Monday, January 28, 2008

On Obama . . is there anything else?

I invited my dad over so he could wax poetic about how important the Kennedy endorsements were. Being a youngster, i hear about the literal adoration that a whole nation had for the Kennedy's (something that Bill C. didn't achieve). So i had to tap someone who actually lived through those times to weigh in on how important this was, and the ramifications in that generation.

So in this analysis, my dad said (you'll hear a lot of that in this post) that Hillary was counting on the white baby-boomer women to be at least a solid backbone to her campaign. So the Kennedy endorsement flies in the face of that. The 'princess' and heir apparent to the Kennedy legacy (that would be Caroline folks) has just endorsed Obama. What was important about that was that Caroline isn't a politician. Analogously, that's like Princess Di supporting a candidate for Prime Minister over.

And Ted/Edward Kennedy coming out behind Obama does something serious to the race. Even though my dad says Ed is a wildcard, his weighing in makes New York a battleground for Hillary and not a walk-over. The Kennedy's are heavy in the Northeast, and their name carries weight in both political and social circles, so this is really big folks.

I've got my eye on New York's numbers in the upcoming days. What about you?

My dad also dropped some science on the racial politics of "'ol miss" and how the Jack Kennedy (Jack was his nickname) sent troops to ol miss. Apparently after Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, a few years later Kennedy sent some federal marshals to "Ol Miss". Apparently 60 of those marshals were hospitalized!!! In response, Kennedy sent parts of the 82nd airborne and the 101st (both of which landed in Normandy) down to Mississippi to show the Gubna of Miss just what country he was in. And apparently it was that that had black America fall in love with the Kennedy's . . . troops in mississippi, whodathunkit
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Euler's Identity theorem

[posted in response to marty's comment on "ooh, an existentialist discussion arises" on the Darkush blog yesterday]

I learned about "i" (the imaginary number, not myself) from a retired math professor who was tutoring a young kid in a school i was working in. He was teaching the kid about cycles and negative roots and many of the things you're talking about. This guy had three pieces of paper and was teaching the kid by switching between the uses of some combination of the two papers. I was interested in his little tutelage session after he was done with the kid and the retired professor enjoyed talking to me.

So, after he explained some things and i was quick on the uptake (which is why he enjoyed talking to me), i asked if i could have the papers, he wasn't going to use them so he gave them to me. Over the weekend, i sat for about 45 min trying to figure out the relationship between them. After a bit of shuffling, i realized that "i" showed up on one plane only when it intersected the plane (duh). When i correlated all the planes, i realized that the path that "i" was drawing was sort of a spiral. So, basically, "i" hits our normal number plane only once in a while, while the rest of its plotting is on the z axis, hence the spiral and its relative 'non-existence' other than when it was on that other plane. [He was absolutely thrilled when i showed him this and asked a few times (once overtly and twice implicating) whether someone helped me with this insight]

Now what i'm not getting from Euler's identity theorem is the diagram next to it, which is a circle that is hemi-inscribed. I'd be very interested to see that same proof plotted on a 3-D surface, and i'd wager that though the diagram on wikipedia is 'right', but only from the perspective of 'above'. What i'm saying is that the proof isn't saying anything about 'identity' because the end plot of the point is further up the axis that we're standing on, and from our vantage point we can't see that the 'circle' is really being inscribed on a spiral, and the start and end points are not in the same position.

Now that i re-read this post, and looked at the website again i'll be even bolder. I'll assert that the starting point for the diagram is (1,1,0) and ending point is (-1,-1,0) and that the hemi-circle IS traveling through the plane Z, and that the "+1" is moving diagonally toward the (0,0,0) point. It's all about perspective man, all about perspective. (and hence relevant to Steve's original discussion about race and gender . . . and when can we throw class into the mix?).

After saying that, what's really got my undies in a bunch is that i originally expected the identity theorem to have something that leaves and arrives at the same point (which it doesn't). But what the theorem is really stating is the proportional relationship between the numbers. Is this a correct interpretation marty?


Also, if i remember correctly, this was the same formula that Lakoff dealt with in the end of his book "where mathematics comes from". I understood the book, but with no math teacher to help, i didn't get the grit of his point for this particular equation.
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Monday, January 21, 2008

watched my first debate

. . . of this election cycle that is. And i think that Obama fricasseed (had to look that spelling up) them how do you spell that word? I think the only fault that i have with Obama is that his speech is choppy. He has a lot of 'uh's and what i think is a mild stutter. I think it's cuz he's actually thinking about what he says, which is actually becoming of him.

I did find that he doesn't support universal healthcare, which i TOTALLY agree with. And when it came down to it, Hillary came out in full dig-her-heels in force for universal healthcare (which Obama calls 'mandatory') and that's just what i don't like about her. Sure, i like mandates. But she's not going after a mandate. She said that universal healthcare is a core democratic value. That's a mis-statement. Universal Healthcare is a core liberal value, and unfortunately she's confused the two, just as many other people have.

I think Edwards is fighting a real good fight. Honestly, i like his honesty and his fight for poverty. But i just don't think his fight against poverty is ripe yet for the picking. I'm for an Obama Edwards ticket. I think Obama would serve as a wonderful uniter, and Edwards with a good groundwork during those years can come with the knock-out punch to help end poverty and its brother: overconsumption, in the next eight years. All the while, i do think that we should have at least one republican congress during that sixteen years to keep those pesky democrats (i'd say 'asses' but i mean that in the symbolic not literal sense) honest and not too wild.

I think Hillary has an axe to grind, and i neither agree with her particular axes, how she's grinding them or why she's grinding them. I think Obama's message of hope and unity hasn't been heard within the beltway for a long time, and it's time to hear it again. And i think Edwards has a passionate empathy for the underdog . . . it's too bad he's a white man having to stress how he's for the 'little man' against two 'minorities'. I think in a playing field of all white men he'd be doing MUCH better, but his message of empathy 'for' someone is much different than a message of empathy 'from' someone. I just hope his love for people doesn't get lost in the fact that he's a white guy.
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

In this corner

I've been sorta watching the Obama-Clinton fiasco. What was really interesting was to hear Bill Clinton come out on radio (heard on the Tom Joyner show) not really attacking Obama, but really taking the man's campaign to task. It was funny, i started to think about the fight as a boxing match and thought of what was going on. What i thought was Bill was definitely a past champion, on the ropes fighting against Obama, but not really wanting to blow the guy out of the water. For some reason, in his diatribe, it just didn't sound like Bill had the poise he once had as president and expert politician. He sounded like he was on the defensive, but not in terms of being pummeled, but in terms of trying to get the sympathy for him that black folk so desperately want to give him for being married to that tyrant in heels.

Also, i read a great article on a website that i used to read a bit, but haven't lately (slate) which is decidedly anti-Hillary. It's almost slanderous (not really, i just wanted to say that word). My favorite is an article that says that she's actually not more experienced than Obama. Bascially, her elected official tenure is six years, compared to Obama's 11 when you include his stint in the Illinois State legislature. So what Hillary has been trading on is her proximity to Bill!!! http://www.slate.com/id/2182073/ there's the link

ps: note to self, i gotta learn to embed links in html so they come up snazzy like in other blogs. If anyone knows how to do this, drop me a line
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

some shit i wrote

i submitted this as a comment on the Darkush blog

loved the explanation of the superdelegate system, i was wondering what that was. And Obama and hillary basically tied in NH, the term 'win' is malleable and over-hyped.

Many people are also missing the fact that many independents played their cards in the republican primary. So, i'm thinking that McCain beat Obama much the way that they say Nader beat Gore

And i think the republican race is actually fighting for the 'soul' of the party, therefore it was actually more important to outline a republican mandate for McCain in New Hampshire to make a good showing than whether Obama or Hillary won.
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Sunday, January 06, 2008

Hope for Obama

I'm an avid supporter. I think he's the great black hope, the great white hope and just the great hope. But i'm scared. I don't want to think it . .. but i was just looking at the video of him after the Iowa win . . . he's inspiring, he makes me want to believe, and i do believe. . . he makes me think that i can make a change. But i also know that there are people out there hating their fear of him. But they don' t know that they hate their fear, they think that they hate him. And they may try to take it out on him, instead of doing 'work' on themselves.
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Thursday, January 03, 2008

nothing much

i don't have anything important to say, but i wanted to post something because i want to feel like a good blogger.
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