Is Penny Wisdom Plain Foolish?

I spent an hour this evening fixing an appliance that I bought at a yard sale many years ago for a coin. Not only that, but I solely and regularly use this appliance for my daily work. You may wonder, how do I use a potpourri crock pot for work? As the heater part of a small double boiler for an etchant that can eat through glass or titanium, of course. And what can go wrong with a crock pot? Well, this one has been dropped a couple of times. But the crack was dealt with well enough some years ago by a liberal application of Acrylic monomer (Super Glue). So what was wrong now? The crack had weakened the heating element (the hair-thin Ni-chrome filament) and it finally burned through. So I took the thing apart and spliced in a bit of brass wire that I had lying around. That delicate job turned out to be the easy part, given strong magnifying goggles, tiny tools, and decades of fix-it experience. But these diabolical inexpensive units are designed to not-be reassembled. They had actually added an extra part to the design to make reassembly impossible. It took me over a half hour to outwit the designers and get the base re-attached in a manner that would let me take it apart again in the future. For a dozen tax-deductible dollars I can have a new one delivered to my house via eBay. Why do I regularly chose to repair disposable appliances? My parents both went through economic times much worse than the U.S. Depression, each losing nearly everything but their lives. They raised me with essential parsimony. Not actual deprivation, mind you. Just a frugal mindset that pervades my being. But now I have predictable (if meager) income, and no debt. I have money in the bank, and could afford nice things. But it just feels wasteful to throw away something that I can fix. I mentioned this in "How Does a Microwave Work?" Things I no longer need may end up on eBay. I usually net less than minimum wage for my time on most of these sales. But the widget/parts/book gets a new life with someone who really wants it, and the post office makes some money. Yet I regularly ask myself, "Is it worth it?"

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…Like I’m Eight

In the movie Philadelphia, Denzel Washington plays a savvy courtroom litigator whose catch-phrase in front of a jury is "Explain it to me like I'm eight-years-old." It's a great line and maybe I'm looking for that kind of clarity now. I really don't know what to make of this. Obama---who won election with a very solid majority of the popular vote and a most impressive majority of the electoral---has managed to be reasonable to the point of impotence. He's on the verge of validating every cliche about spineless intellectuals. The man is smart, erudite, has charisma, and can't seem to say no to the Right. It is possible that this is another one of those situations where we the people simply don't know what's going on and cannot therefore grasp the tactics or strategy. Maybe this is cleverness at such a level that it looks clumsy and gutless. I don't believe that for a second, though. (The only thing that makes any kind of sense in that vein is the idea that he is handing the GOP more and more rope with which to hang themselves. The problem with that is any rope, in order to work in an execution, has to be tied to something substantial on one end.) [more . . .]

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Life-in-outer-space version of fundamentalism

I was recently reminded that the widespread belief in supernatural beings constitutes only one version of a much bigger problem.  The problem is this: people have been turning off their skepticism in droves and allowing their fantasies to substitute for disciplined factual inquiry.   When they turn off their skepticism, they start fantasizing about a wide variety of things, none of which are supported by evidence.  They start believing in the wisdom and the benevolence of the "free market," for example.  They believe in both ethereal beings floating around the Earth and in little green men from outer space.  This reminder that non-rigorous thinking takes many forms occurred while I listened to a prominent AM radio station while I was driving home.  The host of the show, George Noory, features all kinds of un-self-critical guests:

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Justice Isn’t Boring

I'd heard about this Boring case a couple of years ago, and it finally has reached a verdict. In essence, Google's Street View crew accidentally drove up and filmed a private road, and the owners had nothing better to do than sue. I'm picturing some legal adviser drooling over Google's coffers and thinking they had an angle to get something substantial in the form of a settlement. But the case was pretty weak, with several judges simply stripping off charges, until they were left with second degree trespass. But they won! They beat Google! As Geek.com puts it: Boring couple win $1 compensation for Street View trespassing.

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Books, books and more books

I love libraries. More to the point, I love books. My wife also loves books, though now prefers her phone app to read when she gets the chance. I do read texts occasionally on my phone, and used to on my Palm, and I reluctantly read on/offline docs, but I prefer tradition. There are many reasons for going to libraries. I rarely use them for research anymore. I only go for a specific book maybe 20% of the time. I delight in taking in the experience and seeing where it leads me. I might have an objective in mind, but there are so many opportunities awaiting me, it’s hard to choose just one, or two, or several! My own library is not dissimilar from a public or university library in that respect, save perhaps its scale. That and it also serves as a music room (drum set, guitars, keyboard...) and an occasional media room. We have more than 5,300 books, though about 1,000 of them are for very young children (and mostly packed away now) and another 500 for young adults – combination homeschooling and love of books. I was putting books away the other night and looking for some references on homeschooling for a couple of pieces I am writing and went on a mini-adventure (every re-shelving trip up to my library results in armfuls coming back down with me)…. ...I rediscovered Masters of Deception, compiled by Al Seckel, is a wondrous collection of works of optical illusion by such well-known artists as Escher, Dali, and Arcimboldo, but also including Shigeo Fukuda’s incredible sculptures, and Rob Gonsalves’ realistic paintings. Scott Kim (whose work I first saw in Omni magazine in 1979) and his ambigrams, Ken Knowlton, Vik Muniz, Istvan Orosz, John Pugh, and Dick Termes are also among the 20 artists featured in this visual treat. The foreword was written by Douglas Hofstadter, which led me to… …Gödel, Escher, Bach, from which I first gained consciousness of the math in music, and of the music in math (math was something you do, not appreciate, even though I was quite good at “doing” it.) It’s been more than 25 years since I first discovered Hofstadter’s gem, and it occurred to me that I don’t recall finishing it…so that goes on the list; maybe sooner than later. Ooh! There’s John Allen Paulos, and Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences – a fantastic book of concepts, although at times disjointed like many of his works (A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up, and more – all most excellent, if a little scattered). And Friedman's "The World is Flat"... Hmm, Mark Tiedemann wrote a note on Heinlein recently (Robert A. Heinlein In Perspective)...but I only have six Heinlein books, and I promised myself I'd read Asimov's entire Foundation series from I, Robot to Foundation and Earth before I re-tried Heinlein. And I really do love Chalker, Farmer, Clarke, ... ... and Jared Diamond, and Richard Dawkins, and Martin Gardner, and Stephen Hawking,... ...Michael Shermer, Bart Ehrmann, Uncle Cecil, Gary Larson... No matter whether you get your education from electronic or print means, aural or visual, don't ever stop.

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