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 

Remembering the Slide Rule

This came up as a thread in the “Off-Topic Observatory” of the Cloudy Nights discussion board for amateur astronomers. People have all kinds of hobbies and among the stargazers are skiers, rally racers, runners, and rock climbers, though understandably many more bird watchers, radio hams, and numismatists. Several of us collected slide rules accidentally or on purpose. In response to the topic, one poster just bought a circular slide rule to add to the collection. Aside from the engineer’s slipstick, my circular calculators are all for publishing to reduce or enlarge images and paper pages. 

 

Calculators - and I do use my phone, holding it sideways for the technical functions - give us a false sense of precision, when all you need is accuracy. In other words: will it fly? will it overflow the container? will it carry the load? For backyard stargazing, given that the atmosphere is a roiling ocean, what is the (approximate) limit of observable stellar magnitude with a 115 mm versus 102 mm refractor? The difference between pi=22/7 and pi=3.141 is 0.0018: two thousandths. Not much in life is that close. 

The one at the bottom was special because about 1988 or so, Pickett
(or their inheritors) found a large number of them in a warehouse
and in a publication (Scientific American or Science News or similar)
announced that they would give one (one) to everyone who
sent in a letter asking for one. (Email was not common back then),
after which, the instruments would be no longer available.
The one down from topmost came in a leather scabbard
with a fastener on the back so that you could wear it on your belt.
Long after those days, I wore it in to work.
"What's that?"
"This is the formal computing device of a Jedi,
from a simpler, more elegant time."

Clearly, the slide rule has been eclipsed by devices with storage and memory. Back in the 70s, I joined a round-robin newsletter called The Libertarian Connection, which was based on the medium known to science fiction fanzines. We sent in mimeograph stencils; the editors ran them off, collated the magazine, and mailed it out. Back when one ounce first class was 3 cents the saying was “a penny a day from coast to coast.” Then they went to photo-offset, which I enjoyed immensely. And here we are in the age of George Jetson, with a somewhat better BBS via integrated fiber optics into the house instead of a telephone dial-up at 300 baud. 

 The device is based on logarithms which allowed the transformation of multiplication and division into addition and subtraction. With a five-place or six-place tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions, you could achieve 100 times the precision of daily life. (Consider common retail pricing, for example.) That, in turn, allows efficiencies in engineering and production. Compared against working with tables, the slide rule traded speed for precision. You only get three places, but it is much easier, with the likelihood of errors reduced. If you need more precision, there were the books of tables, and an adding machine, then, later a comptometer.

The slide rule shows ratios and proportions so that you do not need to recursively enter numbers 4.1, 4.2, 4.3,… And it is designed to address basic problems involving circles and square roots. 

 

Even in the 1990s, engineers had AutoCAD and its competitors that let you draw something and the program would show the calculations off to the side. Would you rather start a fire with a BiC lighter or two sticks? Still, it is nice to get away from the computer, sit on a couch or chair, and move the numbers and see what is under the cursor or at the index

 

23 squared times Pi.
Set the Index to 23 on the D scale and
read the square at the Index on the A scale.
Set the cursor to Pi on the B scale and read the answer on the A scale.

For the telescope of diameter 115 mm, set the index on the D scale, read the square on the A scale and then set the cursor to pi, and you get 417 or close to. The calculator says 41,547.562843725015579. Ignoring all the noise, 415 is within half a percent. The 102-mm refractor has an area of about 327. Set either the AB or CD scales to 415/327 and the larger telescope has 127% the area of the smaller—and the calculator agrees: 1.27114… But you could do most that in your head anyway. 

In astronomy, the paradigm shifts in understanding the so-called “expansion of the universe” i.e., the Hubble Constant has been measured in orders of magnitude, not decimal places. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Claude M. Watson (1922-2013) 

The Rational Optimist and The Grand Complication 

Celestial Mechanics 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld’s Astronomy Activity Manual 

ChatGPT and the Historical Forms of Academic Dishonesty

 In one criminology class, our professor said that 80% of people are honest 80% of the time; about 20% of the goods on the market have no clear title. 

Back in 1968, at my small liberal arts college, at the end of the school year, several of my classmates found themselves faced with a final paper in world history that some of them could not complete. At least one of them had done (most of) the work. He gave his pals his paper to copy, which they did, apparently verbatim in small or large passages. However, our school had an Honor Code, a Pledge, which was to be written in full at the top of each examination or paper. (Usually, for quizzes and such, we just wrote "Pledged" at the top.) Also, as it happened, the center of the conspiracy copied a section directly from the assigned textbook without attribution. The textbook was a reference for our benefit. We never read from it in class; we had no assignments from it. So, at least one of my classmates may have assumed that the professor would not recognize the passage or passages. In any case, it did not occur to them that their nearly identical papers would betray them. Of course, they should have been expelled and of course they were not. The story is not unusual in any way.

We have one day a month assigned away from the workplace and on that day, we receive a task from a manager. They call this "Mental Spa Day." My work away from work included completing an introductory class about ChatGPT and then having ChatGPT write a story. "Use a favorite character from two of your favorite tv shows/movie/book – so, you have two characters; Have them meet while on vacation in ____________(location of your choosing);  Have them describe the location surrounding them;  Have them go on two adventures." This is the result.

My instructions to ChatGPT: Write a story in which the character of Temperance Brennan from the televisions series "Bones" meets the character of Sherlock Holmes as played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the television series "Sherlock." They are separately on vacation in Austin, Texas. They meet on a tour of the Lady Bird Johnson Wild Flower Center. While admiring the plants and other wildlife, they see a foot under a bush and discover a body. Call this "Intro One."

Title: Botanical Bones: An Unexpected Encounter

Intro One: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

In the heart of Austin, Texas, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center sprawled with vibrant colors and the fragrant scents of nature. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist known for her meticulous attention to detail, found herself on vacation in the Lone Star State, seeking solace amidst the blooming wildflowers.

Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes, the enigmatic detective with a penchant for deduction, had chosen Austin as his destination for a much-needed break from the hustle and bustle of London.

Their paths converged unexpectedly on a guided tour of the Wildflower Center, where they found themselves admiring the indigenous flora and fauna.

[Edit in: 7 June 2024. I rarely edit entry to this blog after a work has been posted. I sometimes fix typographical errors such as "its" for "it's" though most errors survive because that is the record. In this case, I removed the story so that I can edit it and post it on 8 June as "Fan Fic by ChatGPT: Part 3."] 

The work needs editing. Among the weaknesses was the use of the same key word in a sentence: "...they forged a bond forged in the crucible of investigation..." However, it is a good beginning for someone who does not want to create and needs to fill a requirement. I have several books of newly published science fiction like this purchased last summer on a whim. I got through half of one and cannot read the others. I did read two novels by Marion Zimmer Bradley and four short stories by H. G. Wells. To produce literature at that level would require training ChatGPT, which is the intent of its creators: you recursively teach the program to develop what you want. At that level, you might as well do all the work yourself, or, at least you will have the learning experience of teaching the subject. 

In 2008, I had a class in symbolic logic. Our first exercises were to program a logic engine to produce certain truths. After a few weeks, we were on our own: the homework was to solve this or show that or demonstrate some other. Well, I had the logic program to do that. I just entered the Boolean expressions and turned the handle. That worked fine until the problems got harder. I had to do a lot of paper-and-pencil to know what to give the machine. Eventually, although there was one that took me five hours, it was easier just to do the work myself. 

I recently read some discussions on Reddit among professors who were worried (or not) about how to test their students in the era of interactive AI. Here at the University of Texas Austin, they have large lecture classes assigned to teaching assistants: your "professor" is some kid two years older than you. At Eastern Michigan University, we did not have TAs. If your name was in the book, then you were the person in front of the class. Granted, you might not know every freshman in an auditorium of 200, but you should know every senior in your seminar.  

Addendum: April 28. 11:23 AM. For the more recent topic here on the slide rule, I was going to add a comment about calculators. Then, I realized that my phone will do that, of course. I seldom use an actual calculator any more. But how about math class? If you have a phone, you do not need to do any calculations. You enter “Bill can mow the lawn …” in your search engine and you get lots of answers. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Goofing to a Meltdown? 

Engines of Creation 

Lost in Translation 

Invisible Cheating and Visible Rights 

HOW TO KEEP TEENAGERS FROM READING AYN RAND

The Ayn Rand Institute created a guide book for high school teachers who want to bring Anthem into their classroom as an assigned reading. I can think of no better way to make sure that no one who deserves to read it actually will. 

Appendix: Teaching Anthem: A Guide for High School and University Teachers

Lindsay Joseph -- February 16, 2024 -- 24 min read

How can we help students understand Anthem with greater depth and clarity?

https://newideal.aynrand.org/appendix-teaching-anthem-a-guide-for-high-school-and-university-teachers/

“This essay is intended as a guide for teachers as they help their students understand Anthem with greater depth and clarity.

“Once students have achieved an integrated understanding of Anthem, they should be encouraged to relate their newfound knowledge to the world around them. Their knowledge is not useful if it is compartmentalized. The third part of this guide is designed to help students apply Anthem’s meaning to other areas of study, the real world, and their own lives.”

First of all, if the essay is a guide, then that is what it is. To say that it is intended as a guide denies the premise: perhaps it will not be accepted as a guide or be understood as a guide. If so, then the writer of the guide failed. More to the point, no one who reads Anthem needs to have it explained. If they do, then the writer of the story failed—and she did not. 

 

Back in the ‘60s, sometime after I read Anthem, I saw a social commentary comedian on Ed Sullivan. He said that people are upset at campus protests. He said that some people think that kids should spend more time in church. He said that perhaps the way to get kids into church is to put tanks in front of them and order the kids to stay away. That sort of sums up the message in Anthem. I did not need it explained to me. No one did. In fact, just as a classmate of mine had passed the book to me, I handed it off to a girl who took great exception to its message and marked it up with counter claims. Turns out, she was a Christian who understood the message quite well and disagreed with it quite clearly. She also did need not a study guide.

 

You want to keep kids from reading Ayn Rand? 

Order them to do it.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Anthem as a Graphic Novel 

The Girl Who Owned a City 

“Star Trek: Discovery” and the Conflict of Values 

Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard “Serenity” 

An Online Class in Astrophysics

I recently completed a survey in astrophysics offered by the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne through edX, a program created by Harvard and MIT and now involving many other institutions. I recommend this class with serious reservations. If you want a structured experience in learning astrophysics on your own, this can help. I found the content informative, challenging, and edifying. However, the presentation was often marred by careless transcription and poor translation of the lectures. 

 I do grant that as listed, Physics 209, this is about what I would expect from an American university for a sophomore class in physics, though for non-majors. Calculus is at a minimum here. Once a week or so, I did spend an hour with one math problem among three or four multiple choice. If you did well at “Conceptual Physics” and have a head for algebra, this is a solid survey of topics in astrophysics. 

 

Nominally, the course takes seven weeks to work through seven chapters which are presented as 27 lectures and quizzes. Each lecture is about 20 to 35 minutes. So, this is about a fourth of a semester of effort, all in all. There is a thin textbook that you can download as a PDF. I found it helpful and referred to it often. 

 

I took the course for certification. So, I paid the registration fee of USD 139. Personally, I need that kind of motivation. If I had not been financially invested in the outcome, I would have walked away from it—which I also considered. More than once, I almost cut my losses and left the money on the table. Instead, I toughed it out and actually earned the certificate of completion a little more than halfway through the class because at that point, it was arithmetically impossible for me to fail. I viewed all of the lectures and completed all of the quizzes. They drop your three lowest scores. With that, I averaged 90%.

Quote:

The grading system is simple. Each video is followed by several quizz, either multiple choice questions or questions requesting a numerical answer. In most cases it is possible to try 2-3 answers before giving the final answer. You qualify for the certificate with at least 50% of correct answers for at least 19 out of the 22 quizz that we propose. 

 

When a numerical answer is required, usually, a 10% error bar is included in the calculation, more if it's an order of magnitude estimate.

 

Week 1: General introduction - Kepler's Laws - Virial theorem.

Week 2: Radiation processes - Line radiation - Black body - Measuring radiation.

Week 3: Doppler-Fizeau effect and astrophysical applications - Interstellar and intergalactic radiation - Strömgroen sphere - Absorption/emission - Color index - Tidal forces. 

Week 4: Roche limit - Comets - Planetary energy balance - Planetary atmospheres - 

Week 5: Stellar formation - Stellar classification - Stellar evolution. 

Week 6: The galaxies - Rotation of the Milky Way and Oort constants - Dark matter.

Week 7: Fundamentals of cosmology - Distance ladder - Gravitational lensing.

 

Length: 7 Weeks

Effort: 3–4 hours per week

I kept two notebooks, in fact. The first is set of Word files made from the lecture notes provided. The other is a spiral bound that I also have for working astronomy problems from books that I buy or borrow from the library. I captured the solutions to all of the answers that I missed and some that I guessed right and put those in either or both as needed.

 

First, and foremost, I do not have the mindset of a physicist or I would have become one a long, long time ago. So, for some problems, I had to see how it was done, what approach was needed, which contexts were relevant, where the equations of solution had to come from. So, that was learning. I missed a couple of others just because I did not understand what was being asked. 

 

Just below halfway on the left
find "stronger in radius"
for "Strömgren radius."

I also invested a lot of time into correcting the transcripts of the lectures. The English language speaker did not understand the material he was reading. Often, he spoke “v” for the Greek letter nu and “p” for rho, and so on. Sometimes he left symbols out entirely. Once, he spoke “proton” for “photon.” The course was replete with such problems. In one way, the careless transcription of text gave me the opportunity to read and review the lecture in detail. I formatted paragraphs and formatted equations. The fact remains that some lecture notes lacked any punctuation.

 

A more subtle difficulty was in the differences between sentence structure in French and English. The English speaker paused when the professor did, even though the thoughts presented as subordinate clauses, parenthetical comments, noted asides, or dependent clauses were strung differently in the two languages. 

 

Despite the fact that the course was supposedly monitored by a professor and three assistants, in point of fact, no one monitored the course. When I finally tried to send an email the EPFL coordinator, the message bounced as undeliverable. So, you are on your own here. 

 

Through a YouTube channel created by a maths boffin named Tibees. (Tibees

“An MIT final exam in astrophysics”), I found MIT's open courseware. She misidentified this as a final examine in astrophysics from MIT. I followed the links and found that it was merely plain old astronomy, which, apparently, at MIT is astrophysics. (See here.  And they have a lot more if you want to work on your own through a structured course.) Anyway, most of these topics were touched on by at least one quiz question in the EPFL course though in much less depth.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Steven Weinberg on Gravity Waves 

Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirshfeld’s Astronomy Activity Manual 

Newton and Leibniz 

The Solstice Seasons 

Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe 

 

The Great Lakes Maritime Academy

On Friday, May 17, I was granted a tour of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. It was arranged by my sister-in-law, an administrative assistant there. (She served in the Royal Navy.) Although their students were out on the water for training, I had about an hour with one of their instructors, Cary Godwin (CDR USCG Ret). While the simulator ran its program, we talked about training methods and methodologies. Sue then led us through the classrooms and laboratories. 

GLMA cadets are in a four-year program that requires 360 days of active shipboard assignment. In fact, it begins on the water. 

Students work hard at basic skills from the sextant and paper charts up through the newest technologies. Their training includes piloting 1000-foot ore ships and rowing small boats.  

 

The first class graduated in 1979.
Cadet David E. Weiss died when the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost,
November 10, 1975.
Engineer Paul C. Powell, class of 1999, perished in an incident
aboard the Edward A. Carter, July 14, 2001.

 

It all comes down to people.

Cadets graduate as deck officers or engineering officers. In addition, the GLNA has a US Naval Reserves program.

The students master diesel mechanics and electricity generation and control. For those who decide that life on the water is not for them, the school maintains a BS degree program in power systems that qualifies graduates to work in a wide range of industries. The GLNA shares their building with a culinary institute; so, they also train and graduate ship stewards. 

 

Just follow the rules.

 I learned the difference between an allision and a collision. (At home, I discovered that many dictionaries consider "allision" to be obsolete. Reading the US Naval Institute Proceedings since 2015, I soon learned that engines can be casualities, no less than engineers. See NOAA's discussion of allision here.) 

Previously on Necessary Facts

Hurricane Harvey

Evaluating a Dive Team

Soldier's Heart by Elizabeth Samet

Armies Without Weapons  

Firefighters 

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

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

ANOC: Advanced Non-commissioned Officer Course

On the weekend 10-12 March 2017, I completed the Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Class (ANOC) of the Texas State Guard. Although the J-7 (Joint Training directorate) at headquarters likes to maintain the fiction that their orders and guidance ensure that training is the same for everyone, in fact, it depends a lot on who commands in the classroom.

My third class, BNOC, was dedicated to us: we were all BNOC. However, the second class I completed, Primary Leadership Development (PLDC), was, like this one, held in a joint force, cross-component environment. We did not train with them; but we all socialized after hours. So, I benefited from the opportunity to compare and contrast this ANOC with a previous session for another group. The courses were compatible, but not identical.

We all studied the meaning of Leadership, the principles of Supervision, and the application of Leadership Behavior. We all had lessons in Counseling and Mentoring. We all engaged in exercises in applied Creative Thinking. We placed all of that into a narrative of Teamwork based on Management Principles, tempered by Risk Management. The specifics of the PowerPoint slides and the practical exercises were different for us.

Our ANOC instructor was a Marine. Only about half of us in the TXSG are prior federal military. (I am not. ) While Marines can be found in the Medical Rangers, the Air Component, and the Army Component, most of them are (of course) in the Maritime Regiment. Technically, that is the uniform that I wear. However, I am not in TMAR; I am a clerk in the command group. But I knew our instructor. And in real life, he is a high school mathematics teacher. So, this class went well for me.

Non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the military and the reason our military is the best trained, most professional, and most respected in the world. First-line supervisors execute the day-to-day operations with precision whenever and wherever duty calls. Foreword, Army FM  7-22.7

One of our lessons was on the Abilene Paradox. No one really wanted to go to Abilene, but each of them thought that everyone else did, so they each went along with what they misperceived the consensus to be.

In the other ANOC that I observed the new high-ranking sergeants directed us lower non-coms in close order drill. In this class, the instructor called the commands. However, his lessons included several ways to achieve those troop movements. He even taught us “counter march, right about” which, rolling caissons or not, is not a proper command – but is cool to do and see done.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Primary Leadership Training

Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course

Armies Without Weapons

Money is Speech

Start the Presses!

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

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The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Two Books on Fermat's Last Theorem

The Unit Circle

U.S. Patent Law Does Not Add Up

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