought. It'd be nice if I could come up with multi-syllabic, multi-word, bureaucratic-sounding synonym for "retired statistician & homeowner" as the name of my "privately held institution".
I'd be asking for direct infusion of $$$, not to unload "troubled assets".
I'd be more than happy to guarantee that funds would NOT be used to acquire other entities, to pay executive bonuses, or to fund extravagant weekend team-building exercises.

Have a nice day.

US Airways Flight 1549: Good news

Not only did 150 + 5 crew walk off the plane thanks to expert response of captain & crew, BUT...

Nobody paid much attention to W's farewell address: all news focused on the 'miraculous' ditching of Flight 1549!

(... AND: W did NOT appear on the scene with bullhorn!!!)

W's farewell speech

Sorry - I didn't watch it.
Did he use complete sentences?

Me? I'll be lunching with former colleague on Tues to celebrate, in his words, "the screen door hitting W’s ass on his way out."

I'll wait till Obama is formally sworn in to celebrate - I'm still waiting for a surprise that may keep W around longer.

Our MBA President at work

[As previously noted, I'm going to miss that header - might as well use it frequently while I still can!]

Quick tapping of unspent $350 billion in works
By ANDREW TAYLOR and PHILIP ELLIOTT,
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, Jan 11, 2009
WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic leaders said a vote could come as early as this week on providing a second $350 billion for the financial industry, after assurances Sunday by President-elect Barack Obama and one of his top economic advisers that the money would be better monitored and spent.

Confession: My first read of this was that W was asking for the cash to spend in his final week in office.

... BUT- "Our MBA President at work" is still an okay header.
On Friday, 9 Jan 2009, the Congressional Oversight Panel published its second report on TARP.
The conclusions?
Shortened, paraphrased: Paulson's Treasury hasn't a clue!

A previous post noted Paulson's take on the situation:

"There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced," Paulson said in prepared remarks before the House Financial Services Committee.

This same previous post took the liberty of suggesting to SecTreas Paulson just what his job ought to be:

SecTreas Paulson, not that it's my place to tell you your job, but: isn't it a reasonable expectation that your top priority over the past 2 months ought to have been drafting a playbook???
This calls to mind a time-worn biz adage: "If there’s no time to do it right the first time, when will you find the time to do things over?"

So far I've seen no evidence that he's taken my advice!

Meanwhile, my email inbox features this purportedly true account:

The Mustang Ranch and $750 billion bail-out.

Back in 1990, the Government seized the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada for tax evasion and, as required by law, tried to run it.

They failed and it closed. Now, we are trusting the economy of our country and 850+ Billion Dollars to a pack of nit-wits who couldn't make money running a whorehouse and selling booze. Now if that don't make you nervous, what does???

Note: this was under Bush 41 - like father, like son.
[FYI: previous post noted that W has presided over worst economic fiasco in modern U.S. history. The linked article notes that income growth showed similar stagnation only under Bush 41!... if anyone's interested, I've got nice Excel graphs that confirm this contention!]

Meanwhile, David Brooks insists that there's no evidence supporting a belief that fiscal stimulus works - pretty much ignoring the New Deal & JFK's response to 1960 recession.

"The Keynesian policies enacted under the Kennedy administra­tion in the early 1960s had all the hallmarks of a successful economic experiment."
[Great Experiments in American Economic Policy: From Kennedy to Reagan]

In Brooks's world, the only reason we're talking fiscal policy is because we've run out of monetary policy options.

It's true that we've run out of monetary policy options - but that doesn't erase at least two very real examples of Keynesian fiscal policy success!

Have a nice day.

Our MBA President at work

I'm going to miss being able to use that header!... Meanwhile:

Economy Made Few Gains in Bush Years
Eight-Year Period Is Weakest in Decades
By Neil Irwin and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 12, 2009
President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

Who'd a thunk?

Thankfully, this long national nightmare is ending soon.
[See Countdown Clock to the left!]

Galileo, redux

In the latter half of the 20th century, historians of science questioned whether, in fact, Galileo had carried out the experiments he cited as evidence for his theories of falling bodies.
This perhaps healthy skepticism was put to rest with the discovery of "a manuscript page obviously containing experimentat data."

Galileo's own description suggests that he used both his pulse and a clepsydra (water-clock) to measure time:

"... We repeated this experiment more than once in order to measure the time with an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one-tenth of a pulse-beat...
...
"For the measurement of time, we employed a large vessel of water placed in an elevated position; to the bottom of this vessel was soldered a pipe of small diameter giving a thin jet of water which we collected in a small glass during the dime of each descent, wheter for the whole length of the channel or for part of its length; the water thus collected was weighed, after each descent, on a very accurate balance; the differences and ratios of these weights gave us the differences and ratios of the times, and this with such accuracy that although the operation was repeated many, many times, there was no appreciable discrepancy in the results."

That seems to settle the matter: Galileo used a water-clock.

But wait! Modern attempts to replicate Galileo's results have been unsuccessful - the accuracy he asserts cannot be replicated. Now - it could be that the moderns are less adept at experiment than was Galileo. This is not altogether improbable - as noted previously, Galileo is the experimental physicist par excellence.
[For what it's worth: Galileo mentions repeating his experiments "a full hundred times". If he averaged the results of these hundred trials, his asserted accuracy could easily have been attained. Indeed - as a professional statistician, I rather like this explanation. Galileo himself, however, makes no mention of averaging, and seems to suggest that each individual reading met his standard for reliabilty/accuracy.]

Nevertheless, a second, plausible method for determining the inverses of the required time ratios has been proposed (... by these same moderns who failed to reproduce Galileo's water-clock accuracy!). That is, a method whereby only distances need be measured directly, the time intervals being held constant.

I happen to find the alternative plausible.

Think: train on track, or car on segmented pavement - click-clack, click-clack... if traveling at constant velocity, the click-clack providing a constant beat.

Suppose that moveable 'frets' could be introduced into Galileo's inclined plane - such frets sufficiently small as to not significantly impede the descent of the marble... say, thin threads strung across the track. By adjusting these frets so that, to the human ear, the resulting click-clacks were equally spaced in time, Galileo could easily measure the distances between successive click/clacks to arrive at his laws of falling bodies - essentially holding time constant.

The moderns used this technique to achieve Galileo's stated accuracy. They further note that Galileo, coming from a family of musicians, "may have used rhythms in order to measure very short time intervals."

For a much fuller discussion (with photos, footnotes, and all that jazz), see Reconstructing Galileo’s Inclined Plane Experiments for
Teaching Purposes.

Me - I like the rhythm method!

Galileo's telescope: an anniversary

Galileo did not invent the telescope.
Rather, he realized the telescope's potential for astronomy.

In his own words:

About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby... A few days later the report was confirmed to me in a letter from a noble Frenchman at Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to inquire into the means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument. This I did shortly afterwards, my basis being the theory of refraction...
...
It would be superfluous to enumerate the number and importance of the advantages of such an instrument at sea as well as on land. But forsaking terrestrial observations, I turned to celestial ones...
["The Starry Messenger" (1610), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Translated with and Introduction and Notes by Stillman Drake]

Galileo discovered the moon to be mountainous and cratered; Venus to have phases, like the moon; and Jupiter to have moons, in a system neatly analogous to the Copernican universe.
Galileo is a delightful read (via English translation... I lack the capacity to read him in his original Italian.)

Why Galileo just now?

This was suggested by a loyal reader (see comments below).

"The Starry Messenger" was published in 1610. In it, Galileo states that he learned of "a Fleming's" invention of the telescope "about ten months ago".
It is likely that Galileo constructed his telescope, based on the theory of refraction, in 1609.

2009, then, is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's "discovery" of the telescope - and the revolution in astronomy which followed.

A digression.
Galileo represents the experimental physicist par excellence. In addition to his telescopic observations of the heavens, Galileo also discovered, empirically, the basic laws of motion.
By rolling marbles down inclined planes, timing & measuring the descent, Galileo discovered the relationship between time, distance, velocity, and acceleration later implied by Newton's Laws.

Note: Time is a dimension that Galileo considered.
Just how did he measure time?
Recall - Galileo is perhaps most famous for noticing that a pendulum's cycle defines a more-or-less constant unit of time.
For calculus freaks: pendulum clocks work because

limit[t -> 0] sin(t)/t = 1.

Okay - back to the question:
Given his lack of a clock, how did Galileo measure time?
[I know the answer... or, more correctly, I know a plausible answer - not necessarily the true answer.]

... my original intent was to keep writing - to reveal Galileo's secret for measuring time without a clock...

But then I thought better of it.
Best to leave this puzzle for my loyal readers.
Please - if you've an idea, post a comment!

I'll reveal Galileo's secret (or at least, as previously stated, a plausible version of Galileo's secret) in a later post...

Sing a song!

I lied... again

... sort of...

look for 2-3 more posts on AQA, then for a new blog.

AQA is still retiring, for reasons previously cited... BUT i'll still be writing - just on a new, yet-to-be-named blog.

meanwhile: W's wonderful year-old peace initiative in the MidEast has certainly borne fruit: 10 days of carnage in Gaza!!! Way to go, W!!! (... and he & his minions are still calling for a "permanent" solution as precondition for cease-fire - just like in Lebanon a couple of years ago!)