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Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.
This Day in History
Richard Nixon dies, Elian Gonzalez seized by federal agents, Oklahoma land rush begins.
ou know what, why am I getting excited and bothering?
This was never about facts to begin with. But what is new, is that it's
not even about pandering to voters any more. Even half of Republicans
now want this issue dealt with.
Well good luck, because the zombie lies aren't for the voters.
They're for the donors who make their money killing the planet. The
question is not why today's politicians suck more than ever. It's who
they're sucking more than ever.
The Koch brothers are in the oil business and they're pledging
almost a billion dollars in this election. For that kind of money, Cruz
and Bush and the rest of them will say anything. It's what their fellow
prostitutes in the sex industry call the girlfriend experience.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the
chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life-a fabric on
the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough
and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it's PhilJD's fault.
Well, it's been 10 years and I hope I'm constantly surprising you
with facets of my character I have not yet revealed even when I write
within a restricted format (which is the essence of poetry).
My therapist is leaving the medical group (oh, don't worry, it's
all related) with which I am associated and in our final session they
asked me-
"Do you answer to ek hornbeck?"
Yes, of course I do.
It's not a common name so it's easily picked out of the crowd
whereas regular names like Robert or Bob have instantly a dozen heads
spinning.
Well, I'm not like that. Not that my head doesn't spin because
it might be someone I know personally, but because I don't share myself
on the Internet. Personally I Google rather poorly, ek hornbeck much
better, and my onion layers are part of the fascination-
Is he in Heaven? Is he in Hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.
Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.
Yup, one of 500 and ignored on a rainy day.
But by 1833 when Borodin was born the struggles of 1789 were far in the past (hah). and he...
Well, he was an award wining chemist.
He dabbled in music and wrote several things but rarely finished
any of them, still he attracted the attention of the more serious
composers who saw flashes of talent and was considered one of The Balakirev Circle of new wave nationalist Russians because he was so conciously derivitative of popular folk tunes.
The Polovtsian Dances referenced in the commerical above were a part of his (unfinished) opera, Prince Igor, which was about the suppression of native Mongolians (the Polovtsians) by Prince Igor and has all the charms of Opera...
It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.
Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.
with an admirable mixture of genocide of the culture you are
stealing. It has all the charm of a musical about Greasy Grass in which
Custer wins.
Oh and it and several other snippets were stolen by Broadway for Kismet. Someday I'll chat about Nellie Forbush, a thoroughly unsympathetic character.
To his credit Borodin was an early advocate of Women's Rights and
despised by his "revolutionary" contemporaries in 'The Five' for
writing in conventional formats like Quartets, Concertos, and Symphonies
of which I offer you the two that he indesputedly finished all on his
own.
So what does this say about me (aren't we all the star of our own movie)? I like this role. He's exactly like me only more in your face-
I'm not trying to prove anything. All I want
to do is teach my students that man just wasn't planted here like a
geranium in a flowerpot. That life comes from a long miracle; it didn't
just take seven days. But it's against the law. A school teacher's a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to.
Has the accused have anything to say in his own defense? If not, I
sentence you to life as a public servant. A silent butler in the service
of your school board. Waste baskets for ideas on sale in the outer
lobby.
I don't see anything funny in this Mr. Hornbeck.
Objection sustained. Neither do I.
Then why don't you just leave us alone? You newspaper people have stirred up enough trouble for Bert. What do you want anyway?
I came to tell Boy Socrates here that the Baltimore Herald is opposed to Hemlock and will provide a lawyer.
Who?
Who? I don't know yet but what's the difference? A new lawyer with
old tricks, an old lawyer with new tricks. Wake up Copernicus! The law
is still on the side of the lawmakers and everything revolves around
their terra firma.
Then why bother, you and your newspaper?
Because I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.
Sigh. I have to break in a new therapist. I think I'll start with this one-
What do you call a schizophrenic Buddhist?
Someone who is at two with the universe.
And actually, that's multiple personality disorder and I've never been diagnosed as anything except depressed and anxiety prone.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.
This Day in History
Cuban exiles invade Bay of Pigs; Three astronauts of
Apollo 13 land safely in pacific ocean; Benjamin Franklin dies at age
84; JP Morgan born in Connecticut; Ford rolls out the Mustang
convertible.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Well,
I was going to talk about planetary science today (about which you'll
find plenty of links below) but instead I spent all night puzzling over
what is supposed to be a simple 5th grade math problem.
Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl,
and they want to know when her birthday is. Cheryl gives them a list of
10 possible dates.
May 15
May 16
May 19
June 17
June 18
July 14
July 16
August 14
August 15
August 17
Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard seperately the month and day of her birthday respectively.
Albert: I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know too.
Bernard: At first I don't know when Cheryl's birthday is, but I know now.
Albert: Then I also know when Cheryl's birthday is.
(note: copied by me directly from the picture)
If you don't want spoilers you'd better stop reading and figure it out now.
What is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?- 39 Lashes
Let's start with one truth. This is not a simple 5th grade math problem.
You see the meme is that this is a regular old word problem from a
5th grade math test that Singapore children are expected to pass in
order to graduate to the 6th grade which led of course to much Internet
hand wringing about the abysmal state of U.S. education in general and
particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) where
the privatizing looters of our School funds and fiscal conservatives in
general bemoan the lack of a qualified work force that must be
supplemented by smarter (and cheaper) H-1B imported slave labor.
Here's some tangential truth to start off- there is no shortage
of STEM qualified native labor, in fact there is a surplus. The problem
is that they expect salaries commensurate with their expensive multi
year training.
Irrespective of that, almost every element of the meme is untrue.
This question is actually one of the more difficult math nerd questions given to high school students at a Math Olympiad.
Then there is some dispute about the semantics of the question. The New York Times goes so far as to re-write it so it is undisputably true that
"seperately" in this case means that Albert knows only the month and
Bernard only the day instead of another fair interpretation of the word
that would mean merely that Cheryl told them independently. I'll point
out the official language of Singapore is not just English, but British English (hell, they even drive on the wrong side of the road) so that's
kind of a minor, if glaring, quibble; the sort that ought to make Alex
Trebeck blush if not adjust the score during the commercial break (I
give it a 25% chance, but what the heck).
There is however a deeper, logical flaw that allows for two (count 'em, 2) "correct" answers that is explained by The Guardian's James Grime.
The 3 Easy Steps
1. Albert knows that Bernard doesn't know.
2. Albert deduces Bernard can't have a unique date such as 18 or 19.
3. Albert, smugly taunts Bernard, announcing Bernard doesn't know.
As we've seen above in The New York Times discussion, step one is dependent on what the definition of "is" is.
Clearly if knowing the date (as Bernard does) provides a unique
solution, Bernard knows all which he admits he does not. This
eliminates the 18th and 19th (you know my methods Watson).
The Difficult 4th Step
4. Bernard realises what Albert has realised,
which is that Bernard does not have 18 or 19. Now if Albert was holding
June he would know the answer, because there is only one remaining date
in June, namely June 17. So Bernard deduces it is not June.
The "Wrong" Answer- QED
5. Bernard announces he knows the answer. This is the second statement of the problem.
6. If Bernard is so confident, he must have a unique date. We know
it's not 18 or 19. What other unique date can it be? There are two 14s,
two 15s, two 16s and two 17s - but Bernard has eliminated June 17 -
leaving him with August 17 only. That's how he worked it out.
7. Albert is furious Bernard beat him to the answer. Albert puts
himself in Bernard's shoes, running through the six steps above. Finally
Albert reaches the same conclusion we have, Bernard must have 17.
Albert announces he knows the answer too.
So August 17 is a valid answer.
Or is it?
It is all about how you interpret the first statement. If Albert has to deduce that Bernard doesn't know, then we get July 16.
But if Albert knows that Bernard doesn't know - in other words, that
this is a statement of fact, rather than a deduction - then we get
August 17.
This incredibly subtle change - deduction vs fact - completely
changes the nature of the question. Indeed, with fact interpretation the
reader can now deduce the answer from just the first two statements of
the conversation, whereas the argument for July 16 does require all
three statements.
So, can we accept August 17?
Not any more. The originators of the question, Singapore and Asian School Math Olympiads, have rejected this alternative answer.
I'll point out that in most classic logical problems all the
statements are to be taken as fact rather than bluffs. On the other
hand usually (but not always) all the information is relevant.
In any event I'm taking Alex to the mat on this one. Jeopardy is an incredibly lucrative franchise and they give away only a pittance
in prizes. I know plenty of lawyers (looking at you PhilJD) and I
think I get at least a settlement and an invite back.
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think,
the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to
you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with
Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If
it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these
experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found
to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope;
there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We're a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we're not too hungoverwe've been bailed outwe're not too exhausted from last night's (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and
weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our
boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late,
it's PhilJD's fault.
This Day in History
The Titanic sinks off the coast of Newfoundland;
President Abraham Lincoln dies; Jackie Robinson becomes first African
American player in MLB; US launches air raid against Libya; Pol Pot
dies; Joey Ramone dies.
Your account biography page is a Turing Test to prove that you are a human. New members should read the instructions contained in this post. Be sure to access your account after answering the Turing Test, to have your account vetted as soon as possible.
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