Feb 05 2009

An open letter to Mary Bono Mack

Categories:

Politics

by

Ms. Mack,

The House Republicans' unanimous vote against the greatly needed stimulus bill proposed by the president is troubling. While your party is employing obstructionist tactics for the purpose of political posturing, we are hemorrhaging jobs. The state is unable to support the students at my institution (UC Riverside), and my wife's staff is all being let go. Republican governors see that the stimulus is needed; Economists see that the stimulus is needed. Your decision to pursue silly politics will likely continue to drag down the GOP---in the meantime it is dragging us down with it.

It is important that the US always have an opposition party to check the government. However, the frivolity of the GOP's objections make it seem less like a good opposition party, and more like the the party of Herbert Hoover. When the stimulus bill is approved in the Senate and is put up for a final vote, I urge you to vote yes. A yes vote is a vote for good economic theory and for the pragmatic non-partisanship we sorely need.

Thank you

This post has no tag

Feb 03 2009

Upgrade

Categories:

Boring, Computing

by

Updated the blog to WordPress 2.7. Nice features, like widgetized sidebar (not that that was built in to this ancient theme we use, but it was easy enough to modify it to enable widgets) and dashboard ui improvements. I don't know if the site works any better for you, the reader, but then again I'm not sure I care whether it's as good for you as it is for me. Although come to think of it some stuff had been broken for awhile that, apparently as a side effect, is now fixed. Coming soon: exciting (maybe) new (definitely) developments on the non-blog website front.

This post has no tag

Dec 03 2008

Hours and minute hands

Categories:

Science

by

Consider the following, seemingly simple question: how many times does the minute hand overlap the hour hand on an analog clock?

Well, the rotation rates are just 2 \pi/\unit[1]{hr} for the minute hand, and 2 \pi/\unit[12]{hr} for the hour hand. The minute hand moves 12 times as fast. I could simply write down the angular position of the hands as a function of time, which would just be

\theta_m = \omega_m t; \quad \quad \theta_h = \omega_h t,
(1)

but thinking better of it, I realize that I need to reset the minute hand every time it reaches the 12-o-clock mark by subtracting 1 revolution, which is 2 \pi . Thus,

\theta_m = \omega_m t - 2 \pi n; \quad \quad \theta_h = \omega_h t,
(2)

for positive integer n . Equating these and solving, I get

t=\frac{2 \pi n}{\omega_m - \omega_h} = \frac{12 \cdot \unit[60]{s}}{11} \, n
(3)

Now, I can enumerate these in Matlab:

>> floor([12*[0:21]'/11 mod(12*60*[0:21]'/11,60) mod(12*60*[0:21]'/11,1)*60])

to which Matlab spits out


0:00:00 12:00:00
1:05:27 13:05:27
2:10:54 14:10:54
3:16:21 15:16:21
4:21:49 16:21:49
5:27:16 17:27:16
6:32:43 18:32:43
7:38:10 19:38:10
8:43:38 20:43:38
9:49:05 21:49:05
10:54:32 22:54:32

The next entry would be midnight of the next day, which doesn't count. Two columns of 11 rows, that's 22. Twenty two! Mind blowing. Since the minute hand never crosses the hour hand during the 11-o-clock hour, which happens twice per day, that happens two fewer times than hours in a day.

This post has no tag

Nov 11 2008

That old feeling

Categories:

Politics

by

Coming out of nearly a decade of Republican rule, in a major recession, a charismatic democrat is coming to power talking of health reform and the middle class, we've still got troops in Iraq, Guns and Roses and Metallica just released their new records, and the rest of music is in a shitty festering heap of uncreativity.

Doesn't this all sound a bit familiar?

The 1990s are remembered fondly by some---many I would think. We experienced a significant economic resurgence, major political shifts in other countries (especially Russia), cratering oil costs, and somewhat a distancing from the Reagan-era evangelism. Everyone being "tired of Warrant" gave rise to a music industry that was vibrant again: corporate and palatable yet with an influx of new blood and new ideas.

Kurt Cobain said at the time that rap was the first really creative medium to come about since punk. He clearly thought his own movement, "grunge", was wrapped up in that. And he also warned that rap and grunge would become tired themselves in a few years. How true that has become!

So, I'm torn. Are the 2010s going to be another 1990s or another 1930s? I lean toward the former, if only because we have in place the New Deal reforms, and we've learned to be pragmatic about the market: it cannot be allowed to be left to itself. Apparently, this is a lesson we need to review every 20 or so years.

And so it goes. Government will reform, faith in our institutions restored as far as it can be. Will a social movement accompany it? I hope so. This hope is not necessarily 'audacious'. It comes from a sense of togetherness, of liberalism.

Here's to better times.

This post has no tag

Nov 06 2008

Post-election thoughts

Categories:

General

by

I think the feeling of general malaise that I felt on Tuesday evening was the same as what many other people were feeling. Like rising too quickly from a high pressure environment, I had a bit of the emotion bends. For one thing, I've paid nearly unending attention to the election, and it didn't really hit me that it had been 20 months. As xkcd points out, what now?

With a final feeling of triumph came, inevitably, a feeling akin to what Robert Redford as Bill McCay said in The Candidate: "what do we do now?" We haven't actually done anything yet; we just made sure the guy in charge wasn't a disaster.

As for the demise of the Republican party, I am reserved. Repubs have had two down cycles, but they are far from out. The idea that they will now jettison their time-honored but perhaps largely irrelevant social issues of creationism, pro-life, and no gun control is far from a foregone conclusion. McCain was a disaster, his running mate a disgrace, and yet this was still no landslide victory. The Dems won because white people wanted their 401Ks to go back up and black people wanted one of their own in the top office. A sea-change within their opposition is possible, but I fear not likely.

And as the blacks rose up, voted their numbers, and perhaps bent the arc of history toward justice for themselves, so did they bend it back against the gays. Their hypocrisy on the Proposition 8 ballot is perhaps a symptom of their being for so long outside the political arena. The fact that I can think of zero gay black men shows that something about the culture we have now beckoned to join us in voting is lacking in honesty. With luck, the liberalization of blacks will begin now.

Young people, among whom I think I no longer belong, once again disappointed in their voting numbers, coming out barely more than the 2004 election. I can't help thinking that if they were truly mobilized, they would have counteracted the black vote that put Prop 8 over the top. Legal challenges will likely not work. Equal rights for gays will just have to wait.

This post has no tag

Older posts «

» Newer posts