d_rawk

I like Jaimoe's list, and to top it out to a proper top 5, I'd add Marc Bolan. (With an honourable mention going to Transformer-era Lou Reed)

Dude, pi == 3.2 The Case of Indiana vs. Pi * THE STORY OF THE BILL The bill's author was one Edwin J. Goodwin, M.D., who evidently was a crank mathematician. He lived in the village of Solitude, which is in Posey County, Indiana, about 20 miles west of Evansville. And the epoch-making suggestion that he put to Taylor I. Record, the state Representative for the county, was this: If the State would pass an Act recognizing Goodwin's discovery, then he would allow all Indiana textbooks to use it without paying him a royalty. Record went along, introducing the bill into the state House on the 18th of January, 1897; the legislators then referred it to the House Committee on Canals, also called the Committee on Swamp Lands. On the 19th, that committee's chairman, Representative M. B. Butler of Steuben County, reported back with a recommendation to refer the bill to the Committee on Education. On the 19th, two Indianapolis papers had carried brief notices about a bill telling how to square the circle. (That's the name used for the problem, which in ancient times was to be solved by a compass-and- straightedge construction, of finding a square with area equal to a given circle.) Then on the 20th, the Indianapolis Sentinel ran the following article: TO SQUARE THE CIRCLE Claims Made That This Old Problem Has Been Solved. The bill telling how to square a circle, introduced in the House by Mr. Record, is not intended to be a hoax. Mr. Record knows nothing of the bill with the exception that he introduced it by request of Dr. Edwin Goodwin of Posey County, who is the author of the demon- stration. The latter and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Geeting believe that it is the long-sought solution of the problem, and they are seeking to have it adopted by the legislature. Dr. Goodwin, the author, is a mathematician of note. He has it copy- righted and his proposition is that if the legislature will indorse the solution, he will allow the state to use the demonstration in its textbooks free of charge. The author is lobbying for the bill. Another Indianapolis daily ran a more educated article, even mentioning Ferdinand Lindemann's proof, just 13 years before, that pi is actually transcendental (which implies that squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge must be impossible). Unfortunately, this was a German- language paper, and so their article didn't get a lot of notice among English speakers. And the Committee on Education's chairman, Representative S. E. Nichol- son of Howard County, reported back on the 2nd of February "with the recommendation that said bill do pass." The bill duly came up for second reading on the 5th, and passed. Nich- olson then moved the suspension of the constitutional rule "requiring bills to be read on three [separate] days", allowing an immediate third (final) reading. The suspension passed by 72-0, and the bill itself, by 67-0. The Indianapolis Journal called it "the strangest bill that has ever passed an Indiana Assembly." However, by sheer chance, it happened that a real mathematician, Prof. C. A. Waldo of the Indiana Academy of Science, had been present in the House that day. To quote Edington quoting Waldo: ...imagine [the author's] surprise when he discovered that he was in the midst of a debate upon a piece of mathematical legislation. An ex-teacher from the eastern part of the state was saying: "The case is perfectly simple. If we pass this bill which establishes a new and correct value for pi, the author offers ... its free publication in our school text books, while everyone else must pay him a royalty." Waldo was then shown a copy of the bill and asked if he wanted to meet its author. He replied that he was already "acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know." Fortunately, Indiana has a bicameral legislature, and by the time the bill got to the Senate, Waldo had been able to make sure that the Senators were "properly coached". The bill got its first reading in the Senate on the 11th of February. Apparently in fun, they referred it to the Committee on Temperance. And the next day its chairman, Senator Harry S. New of Marion County, reported back "with the recom- mendation that said bill do pass." According to the Senate Journal for the 12th of February, the bill was read a second time, an attempt to strike out the enacting clause failed, and finally the bill was postponed indefinitely. But this leaves out all the good stuff, as reported in the Indianapolis News on the 13th: The Senators made bad puns about it, ridiculed it, and laughed over it. The fun lasted half an hour. [Then] Senator Hubbell said that it was not meet for the Senate, which was costing the State $250 a day [!], to waste its time in such frivolity ... He moved the indefinite postponement of the bill, and the motion carried. ... To which Dudley comments that here it is almost 100 years later and the bill is *still* indefinitely postponed. As to the Senators' attitude to the bill, the Indianapolis Journal reported: All of the senators who spoke on the bill admitted that they were ignorant of the merits of the proposition. [in the end,] it was simply regarded as not being a subject for legislation. And so ends the tale of, as Waldo put it, "the epoch making discovery of the Wise Man from the Pocket." Goodwin continued promoting his discovery for a long time afterwards, but never came so close to success. As Allan Adler said in a Usenet posting, "and before we laugh too hard at the legislature of Indiana or at the state of education in 1897, I think we should have a moment of silence as we contemplate what fate the bill might have if it were brought up for a referendum today." * VIEWPOINTS ABOUT THE BILL First, let it be clearly understood that everyone agrees that the bill was mathematical nonsense. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun thinking about it. In Singmaster's article, he has fun by taking each individual mathe- matical statement in it at face value, and comparing it with a true statement involving pi to derive a supposed value for pi. Dudley also goes along with this approach, citing Singmaster. My opinion, on the other hand, is that it's more fun to try to recon- struct Goodwin's thinking, and Singmaster and Dudley don't provide a fair representation of what that was. I think my annotations, given below, do. It's clear from the text of the bill that Goodwin's version of geometry had lots more deviations from reality than simply the shape of a circle. So what I have tried to do below is to identify *each* of those differ- ences, and to see just how self-consistently the bill can be interpreted. Now, the term "pi" can be defined in many ways, all of which are neces- sarily equivalent in real mathematics. For example, it is the ratio of the area of a circle to the square of its radius, and also the ratio of the circumference and diameter of a circle. Then there are possible definitions based on infinite series or on probabilities, having nothing to do with geometry. In Goodwin-land, these definitions are not at all equivalent, and this is the source of Singmaster's many values. But the definition usually given for pi is the ratio of the circumfer- ence and diameter of a circle, and that's the definition that I'm using from here on. Accepting that as the definition and accepting standard ratio operations on Goodwin's "ratio of the diameter and circumference", the only conclusion can be that the bill assigns the value 3.2 to pi. Most people writing about the bill have considered it as an *attempt to legislate* the value of pi. To Dudley, this is a "falsehood" which "all of us who revere reason have a sacred duty" to put down. As Dudley says: The bill that the Indiana House of Representatives passed was not one setting the value of pi by law. It was one that gave the state the privilege of using the proper value of pi for free. And so, he says, when the Senate didn't vote on the bill, There was only a refusal by [the lawmakers] to take [Goodwin]'s value, or values, [of pi] as a gift. Now, this is an accurate description of the bill's *intent*. But all the same, it *was* a bill "setting the value of pi", in the sense that sections 1 and 2 of the bill really would have *enacted* Goodwin's formulas. Therefore it is also quite accurate to say that the bill would have set the value of pi to 3.2.

Agreed. 'course that doesn't necessarily mean that the religious right is wrong about god, or that the supporters are wrong about climate change. (Actually I'd like to retract that particular analogy somewhat - the enlightenment era idea that religion should play in the grounds of science has been a disaster for both religion and science) Your point is well taken, though. Blind parroting does not convincing make.

Cute Brings a point to mind -- scientists are supposed to be skeptics, and we've got to be cautious to not immediately flag skepticism as out-of-touch dissent. Although pure self-serving greed disguised as legitimate skepticism is something we've got to watch out for, too ...

Haha, yeah, this should help ease the burden of Wikipedia vandalism some. They've pretty much made themselves an inviting new target.

I love you (or whoever compiled those stats) for not conflating "virgin birth" with "immaculate conception".

Or more. France is Europe's Quebec. Prone to reactionary bigotry as a result of cultural insecurity. Not a slam on France or Quebec. Love them both to tears. But undercurrent nothing. The ugliness is worn proudly on the sleeve.

www.conservapedia.com The date thing aside (I once read a review of a Karen Armstrong book that dismissed it out of hand because of the use of C.E. -- for fucks sake!), if there is evident bias in Wikipedia, why not ... Ah, screw it. Some highlights from the rantish "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" - Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E. instead of B.C. and C.E. instead of A.D [sic]. The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise? Conservapedia is Christian-friendly and exposes the CE deception. - Polls show that about twice as many Americans identify themselves as "conservative" compared with "liberal", and that ratio has been increasing for two decades.[1] But on Wikipedia, about three times as many editors identify themselves as "liberal" compared with "conservative".[2] That suggests Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public. - Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American. Look up "Most Favored Nation" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts the spelling to the British spelling "Most Favoured Nation." Look up "Division of labor" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts to the British spelling "Division of labour," then insists on the British spelling for "specialization" also.[9] Enter "Hapsburg" (the European ruling family) and Wikipedia automatically changes the spelling to Habsburg, even though the American spelling has always been "Hapsburg". Within entries British spellings appear in the silliest of places, even when the topic is American. Conservapedia favors American spellings of words. etc, etc

I don't think that is what hate crime laws are designed for? (merits or lack of merits aside, by and large I think the intent is to create an actionable offense by which a murder or other attrocity might be prevented, not to add another layer of legal complexity to a murder that has already occured. This is like the whole thing with gun legislation -- yes, it's true that criminals aren't going to give up their guns just because there is a law against them. HOWEVER, having a law against them gives the police the means to arrest people with unregistered weapons, a means which they would not have if such legislation didn't exist ...). On topic: France is totally politically fucked up.

America: we must invade Iraq now, because weapons inspections have failed. The World: what makes you think that weapons inspections have failed? America: no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The World: maybe there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? America: but how could we know that, when weapons inspections are so ineffective? The World: but what makes you so certain that they are ineffective? America: the fact that they haven't uncovered any WMDs in Iraq! The World: *blink*

Right. This is one of those cases where pragmatism probably trumps all. Even if we're out to lunch on the subject of climate change, most of the behavioural changes are worthwhile regardless. And even though we've got no bloody chance of reaching Kyoto targets at this point - even if the political will were there - it's not at all a loss to exert pressure to act as though we could. Regardless of some of the undesirables of that particular accord.

As Blane suggested, I'm confused too. You're skeptical of climate change, you're skeptical of the human impetus behind it, or you're dissatisfied with the Kyoto accord? All are fine positions to take, of course, but very different positions altogether. You could, for example, acknowledge climate change and assert your belief that humans have played some significant role in it, and still have no love for Kyoto. Which seems to be what your (well Allegre's, but assuming the choice of emphasis is yours) bolded text is getting at ...

That is a staggeringly piss-poor response from an employer. He should be poked in the eye. Thrice. With dirty fingers. Incidentally, what corrective action was taken towards the students 'razzing' Rice about her Mormonism? If the article is any indication, not a thing.

He wrote a book with a hauntingly beautiful title. That's all I've got.

Jay Harper.

That was a good one, thanks! There were a few points I wanted to hit on, but it was a pretty long article, and most of them have escaped me now that I've reached the end. Man, though, is it just me or hasn't Hitchens become completely beligerrent and unbearable since Sept. 11, 2001? He's always been something of a contrarian, of course (taking on Mother Teresa was ballsy and cute) but dammit, he's difficult to bear these days and seems somewhere along the way to have stopped thinking things through.

Confirmed. That was my favourite neighbourhood to live in.

But where do I find that clarity to discover my wants in order the specify them? What if my wants, as they stand at present, have the consequence of a multitude of victims whom I might not ever take into account or even recognize as the necessary victims of that particular wants fulfillment?

Getting what you want is the easy part - or if not easy, certainly the least interesting. Most of the harm I've done myself (and others) has been a result of getting what I want, and getting it when I wanted it. Learning what to want -- and why -- is a different matter altogether. Most growth probably results from hitting those barriers, those walls, that suffering, that lack and those uncertainties. What value spiritual capitalism? If I want an extra $1000 dollars, what is the consequence of that $1000 being delivered?

From a couple days ago - this interview was live on 100 Huntley St., and they've made it clear that it will not be re-broadcast.

Yeah, I don't think it's peculiar to Christianity at all. It was (and could still be) something radical and revolutionary, but like anything that gets co-opted all the jagged edges get smoothed out. You can't be the anti-establishment when you are the establishment. We see it most in something like Christianity because that is culturally dominant here. Consider what happens with revolutionary leftist politics, too, once those groups come into power.

Good for you man. All the best to ya. There is a wit and a brilliance in you that I admire, Luke. I don't know that we've met proper, but I've been worrying about you a bit. So happy that you knew when to seek some outside assistance. Keep your chin up dude. We're all behind you 100%.

Shouldn't be too complicated ... Here's a good step by step: Turning on DMA in XP

No, you're not. And your points are spot on. Worth stating the obvious, too -- if an interventionist God is going to steer your bloody car for you, what are we to infer about all those people who ... y'know ... get into these predicaments and ... well ... die and stuff? I s'pose they had it coming. As far as thoughts -- does a long, defeated sigh count? Probably not, and yet ... there it is. An aside to Bouche: It's 2007 dude. When the heck are we going to get the ability to embed mp3s? I just thought of a good one.