Latest Posts

Innumeracy

Numbers & Statistics

Oh FFS.  This simple question has apparently caused all sorts of mayhem among the innumerate:

The answer is of course “FALSE” — and to think otherwise is to be ignorant of two of the simplest definitions in mathematics, i.e.

  • “A right angle is defined as two straight lines meeting at a 90-degree angle”, and
  • “There are no straight lines in the circumference of a circle.”

And in the above picture, there’s only one straight line.

That anyone can even be fooled by the question means that math education has been completely screwed up.  I agree that it’s quite a tough question for a seven-year-old child (as posed in the article), but nobody with more than a seventh-grade education should be stumped by it, let alone a professor of mathematics.

By the way, ignore the red herring that a straight line consists of two right angles:  that’s only a partial definition of straight line.  (“The shortest linear distance between two points” contains only implied angles, not actual ones.)

And by the way:  the correct spelling is “two right angles”, no hyphen necessary.

I need another gin.

Update:  Oh FFS-squared.

For the above diagram to contain two right angles, one would have to add a third radius, thus:

Now the question “There are two right angles” has the answer “True”  (A0C, B0C).  If you were to answer “False”, giving “because there are four right angles” as your reasoning, you would (rightly) be given an “Incorrect” because there are only four right angles in the imaginary world (i.e. Thales’ Theorem et al.).  However, we are not in an imaginary world because we are not talking concepts, we are talking about an actual diagram.  And to cap it all, we are talking about a question posed to a seven-year-old child, for whom Thales has no existence.

As I explained to a Reader in an email on this very topic, it always pays to remember that mathematics has little basis in reality, e.g. where a line can have direction but no thickness and a point has a position but no size.  And I’m not even going to touch on division by zero… [eyecross]

Because That’s Why

Bad News, Business

As Britishland begins to emerge ever so slowly from its Chinkvirus lockdown foolishness, businesses are being allowed to open, one sector at a time.  Which leads to squeals like this:

Gym boss spending £20,000 a month furloughing staff slams Boris Johnson for reopening pub beer gardens before fitness centres as she asks ‘why isn’t health a priority?’

Here’s my problem with arguments like this.  Instead of arguing the unfairness of pubs opening before gyms and wanting gyms to be given preference, she should be asking why gyms and pubs shouldn’t  open at the same time.

And it’s all about the definition of “health”, isn’t it?  I for one resent the assholes who think that we should all be physically healthier — whereas there’s an equally- or even more-important “social” health, that of companionship and shared good times that would be improved by the opening of pubs.

Moreover, just from a pure numbers perspective, I bet that there are untold millions of people all over Britain lining up to go to their favorite pub — or any pub, for that matter — whereas there are only a few thousand (largely) urbanites waiting to go and hit the treadmills.  If there’s a utilitarian argument (which seems to be what the unkempt Boris Johnson is following), it’s that opening pubs will give pleasure to the greatest number of people — and that if there’s a priority, it should be to the general public rather than a relatively-small number of smug and self-satisfied health-obsessed scolds.

Here are the two arguments:  “Go to the pub and have a good time” vs. “Go to the gym because you should be fitter (unspoken:  you overweight slob).”

No prizes for guessing which argument will (and should) win, every time.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

I’m exercising my editorial prerogative on this one to include “clubbing” with “shooting”, as Our Hero used a shotgun to send a choirboy to his justified end:

An 82-year-old Vietnam War veteran beat an armed home invader to death with the butt end of a shotgun to protect his 79-year-old wife after the invader attacked her in their home in South Carolina on Monday.

…and we’re talking ten (10!) butt-strokes.

of course, we get the prerequisite “you shouldn’t do that” warning from the fuzz:

Captain Eric Abdullah, a spokesman for the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office, advised all residents to immediately contact law enforcement if they believe their home is being broken into.  “Of course, folks have the right to defend themselves if their lives are in danger, but the best thing to do is to call for help.”

Call for help in carting the scumbag’s corpus delicti  away, would be my advice.

If this story doesn’t put a smile on your face and bring out an “Attaboy!”, I don’t want to talk to you.

News Roundup

Bad News

With commentary briefer than a thong bikini worn backwards:


…nope:  add stupid meat-eating journalists, politicians and celebrities.


…frankly, I can’t see how it could get any worse than it is right now:


…and just like that, the Supremes became irrelevant.


…[insert “Satan” joke here].


…and yet, anyone who’s ever seen or heard dumpy ScotPM Nicola Sturgeon knows that the stereotype isn’t outdated.


…following Robert Townsend’s advice in “Up The Organization” (first pub. 1970).


…SC’s murder rate to plummet in 3…2…1...


…wherein 2021 tries to outdo 2020.


…1.) no it isn’t, and 2.) fuck you, Scott.


…and fuck you too, Fauci.


…Kim’s prediction:  it will be the only novel on Amazon with more favorable reviews than actual buyers.


…okay, then let’s “repurpose” the building into a casino.  Especially so when you read shit like this:


…here’s a message to the Stupid Party:

Or we could just nuke D.C. and be free of all this kind of shit:


…so there we go.

And finally, something worth looking at:

Amen To All That

Architecture

Found via Insty, this diatribe against “modern” (fugly) architecture.

“Let’s be really honest with ourselves: a brief glance at any structure designed in the last 50 years should be enough to persuade anyone that something has gone deeply, terribly wrong with us. Some unseen person or force seems committed to replacing literally every attractive and appealing thing with an ugly and unpleasant thing. The architecture produced by contemporary global capitalism is possibly the most obvious visible evidence that it has some kind of perverse effect on the human soul.”

For newcomers to this website — there may be one or two — here are some of my own thoughts on the matter, and you may find a common thread among them all:

Back To The Classic —  My Style — Old Fashioned?  Me?  — Another RCOB — Talk About Ugly — As I Said — Squares, Cubes And Blocks — Insisting On Beauty

Just re-reading some of those posts raised my blood pressure five points.  And that picture at the top of both this article and the one it’s linked to actually made me slightly nauseated.

A pox on all of them.

Afterthought:  I once stayed in a little apartment in this building, just north of Sacré-Cœur in Paris:

While the apartment itself was small and rather foul, every time I stepped out into the streets surrounding the place, I felt invigorated by being in the midst of such beauty.  If I had to step into a street lined with modernist concrete blocks, I’d want to kill myself.