New Normal

As the year 2020 hurdles along, I am reminded of what I thought was such a funny joke at a New Year's Eve party - something along the lines of where do you see yourself in a year and the punchline about not having 2020 vision. I don't think any one of us foresaw any, let alone all of this, from an impeachment to massive conspiracy theories in the political realm, the COVID19 pandemic and all the businesses/sports/schools being shut down with it, famous people dying (Alex Trebek, Eddie Van Halen, Sean Connery, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Regis Philbin, Kobe Bryant, and countless others), California and Australia fires, the monolith appearing and then disappearing in the Utah desert, racial unrest and riots, murder hornets, and who knows what remains with a month left.

How many of those things do we recover from? Celebrities die every year. There are always wildfires. People get sick. Social media is always on the lookout for the next big cultural talking point.

More importantly, how do we work together to build a new normal? Is it possible to come together like we did in the early days of the pandemic, before it seemingly permanently divided us? I hope we can roll into 2021 with a determination to keep the things that unify us and make us happy and healthy and leave behind the divisiveness and bickering. I see flashes of brilliance in between all the crazy, and I'm hopeful that this Christmas season can be an early start.

Small World

It's a small world. We've talked for decades now about how the world is becoming more and more flat. It's easier than it's ever been to communicate around the world. We're often more likely to be talking to someone in a different location than we are to be talking with the people in the same room as us.

Yet at the same time, there's always a little bit of a disconnect. There are always shibboleths that let us differentiate who really belongs and who doesn't. Who is the outsider vs. the insider? What are the things that we misread or mishear or otherwise misinterpret?

I was looking up information about the calories in some of McDonald's food on their website, and I saw the following:

I was totally surprised, thinking maybe McDonald's had expanded from the Travis Scott and J Balvin celebrity meals, and that they had gone out and set up a deal with Disney.

When I clicked on the large option and saw this, I realized my mistake, knowing there's not such a thing as Large World:

I was reading it as "Small World" "Famous Fries" when it should have been "Small" "World-Famous Fries". This wasn't someone trying to be tricky. It was just my mind playing tricks on me. It reminded me of an ad I heard on the radio not long ago for some event at the Utah State Fair Park. The funny thing was how the announcer strung the words together. Nothing would have sounded off to anyone unless you are local to Utah. I don't know how no one local caught it before the ad aired. Maybe they did, but it was too late.

The professional voice-over person lilted the words ever so differently than we normally do, calling it the "Utah" "State-Fair" "Park". Everyone has heard of a state fair. It makes sense that Utah would have a Utah State Fair, and we do. But it isn't the state-fair park. For whatever reason, it is the "Utah State" "Fair-Park". That is, the way we pronounce it, it doesn't emphasize that it's the park where the state fair is held (even though it is) but rather it's the fair-park for the state of Utah. Read that outloud a few times, switching between connecting the words State and Fair and then connecting the words Fair and Park. Utah State-Fair Park. Utah State Fair-Park. Say it enough times, and it sounds completely different and awkward, like you can tell the artist reading the script is definitely not from here.

Does it matter that they aren't from here? Does it matter if we can tell? There's always a way to tell, but I think it comes down to what we do with that information. Do we take the presence of an outsider as a blessing? Are we using diversity to learn and make ourselves stronger? Are we building on different experiences and making everyone feel welcome? Or are we xenophobic? Are we using the differences as a way to divide us and keep people out? Are we using dog whistles to secretly signal our intentions to our friends while keeping our enemies in the dark?

I hope we're making friends rather than enemies.

It is a small world, after all.

Unrest

Can't we all just get along?

This paraphrased quote from Rodney King back in 1992 still echoes 28 years later. Think of how much has changed in that time. How much has stayed the same?

Wars have been waged, the internet and mobile phones have transformed communication and how businesses operate, 5 U.S. presidents have served, reality TV shows (or unscripted dramas) have shifted the entertainment landscape, hip hop music has become mainstream music, and much more.

One of those presidents was our first African American president, and the hip hop music that has dominated the last couple decades was created by and is primarily still performed by people of color. But where has that really gotten us?

More and more people of color are killed in the streets. Riots break out across the country as part of protests against racial divisions and atrocious acts committed by police and everyday citizens. Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice. White America is barely aware of the existence of our own privilege.

A pandemic seems to have lowered defenses, opened doors, unified us against a common enemy, and squeezed out all but the essential from our lives. And in the middle of the pandemic with no end in sight we have race riots and protests, burning police cars, looting, a president who seems to provoke more than promote calm, and more to come as the disadvantaged are stressed by an economy in shambles. Race continues to divide us as the pandemic should be uniting us.

Can't we all just get along?

Confirmation Bias

This has been a different year. Even halfway through the year people were talking about how crazy 2016 is, and it hasn't disappointed. From the many celebrity deaths such as Gene Wilder, Prince, and Alan Rickman (many more, not a comprehensive list) to the Cubs winning the World Series to Donald Trump winning the presidency to snow in the Sahara Desert, it's been a wild ride.

I don't like doing year end reviews before the year is over, because crazy or amazing things can happen all the way through the 31st of December. Those who created their lists during the first half of December would have missed the last item I pointed out above - snowfall in the Sahara:

Crazy! Beautiful, but crazy! Of course taking it to social media, the crazy takes a different turn. Instead of just enjoying the crazy beauty of nature, it turns into a political discussion related to climate change. And of course everyone sees just what they want to see. Those more concerned with the environment point this out as an indicator of climate change, and those more concerned with government overreach point this out as an argument against global warming. I will say that from a scientific point of view, the idea that global warming could not lead to snow in a place that is usually hot is actually a little backwards. Theoretically, global warming can lead to more moisture in the air, which can lead to snow, so it's not just about the temperature itself, which is part of why the other side has started referring to it as climate change instead of global warming. That doesn't stop me from making jokes when it's 10 degrees outside about how much I'm looking forward to global warming.

The issue is that neither side is really supported by this isolated event. Whether or not climate change or global warming is a thing, snow in the Sahara does not make or break either case. A consistent pattern one way or the other would lead more toward something measurable, but it's a rare enough event that I don't think we have enough information. It also snowed in 1979:

And if you look around there are reports of possible snow in the Sahara in 2005 and 2012. Four times in over 40 years hardly a pattern makes for either side.

Rather, what we have is a clear pattern of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when a person has an idea they hold to be true, and any evidence they see is molded around their world view to help them confirm what they already believe to be true. One side thinks the snow proves man is changing the world's climate, and the other side thinks the snow proves that we are not.

This is what in statistics we would call an outlier. The problem with outliers is that sometimes we ignore them because they are such a strange occurrence that it ruins our simple model even though it's important to consider what would cause that extreme case. The other problem with outliers is that sometimes we focus too much attention on them and treat them as if they are regular cases instead of just abnormal phenomenon. Statistically speaking it probably should snow in the Sahara once every couple decades.

Confirmation bias is related to cognitive dissonance, which is the idea that when confronted with conflicting evidence contrary to our existing view, the tension must somehow be resolved by either dismissing the new evidence or by adjusting it (often subconsciously) to fit the previous belief. For example, I haven't said if I think climate change is a thing or not, but people with strong beliefs one way or the other will tend to have one of two responses to what I've written. They will either apply what I've written about how this doesn't prove anything just to the other side's argument if they believe what I'm saying or if they don't like what I'm saying they will read it as though I agree with the other side and say that I'm actually wrong about the weakness of the evidence.

Think through what I've written and by identifying how you react to my position that the snow doesn't mean as much as you think it means may help you understand where your own biases are positioned. Only by recognizing and understanding your own bias can you do anything about it.

The King-men vs Freemen Battle Continues

As we approach election day tomorrow, a scriptural story comes to mind of a military and religious leader who was trying to protect his people. Factions within the country would overturn their freely elected government and establish a king. Of course those in favor of a king were those who had royal blood (whatever that means) and would be able to take power over the people.

At the same time, enemies from another country were attacking. Rather than give in to the King-men and settle things internally after taking care of the outside enemies, the Freemen took care of the internal threat first. Only having cleansed the inner vessel could they have the strength to stand up against external forces.

It's important not to take the comparison too far, since we do live in a different day and time. We settle disputes in a different way than they did two thousand (or even two hundred) years ago. But watch how those in power spend more time trying to keep themselves in power than they do truly governing according to the will of the people and with the people's interests in mind. It seems that half of what incumbent politicians spend their time doing is raising money and campaigning for themselves and their friends. They set up systems where the longer they have been in office, the more power they have.

From term limits to random committee chair assignments to instant runoff voting to abolishing closed door meetings to publicly funded rather than donor funded elections, there are many steps that could be taken to level the playing field. But as much as the two major political parties fight against each other, they know that they both need to maintain the status quo of an uneven playing field and collude to maintain power between the two of them. As long as legislators can create their own rules, which right there is your biggest conflict of interest, the field will remain uneven.

Not Just a Water District

If a vacuum salesperson comes to your door, would you write a blank check, leaving it to the experts to select the best vacuum and what to charge you? As a smart consumer, you would make the decision yourself after reviewing their proposal and competing options, even when they tell you the offer expires if not accepted immediately.

Regarding the water district for Cache County, shouldn’t we do the same and analyze the proposal? Surprisingly, there is no binding proposal. We are only voting on whether there will be a water district. Like a contract that says you can’t hold them to anything the salesperson just told you, we are voting for the creation of a water district which mirrors Nancy Pelosi’s defense of Obamacare, “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it.” Contrary to the claim in a recent letter to the editor, voting no is not doing nothing but rather actively looking for the best proposal.

There are draft bylaws, which will only be finalized and approved by the appointed board after the district is created. The initial board will be appointed, not elected, and they may or may not choose to allow boards in the future to be elected. Future boards will likewise be able to change their own bylaws. They will assuredly not place term limits on themselves.

I don’t think anyone is acting maliciously, but there are no protections in place in case that happens in the future. We can hold future boards accountable by not reelecting them, if the board chooses to open themselves to elections and if we are willing to vote them out. Lyle Hillyard, a signatory in favor of the district, has yet to be held accountable for being the Senate sponsor of the 2011 bill that would have hidden a significant portion of legislators’ electronic communications from the public. This was at the same time that Hillary was running her private email server to hide her communications from the public, which she has not been held accountable for either. Hillyard has not utilized his seniority to push the legislation that would allow the county a seat at the table on water issues without a water district, which should be a simple option.

Proponents of the district are downplaying the new dam that the water master plan calls for. Why not discuss it openly? If we need Fourth Dam in Temple Fork up Logan Canyon, and the water district is what will pay for it, let’s say that, so we can make decisions with all available information instead of allowing elected and appointed officials to give us only part of the story and so we can have necessary protections ensured rather than hoped for.

As long as Utah political leaders continue to make decisions in closed-door meetings, do not build in protections against conflicts of interest, take money from loaded special interest groups, and hide information from their constituents, we will continue to see trust in our government degraded. This isn't about a water district. This is about true leadership, or lack thereof.

Qualification for Not Governing

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it, or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not.

And somewhere in the shadows behind them—who?

Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

—Douglas Adams, Chapter 28, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Online Communication

I had an interesting comment from a student in an online course message board. Basically, the note was that face to face communication is always better. I agree with the student's premise that technology is not always the answer, but that doesn't mean that it isn't often an answer. I do disagree that a face to face classroom is always better than a technology based classroom. I've been in a lot of ineffective classrooms. My response to the meta-challenge that the discussion of how effective technology is to communicate would be proved by the fact that no one would respond to the post positing such:

I don't know that I'd totally agree with the statement that the authors believe that technology is always the answer. If used correctly and implemented well, it often can be. But it's not always. A large piece of the SDLC which the course covers deals with the need to analyze what the problem is before making a choice of how to fix it. And the course starts with several chapters related to understanding how businesses function before it gets into an substantive discussion of technology.

Even your example of the discussion we might have F2F, while true in just the right set of circumstances, doesn't necessarily work for a couple reasons. One is that how likely would it be that you would be able to get a group of people who are enrolled in the course together? Not likely, due to geography and differing schedules, which is why most of you are taking online courses to begin with.

And two is how often do you actually get a substantial conversation in a group? Does everyone actually get to participate? In many classes in a F2F environment, 90% of the students sit there and don't actually participate. Only a small handful will often dominate the conversation because not everyone can talk at the same time and the introverts like actually thinking about what they're going to say before they say it and by the time they decide what to say the conversation has moved on.

Technology levels the playing field a bit. Not everyone who uses Wikipedia contributes to it by writing or fixing articles, but enough do that it has become an invaluable resource which is comprehensive enough and accurate enough to put print encyclopedias out of business. I will fully agree that technology is often used ineffectively, inefficiently, sometimes just for the sake of using technology and not for a real business need, or using the wrong tool (a hammer when a miter saw is called for).

That, I hope, is the point of the course. If you don't have the right tool or can't speak the right language to get what you need from the IT department, you will have problems. Flip it around. It's not that technology is a hammer and actually talking to each other are the other tools but rather what are the various technology tools that can help us in a variety of situations? Thanks for the conversation starter. I'm glad that the asynchronous post you made allowed me to make an answer later since I was busy at the time you were making your initial post. How about anyone else? Examples of using technology effectively or not effectively at work or other places you spend your time?

The student's eyes were opened a bit, I think, recognizing how common it is for some people to dominate the conversation in a live group. We didn't really talk about this specifically, but as I think back on it later, I wonder how often it leads to bad, extreme ideas, simply because the extroverts who like to blurt things out without thinking about them end up directing most of the conversation. This seems particularly relevant as we are in the middle of election season. The follow-up comment by the student that the younger generation is overly involved in technology and do not know how to communicate face to face is sadly true. It isn't a reason to get rid of technology but rather a reason to focus on when and how to communicate effectively in a variety of situations.

I definitely agree with you there regarding upcoming generations who only know how to communicate through technology, even to people who are in the same room as them. Or who communicate electronically only to people who are far away and ignore the people close by them. Just look at a group of teenagers in practically any environment, and you'll see very little live interaction among them, which is sad to see. I went to Europe a couple years ago, and I was happy to turn off my cell phone for two weeks and just enjoy what was there in front of me rather than trying to stay up on the latest FB gossip. I enjoy the same when heading up to the mountains for some hiking or backpacking. Some literally go through physical symptoms of withdrawal if removed from an always-connected environment. That doesn't mean the technology is bad, just that the person hasn't learned to use other options or is bad at selecting which tool to use when.

Legislative Goals

You've probably seen the pseudo-meme floating around Facebook and other places, saying something like this:

Legislators want teachers to be paid according to their effectiveness as evaluated by student test scores.
How about paying legislators according to their effectiveness - as evaluated by job creation and economic growth?

Being a teacher myself, although in higher ed rather than public ed so it doesn't work exactly the same way (yet), I understand the reticence of teachers to be evaluated on something they don't have complete control over.  Now, the argument could be made that teachers do have control over their classrooms and that they should be doing everything in their power to motivate their students to work.  If the students fail to progress, it is the teacher's fault.

I don't totally buy it.  I'm in the SMART goals camp.  For a true goal, you need something that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.  Specific means that you break up goals into appropriately sized pieces.  Measurable means you can objectively tell if you achieved it or not.  Attainable means it's possible to achieve.  Relevant means there's a purpose behind it.  Time-bound means at some point you need to be done, whether you finished it or not.

So whether we let teachers set their own goals or set their goals for them (since we do pay their salaries), their salaries should be tied to meeting goals, and their goals should be SMART, so they can be objectively measured.  That said, using student test scores fails the SMART test.  It is not attainable, because it relies on someone else to do something in order for teachers to meet their goals.  An individual student could have a goal to achieve a certain score, but if a teacher does not have direct control over achieving the passing score, it is not SMART for the teacher.  It's measurable, and students take the tests at the end of every year (time-based), so it fits some pieces.  You could argue relevance.  I'd have to know what test students are taking, but many tests are actually poor indicators of anything useful (or indicators that are particularly un-useful like the social efficiency curriculum theory), so they tend not to be relevant to the kinds of learning students should be doing, or to flip this back in the control of teachers, the types of learning teachers should be promoting.

So there are some problems with the teacher pay thing, but I have to admit that it's a false analogy to say that politician pay should be linked to job creation and economic growth, in spite of how poor a job I see them doing on that goal and as nice as it would be to hold them responsible.  I see the connection with teachers more directly, in that their job is teaching students, in spite of the problems I've already discussed.  The question, then, is whether it is job of legislators to create jobs and grow the economy.  I wonder if that's not giving them too much credit.

The government does create the environment in which businesses function.  But is it really their role to create jobs?  Isn't it also their job to create a safe environment for us?  So if crime goes down, that should count for something.  What about road construction and maintenance?  So do legislators get bonuses for building two more roads than the previous year?  They own the post office, so what if they didn't create more jobs but they do help the USPS reduce their costs?

One of the biggest problems is that you're going to get what you decide to measure and base performance on.  If we base teacher pay on students passing tests, we'll get teachers that reward students for passing tests.  If we reward legislators for job creation, we'll have legislators who encourage war, since war is one of few known job creators.  War is also conveniently a good excuse to take away our freedoms and make it appear we are more secure.

We must make sure we're asking for something we really want.  I'm not sure we want jobs created by legislatures.  We also don't want students who are good at taking tests.  Perhaps that is the point of the pseudo-meme.  There's just too much complexity that is lost behind the trite saying.

Congressional Term Limits

It's past time for a serious discussion of term limits in the U.S. Congress.  The current system of seniority holding so much power leads to situations like the one we have now, where they have abysmal approval ratings, yet the states keep sending back the same people.  The problem is that while no one likes what is going on, no one is willing to lose the power they believe they have through decades of seniority.

The problem is that the people don't have the power.  Again, they believe they do, but they don't.  Their congressional delegation has the power.  Each state sends back their own delegation and hopes that all the other states replace theirs with new people.

I was looking up something in the Constitution (something I think most of Congress hasn't spent much time doing recently), and I found something really eye-opening to me.  The U.S. Senate website has a copy of the Constitution on their webpage.  Great.  Thanks for that nice service.  Of course, they go so far as to interpret it for us.  Okay, so I know we're in murky waters when it comes to trusting their interpretation of the Constitution, especially since that responsibility falls in the lap of another one of the three branches.

Before even getting to the preamble, there is a short introduction.  It points out that the first three words, "We The People", stress the fact that the government is to serve its citizens.  Great so far.  And stop.

The supremacy of the people through their elected representatives is recognized in Article I, which creates a Congress consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The positioning of Congress at the beginning of the Constitution reaffirms its status as the “First Branch” of the federal government.

I'm good where they say that government should serve the citizens and that the people hold supreme power, but that's not where they're going with it.  The Senate's claim is that not only is Congress the first branch of the government, but in effect, they are the people.  That is, our power is not inherent in that we are the citizens of the country but that our power is made manifest through Congress.  We are not supreme but rather supreme through our elected representatives.

I get that we are a republic and as such the statement they make is true from a certain point of view.  Our power, however, is supreme, in that we can replace those elected representatives.  The only problem is that we are tricked into not exercising that power by rules Congress puts in place to promote their own longevity.  So what we need to do now is push for a rule that limits longevity and promotes turnover and new ideas.

So where do we put the limit?

To figure out if there is a natural break, I grabbed a list of all current members of the House and Senate, all elected under an open market, if you will, with no term limits.  The average length of time current members of the Senate have been serving is 9.6 years, with a standard deviation of 9.8.  Given a normal distribution, two thirds of a population are within one standard deviation of the mean (0-18).  Since there is a hard cut-off at 0, one standard deviation below the mean, the percent actually drifts a little higher at the other end.  16% have actually been in office for longer than 18 years, more than one standard deviation.

Interestingly enough, the numbers are almost exactly the same in the House even though Representatives are elected every 2 years, while Senators are elected every 6 years.  The average tenure of current members of the House is 8.9 years, with a standard deviation of 9.5.  Likewise, 16% (71/435) have been in office for longer than 18 years, which is again, one standard deviation above the mean.

An interesting stat with members of the Senate is that almost exactly 50% of them served in the House before being elected to the Senate, so the numbers are actually even more skewed in the Senate if you include their full tenure in Congress.

While I'd be more tempted to place the limit at 12 years - 2 terms for Senators and 6 for Representatives, I'm actually okay with giving them 18, although if you let me think about it too much longer, I might talk myself back down to 12.  Only 16% really overstay their welcome all the way past 18 years, and those are more likely to be the extreme sociopaths.  If we cut it off at 12 years, we'd be skimming off the top 28% in both the House and Senate (still interesting how the percentages stay the same, 28 in the Senate and 122 in the House).  If the 18 years was a cumulative total between the House and Senate, that would perhaps make up for going with 18 instead of 12.  There would be a more steady churn from House to Senate and from Senate out to pasture (jobs with lobbying firms or a run for the presidency).

So where do we draw the line?

Famous Deaths 2012

Everyone is in such a hurry to talk about the best/most/biggest/worst/etc. of the year that lists start coming out as early as November.  I think we should save those lists until January, so anything that happens in the end of December will still count.  I still remember hearing on the radio on Christmas day that Billy Martin died in a car accident, over 20 years ago, but how unfair is that to leave him off a list because it's near the end of the year?  I had my list ready a week ago, and sure enough, Norman Schwarzkopf died, and he shouldn't have been left off the list.

A few of these are pretty obvious, but some might need some explanation.  I left off some famous deaths because I didn't have much of a connection to them, like Harry Carey - he was in two great movies, Gremlins and Back to the Future, but I didn't really remember his characters even after looking them up.  When Polly Holliday, who played Mrs. Deagle, dies, she'll be in the list for sure.

The zombie actor is there, not so much because of his role specifically or anything about the movie itself, although it is the granddaddy of all zombie movies.  Actually, it is likely that we even have the zombie industry fascination that we do have because of the copyright status of this movie.  That is, it doesn't have one.  Before the U.S. adopted the Berne Convention, you had to claim copyright to be granted copyright.  A last minute change to the title of the film and someone forgetting to put a copyright notice on the new title screen meant it was public domain, open for remixing, sharing, and a multitude of other uses, which increased its popularity.

Trayvon Martin stuck out to me because of his complete lack of being famous, yet his tragic death, which is still being investigated is what made him famous.  I didn't know or care that much about Vidal Sassoon, other than growing up knowing it was a shampoo, and it wasn't until he died that I realized it was a person.  What's worse?  Being famous for dying or for being a shampoo?

Joe Paterno - Penn State coach
Ian Abercrombie - Seinfeld actor Mr. Pitt
Bill Hinzman - first zombie in Night of the Living Dead
Whitney Houston - singer
Gary Carter - catcher (Go Mets!)
Trayvon Martin - teenager
Davy Jones - the Monkees
Mike Wallace - news correspondent
Dick Clark - TV host
Junior Seau - football player
Adam Yauch - rapper Beastie Boys
George Lindsey - actor Andy Griffith
Maurice Sendak - author
Vidal Sassoon - hair stylist
Robin Gibb - singer Bee Gees
Ray Bradbury - sci fi author
Rodney King - LA riots
Andy Griffith - actor
Ernest Borgnine - actor
Stephen Covey - author
Sally Ride - astronaut
Mel Stuart - director Willy Wonka
Phyllis Diller - comedienne
Jerry Nelson - muppetteer
Neil Armstrong - astronaut
Michael Clarke Duncan - actor
Gary Collins - actor
Arlen Specter - politician
Zig Ziglar - author
Rick Majerus - coach
Jack Klugman - actor
Norman Schwarzkopf - general

Origin of the Universe

I occasionally ponder on the origins of the earth. When I was younger I could make my brain hurt trying to think of how there could have always been something that existed somewhere and how there is no end to anything, yet everything we know is that there is always a start and end. So how did we start if there was nothing there to start it? I don't worry about that anymore. Why? A scripture in the bible solved it for me, and not the one in 2 Peter 3 about a day for the Lord being 1000 years for us, but one in Revelation of all places.

Revelation 10:5-7

5 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

So time will be turned off. It's a temporary constraint to our understanding. I don't understand what the big picture is, but I know time isn't permanent. At least I believe it doesn't, to the extent that it no longer gives me headaches.

A few days ago I saw this graphic posted who knows where, which I tried to track down, and I can't figure out the original source, so if anyone knows where it came from, let me know so I can give proper attribution. The idea is that none of us knows what is truly real. There are real things we can't see just as there are things we see that aren't real. There are always people who think they have it all figured out, whether based on their interpretation of the bible or on what Bill Nye tells them. The truth is that none of us knows the truth, and with apologies to Jack Nicholson, we probably can't handle the truth.

It then makes me wonder when I see an article like this one that purports to explain Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old. Go read it if you want. The author, who is a technology writer for Forbes (not a theologian or a scientist), calls out Marco Rubio for answering truthfully that he doesn't know how old the earth is. Rubio states that he is neither a theologian or a scientist, and none of those experts can agree, so he's leaving the debate up to them.

The interesting point that is called out of the many that could have been is that if the earth isn't billions of years old, then all our DVD players will stop working, laser surgery will start failing, and our nuclear reactors will all blow up tomorrow (Are you paying attention, Mayans?) because everything we know about science is wrong.

Awkward pause.

Just a minute while I finish looking up the Wikipedia article on logical fallacies.

One of the most important ideas that I learned about in the multivariate statistics class I took in my PhD program (which I will get to blogging about in a couple years at the rate I'm going) is the principle of parsimony. The idea is that you go with the model that is the appropriate balance between simplicity and completeness, or you start with the simplest hypothesis, with the fewest number of assumptions, and work towards the more complex ones.

Thinking about all the elements that would have had to blow up just right to form new elements and align themselves somehow into what would become self-aware beings is a bit complex for me and the basis of another big headache. That's not to say I don't believe the earth is billions of years old, or that at least the materials used to create the earth are that old. I said before that it gives me comfort that time will be turned off at some point, but that doesn't mean that time doesn't still exist and play a role in our larger existence, just that it won't be limiting as it is now.

Foes of the religious will dismiss what I'm about to say as me dealing with my cognitive dissonance, but hear me out. This is the parsimonious model I've come up with that brings together my belief in the bible and the creation and in my understanding and trust of scientists. Matter in various shapes and forms has existed for a long time, billions of years or more even. The universe has existed for billions of years. God has existed for billions of years. If we read the biblical history literally, our earth was only created maybe 10,000 years ago, depending on when the clock started ticking. It was created from remnants of other worlds and placed with our solar system into the universe that already existed.

The laws of nature, such as how light works, gravitational pull, and chemistry, are constant. They haven't changed. Our DVDs will still work tomorrow. At least I hope the laws of physics will last long enough for me to see The Hobbit. We just have some billion year old recycled pieces of another planet that happened to have animals that were a lot scarier than the ones we have now. No, dinosaurs never walked this planet. They walked on another planet, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Not reasonable? Which is more far-fetched? God recycled the dinosaur's planet in making ours or the earth and dinosaurs evolved from nothing, they were all killed from a meteor and resulting ash cloud, and then we evolved again from nothing? The scientists are guessing when they come up with their hypotheses about why the dinosaurs went away. They don't know. So why is my guess of a hypothesis any worse off than theirs? Which is more parsimonious?

I learned within the past year or two about dark matter. Granted I don't know a lot about it, but the basics of it is that there is something that exists in such a way that it increases the mass (and thus the gravitational pull) of galaxies but that cannot be seen. Wait, let's think about that. We know (or think we know) how gravity works. But something in the galaxy behaves in a way inconsistent with our understanding of gravity. So scientists hypothesize that there is a mysterious, invisible matter that accounts for 84% of the mass of the universe in order to make their previously held theory (gravity) continue to work. Now is a good time to refer back to the cognitive dissonance link in the "Foes of the religious..." paragraph above.

Understanding how the universe works seems to me to be a completely separate question from how we and the particular world we live on were created. They still don't know for sure where the moon came from. But we do know it's there and can predict its movements and measure its effects on the tides. We don't know where the dinosaurs came from or how they died, but we do know that their rotting flesh makes good fuel for powering our cars and heating our homes. Well, maybe oil comes from dinosaurs.

My pointing out the great deficiencies in the knowledge of scientists does not mean I think they are idiots but rather to point out that any of the things they say about religious folks could apply equally to them. I do respect scientists, and I believe that many useful discoveries can be made by investigating the origin of the universe, just as much as studying the operation of the universe. As of next month (December 2012), it will be 40 years since a man last stood on the moon, and I think we should go back.

More importantly, I think we should be more respectful of one another's ideas, because if I'm right, then both theologians and scientists are right. If I'm not right, chances are both of them are wrong with me as well, and neither has the standing to point out the flaws of the other.

Back to Work

I've been waiting for President Obama's recovery plan. He didn't have one during the campaign, but neither did Mitt Romney. I was excited to see this video come across the wire, in which President Obama was to discuss growing the economy and reducing the deficit.

At least I think that's what it's about. It's what the title says. I can't get past the googly eyes of the lady in the upper left corner. Go ahead, start it up. I'll wait. The lady right above him looks like she's having a hard time focusing as well. You'll notice they slowly zoom in on the president throughout the video, most likely to cut out the distracting people around him, but that just makes you wonder where the short lady standing right behind him came from. The lady in the audience at 4:21 has something going on with her eyes, too. I sure can't focus enough to listen to what he's saying.

For some reason the googly eye lady in the upper left makes me think of this.

And that makes me think of this.

And that means I still have no idea what President Obama's plan is or if he really has one now. Can anyone explain it to me? After all, you just watched it, too, right?

Political Turnover

You've probably all heard the quote from Warren Buffet about fixing the national deficit.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of congress are ineligible for re-election.

That's a nice thought and a simple solution, but it has two major holes. The first, most obvious, is that it would be up to Congress to pass such a law, and we all know that's never going to happen. I think their new law template automatically includes verbiage that exempts themselves from whatever law they're passing. The second is that our problems go beyond whether there is a deficit. The corruption in Washington goes deeper than whether the government is spending more money than it's bringing in. We need turnover to get rid of some of the layers of corruption, which is the opposite of the current system of encouraging seniority.

A quicker way to fix some of the problems in Washington, which would suffer from the same problem as Warren Buffet's recommendation in that Congress wouldn't agree to pass it, would be to hold congressional pay at the level it was when each member is elected. So, to see how that would work, Orrin Hatch would be making $44,600 now instead of $174,000. This would help with the incentive to turn over anyone who has been there for decades.

The best way? Do not allow anyone to run for elected office while holding an elected office. If you want to run again, you'd have to actually resign your current position, even if it's the same one you're running for. In effect, there would be no such thing as reelection - only election. In the mean time, someone else is appointed to your seat for the last year of your term. If you're running for a completely different office, you show your confidence by stepping down, instead of knowing you have a fail-safe to fall back to the position you've been ignoring while running for the new office.

I don't know much about Mia Love, but one blogger pointed out that some people in the city are concerned that she has been slacking as mayor while running for national office. I wonder the same about President Obama - if he's out shaking people's hands and raising money, he's not fixing the country.

A possible way to game this would be to have two people who alternate back and forth and endorse each other, but I think once someone is out of office for a few years, they would be less likely to be sent back than if they were the incumbent.

What other ways could that system be gamed? What are some other ideas with just as unlikely of a chance of being passed by Congress that might more effectively turn things over and get some new people in Washington? Would more turnover cause more corruption than we have now?

photo by basykes

Ron Paul's Farewell

Excessive confidence is placed in the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats. This replaces the confidence in a free society.

We should have more trust in ourselves and less in the government. Too many people have for far too long placed too much confidence and trust in the government and not enough in themselves.

Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

Has nobody noticed that the authorities can't even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility when there is such a disconnect in what they say and what they do?

Sacrificing a little liberty for imaginary safety always ends badly.

To achieve liberty and peace, two powerful human emotions have to be overcome. Number one is envy, which leads to hate and class warfare. Number two is intolerance, which leads to bigoted and judgmental policies. These emotions must be replaced with a much better understanding of love, compassion, tolerance, and free market economics.

Political Pumpkin Walk

The North Logan Pumpkin Walk is a fun family tradition. Each year they have all the scenes made from pumpkins by anyone who volunteers to create one, and then you generally end up in a kind of current events scene. A few years ago, for example, they had a scene entitled "Martha Stewart Living in Jail" that was a great hit.

This year's culminating scene was a political one, presented without comment.

Three Sides to Every Story

On Friday, President Obama announced new fuel economy standards that will be worked towards over the next 15 years.

Shortly thereafter, the obviously politically neutral folks at impeachobamacampaign.com posted about how these new fuel economy standards will result in death. Simply put, cars must be lighter in order to attain higher fuel economy, but people in light cars are more likely to die when they collide with heavy vehicles.

Just two days earlier, the even more politically neutral folks at freakonomics.com posted a similar story, but unless they had some White House connections (which is possible) was unprovoked by Obama's announcement of higher standards. Their line is that heavier cars cause more deaths.

What's interesting is that the two stories are saying both the same thing yet opposite things at the same time. One claims that lighter cars result in more deaths, while the other claims that heavier cars result in more deaths. The difference is in which car they're talking about. If car A is heavier and collides with car B, car B's occupants are more likely to die. If car B is lighter and collides with car A, car B's occupants are more likely to die. What I take from this is that it's the difference between the two that counts. The relatively lighter car will always fare worse.

So if over the next couple decades, most cars get smaller, there would not likely be a large increase in deaths, because everything would get smaller at about the same rate. Some of the behemoths currently on the road will still be out there, true, but you're not going to last long driving a 20 year old SUV pulling in 12 mpg when everyone else is getting 50+ mpg.

So there's two sides to the same statistical story, but what's the third side? My side is the third side. I question whether we'll even be thinking in mpg in 15-20 years. Between CNG, electricity, Mr Fusion, methane, solar, hydrogen, etc. there are so many alternative energy sources poised to take the place of the archaic gasoline that you'd have to hope something else will have matured enough by then to take its place. At the very least, we'll see more hybrid or bi-fuel vehicles that either automatically or manually switch between gasoline and the alternative power source.

Then what if there's an alternative power source that is so cheap and powerful it allows for heavy vehicles? Add to that computers and sensors that detect imminent crashes and stop you before they happen, and it won't matter the size of your vehicle, since we won't crash into each other anyway. Perhaps cars will be driven by Google so we can just rest in our sleep pods while Google optimizes our travel for us.

Maybe 2025 is too soon to expect an accident-free, emissions-free future. After all, I'm pretty sure Back to the Future's vision of hovercars and home energy reactors won't be reality by 2015 even though they've had 30 years to work on them. But we can dream. Maybe we'll see Obama channel JFK's speech from almost 50 years ago about going to the moon and rally the country around a monumental transportation goal, ironically just after he dismantles NASA.

We'll see where the big dreams take us, but with all the fantastic possibilities my mind can dream up, 50 mpg doesn't seem like that big of a deal, even if it requires a little extra technology to keep us from crashing into each other so much.

Student Government or Start a School?

Someone has to plan parties. Otherwise they either wouldn't happen or would be very poorly organized. So there is a place for student government in college, but it should be renamed to reflect that limitation.

High school is all about being popular, so it makes sense that student government there would be structured around popular kids maintaining their popularity monopoly. It just doesn't translate to the college level.

College is a great equalizer. It's a time to regress to the mean. Ultra popular kids will find they really aren't that much more special than everyone else (big fish in little pond becomes little fish in big pond). Shy kids will break out of their shell. All that is really needed at this point is someone to throw a few big university-wide parties and several small department-sized parties to bring everyone together.

A recent article in the paper at USU regarding approval ratings of various facets of student government there focuses mainly on the fact that approval ratings are up, because they put on some great concerts this year. That's as it should be.

Just a couple months ago, there was another article about how student government was restructuring compensation for their officers, since as of halfway through the school year, they had put themselves $80,000 in the hole. I'm okay with someone who's bad at math putting on a big party, because the worst they're likely to do is go over budget by a few thousand dollars or run out of ice cream halfway through the party. The problem is when they start stepping out of their party zone to push for new buildings or try to influence academic programs, both of which they've also been doing over the past couple years. Major capital investments and toying with academics are just something they shouldn't be allowed to play with.

I'm not saying that there are no students that could contribute in a meaningful way to the university community or even do awesome things around the world. There are many who can and do. The people who will do these amazing things, however, are not likely to run for office, since they recognize its party-planner role. My dad was Business Senator about 40 years ago, so no offense, Padre, if you're reading this; maybe leave a comment if things were much different back then than they are now. From my own experience about 10 years ago as VP of one of the chapters of ACM on campus, we did get decent turnout to some great educational sessions on a variety of topics, but the billiards and pizza party at the end of the year got a lot bigger turnout than the demos on Flash or ASP.

To drive the point home, check out this video by current president Tyler Tolson, encouraging students to run for office. His point is basically that you get paid to eat dinner with university administrators and students follow you around campus (unless their shoe comes off like the dude on the far left at 1:01).


Compare that to Casey Allred, also an undergraduate student, who has created a non-profit organization, Effect International, and built a school in India with more on the way.


What do you do in your spare time? Throw a party? Rid the world of illiteracy? Choose what works for you, but be honest about it.

Problems in Student Teaching

This week is WGU's semi-annual academic meetings. We're almost getting too big for the conference center we've been meeting at, with about 700 people attending.

Today one of the presenters talked about a particularly difficult problem facing the teacher education programs. An important component of licensure is student teaching, and true to form, WGU has a different term for it: demonstration teaching. Regardless of what you call it, placing students in schools is becoming more difficult, and I imagine it's the same for schools across the country.

With the economy down, people are out of work, so they go back to school to either be better positioned to find a job now or to at least find a better job when the big recovery happens, so enrollments are up. Budgets in the states are down, so teachers are laid off, meaning there are fewer classrooms in which the increased number of teacher candidates can be placed.

Add in the pressures of NCLB, and a whole new challenge appears. In schools that are struggling to maintain AYP, teachers may decline to take on a student teacher because of the extra burden it imposes and the chance it could cause problems for their students' scores. For failing schools, well, it's not really an option to student teach at a failing school.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the solutions are. A change to NCLB seems like a good place to start.

Snow law like a snow law

It's interesting that within a few weeks of each other, two cities within a few miles of each other both discussed making it "unlawful for any person to push, plow, or otherwise deposit snow from private property into the public street."

Smithfield passed it, whereas North Logan rejected it.

It makes one wonder if somebody is going around pushing all the city councils to adopt the same ordinance. I don't know if Smithfield and North Logan use their own crews or contract out with Logan or the county, but I'd guess the same group takes care of plowing if they both discussed this issue at the same time.

Logan City, where I live, has their own snow removal crews and already has an ordinance that prohibits leaving water, wood, rocks, snow, ice, vehicles, etc. in the road in such a way that they block travel or endanger people. Logan's ordinance is worded in a way that mostly makes sense, although it does make me wonder if the puddle my sprinklers leave in the gutter would be considered a stagnant pool and leave me technically in violation.

photo by mvhargan
I'd be interested to see the wording of the proposed ordinances, but the stories linked above were a little sparse on the details. The main detail that seems clear is that they don't want residents pushing snow into the street and leaving tracks that freeze into bumps that can cause the snowplows to bounce around when they hit them; you know, a miniature version of the wall of snow the plows push into the end of your driveway right after you finish shoveling? So why don't they just make an ordinance saying that? "Don't create snow or ice piles that interfere with snowplows."

On a side note, you'd think someone could invent a snowplow with some type of guard on the right side that could be enabled by the driver passing a driveway or intersection, which would temporarily stop the snow from flowing freely off to the side and when disengaged would release any accumulated snow. It wouldn't have to hold much for very long. But I digress.

From the discussion in the articles, if it just prohibits pushing snow from private property into a public street, then what happens if you push that big pile from the snowplow back into the street? If it's technically snow from the public street, not from your private property, is there a repercussion? North Logan did the right thing and rejected it, since they agreed that it would simply be unenforceable.