June 4, 1989: An Ugly Day in History

Posted on 4 June 2015 by RobertLovesPi

If you’re old enough, you remember this iconic image, from June 4, 1989 — twenty-six years ago today.

If you don’t know what happened 26 years ago in Tiananmen Square, here’s a link to Wikipedia’s article describing the vicious crackdown there, on peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, China, on June 4, 1989: twenty-six years ago today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

I was in college, as an undergraduate. So were many of the protesters. I watched the tanks roll in and murder them on live TV. This man, through an a amazing display of courage, held off a row of tanks alone, and unarmed, and delayed those tanks’ arrival at the massacre — but he couldn’t block every street to Tiananmen Square, and the Red Army was free to attack from any direction. This tense, but quiet, scene was not all I saw and heard those dark June days. When Deng Xiaoping gave the order, the Red Army came in, and took the college kids out. And thus, for decades, the hopeful light of freedom has dimmed almost to nothingness. People in college right now in China are quite likely not to even know about what happened in 1989. That’s forbidden information, so it isn’t freely shared, and much time has passed.

Think about that, please: “forbidden information.” The group that can hide the past can do anything they want in secret, and no one will ever know. That’s the position in which recline the decadent neo-“Communists” now in control of China. There, “to be rich is glorious,” as Deng rewrote Mao (who had rewritten Marx), and they fully intend to stretch the current period out for as long as they can.

China never gets in a hurry. Get things done, yes, but not on anyone else’s schedule.

Beijing still denies there was a large massacre in 1989, and still punishes anyone there who dares to discuss the topic, publicly, in any way that doesn’t “properly” defer to the regime. If you are ever in communication with anyone inside China, it’s important to avoid this topic — for the safety of that person, as well as his or her family.

“That’s Not Fair!” — A Response to This Common Phrase

Posted on 3 June 2015 by RobertLovesPi

Source of quote: Guardians Team-Up #6.

Source of image: http://avengersalliance.wikia.com/wiki/Gamora/Gallery

Cats Make Good Scapegoats (with Jynx the Cat)

Posted on 1 June 2015 by RobertLovesPi

Jynx the Cat is the official scapegoat of our home, when blame cannot otherwise be determined.

Richard Feynman, on Solving New Problems

Posted on 29 May 2015 by RobertLovesPi

Revise, and Re-install, Unconscious Mental Subroutine

Posted on 15 May 2015 by RobertLovesPi

Sleep eventually takes your awareness from you, and, at the end, you don’t even resist.

Asleep now. Initialization of nREM startup program in progress.

Stop. Evaluate time elapsed since last sleep-reprogramming. Identify areas of concern.

Rank items of concern in priority order,

Schedule upcoming REM cycle to allow the “playing out” out of necessary “real-word” drama to address the top priority concern. Maintain focus on that concern until it is replaced by another one, new, and of more importance. Keep an eye on all areas of past conflict, while watching for new ones, hoping for early detection.

If unavoidable, implement “the best you can fake it” multitasking coping-mode.

Realize that memory of this sleeping activity will be fragmentary at best.

Know also, nonetheless, that you are the one one writing the program, at both ends of the consciousness-spectrum, the autism spectrum, and any other spectra I find myself standing on.

To answer the obvious question: yes, this blog-post is deliberately being written in the grey zone between sleep and wakefulness. If parts of it make no sense, that’s the reason.

~~~

Note upon waking: I found this, written but not published, on my computer, when my alarm clock went off. I guess I’ll post it now!

Albert Einstein, on Morality

Posted on 26 April 2015 by RobertLovesPi

albert-einstein-14

A Serious Government Reform Proposal for the State of Arkansas

Posted on 16 April 2015 by RobertLovesPi

News item (http://www.thv11.com/story/life/2015/04/15/slide-the-city/25859617/): giant Slip-‘n’-Slide may be coming to downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. Here’s a photo from the news story.

To reform state government, I think we should have this event come here every time the state legislature is in session, and have it on the capitol grounds, right here in Little Rock. Why? That’s simple: if Arkansas lawmakers spent each session on a Slip-‘n’-Slide, they’d do a lot less harm.

Richard Feynman, on Computers

Posted on 11 April 2015 by RobertLovesPi

“You Majored in WHAT?”

Posted on 8 April 2015 by RobertLovesPi

I’m in my twentieth year of teaching mostly science and mathematics, so it is understandable that most people are surprised to learn that I majored in, of all things, history.

It’s true. I focused on Western Europe, especially modern France, for my B.A., and post-WWII Greater China for my M.A. My pre-certification education classes, including student teaching, were taken between these two degree programs.

Student teaching in social studies did not go well, for the simple reason that I explain things by reducing them to equations. For some reason, this didn’t work so well in the humanities, so I took lots of science and math classes, and worked in a university physics department, while working on my history M.A. degree, so that I could job-hunt in earnest, a year later, able to teach physics and chemistry. As it ended up, I taught both my first year, along with geometry, physical science, and both 9th and 12th grade religion. Yes, six preps: for an annual salary of US$16,074.

History to mathematics? How does one make that leap? In my mind, this explains how:

History is actually the story of society over time, so it’s really sociology.
Sociology involves the analysis on groups of human minds in interaction. Therefore, sociology is actually psychology.
Psychology is the study of the mind, but the mind is the function of the brain, one of the organs of the human body. Psychology, therefore, is really biology.
Biological organisms are complex mixtures of interacting chemicals, and, for this reason, biology is actually chemistry.
Chemistry, of course, breaks down to the interactions of electrons and nuclei, governed by only a few physical laws. Chemistry, therefore, is really physics.
As anyone who has studied it knows, physics often involves more mathematics than mathematics itself.

…And that at least starts to explain how someone with two history degrees ended up with both a career, and an obsession, way over on the mathematical side of academia.

Combining Octahedral and Icosahedral Symmetry to Form Pyritohedral Symmetry

Posted on 8 April 2015 by RobertLovesPi

Pyritohedral symmetry, seen by example both above and below, is most often described at the symmetry of a volleyball:

[Image of volleyball found here.]

To make the rotating polyhedral compound at the top, from an octahedron and an icosahedron, I simply combined these two polyhedra, using Stella 4d, which may be purchased (or tried for free) here.

In the process, I demonstrated that it is possible to combine a figure with octahedral (sometimes called cuboctahedral) symmetry, with a figure with icosahedral (sometimes called icosidodecahedral) symmetry, to produce a figure with pyritohedral symmetry.

Now I can continue with the rest of my day. No matter what happens, I’ll at least know I accomplished something.