No House Rule Against Poisoning

 Idaho Republican state Representative Aaron von Ehlinger" was accused of raping a 19-year-old intern.   

"Representative Wendy Horman rejected [Ehlinger's] argument that because there was no written rule against dating staffers, there was nothing wrong with the behavior.

"There is no House rule against poisoning another person, yet his behavior has poisoned all of us," Horman said. "Conduct unbecoming is an undefined term for a reason per our rules."

https://apnews.com/article/idaho-government-and-politics-52fcc76661c09b6e9e960fcb6195c5ff

Not a Typo

 So I'm reading along on MSN and suddenly there's a bizarre bit of text like the one below.  (I know there are no copy editors, so its not their fault.)

I eventually came to the conclusion that the odd text had been or was intended to be a hyperlink.

And that raises an interesting question.  Was it a technological fail?  Was the software which should have enclosed the text with a hypertext link faulty or, more intriguing was what I was seeing a screen scape automatically pasted from another story as text into a template?

I don't know, but just the fact that I've seen this multiple times indicates poor quality control.

The original story came from The Washington Post late on Friday night 4/2/2021 for those who want the original.

Dust My Broom - Koerner, Ray, and Glover

Listening to "Dust My Broom" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcIFqnlLoQA) from the Blues, Rags and Hollers reissue (yup no Oxford comma in the title) I thought I heard and understood a lyric for the first time even though I couldn't make out the first part of stanza.  It turned out that the song was actually on their first self-issued album, but cut from the original Elektra release I bought over a half century ago. 

What you learn from a woman /who can't tell yes from no
What you learn from a letter/when she can't tell gee from haw

My head snapped up when I heard "gee from haw".  I knew the terms from driving an amateur sled dog team.  A web search will show you that the terms were used to command draft animals.

Nice to listen to hear Koerner Ray, and Glover again.

Supreme Court Justice: "I really don’t understand"

The NT Times covered a voting rights restriction case from Arizona which featured the following exchange:

“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked [Ms. Amunson, the lawyer for Arizona’s secretary of state] a series of hypothetical questions about early voting, ballot forms and deadlines for mailed ballots. Ms. Amunson gave a general answer.

“You have to take a functional view of the political process and look to a holistic view of how it is actually affecting the voter on the ground,” she said.

Justice Alito appeared unsatisfied. “Well, those are a lot of words,” he said. “I really don’t understand what they mean.”

What does it say if a US Supreme Court justice can't  understand a lawyer's argument.  It could be that the justice is as thick as a brick or the lawyer's words don't mean anything.  In this case I'd lean toward the latter explanation.

Corrugated Fasteners

In preparation for making a crate I was removing hardware from some scrap lumber,  Staples and screws weren't a problem, but the crinkly things at the end of some mitered pieces were really tough.  In the past I was able to wiggled some free, but there had to be a better way.

The first thing was to find out what they were called.  Some stumbling around on the web revealed that the thing is a corrugated fastener.  The comments to "Corrugated Fasteners Everything There Is to know" [sic] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXpP9FkG_LA) yielded this gem of an exchange:

Fred C Dobbs (4 years ago): Would you know how to remove a corrugated fastener?

Stapling & Nailing Supplies Ltd (4 years ago):  Hi Fred it's not a question we've been asked before and unfortunately do not have an answer for you.

Fred C Dobbs (4 years ago): Yes, my marriage proposal was sort of like a corrugated fastener, it was a quick way to get into a inextricable situation.

I 'Found the Shoelace

Yup.  Big headline.

Now the back story:

Sometime last year I bought a pair of Rockports at a garage sale.  I'd already picked up some gloves.  As I was looking through the tools in the basement the fellow asked me if I was interested in some shoes.  My reflexive response is no, but  I asked what type and whadda y'know, a pair of Rockports in my size and waterproof with Adiprene a product from Adidas.  And they fit.  For $10.  OK.

I wore them a few times when it was raining.  My only complaint was my usual complaint when wearing boots: they seemed to chafe a bit about the ankle.   But they weren't worn in so all in all, no complaints.

Although the leather uppers are advertised as waterproof ("Microshield") I thought I'd go one better.  When I drove dogs (it was a hobby, it wasn't the Iditarod) it was de rigueur for drivers to waterproof leather with "the best" waterproofing.  (The best product was always a matter of contention.")  After removing the shoelaces, and tucking them into the shoe so they wouldn't get lost, I treated the leather with Sno-Seal, and with memories of college days, put the boots in the car to let the sun's rays work its magic.  (When I was a freshman in college my boots would be treated with Snow-Proof and be taken out to sunbath.  I didn't like sun bathing, but the guys on my floor would let the boots bask in the sun until the application was absorbed and then bring them back in for a reapplication.  It worked out nicely.) 

It didn't seem that all the Sno-Seal was absorbed as the leather had a tacky feel, but there weren't any large sticky spots so I thought I'd bring them in and put them somewhere warm.  It was then that I couldn't fine the lace for the right foot boot.  Thinking that it must have dropped out in the car I searched, but could not find it. 

Since that time the boots have sat in their box until today.  Just by chance as I was moving stuff around what should I find but, yup, the missing lace.  I'm guessing that the lace fell out just as I was putting the other boot in the box.

But the story is not over.  Writing this I wanted to describe identify the shoe, but ran into problems: neither the UPC code or the model number are recognized on Rockport's site,.  Who knows.  I may have gotten a good deal on a knockoff.

Dr. Jill Biden

On Saturday, December 13th, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Joseph Epstein that ignited a firestorm of criticism for being sexist and misogynist. In the piece he calls First Lady-elect Dr. Jill Biden "kiddo" and argued that she should stop using the "Dr." title in front of her name.

I thought Chasten Buttigieg's Tweeted response said what needed to be said succinctly with a dash of humor: The author could’ve used fewer words to just say “ya know in my day we didn’t have to respect women.”

(Follow up reporting found that Epstein who described himself as having taught for 30 taught from 1974 till 2002 years at Northwestern University's English department as a visiting adjunct lecturer.  see: wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Epstein_(writer))   

Typo and Nobody To Whine To

 

The article, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-years-since-investors-have-been-this-fearful-of-a-stock-market-crash-nobel-prize-winning-economist-warns-11603685224, discussed a NY Times Op-Ed by Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller's observation that his Crash Confidence Index was flashing warning signs.,  In addition, the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE) ratio was in territory not seen except the lead-up to the Great Depression and just before dot-com bubble burst.

In my own version of flagellation, I checked finanace.yahoo.com, then assumed the fetal position and turned the electric blanket up to 9.   (The last phrase was stolen from a Limelighter's recording.)

Ever the pedantic, the sentence "Shiller also pointed to the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (CAPE) ratio, a measure he helped created." jumped out at me.  While I'm not confident enough in my English grammar to explain why this is not correct, I know enough to know that it is not correct.

A brief attempt to contact the author through the Marketwatch webs site was frustrating because it required filling in text boxes which didn't exist on the form.  I took a chance on searching for the author by name.  Even though I misspelled his name, Rocket Reach (rocketreach.co) found some probably email address sites, but without the name part.  Sigh.

Kitchen Sink Drain Mat

 The plastic coded wire rack in my kitchen sink has rusted through and left stains on the porcelain and told me in no uncertain terms that it was time for a replacement.  

In my 21^st Century it means asking someone the name of the object followed by a web search.  In the end I found a rubber mat at a discount store for $2.99.  ($3.25 if you add in the tax.)

Just before I put the mat in the sink I took a closer look.  It's something I've done more and more for ideas for my Engineering Drawing course.  This I imagine is similar to musicians looking for patterns and inspiration in sounds I'd never remember.  For me everyday objects get a brief consideration as a homework or exam problem.   (The latest midterm had a variant on COVID-19 icon.)

I realized that the lines of holes in the mat were not orthogonal (perpendicular to the sides), but at a slight angle.  And then there were the ridges.  Could I actually ask the students to do that in 3D, or more importantly, could I?

And with that I was off on a 2¹/₄ hour jaunt through AutoCAD land.  Here's the result:

This is the type of drawing which, in the past, I would say makes the world a safer place for democracy by keeping the students off the streets.  

Market Up a Little/Excess Cash

The announcer on NPR this morning said that the market was up "a little". The market was up over 200 points!

It makes me wonder yet again what the bleep is happening in this world. With unemployment somewhere near 10% (and higher among Blacks), the service economy in the toilet, and parents and student anxious about returning to school, why is the market up?

Wall Street pundits repeat the mantra, "Wall Street is not Main Street" often enough to explain why the price of a stock going up when a large company announces yet another huge round of layoff. The company has just reduced expenses why shouldn't the profits increase?

I stumbled over a description of Benjamin Graham forcing Northern Pipeline Company to distribute its "excess cash" to shareholders in 1927. The idea of excess cash is interesting for several reason, one of which is how one decides what excess is. 

 At one time in the mythological economic past the stakeholders involved the company, the stockholders, the employees, and communities. If one imagines communities where most of the jobs were dependent on a local employer you get the idea. The owner and his family had to face employees in the town.  There was responsibility and face and pride involved.

Change that to a board in a far off city who feel beholden only to shareholders and the difference becomes in focus to the detriment of the workers.

Why should employees feel a loyalty to a company whose only loyalty is to the faceless group who bought their stock?

Algorithmic Failure

Anyone who's been on the web recognizes that something is being tracked, otherwise why do the same ads for that thing keep showing up on different web sites? 

In my case I usually see ads for watches.  I often click on watch ads and announcements to see if there's something interesting.  Watch mechanisms fascinate me.  Just recently I noted that some new watches don't have crown guards.  

That there are watch rental web sites is fascinating.  I read a piece where a journalists felt he got an exclusive interview because the person spotted an expensive (rental) watch and deduced that the journalist was someone important/influential enough to warrant more consideration.

With that said about watches I wear one I got for $1 at a tag sale (and $10 more getting the battery replaced).  It tells time and suits me just fine. This is what it should look like, except that some of the bezel paint has flaked off mine.  (I probably could have bought one new for the same cost, but hey, I didn't know that then and I needed a watch.)

 So after that diversion about watches, what should show up as an ad on a comic site but an eBay ad for an "Advanced Aquaduck, Duck Puller Tool, Stainless Steel Tip, One Piece Shaft" a steal at a little over $50

and a "23 pcs Cup Type Aluminium Oil Filter Wrench Removal Socket Remover Tool Set Kit" for under $40.

Why?

My guess is that I was on eBay looking for something like the snow mobile boots I remembered from years ago.  Did that mark me as a man's man who needed tools?  

Perhaps you can boost your ego by searching for condominiums costing more than $2M.  My curiosity  about the cost of used Maserati resulted in those ads to popping up for several weeks.  (One of my students said, yeah, the price is reasonable, but the maintenance will kill you.  I take his word for it.)

Should we be annoyed or flattered if an algorithm is literally targeting us with ads suitable for a higher socio-economic class?  Forget about crows feet, varicose veins, and other signs of aging, Viking Cruise ads appearing in your feed signal that it's time to update your will.

.

Mad Rush

Setting for a long session of grading and responding to students end-of-semeseter anguish, I turned to Philip Glass's performance of "Mad Rush" in Montreal (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0G0-9E5SE).  In the comments echo_delta wrote: "Somebody's soul is invisible, but sometimes you can hear it.", a phrase I hope to remember. 

For some though,  you  can feel it.

On Bernie Ebbers (WorldCom  $11 billion accounting fraud in 2002) being released from prison for medical reasons Snarky Jackhole posted: "'Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.' - Terry Goodkind" on finance.yahoo.com.

He's probably suffering, but the judge, Valerie E. Caproni, said she'd explain her reasoning later.  For those who saw their 401K's wiped out, their future stolen, there was no mercy.  He served 13 years of a 25 year sentence.

People will be watching to see if he miraculously recovers.

Palin Divorce

I was struck by this line in the  Washington Examiner story:'"It's not over': Sarah Palin says she is fighting to repair her marriage ":
"Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she learned her husband, Todd, wanted a divorce in an email from his lawyer and that the two are seeking counseling."  (www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/its-not-over-sarah-palin-says-she-is-fighting-to-repair-her-marriage)

My first thought was, "What a gutless jerk!"  What, he wasn't man enough to tell her face to face?  (I stare in fascination that I even write "man enough".)  My second and subsequent thoughts were still "What a gutless jerk."  

There are many reasons to avoid Sarah Palin, so I can't blame her husband, former First Dude of Alaska, for wanting to get away/come to his senses, but her husband didn't have the simple courtesy to do it himself.  

What am I missing?  Was this executive type behavior: delegating authority so he could attend to the important business at hand like, driving a snowmobile , playing cards with the gang, or shooting wolves?  Or, wait!!  Maybe it hurt more to hear from his lawyer rather than him directly?.  Yeah, sorry, Todd is too busy binging on Queer Eye reruns.

We'll have to wait for the divorce.  

Barneys New York is Closing

Here's the NY times article describing the sale of the brand name: Barneys is Being Sold for Parts (www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/business/media/barneys-bankruptcy-authentic-brands.html).

Over the years, when I would hear the name or see an ad for Barneys I would remark, "The only reason I'd go to Barneys is to pass a bad check."

Many years ago I went to Barneys to buy a suit.  I was young (and stupid -and as Mark Twain remarked, I repeat myself) and wore sneakers.  Anyone interested in selling would have pointed out that one should wear the same foot ware when trying on a suit as one would wear with the suit so the suit could be properly fitted.  A good salesman might take a chance on suggesting that I should buy shoes and then the suit.  I didn't emit a master-of-the-universe vibe, but maybe I was a rock band's tour manager looking to go legit with cash to burn.   If Barneys had loaner shoes, but those weren't offered.

I felt that they actually sneered at my ignorance.  Fine enough.  I've suffered worse insults with a shrug.  What really made me mad was the way the salesmen treated the Japanese customers.

The Japanese economy at the time seemed poised to dominate the world.  The salesmen, most out of hearing of their Japanese customers, but well within mine, made insulting remarks about them.  While I can no longer quote what was said, the image of one salesman playing with a very young child as the mother stood near by has stayed with me all these years.

I presume the mother knew no English or had a will of steel because she didn't show any response as the salesman's smile as he played with the kid contrasted with his insults.

When the store was renovated to great acclaim I considered a visit, but never got around to it.  With the announcement that it was closing the Internet satisfied my curiosity.  An open sculpted look by the look of things, but not worth a personal look.

May Barney Pressman rest in piece.  The arrogant poseurs who worked there can rot in hell.  The rest will stand out from the rests of the unemployed with their bespoke suits.

My Lost Weekend

This was written over a month ago after the midterm exam in my computer drawing class but I didn't get around to editing it until just now about six months later..

This past weekend will be my Lost Weekend.

Film and literary historians will recognize the reference to the 1944 novel by Charles R. Jackson and the Academy Award winning movie of the same name made the following year.  In my case, the central problem obliterating all else in my case was 3 classes worth of midterms, not alcoholism.  At this point in my life, the trauma is in grading, not taking midterms.

As with the protagonist in the reference, the problem is my own character flaw: I want to be perceived as grading fairly.  Grading correct answers is easy: students get full credit and I'm on to the next answer.  Incorrect answers requires much more time.  For the course involving AutoCAD, I annotate each incorrect drawing  (incorrect or missing dimensions, lines not meeting correctly, or other technical errors), save a screen shot of the student work, and post that image to the grade book in the course web site to leave a clear record for the student and myself.

It takes a loooong time.

There was a particular problem on the final which could be an easy two minute job if you knew the trick.  The trick was covered in class, described in the book we use, and to make things even fairer, I posted a video online with the midterm so there should be no doubt how the drawing should be structured.  After all the midterms were submitted online I asked who in the class had watched the video.  Nobody.  Sigh.

So dispiriting.

Some  drawings had kinks where curved lines met where supposed to join seamless. Did the students not see the problem? 

(I fantasize about adapting Jack London's comment that after he's completed a piece he looks at it.   If it's good he sends it out.  If it isn't he sends it out.  (A web search couldn't find a reference to this quote.  A Jack London scholar/devotee couldn't place it either.)  Maybe, in those courses which there are written assignments I can just hand out slightly lower grades based on the quantity of buzzwords and wait for the students to complain.)

Welcoming Samara/International Living

The subject line gave me a start because of the obvious association with the preface to the famous  John O'Hara novel, "Appointment in Samarra".  The names are different, but close enough for me.

The email from International Living magazine described the marvelous expat life of a Canadian couple among the welcoming local Costa Ricans.  Ever cynical I couldn't shake the city's name association.

(For those who forgot the forward, here's the brief version of the brief story: a servant in Bagdad is startled by Death staring at him in the market place.  Frightened, the servant begs his master to let him flee to Samarra where Death won't be able to find him.  Later, the master accosts Death in the market and asks why Death frightened his servant.  Death replies that, contrary to what the servant said, it was he, Death who was startled be cause "I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.")

The tale is neatly told and always gets knowing approval the first time someone hears it.  I see fleeing the northern climes to a sunny retirement only to suffer some brutal misfortune in an otherwise delightful clime.

Although I enjoy reading "Internal Living" email, most of the activities that the expats enjoy shopping, golf, snorkeling, fishing, happy hour, are things which have minimal appeal.  I keep looking for description of broadband access and internet connectivity.

What am I ignoring?  One day someone will point out that life is meant to be enjoyed. 

Ooops.

Devil's Staircase in MATLAB

I can't recall how I stumbled over the description of the Devil's Staircase, but it sounded like an interesting programming problem.  Although I recognized the name, math ability has deteriorated to the point that references to Cantor Sets made no sense until I stumbled over pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Summer2009/Whieldon/Math_Explorers_Club%3A__Lesson_Links/Entries/2009/7/31_Lesson_3%3A__The_Devils_Staircase_%26_Other_Uncountable_Problems.html
 and the illustration below:

It took an embarrassing long time to get the coding correct.  I was reminded once again of truism I first heard from Roy Mendelson: The first step to solving a problem is the correct statement of the problem.

It took me a while because I was distracted by a seductively sneaky solution to the problem using MATLAB's array math. If the steps below the middle step could be calculated, all the steps after the middle step could be calculated in one swell foop by adding the value of the end point of the middle step to the array of steps between 0 and the lower x-value of the middle step.

It took me a while to find the appropriate quote from Knuth: "The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." (From Computer Programming as an Art, p. 671, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth)

It was only after I'd solved the problem myself that an online search found a recursive solution (m2matlabdb.ma.tum.de/download.jsp?MC_ID=5&SC_ID=13&MP_ID=104) which provides not only a plot of the staircase, but the Cantor set as well.

(I avoid recursion because 1) I'm not good at it (why not admit it here), 2) recursion generally uses more memory than looping, and, lastly, I suspect that the repetitive function calls is slower.)

From a quick look at the recursive code I like mine even better because the recursive code starts with a conditional check to see how many steps are requested whereas mine will take any step.  (To be frank, however, the recursive code does the mandatory parameter checking.  Mine assumes that the user will not pass an invalid number of steps, e.g., 0 or a negative number, or pass a string or other pathalogical value.)

The recursive code creates the middle step and then if more steps are required generates the left and right side of the Devil's Staircase.  The code involves a lot of multiplication of array values.  My early assembler experience always made me avoid multiplication and array values.  I wish I could blame a cruel instructor for beating into using pointers and addition, but I did it to myself.  As MATLAB doesn't have pointers (yeah, I know, arrays are really pointers) I had to use arrays also.  You can see from the code that calculating a new vector value required two or three multiplications, depending on how you count.  (I'm guessing that the multiplication by 0.5 is accomplished by shifting the bits to the right rather than actually multiplying by 0.5

xr(stufe)=.5*((1-e)*xr(stufe+1)+(1+e)*xl(stufe+1));
yr(stufe)=.5*(yr(stufe+1)+yl(stufe+1));

My MATLAB solution is far from inspired, but much shorter than the recursive method.  The code generates the two member vector (0 and 1) and calls the genXValues function to generate the new values by using every other value in the current vector.  Here's the heart of it:

It' not pretty but it works.

Hey A Custom Error!

Anyone out there get this message on outlook?  I was trying to log in and an unknown error occurred. I'm sure alarm bells must be ringing in Redmond as they scramble to track this down.

Wine & Spirits

Passing a store advertising Wine and Spirits I wondered what wine goes with the ghost of Christmas past?

Would a Merlot go with the specter of a woman spurned by her lover? 

What should be paired with an incubus?