Happy 4th

 From NASA telescope. I shall be working in the field of lilies. 

D Day

 

D Day, September 13th 2001. Two days after 9-11 I was staying in Normandy, out of Paris until the flights to North America resumed. I visited the Normandy beaches. Each year we remember Normandy, and we should equally remember Saipan, where my father and thousands of others attacked and stormed the beaches, allowing the annexing of Tinian, the airfield for B-29s and Hiroshima. 

Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant

The gladiators fought with their gladius, the mid sized sword used in the Roman legions. The gladius was often chipped from battle, made of a Roman steel blend, iron with a charcoal mix of carbon, then heated and sharpened.

I gather the White House has installed a Roman like gathering with brutal fighters. Gold fixtures, all we are missing is golden leaf crowns! 

55 Years Later

 In June 1971 at my doctoral ceremony, the only one I went to in those days, all others I got via mail, we had a a small short ceremony. Viet Nam was still afoot, there were no job recruiters on campus that year, Nixon's economy was starting to explode, off gold standard and massive tariffs, so we had no useless speaker, and we all were trying to figure out how to support ourselves. Frankly we could not even get drafted! Too old and probably physically exhausted.

Now above is this years Engineering doctoral students. You could not recognize this class if you were from 1971. First we never had hats, second the doctoral gowns were black, the hoods were simple. Below is MIT 1960.

 

One wonders what these folks will contribute 55 years from now? 

Memorial Day

 

Burial after Battle of Surigao Strait, October 1944, on my father's destroyer. Almost a third of the crew, from friendly fire, the USS Denver.

Yes or No

 One of the things I learned as an expert at trials is to answer yes or no to a question that allows that. Such as: "Have you ever traveled to Russia?", "Yes". Now I find that the younger generation, it now includes almost everyone, cannot do this. The have to tell you stories. 

For example if one asks a patient:

Miss Jones, have you had this pain for several days." 

The answer is a yes or no. Instead one gets what she had for dinner last night, how she arrived by Uber today at the clinic, where she went last weekend with her boyfriend, and on and on until you repeat the question as if she never heard it, and you get another set of desiderata. 

I see this across many environments. I assume they are not avoiding an answer it is just that they want to share their social life; meals, contacts, places, pets, etc. This phenomenon has become more so as social media has exploded. 

I just wonder if it is due to age or my lack of social media contact. It is great for an attorney since the witness will just ramble on telling you everything without aver asking. 

The Earth is Flat

 The fatal flaw of AI is that it relies solely upon masses of prior information. It takes everything as truth with no balance or fact checking. Thus if one does a simple thought experiment the fault would become clear. Consider if AI existed in 1300 AD. Fear not, just AI nothing else new. I then ask the AI engine if the earth is flat. The answer clearly is yes because all of the documents it relied upon says so. 

Thus the fatal flaw of any AI system is the "fact base" it relies upon. As someone once relayed to me, "There was a young boy whose father placed him on a high table. He opened his arms and said jump. The boy jumped, the father withdrew his arms and splat! The father then said to the boy: Trust no one not even your father" 

Sixth Avenue

 As an old New Yorker I still call the Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Avenue. The bridge across the Hudson the Tappan Zee Bridge. Penn Station is Penn Station. Grand Central is Grand Central. The Hudson River is the Hudson River. He sailed up it in 1609 so I guess that is just fine. Newark Airport is just OK. I cannot get used to Newark Liberty. 

Don't start changing names. Idlewild is now JFK. Easier to say I guess. LaGuardia,  well I guess it is OK, after all he allegedly signed my birth certificate. Build a victory arch, name it for the Emperor? The above is in Aosta, but beware Constantine went through it on his way to conquering all of the Empire. 

Rights and the Individual

 Turley’s latest book, Rage and the Republic, is a highly readable and compelling presentation of the fundamental issues that created the American Republic as we may know it.

 I begin by noting that on the west side of Morristown, NJ, on the way to the wintering grounds of Washington’s troops during the Revolutionary War, is a small park, a pond and a wonderful statue. Fortunately it was not torn down during the rage on past people, it remains but a lonesome edifice to the past. It is a statue of Thomas Paine, with his writings held in his hands. I suspect that few visitors have any clue who this person was. I have sat in the shade many times in warm weather looking up at old Tom and wondering is he remains a well known character anymore. Then along comes Turley and enlivens Tom as a key player and essential writer to the Revolution’s cause. Paine flows in and out of Turley’s work and one must understand him to get to understand the theme of Turley’s book. Turley provides such an understanding in a brilliant and readable manner.

 Turley presents many of the issues in readily understandable terms. For the many who have little if any knowledge of the “ideas” that led to the American Revolution and in turn to the French Revolution, Turley’s presents them in understandable terms.

 One his earlier discussions if the use of natural law and natural rights. In my opinion, natural rights precede natural law. Natural rights is a concept that has a long standing existence. In simple terms natural rights are those things that people believe that have or should have. Such as the right to speak freely, the right town and control property, the right to a fail trial, the right to believe in one’s own religion. By the time of Paine and Rousseau, the American view and the French, these rights were somewhat commonly held. Natural law then is the law that provides the legal basis for ensuring these rights. Turley depicts the Founders as true believers in these rights and the basis in law for their protection.

 Turley points out as US Senator who questions natural rights and in turn natural law. I have seen this Senator in action and clearly in my opinion his comments are baseless at the very least and reflect perhaps a gross ignorance of both history and facts. But alas it is politics, where ignorance is oftentimes a virtue, it allows one to purport statements that satisfy a political position independent of the facts.

 In addition to the first two above, Turley depicts the Founders and their actions as supporters of the individual, and in turn individualism. The Bill of Rights, based upon Natural Rights, are rights for the individual, not the collective. Freedom of speech is freedom for the individual, as is freedom of religion, and of the press. The rights are furthermore equal for all individuals. In the American Revolution, people became citizens nor subjects. One should not in England to this day people are subjects, subjects of the Crown. Whereas in America, citizens hold equal and inalienable rights. Turley does an excellent job in presenting these concepts.

 Let me consider several points that Turley makes throughout the book.

 On p 34 he speaks of Mayhew and Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Paul stated: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.

 Now one must question this on its face. After all one could hardly say that following Herod or Nero were established by God! Indeed Mayhew and Paine broke from this well established idea of divine selection. However it should be noted that Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham in the 14^th century predated Mayhew and Paine in denying this divine assignment of rulers. In fact they espoused the rights of individuals, rights that superseded the divine or royal. Unfortunately the plague of 1348 quieted this movement for some 400 years.

 On p 62 is the discussion of Paine and unicameralism. Namely only one house for legislation. I felt that the failure to cover Montesquieu in this place was a fault. For it was Montesquieu who had developed a government with a balance of powers, a form inherent in the Constitution. How much of this Paine accepted in uncertain.

 On p 167 the author begins with de Tocqueville and his understanding of the Americans. Now I believe it is useful to see Tocqueville in the context of three of his works; that on America, the French Revolution and Ireland. Most of the attention is on America. But Tocqueville saw the French Revolution as a revolt against the centralization of all governmental power in Paris and lack outside. It is a somewhat different view but worth consideration. In his work on Ireland he commented upon the near slave like existence of the Irish under English rule. Brutality, death, starvation and the total depletion of any claim to a right.

 From p 173 forward the author considers contemporary responses and indeed contemporary rage. Most of what he writes here is a reiteration of current acts by people and politicians. For example on p 176 he discusses the assassinations of Kirk and Thompson. He contends that these acts were done by American Jacobins. In the context of the French Revolution the Jacobins were the “Jacques”, the common man. Similar acts were common with earlier “Jacques” call Jacquerie, a 14^th century band of “common men” who roamed France slaughtering those whom the believed were infringing on their “rights”. The question that needs answering is what drives these people? What makes an otherwise normal human being become an assassin? This is not a new set of events, it is common, albeit it ebbs and flows with the time and place.

 On pp 184-185 the author discusses the fumbling and bumbling U.S. Senator and his denial of the existence of natural rights. Now there are centuries of writings on natural rights and at the time the Founders wrote the Constitution there were well of many centuries of thought of these issues. But to have a Senator from Virginia of all places to espouse such grossly inaccurate remarks makes one wonder. The author uses this well placed discussion to make a point.

 On pp 187-196 the author discusses Professors. I was at MIT in the 60s, as a junior faculty member so I managed to see both worlds, student and faculty. The “age” then was against the Vietnam War. The SDS was a well organized Marxist group whose action were often poorly targeted but damaging. My office were threated by fire bombs, my exam rooms got bomb threats, and smoke from Harvard square worked its way down Mass Ave. But the protests were focused on the war. I was even an adherent to Chomsky’s views, albeit a bit of a fringe personality. But now the Chomskyites are pervasive, often Marxists through and through. But what I found later was that Chomsky was a sophist par excellance. He wrote brilliantly but managed to twist facts to his desired conclusions.

 On p 233 the author discusses property rights, on of the natural rights. If one labors and the fruits of that labor are the creation of legal acquisition of property one has an inalienable right to that property.

 On 260 to 264 the author discusses AI. Here as with many other authors I ask how does one define AI. One looks about and everything is now AI supported, even one mobile phone. In reality there are multiple niches wherein the use of computers, the collection of massive amounts of information, the tools to enter queries and obtain responses via complex processing of the query and the databases is called AI. But in reality AI is in the eye of the beholder, it as the Supreme Court noted in pornography, you know it when you see it. Thus it use and ultimately its regulation is clouded in uncertainty.

 Overall this is a superb book. It lacks the excitement and fire of Paine but it balances facts, history, and politics in a superb manner. It is a book written by an academic, providing facts and interpretation but accessible to every reader. I would highly recommend a read of this book, not just once, but several times.

A New Zealand View

 Now New Zealand is an English speaking country but in many ways an outlier. In a Nature article the authors discuss Toxic Masculinity. They state:

The term toxic masculinity was coined in the 1980s, and expresses the idea that some of the traits that many societies consider stereotypically ‘masculine’, such as dominance and aggression, can have damaging social impacts. Today, the phrase is often used to describe all manner of behaviours, from sexual violence to a disinclination to help with chores around the home. The concept has proved helpful in many ways — highlighting how gender-based expectations can contribute to depression in men, for example, and encouraging men to see value in being open about their emotions. But it can also be problematic, researchers say. Casual use of the term might falsely imply, for example, that all societies think of manliness in the same way, that all masculine traits are negative or that all men are toxic. Researchers have delved into similar concepts, including hegemonic or patriarchal masculinity, which examines how a dominant, culturally idealized view of manhood upholds the patriarchy. But the term toxic masculinity hasn’t had as much academic attention. “Nobody measures it,” says psychology researcher Steven Sanders at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Some psychologists are now trying to pick apart and quantify its aspects.

 Now clearly the authors have not been examining the trends of American XX in the recent decade of protests. Dominance and aggression is an understatement. Ruthless, assertive, and provocation are more the likely assessments of XX. 

 The XY groups try to keep their own but clearly the behavior is dominated by the aggressive XX groups. But alas this is New Zealand.

 

Cloudflare Messes Up Everything

 More and more web sites demand use of Cloudflare. Time and time again it messes everything up. It asserts that my IP address is a risk. I have used it for three decades! No risks. It fails to learn. It then inhibits log in to common sites. You spend time working around it.

I agree we should be careful. But it appears Cloudflare despises users! Security should be better at what they charge. If all else fails listen to the customer. They clearly do not.

March of the Turkeys

 It is sub zero but these guys seem to be bouncing around. They are on their way to Davos to meet the rest of the clan!

OK, Who Died?

 

 

In the old days, one studied the Trivium. Simply, the use of language, grammar and logic. Now if one looks at the above, it is a memorial to now two people, not just the one. Thus did someone pass away that we did not know of. I am truly amazed by the blatant ignorance of language. 

Happy New Year! The fun never ends! 

Social Media

 I do not use social media, unless you consider my 20 year old blog one. But the blog is purely one way, I really do not care what anyone thinks, it just reflects current issues.

But I am being bombarded with Facebook stuff from family members. Frankly it is 99% advertising, selling stuff I would have no interest in. Then it includes the politically correct junk that must mean something to someone. 

What had struck me was that as I had projected years ago it is a psych profiling and psych motivation system. Why would anyone knowingly subject themselves.

The companies operating these useless and dangerous systems must be making a fortune on targeted ads. Why would anyone click on an ad on Facebook? Where would it take you, how would it profile you?

Try writing a letter, you know, paper and pen, then envelope, then mail it. No ads! 

A Midnight Visitor

 My local fox comes around late at night.

Nonsense, and How Do You Wash the Windows

 Frank Gehry passed away recently. I had the misfortune to spend some time in one of his monstrosities, the Stata Center at MIT. I always wondered how one washes the windows. Why were the rest rooms hidden away and sized for one each. It was a grossly dysfunctional building.

But if you are one of the left wing types you glorify it. Especially if you never tried to function in one of them. As The New York Review notes:

The great liberator of late-twentieth-century architecture, Gehry was a latter-day Alexander who sliced through the Gordian Knot formed by an exhausted Modernism intertwined with a callow Postmodernism. Instead of trying to untangle those two discordant stylistic visions, which wastefully dominated American architectural discourse during the 1970s and 1980s, he showed an exhilarating way forward with freeform designs that drew on advanced contemporary art as their primary source of inspiration. He made the world safe for oddball buildings, and whatever one might think of the idiosyncratic architecture by the generation who followed him—Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne, and their ilk—their careers would be unthinkable without the precedent he set. Although his dramatic departure from architectural convention was at first confrontational and forbidding, it gradually became more buoyant and embracing. As his clients’ budgets increased and he moved from corrugated metal to shiny titanium, unfinished plywood to polished Douglas fir, and rubber matting to travertine flooring, his architecture lost none of its expressive power and appealed to many who’d found his earlier tough-guy efforts more alienating than audacious. But he was never to everyone’s taste, including Marxist intellectuals averse to an architecture of pleasure, who saw him as an agent of capitalist corporate branding

 The buildings just did not work. Why should a great university like MIT have this colossal clump of metal and dirty windows, leaking like a sieve, disconnected from everything else on campus. One missed the old hallways of the original buildings. One had to scurry about hidden hallways in hopes of finding the adjoining location. 

Buildings must adhere to their functions. Not the bizarre ideas of some over paid architect.  

The F Word

 In the winter of 1961, when I was still in Secondary School, I had managed to get my college admissions done with scholarships. I had passed all my Regents Exams so I had a Regents Diploma. So I thought I could just slide the second half of my Senior year. My father, not so much. He decided that I should learn what work was like, not the kind of stuff college grads did in suits and polished shoes and clean nails. But real down and dirty work.

January 1961 in New York was cold and snowy. My father got me a job, with my Headmaster approval, working for the NY Sanitation Department clearing sewer drains along the road ways. I got up at 4 AM, dressed as warmly as possible, took the bus, the first one at 4:35 that go me to the Garage at 5:30. I clocked in and met my "fellow" workers. They were a couple of years older than me, High School dropouts for the most part, many married with kids! Unlike contemporary students off to the Swiss Alps I was off to the Port Richmond garage. My peers there were not ones who could advance my career. 

Every day I would be out with a team clearing sewer drains in freezing slush getting splashed by passing trucks. But one thing I did get was the use of the F word.

Now in my school one rarely if ever heard it used. It was at the time the lowest of the low words. But here I heard it used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunctive, and every possible word form. In fact there was one fellow who could, with hand and arm motions, conduct a conversation with that one word alone! After a few weeks I could understand him. I did realize that one could not have a dictionary for such speech since it did involve human facial and hand expressions!

Thus I have always associated the use of this word to Staten Island the the Sanitation Department. I could out Soprano the Sopranos. Once some dude in New York tried to intimidate a few well dressed colleagues and myself. The use of my Staten Island dialect and the F word sent him scurrying for fear of his existence! Amazing what that word could do. It transformed me n my Brooks Bros attire into a street wise guy, with possible connections that one did not want to upset. It was the lowest class language available but intimidating.

In today's world we now have "ladies" and "politicians" using it without any form of proper training. It sounds foolish and out of place. They all failed to get educated in the Garage. In fact their use is laughable! As are they. 

Annual Letters

 I had an interesting connect this week. First my semi-annual secondary school luncheon. The attendees was down to eight from the usual twenty just five years ago. Each of us has had our crises and losses, including luncheon ones directly. Age does creep up. Then the second connect was one annual "letter" filled with pictures and happy faces across the posh spots of the globe. As if there was some immunity to family crises.

If I were to send out an annual letter it would be akin to my luncheon conversation. Age does creep up, and all family members have challenges. My five grandchildren each have set a separate pathway in life. My namesake grandson is a successful CPA and soon to marry a charming psychologist. My oldest grandson is a police officer married to an El Salvador descendant and with my first great grand child.  One grand-daughter is a forestry major grad somewhere in the upper Michigan peninsula in sub zero temps and feet of snow doing something on trees. Go Figguah! The other grand daughter is finishing business school wondering what is next. Finally the youngest grandson is in retail. He knows more about inventory, market demands, personnel management than any Harvard MBA. It helps to work in the trenches.

So if we had a family letter it would be work, work, work! Each different, none like their grandfather. 

Instead of regaling our fine times, I listen to and support my ailing colleagues and assist the next steps with family members. As one ages, meetings become medical appointments, entertainment becomes watching BritBox reruns, travel is hospital visits for friends. But that is life amongst the common folk.

Yes, I still have many colleagues I stay in contact with from California, Moscow, Greece, Singapore and the places I spent time at in business, rarely at what could be called pleasure. 

So to all those whose year has had its bumps, and few "grand moments", I commiserate, but laud your life of interesting challenges. 

Proper Attire

 In 1952, I cycled from Staten Island to Newark Airport. The old terminal. I would sit on my bike and watch the planes depart. My favorite place was adjacent to the Eastern Shuttle site. They flew Lockheed Constellations, large 4 engine aircraft. They flew every hour between Boston or Washington and back. 

One day I saw the Captain and he came over and I was thrilled! We spoke and I told him of all the model WW II aircraft I built. He flew B 17s, and I had one. I was just thrilled to meet a real pilot. My grandfather had take me up on Piper Cub flights, those high wing yellow birds, from an airport on Staten Island. I told the pilot all about the thrill.

 He then said: "Want to fly to Boston?"

What else could I say but sure! Thus I parked my bike and climbed aboard with a jump seat in the flight deck. Up and back, three hours and I was home for dinner. My secret. Today of course it would have violate dozens of laws and we would all be in prison. But back ten it was an adventure. 

I loved flying. The elegance of the passengers, the thoughts of who may have been on the flights. 

Today, as the Secretary of Transportation notes, dressing has collapsed. One sees morbidly obese people in sweat pants dropping well down their behind, or yoga pants leaving nothing to the immigration. Tattooed creatures lugging half the worldly belonging behind them. Food and drinks of all sorts. Clothes that last saw a cleaning months ago!  

The Secretary has a point. But alas those days are gone forever. Just try and find people in a suit,or dress. I sat in a surgical waiting room a few months back, and looked about. Men in cargo shorts, T shirts, tattoos, and scroungy beards! Enough sources of infection to kill a Russian Army! 

So who sets what standards. Class is often defined by what one wears. Class can be both defining and controlling. But one often gets more respect if properly attired, and less otherwise. 

Socialism 1920

 From The NY Times, July 5, 1920 

Here is the Socialist ticket: 

For Governor—JOSEPH D. CANNON.

Lieutenant Governor— Miss JESSIE WALLACE HUGHAN

Secretary, of State— CHARLES W. NOONAN

Controller—PHILIP RANDOLPH.

State Treasurer — HATTIE F. KRUGER 

All candidates of the Socialist Party, when elected to office, will vote and work for the adoption of such  measures as the following, not only for the immediate relief of pressing evils, but also as preparatory to the full realization of the Socialist goal. 

1. Legislation which will enable municipalities to acquire land, construct dwellings on public account, and lease them at rents calculated to cover cost of upkeep and replacement, but without profit, thus solving the now growlingly acute housing problem. 

2.’ Establishment of a comprehensive system by which the State in conjunction with municipalities and co-operative societies shall deal on a large scale In food and other necessaries of life, buying directly from the producers and selling directly to the consumers at cost, thus eliminating the capitalist middlemen, stimulating production and diminishing the cost of living:. 

3. The rapid extension of State and municipal ownership and operation of transportation and storage plants, of lighting and other so-called public utilities and of industrial establishments beginning with those which, are already most largely monopolized and those which have to do with the production of the prime necessaries of life. 

4.’The conservation by the State of the forests, mineral deposits and source's of - water power which it still owns, the reclamation of such as have been voted away, and the exploitation of these resources by the State, not for profit, but for the production of raw materials and power to be sold at cost. 

5. Legislation which will clearly exempt labor unions and farmer associations from prosecution under the so-called anti-trust laws, and will assure them of the right of collective bargaining in the sale and their farm produce respectively. 

6. Legislation guaranteeing labor the right to organize and strike, free from interference by the courts through the power of injunctions. 

7. Repeal of the war emergency concerning military service and military training in the schools, and repeal of the so-called criminal anarchy law, which has been demonstrated to be in practice a law for the suppression of free speech and for the promotion of spies and provocators. 

8. Amendment of the State Constitution and of the laws governing municipalities in such manner as to introduce the principle of occupational as well as geographical representation in legislative bodies and administrative boards: to introduce the referendum and the power of recall 

I have a personal link, Hattie Kruger was my Grandmother. So none of this is new. But just look. New York did public housing. How has that worked out. Crime and Crumbling buildings. Public transport, think MTA and AMTRAK, also coslty crumbling failures. 

Perhaps we have been there already.