Albeit they possess the Might ...

Nonetheless, we have the will.

Last Tuesday evening (April 15), after arriving home, feeding the cats, and changing out of my work clothes, I opened Google News to discover Harvard's resistance to demands by  President Trump's administration. Columbia's capitulation was easy to retrieve and I quickly built the presentation which I posted that night. 

Driving in to work the next morning and commuting home that afternoon, I decided to send a donation to Harvard. Right now, the check is in an envelope with a cover letter and a printout of that blog post. I will drop it into a Postal Service branch along tomorrow's commute in and it will move to a USPS regional point after 11:30 AM. It took almost a week because my days begin at 4:30 AM and by 5:00 PM composing literature is difficult. Admittedly, the letter betrayed little erudition. Plain speaking is fundamental to technical communication, validating the importance of the narrative. After a few edits, the letter carried my message. 

Originally, the post launched with a bold blue Helvetica kicker: "TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." After a couple of days of reading and reviewing, I edited that out because it was too much message without context and delivering those precepts and conclusions would have detracted from the impact of the post. Silence is golden. 

My point then (and now) is that university researchers always believed that government money came with no other requirements than honesty. After a submitted proposal is accepted, following the norms of research were all that was required. The political progressivism of academia was never challenged by the granting agencies which largely shared those assumptions--and when not, they still gave out the money, lest they deny a valid inquiry for an invalid motive. 

That began with Vannevar Bush.  "In Science, The Endless Frontier, his 1945 report to the president of the United States, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation." -- (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush) As an inventor, and then director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, Bush articulated well the fact that the ultimate rewards of original research are often not predictable at the moment of creation. So, the government should fund "everything" (within reason; subject to peer review). 

But there is no such thing as a free lunch. Finally, the government came to collect its due and what it wanted was less, not more. There was now a political price to be paid. The social agenda of the party in power is now the norm and there is no peer review. Lysenkoism and Aryan Physics were someone else's problems and now they are ours. 

Edward Jenner's small pox vaccines (1796) were predicated on over 50 years of general scientific reporting from Constantinople and other Asian entrepôts. This was the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. Experiment, publication, discussion, and debate brought material progress which included the steam engine. But there was no theory of thermodynamics--and no germ theory of disease. For over 100 years, the "animicules" revealed by Anton Leeuwenhoek's microscope were accepted as a consequence of disease, rather than the cause. Common knowledge credits Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others with the proofs, but ahead of them, in 1847, John Leonard Riddell of the New Orleans Medical College argued well. (NecessaryFacts here .) 

Does inoculation have unintended consequences? How could it not? Exploring those, understanding them, and building a theory that can be tested is a scientific project. 

"Cloudy Nights" is a discussion board for amateur astronomers. Chatting about the recent discovery of dimethyl sulfide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, I pointed out that DNA can edit and repair itself. My current library here in my office includes Genetics for Dummies. I make no pretense. And that is just one reason why I am not the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Lightbulb Does Not Need to be Changed 

If a Philosopher Falls in the Forest 

Innovation and Discovery 

20% of Scientists are Crooks 

The Great Gatsby an Alternate View and an Alternate History

The family is reading The Great Gatsby. It is something new for us. About 12 years ago our daughter and I read The Sun Also Rises. After that I read For Whom the Bell Tolls on my own. My wife and I have read some of the same books—I read four Rex Stouts for her; she read some cyberpunk scifi for me—but we never read together like a book club. 

About page 44 for me, Laurel asked about study guides and I examined four online, from the New York State Regents Examination Preparation down to GradeSaver and Shmoop. The Regents want you to know your tropes but the criticisms are all pretty much the same about the decadence of the Roaring Twenties. For the academic critics parallels to America today are impossible to ignore. I can take a different view. I can find in The Great Gatsby the hints and tendrils of new virtues then and now, supplanting Victorian sensibilities, which I can contend are also misunderstood by critical theorists from sociology and literature today.

 

Consider Jordan Baker. She earns an independent income as a golf pro, competing in tournaments. That would have been impossible before World War I. We easily accept that Nick Carraway sells bonds, but that, too, did not exist until about the 1820s. It could have been explained to a medieval banker or merchant factor. They bought and sold paper. Gaining understanding from a noble, knight, or peasant would have been difficult. Industrial capitalism of the mid-19^th century created the bonds markets to finance canals, railroads, etc. The soubriquet nouveau riche was an insult. It should have been a compliment, speaking to the creation of new wealth. 

 

When I read this in college (1967), the only thing that I took away was that Daisy’s ineptitude as a driver symbolized her inability to manage her own life. I understand. But, really, no one could drive back then. Today, we have two or three generations raised in automobiles, conditioned to perceiving the world at 60 mph. And cars are much safer with seatbelts, airbags, impact resistant superstructures, automatic transmissions, power steering, and steel belted radial tires. We still kill 40,000 people a year, but the population is three times larger than it was in 1925. So, the symbolism stands: Daisy is a wreck. That being so, automobiles nonetheless deserve context.

 

World War I was the turning point. When I cannot get to sleep, I imagine that I have a time machine and box of Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. To whom would they go? What would be the reaction? I could have the books on a Kindle or iPad, itself a wonder to underscore the veracity of the claims. (And then I am asleep.) But what if…? Had World War I not destroyed the status quo of Europe, what would the world of 1940 have been like?

 

I like to think that we could have been on our way to the Moon. The Internet would exist via telephone, radio, television, and teletype. But would any woman earn an independent income playing golf? Would women vote? 

 

I am enjoying The Great Gatsby for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing. I underline phrases and block off paragraphs of narrative. That in itself is motivation and reward. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Aaron Feldman: Buy the Book Before You Buy the Coin 

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Dealers Make the Show: Amadillocon 41 Day 3 Part 2 

Soldier’s Heart by Elizabeth Samet 

Libraries of the Founders 

 

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Nothing has changed in the fifty years since Richard Hofstadter chronicled the history of anti-intellectualism. The warning bell may seem muted because the names Billy Sunday, Carl McIntire, and J. Frank Norris no longer resonate. The value here is to learn and remember that today’s attacks on education are not momentary news but substantial tradition. Anti-intellectualism is not a quirk of the times; it is an abiding cultural context within which other phenomena can be understood. 

The irony of history is that we cannot see the day after tomorrow. So, publishing in 1962, Hofstadter could not write about the transformative generation that was about to enjoy a long life of broad, deep, and swift intellectual activity. But Hofstadter was prescient in identifying the long train of abuses against education launched by both nominal progressives and self-styled patriots. 

It is the patriots, in particular, who easily deny the Enlightenment that made possible the American Revolution and the political constitution that resulted from it. They did so in the 1800s and the 1900s, and do so today. But they are not alone. Radical progressives use physical force to deny access to campuses by those whose ideas they dislike. It is not just actual “hate speech”- though the Skokie Ruling long ago protected even that – but anything they seem to find worthy of their own hatred. 

Hofstadter examines the foundations of thought (or lack of it) that appear as outbursts in the common space. The newspaper editorials and Congressional hearings of the past exist today as blogs, websites, podcasts, and tweets. They all reflect deep assumptions within our culture. The insistence that university, high school, or elementary education serve “practical” goals of career or employment, community service or family responsibility can be found all along the course of American political history whether you look to the left or the right. 

“This distinction may seem excessively abstract, but it is frequently illustrated in American culture. In our education, for example, it has never been doubted that the selection and development of intelligence is a goal of central importance; but the extent to which education should foster intellect has been a matter of the most heated controversy, and the opponents of intellect in most spheres of public education have exercised preponderant power. But perhaps the most impressive illustration arises from a comparison of the American regard for inventive skill as opposed to skill in pure science. Our greatest inventive genius, Thomas A. Edison, was all but canonized by the American public, and a legend has been built around him. One cannot, I suppose, expect that achievements in pure science would receive the same public applause that came to inventions as spectacular and as directly influential on ordinary life as Edison’s. But one might have expected that our greatest genius in pure science, Josiah Willard Gibbs, who laid the theoretical foundations for modern physical chemistry, would have been a figure of some comparable acclaim among the educated public.”

The equivalents in our time are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Admirable as their achievements have been, they upstage the work of the geniuses who discovered the general laws of cybernetics, informatics, and electronics by inventing the infrastructure of our civilization. A hundred years ago, classical Greek was ebbing out of high school education, as unnecessary. Fifty years ago, Latin retreated. Their demise may have been a loss only to a few, but they have not been replaced by new languages such as Java and C. The value in learning to program is not to win a lucrative career in computing – though that is predictable and desirable – but to open the mind to new ways of perceiving and creating ideas that can operate in the material world. In that, they are as important as drama, art, and music, which are academic offerings that also have suffered reduced budgets for want of “practical” value.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Economic Value in a Liberal Education 

Another Cheer for American Education

The Pretense of Sociology

Sociology: A Defense and a Call for Reform

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

When has our republic not been in danger of invasion from without or subversion from within? 

"[A] populist strand ... has run through American history since Jonathan Edwards led the Great Awakending against the sophistication that was blossoming in the eighteenth century and Andrew Jackson spearheaded a popular revolt against John Quincy Adams. In fact, the division between populists and the establishment has been a more fundamental one in American politics than that between left and right, liberal and conservative. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, like many of their predecessors, rode to the White House in large part by tapping an anti-Establishment vein in the populace."  -- The Wise Men: Six Friends the World They Made  by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986; page 29.

Nothing in human history required the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. They were not the only documents of their kind. Before it was the United Kingdom, Great Britain had the Bill of Rights of 1689 which constrained the monarchy and included the right of the people (all of the Protestant ones) to keep arms in their homes. We all know the Articles of Confederation. But even that rested on the Albany Plan of Union, which itself was only one of several compacts over the previous two generations among some colonies for mutual defense. And the villages and townships were governed by elections, even—and especially—as the colonies lost their charters to the crown. 

The American revolution did not begin in July of 1776. The Marine Corps was founded on November 10, 1775. The battle at Breed's Hill and Bunker Hill had been fought on June 17, 1775, six weeks after Lexington and Concord. The Boston Massacre was March 5, 1770. The "American revolution" had already begun fifteen years earlier. The battlegrounds were the minds of Americans and the shots fired were ideas in newspapers, pamphlets, sermons, and private letters. 

Today, here in Austin, Texas, no parade will be held. We will have civic barbeques. Maybe that is enough, if it is true that 30% of the Texans in attendance will be carrying concealed handguns. I am less confident that 30% of them will have the post-graduate reading level necessary to understand the Declaration of Independence. (See here.)

Previously on Necessary Facts

Libraries of the Founders 

The Science of Liberty 

Rebels: A Well-Regulated Militia 

Liberty’s Kids 

The American Political Tradition and Profiles in Courage

BIG BANG THEORY: MORE FRIENDS THAN SEINFELD

Friends and Seinfeld were the most successful comedies on television because they appealed to wide audiences. That may seem tautological: The fact that Big Bang Theory has now surpassed them indicates a cultural shift in America. The widespread acceptance of Big Bang Theory derives not just from the writing and acting, but from a general interest and appreciation for science.

To some extent, this is a measure of pretense. More people claim to watch PBS and listen to NPR than actually do because it is expected as a sign of culture, learning, and social standing—at least among some people. The ratings for BBT are more reliable than that. It remains that very few of the millions who enjoy the humor freeze the frames to read the white boards. True fans know that the erasable boards contain physics equations that underscore passing elements of the dialog. Sometimes they frame the running narrative. The show is funny and the characters are compelling without it.

(For four seasons, the show was supported by a scientific website, Big Blog Theory written by their science advisor, UCLA’s David Saltzberg.  The final post, which footnoted “The Raiders Minimization” (Season Seven, in fact), was November 10, 2013, here. David Salzberg interviewed by NPR here.)

It raises a deeper question about the nature of comedy in particular, and fiction and literature more generally. Friends was inclusive. It had a large cast of ordinary people from several overlapping urban micro-cultures. Seinfeld was point-of-view, observational humor, with Jerry Seinfeld as our lens, even as we glanced aside to share with George, Elaine, and Kramer.

We can identify with the characters because we know them, perhaps all too well. When I first brought BBT home from the library in 2009, Laurel could not watch even the first episode. It was too embarrassing because it was too much like the people she worked with at the University of Michigan. Personally, I just thought that it was because she has so much in common with Sheldon. The fact is that even those millions who do not see themselves in the characters – as with Friends and Seinfeld – know people like them, again, as with Friends and Seinfeld. The difference between then and now can be attributed to a sociological “tech effect.”   

BBT is just one of many high-tech shows, such as the CSI franchise, N3MBERS, and Bones. Even NCIS is as much about Abbey, Duckie, and their labs, as it is about the marriages and marksmanship of Leroy Jethro Gibbs; and McGee graduated from MIT. The “tech effect” was the label given to the so-called “CSI Effect” in complaints from prosecutors that jurors were expecting sometimes ridiculous physical evidence, such as fingerprints lifted from grass. (See “The CSI Effect” earlier on this blog here  and “Junk Criminology as Pseudo-science” here.) Researchers Barak, Kim, and Shelton found that less educated jurors wanted "scientific" evidence. Educated people just trusted the prosecutor, worrisome as that is.

That nonetheless may reflect the wider “Flynn Effect” which posits that the general IQ is rising and that we are measurably smarter than we were 100 years ago. That being as it may, it is apparent to me that too many people still believe a lot of really stupid claims. It may be a slippery slope from speculation to mythology, from Star Trek to Star Wars, from Batman to Thor, from putting climate science and creation science in the same category.

A recent Pew Research poll on basic science may be disappointing because only 78% of 3278 randomly chosen Americans got 9 out of 12 right. You can take their quiz here. And read the analysis here.  However, as Wired writer Rhett Alain pointed out about a different quiz (here), these instant investigations ask not about scientific thinking but about the memorization of isolated facts. Alain was responding to a now-classic pop quiz given by Prof. Jon Miller of Michigan State University back in 2008 (see here and here ). One extension that Miller reported then was the fact that Americans tend to score slightly higher than Japanese or Europeans.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Nerd Nation 4.5 

Where all the Children are Above Average 

World Peace Through Massive Retaliation 

Education in America: at least two cheers  

Backyard Astronomy

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Tarzan, the Amazons, and my Mother

Public education ain’t what it used to be.  It is a law of economics that collectivism is inefficient, an entropic downward path. So, it is no surprise that we were better at public education 100 years ago.  The other day at work, referring to “the old college try” someone said, “Siss boom bah” intended as a cheer from the stands. It is a common error, one I once made about 60 years ago and was corrected by my mother. Even though her culture expected her education to prepare her only to be a wife and mother, she did have two years of Latin, along with much else.  “Sic cum pah!” she said, “Thus with oomph.”

 

Left circa 1945. Right some years later.

 About that same time, give or take a few years, my brother and I were watching an old Tarzan movie on tv, and Mom stopped in.  It was Tarzan and the Amazons, and when they were taken to “Palmyria,” and they called for the Queen, Mom said, “This will be Zenobia.”  (Very much more on this Johnny Weismueller fan site.) I think that she was just eponymously the Queen, but, decades later, studying the numismatics of the Roman Empire, I learned about Zenobia of Palmyra and remembered that moment.

Tarzan returns Athena to the Amazons.
From IMDB Media view here.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Cure for a Failing Empire

Star of Wonder: Arguments over the Christmas Star

Aspasia of Miletus

My Grandmother and Science

Elisha S. Loomis and the Pythagorean Proposition

The fact that over 300 proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem are known and an infinite number are possible is in and of the nature of the universe.  When something is true, many other truths support it; and a truth leads to many others.  Moreover, no truth can be supported by a fallacy; and a truth cannot lead to a fallacy. 

The Pythagorean Proposition: Its Proofs Analyzed and Classified and Bibliography of Sources for Four Kinds of Proofs by Elisha Scott Loomis, Ph. D., LL.B., Masters and Wardens Association of the 22^nd Masonic District of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, 1927.  National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Washington, D.C. 20036, 1940, 1968; 2^nd printing 1972.

National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics. 1968.
(Image courtesy of
Robert Blumenblatt)

Prof. Elisha S. Loomis divided proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem into four classes: algebraic, geometric, quaternionic, and dynamic. 

Algebraic proofs show that for two numbers, each of them multiples of other numbers by themselves (squared), there exists a third number, also the product of some number by itself (a square) that is the sum of those.  That is, for some integers A and B there is a C such that C*C equals A*A + B*B.  Geometric proofs are achieved by constructions, folding, cutting, and superimpositions. Dynamic proofs come from the mathematics of engineering mechanics, from vector arithmetic, in which magnitude and direction together define a force. 

For quaternions, I can only quote Wikipedia: “quaternions are a number system that extends the complex numbers. They were first described by Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. A feature of quaternions is that multiplication of two quaternions is noncommutative."  In other words A * B ≠B * A.  The only explanation I know – perhaps not actually from quaternions – is that there are ways to flip a book (transformation with rotation) so that when you reverse the steps, the book is in a different orientation than when you started.

But I could follow the concepts supporting the algebraic and geometric proofs; and they are the foundation for the vector arithmetic.

The simplest algebraic proofs are attributed to Pythagoras and Euclid, but I would like to find them in the original because, in fact, those ancient savants did not know algebra. Nonetheless, citing Loomis, those proofs were explored and generalized by Artemas Martin (1891) and Leonard E. Dickson (1894).

Start with any odd number. Square it and subtract 1; then divide by 2; this is the second number. For the third, take the original, add 1 to it, and square the sum. That third number equals the sum of the squares of the other two.

Let n be odd; then n, ( n² -1)/2 and (n²+1)/2 are three such numbers. For n²+ [(n² -1)/2]² = (4n²+ n4 – 2n²+1)/4 =(n²+1)/2]² .

The algebraic proof is difficult to lay out with a word processor but is easy enough with paper and pencil.

The simplest geometric proof is achieved by starting with a right triangle. Drop a perpendicular from the right angle. The three triangles are similar. The ratios and proportions of their respective sides can be stated algebraically, and then be manipulated to show that the square of the original hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

The other 368 proofs are left for the reader to enjoy.

Elisha Scott Loomis held a doctorate in mathematics from Wooster College in Ohio, earned a law degree and was admitted to the Ohio bar, worked as the town engineer in Beria, Ohio, and, after some other appointments and assignments became the chairman of the mathematics department at West High School in Cleveland, Ohio. 

The first edition of this book includes a roster of the 22^nd Masonic District of Ohio with their officers, including the Past Grand Masters, and the Masters and Wardens Association, about 150 names in all. I recognized many of the neighborhoods:  Brooklyn, Denison, Collingwood, Windemere, Lakewood, Euclid, Sheffield. Other lodges had honorific names: Laurel, Pythagoras, Warren G. Harding, North Star, Halcyon.

The second edition had three printings, 1940, 1968, and 1972 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Their office is listed in Washington DC, but the books were printed in Ann Arbor. The dedications to the FAM lodges were removed in the reprinting.

You can find a biography of Elisha Scott Loomis in Wikipedia.  The same information can be found in the front matter of the books.  Other biographies have been archived online.

“While he was living in Berea, Loomis began to study civil engineering and became the village engineer. He also served a three-year term as president of the Berea board of education. He continued to study while he taught, and this led to an A. M. degree from Wooster (Ohio) University in 1886 and a Ph.D. in metaphysics and social science from that same institution in 1888. The subject of his doctoral thesis was "Theism the Result of Completed Investigation."

In 1895 Professor Loomis left Baldwin University to become head of the mathematics department at Cleveland West High School, where he remained until his retirement in 1923. In 1900 he earned the LL.B. degree from the Cleveland Law School and was admitted to the Ohio state bar. He served a 3-year term as president of the High School Teachers¼ Mathematics Club of Cleveland, and he was active in the Masonic lodge.” – Kullman ("Elisha Scott Loomis," The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 15, New York, James T. White & Company, 1914, p. 186. Article by David E. Kullman, Miami University.)

Title Page of First Edition

ELISHA SCOTT LOOMIS, educator, author and man of affairs of Lakewood, was born on a farm in Wadsworth Township, Medina County, this state, September 18, 1852, son of the late Charles Wilson and Sarah (Oberholtzer) Loomis.  …  He was superintendent of schools at Shreve, Ohio, from 1876 to 1879; principal of Burbank Academy at Burbank, Ohio, from 1880 to 1881; principal of Richfield Central High School, Summit County, Ohio, from 1881 to 1885; professor of mathematics in Baldwin Wallace University from 1885 to 1895, and from 1895 up to the close of 1923 was head of the department of mathematics in West High School of Cleveland. At the last mentioned date he retired on school pension, having reached the limit established by Ohio law which provides that no teacher of the public schools shall hold position after having reached the age of seventy years. He taught his first school, beginning in April, 1873, and completed his last term of teaching in June, 1923, thus rounding out a full half century of successful teaching, and but for the intervention of the Ohio school law limiting the age of teachers for school teaching he would have continued his school work for an indefinite period, should he have so desired, for his physical and mental faculties are unimpaired, and "his spirit is willing."
http://www.onlinebiographies.info/oh/cuya/loomis-es.htm

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Two Books on Fermat's Last Theorem

The Unit Circle

U.S. Patent Law Does Not Add Up

Patent Nonsense