"An early practitioner of reflective journaling was Thomas Jefferson... One of his biographers quoted Jefferson as saying 'I was in the habit of abridging and commonplacing what I read meriting it, and of sometimes mixing my own reflections on the subject' (Cunningham, 1987, p. 9). Herman W. Hughes, Dialogic Reflection: A New Face on an Old Pedagogy.
Friday, November 29, 2013
O, America!
The Inner Part
When they had won the war
And for the first time in history
Americans were the most important people –
When the leading citizens no longer lived in their shirtsleeves
And their wives did not scratch in public
Just when they'd stopped saying "Gosh" –
When their daughters seemed as sensitive
As the tip of a fly rod,
And their sons were as smooth as a V-8 engine –-
Priests, examining the entrails of birds,
Found the heart misplaced, and seeds
As black as death, emitting a strange odor.
Louis Simpson
from At The End of the Open Road 1963
The End of the World
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb---
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing --- nothing at all.
Archibald MacLeish
1926
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Lincoln
"We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of."
Harrisburg Patriot& Union
Nov. 24th 1863
Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives. We write today in reconsideration of "The Gettysburg Address," delivered by then-President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the greatest conflict seen on American soil. Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincoln's words "silly remarks," deserving "a veil of oblivion," apparently believing it an indifferent and altogether ordinary message, unremarkable in eloquence and uninspiring in its brevity.
In the fullness of time, we have come to a different conclusion. No mere utterance, then or now, could do justice to the soaring heights of language Mr. Lincoln reached that day. By today's words alone, we cannot exalt, we cannot hallow, we cannot venerate this sacred text, for a grateful nation long ago came to view those words with reverence, without guidance from this chagrined member of the mainstream media.
The world will little note nor long remember our emendation of this institution's record - but we must do as conscience demands: In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln's speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, The Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error.
Harrisburg Patriot-News
Nov. 17th 2013
The Speech
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Harrisburg Patriot& Union
Nov. 24th 1863
Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives. We write today in reconsideration of "The Gettysburg Address," delivered by then-President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the greatest conflict seen on American soil. Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time, called President Lincoln's words "silly remarks," deserving "a veil of oblivion," apparently believing it an indifferent and altogether ordinary message, unremarkable in eloquence and uninspiring in its brevity.
In the fullness of time, we have come to a different conclusion. No mere utterance, then or now, could do justice to the soaring heights of language Mr. Lincoln reached that day. By today's words alone, we cannot exalt, we cannot hallow, we cannot venerate this sacred text, for a grateful nation long ago came to view those words with reverence, without guidance from this chagrined member of the mainstream media.
The world will little note nor long remember our emendation of this institution's record - but we must do as conscience demands: In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln's speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, The Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error.
Harrisburg Patriot-News
Nov. 17th 2013
The Speech
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Hot Stove - A Glimpse of the 2014 New York Yankees.
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.
Edgar Allen Poe
Descent into the Maelstrom
Edgar Allen Poe
Descent into the Maelstrom
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Arguing the Toss.
And somewhat surprisingly, Cambridge have won the toss.
Harry Carpenter
Sometimes you need a fair coin to toss so that you can make a choice between two options without any bias....Now suppose that the only coin you have available is a biased one: it does not have an equal probability (of 1/2) of falling 'heads' or 'tails'....Is there anything you can do in order to ensure that tossing a biased coin creates two equally likely, unbiased outcomes?
Suppose that you toss the coin twice and ignore outcomes where both outcomes are the same - that is, toss again if the sequence 'heads-heads' (HH) or 'tails-tails' (TT) happens. There are two pairs of outcomes that could result: 'heads' followed by 'tails' (HT), or 'tails' followed by 'heads' (TH). If the probability of the biased coin coming down 'heads' is p, then the probability of getting 'tails' is 1 - p, and so the probability of getting the sequence HT is p(1 - p) and that of getting TH is (1 - p)p. These two probabilities are the same, regardless of the probability p of the biased coins. All we have to do to get a fair game is define HEADS by the sequence HT and TAILS by the sequence TH, and the probability of TAILS is the same as the probability of HEADS. And you don't need to know the bias, p, of the coin.*
* This trick was thought up by the great mathematician, physicist and computer pioneer, John Von Neumann. It had wide use in the construction of computer algorithms. One of the questions that was subsequently addressed was whether there were more efficient ways of defining the new HEAD and TAIL states. The way we have done it wastes 'time' by having to discard all the HH and TT outcomes.
John D. Barrow
If you're worried by the expression 'p(1 - p)', remember that in Probability Theory probabilities are expressed as decimal fractions between 0 and 1, so that 0 represents impossibility, and 1, certainty. Thus, if a coin is rigged to fall 'heads' 6 out of every 10 times tossed, the probability, p, of H is 0.6 (and, clearly, p of T is 0.4)
In our example,
p(1 - p)
or, p - p^2 (representing p squared)
= 0.6 - 0.6^2
= 0.6 - 0.36
= 0.24
Von Neumann was a character. His work on Game Theory, and his membership of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, mixed with a hatred of the Soviet Union, led him to develop the wonder that was the equilibrium strategy he called, with deliberate humor, mutually assured destruction, or MAD. He described himself, before Senate Committee, as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm." And, elsewhere, "If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today. If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock."
Harry Carpenter
Sometimes you need a fair coin to toss so that you can make a choice between two options without any bias....Now suppose that the only coin you have available is a biased one: it does not have an equal probability (of 1/2) of falling 'heads' or 'tails'....Is there anything you can do in order to ensure that tossing a biased coin creates two equally likely, unbiased outcomes?
Suppose that you toss the coin twice and ignore outcomes where both outcomes are the same - that is, toss again if the sequence 'heads-heads' (HH) or 'tails-tails' (TT) happens. There are two pairs of outcomes that could result: 'heads' followed by 'tails' (HT), or 'tails' followed by 'heads' (TH). If the probability of the biased coin coming down 'heads' is p, then the probability of getting 'tails' is 1 - p, and so the probability of getting the sequence HT is p(1 - p) and that of getting TH is (1 - p)p. These two probabilities are the same, regardless of the probability p of the biased coins. All we have to do to get a fair game is define HEADS by the sequence HT and TAILS by the sequence TH, and the probability of TAILS is the same as the probability of HEADS. And you don't need to know the bias, p, of the coin.*
* This trick was thought up by the great mathematician, physicist and computer pioneer, John Von Neumann. It had wide use in the construction of computer algorithms. One of the questions that was subsequently addressed was whether there were more efficient ways of defining the new HEAD and TAIL states. The way we have done it wastes 'time' by having to discard all the HH and TT outcomes.
John D. Barrow
If you're worried by the expression 'p(1 - p)', remember that in Probability Theory probabilities are expressed as decimal fractions between 0 and 1, so that 0 represents impossibility, and 1, certainty. Thus, if a coin is rigged to fall 'heads' 6 out of every 10 times tossed, the probability, p, of H is 0.6 (and, clearly, p of T is 0.4)
In our example,
p(1 - p)
or, p - p^2 (representing p squared)
= 0.6 - 0.6^2
= 0.6 - 0.36
= 0.24
Von Neumann was a character. His work on Game Theory, and his membership of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, mixed with a hatred of the Soviet Union, led him to develop the wonder that was the equilibrium strategy he called, with deliberate humor, mutually assured destruction, or MAD. He described himself, before Senate Committee, as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm." And, elsewhere, "If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today. If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock."
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