Jail Zuckerberg

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 21:52:37 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 3/1/2021 8:22 PM, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/1/2021 7:00 PM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 18:43:46 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 3/1/2021 5:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

It doesn't matter, and phones, internet connectivity, and all the
problems and compromises they bring with them, are here to stay.

That's an admirably Stoic attitude.

Two comments on the problems and compromises:

1) We're already at the stage where it's difficult to function without
an internet connection. I saw this recently when my credit union's
connection was out of service for quite a few days. I've heard of many
people who wanted COVID vaccine but weren't comfortable using the 'net
to try for an appointment and were forced to sit on telephone hold for
hours. And a good friend of mine (and one of the most tech-averse people
I know) has had no internet connection at home for about 12 days and is
beyond furious. The net is now considered the default way of performing
any transaction, and it must be making millions of elderly folks very
anxious.

2) Drivers entranced by their smart phones is becoming a real concern,
including for bicyclists. In our state, members of one political party
(guess which!) just struck down yet another attempt to make distracted
driving a primary offense. But I'm afraid even that won't solve that DD
problem for decades. I seem to see a phone-intoxicated motorist every
five minutes. We'll never have an army of cops big enough to pull them
all over.

I think the only slim possibility of a solution is phone apps that
automatically disable phone communication while a car is moving. If the
use of such apps became The Responsible Thing To Do, at least a portion
of motorists wouldn't be tempted to answer the texts coming in.

Interesting :-) Singapore solved the problem of people fussing about
with hand phones while driving years ago. They simply promulgated a
law that using a hand phone while driving was penalized by a $1,000
fine... and then enforced the law.


Singapore's solution cannot be applied he

True, but for several reasons.

One is the pervasiveness of cell phone use while driving. It's gotten so
common that it would take an immense simultaneous nationwide effort to
clamp down on it via enforcement. Politics will prevent anything
remotely like that level of enforcement.


Don't you think that hand phones aren't pervasive in other countries?
Here, in Thailand, almost literally everyone has a "smart phone" we
have a house maid (who is paid slightly more then the legal minimum
wage)... she's got a phone and previously we were breaking the law and
had an illegal Cambodian girl working for us - same salary - she had a
phone. And I can assure you that they are just as common in Singapore,
in fact, before they became so common here that was one of the things
you "made a note to buy" on your next trip to Singapore was a "hand
phone".

Another problem is the difficulty of detection. I think that even if
cops were told to ticket absolutely everyone they saw using a phone,
people will continue using them in a hidden manner.

Well, one thing different in Singapore is the mandatory government
service for all males and government service is generally the
army/navy, police or fire department, so there are plenty of cops on
the street and there isn't this, would you say distrust, of cops.
After all it might be your kid in the blue suit, or the neighbor's kid
who's standing on the corner and gives you a ticket when he sees you
jabbering away on your phone.


The root problem is a combination of overconfidence and arrogance and
"me first" selfishness: "I'm a terrific driver and I know exactly what
I'm doing, so you can't take away my freedom" - freedom to put others'
lives at risk.

https://forums.somd.com/threads/raci...cement.369343/

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/indu...s#.YD2TTE-NWOI

Of course, I don't think any bicycle helmet law makes sense. And I do
sympathize with minorities subjected to discriminatory police attention.*

But I note that the articles seem to omit one essential data point: Do
on-street observations show many more blacks actually flouting the
helmet law? If over three times as many blacks ride without helmets,
getting over three times as many citations wouldn't in itself prove
discrimination.

-----

* I do think blacks are unjustly targeted in many ways. One tale that
drove that point home was when a certain physicist related after-hours
discussions at a physics conference. Every physicist there had tales of
being hassled by police. There were plenty of details, such as being
stopped and frisked when entering the laboratory building at night, etc.
Those tales astonished me. How could physicists be targets?

It turned out the conference was a gathering of black physicists. The
story was told by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

I suggest that every minority group, except for the original WASP's
who first settled the place have been treated badly, and relatively
recently too. Certainly the French-Canadian, the Jews, the Irish, the
Italian, the Polish, the Spanish speakers, followers of other then the
major Protestant religions, and probably others that I don't remember
have all been considered second-class and treated with disdain.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 19:57:26 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 18:30:18 -0800 (PST), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

I can remember in high school if you were caught with a calculator
during an exam you got a Zero on the exam and had to leave the
examination room. Times have changed.

Yep. I think that problem hit me in about 1970, when I was in
college. There were several problems. Some students couldn't afford
calculators which were running at about $120 for a 4 function
calculator. The instructors didn't want to revise their exams to
accommodate calculators. Technology was progressing very rapidly
resulting large performance differences between different models. The
usual solution was if they couldn't figure out how to integrate the
calculators, then no calculators were to be used. This made little
sense to the engineers, who were expected to use calculators on the
job after graduation.

My "solution" was not exactly in the playbook. Since analog slide
rules were allowed, I would build an electronic analog calculator. I
had take a class in analog computing and decided it could be done. So,
I built an analog calculator of sorts in a briefcase consisting of two
Bournes 10 turn potentiometers, an analog multiplier/divider circuit,
some inverters, some amplifiers, a log amp, and a rather large panel
meter with a mirrored scale. Basically, the same thing as a slide
rule using logarithms, but electronically.

I then asked if I could use it during exams. Much to my surprise, the
reactions were mixed. It took about a month of demonstrating and
haggling to convince the head of the electrical and electronic
engineering department to allow me to use it. His logic was simple.
It took longer to work a complex problem with my device because it
lacked most of the obscure scales found on most slide rules. He was
right. The first time I used it on an exam, I was sweating blood to
finish on time. It tried again on 2 other exams and went back to
using a slide rule. Later, I bought a TI SR-10 calculator.

Eventually, calculators were allowed during exams, but only after most
exam questions were re-written so that any advantage in having a
calculator was minimized. By then, it was assumed that every student
had access to a calculator.


I remember a story about using a calculator. It might have been during
the Government Radio Operator test I mentioned. The test taker arguing
that he should be allowed to use his calculator and the Examiner
saying something like. "What will you do if you don't have your
calculator" and the student replied, "I'll always have a calculator".
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 3/1/2021 9:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 19:22:49 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

https://forums.somd.com/threads/raci...cement.369343/

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/indu...s#.YD2TTE-NWOI

Interesting. Extracting some numbers from the article:
Of the 2,962 total bicycle infractions from 2003-2020,
56% were for not wearing a helmet, according to a study.
That is:
0.56 * 2962 = 1659 helmet tickets over a 17 year period or:
1659 / 17 = 98 = Approx 100 tickets per year.

Then, there's the homeless:
In addition, one report shows nearly half of Seattle's
helmet tickets were issued to the homeless.
That's about 50 helmet tickets per year for the homeless. That leaves
the remaining 50 helmet tickets per year for those who are not
homeless.

My guess(tm) is about 50% of those went to school children riding to
and from who knows where. So, that's 25 helmet tickets per year for
all races to those who are neither homeless or school children.
Assuming that the Seattle skools are defacto segregated by
neighborhoods, with that few tickets per year, it wouldn't take much
for one overly zealous enforcer at one of the predominantly Black
schools to change the balance.

Black people make up about 8% of Seattle's population; yet,
they received more than 17% of the helmet violations from
2003-2020...

Out of the 50 helmet tickets issued per year to those who are neither
school children or homeless, in order to get equality between the 8%
Black population and 17% tickets issue, the difference would be:
17 + 8 / 2 = 12.5 ticket for perfect equality
with a difference of:
0.17 - 0.125 * 100 = 4.5 tickets difference.

Therefore, to solve the problem and insure perfect equality between
Blacks and everyone else in the area of helmet tickets issued per
year, simply randomly issue 5 helmet tickets per year to anyone who is
not Black or homeless, at a total cost to the victims of $150 plus
taxes, and be done with this nonsense.




You have either not read or understood Gramschi. To destroy
a society, groups must be incited against other groups and
where there are not disparate groups one must invent them.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Tue, 02 Mar 2021 08:23:56 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

You have either not read or understood Gramschi. To destroy
a society, groups must be incited against other groups and
where there are not disparate groups one must invent them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
I haven't read any of his works. However, I understand the problem:

The first step to solving a problem is to blame someone. If nobody is
available, find someone innocent and blame them. If the size of the
problem justifies a group, contrive a conspiracy. If the designated
culprit is expected to solve the problem, find someone else. If the
designated conspirators provide an adequate defense, assign a new
(derogatory) name to the group and repeat the process. Etc...

In this case, the problem is a mandatory helmet law. The author of
the paper did a fairly good job of inflating a minor statistical
anomaly in crisis level proportions. I have the irritating habit of
annualizing numbers so that they can be prepared. Had I not done
that, I probably would have missed the authors clever manipulation of
the available numbers. While I agree that mandatory helmet laws
should be repealed, methinks some better reasons could be contrived
than claiming they are discriminatory.

Slight change of subject:
Recently, I suggested that readers of R.B.T. might be interested in
viewing some videos that involve urban planning:
https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos
The results in R.B.T. were under whelming, where proponents of various
points of view immediately restated their positions without much
consideration for the videos. So, I'll try again. The author
mentioned one trivial item in one of the videos (I forgot which one).
The bicyclists in Amsterdam seem to not wear helmets. Like most
people, I assumed that this included everyone on a bicycle in
Amsterdam. Nope. In an interview with a resident, they point out in
the crowded streets, the cars are not able to travel much faster than
the bicycles. The upright or comfort bicycles used also don't lend
themselves to fast riding. The result is that cars and bicycles seem
to get along with each other in the city streets for Amsterdam. The
resident also mentioned that those outside the city, who ride on road
bikes, generally wear helmets because they ride faster.



--
Jeff Liebermann
PO Box 272 http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Ben Lomond CA 95005-0272
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 9:47:05 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:

When I took the test for a U.S. commercial radio operator license
there were quite a number of questions that took a fair amount of
calculation and calculators weren't allowed.

When I took the day-long test for the Professional Engineer's license, calculators were absolutely necessary, but only certain ones were allowed. IIRC any calculator that had alphabetical inputs was illegal, for some arcane reason. That meant I had to do a full day of intense calculations with a very unfamiliar calculator. (But I did fine.)

- Frank Krygowski

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 12:51:47 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 21:52:37 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote:

* I do think blacks are unjustly targeted in many ways. One tale that
drove that point home was when a certain physicist related after-hours
discussions at a physics conference. Every physicist there had tales of
being hassled by police. There were plenty of details, such as being
stopped and frisked when entering the laboratory building at night, etc.
Those tales astonished me. How could physicists be targets?

It turned out the conference was a gathering of black physicists. The
story was told by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
I suggest that every minority group, except for the original WASP's
who first settled the place have been treated badly, and relatively
recently too. Certainly the French-Canadian, the Jews, the Irish, the
Italian, the Polish, the Spanish speakers, followers of other then the
major Protestant religions, and probably others that I don't remember
have all been considered second-class and treated with disdain.

I get your point and agree (except that Native Americans might not call WASPs "original"!). But the relevant difference for Blacks is the permanence of the condition. From what I can tell, other groups eventually assimilated. Blacks, being black (or at least a darker shade of brown) seem to carry that stigma forever.

I once knew a PhD professor of chemistry who was originally from India and very dark complected. He was incensed at the treatment he received when traveling in the southeast U.S. His accent was thick enough that anyone with brains should have been able to tell his ancestry, if not his intellectual qualifications. I don't know if those mistreating him didn't know, or just didn't care.

- Frank Krygowski

On Monday, March 1, 2021 at 6:02:37 PM UTC-5, Frank Krygowski wrote:

Interesting. I began using Hewlett-Packard calculators in the late
1970s, IIRC. In addition to the RPN logic that I still greatly prefer, I
was sold by a demonstration my best engineer friend had seen.

holy crap I had nearly forgotten about the RPN HP calculators. I used my first one as an engineering stdent at Northeastern in....hmmmm, '83?

After a few years the keys started "stuttering" - as in,
typing 5 might result in 55555. Many times I opened the keyboard,
cleaned off corrosion, smeared with a thin layer of Vaseline to slow the
progression of corrosion.

Horrible switch-bounce. Add in the more adnvaced models with the dihedral keys and in some cases all you got was a random number generator. Before the HP I was using a much lower cost TI scientific calculator (can't remember the model) with even worse switch bounce. My professor in my first year electronics course allowed their use, as long as we showed the work. My calculator ****ed up so badly I finally turned it off and did the test by hand. I was the last to finish, but aced it.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 2:24:08 PM UTC, AMuzi wrote:
On 3/1/2021 9:35 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 01 Mar 2021 19:22:49 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

https://forums.somd.com/threads/raci...cement.369343/

https://www.bicycleretailer.com/indu...s#.YD2TTE-NWOI

Interesting. Extracting some numbers from the article:
Of the 2,962 total bicycle infractions from 2003-2020,
56% were for not wearing a helmet, according to a study.
That is:
0.56 * 2962 = 1659 helmet tickets over a 17 year period or:
1659 / 17 = 98 = Approx 100 tickets per year.

Then, there's the homeless:
In addition, one report shows nearly half of Seattle's
helmet tickets were issued to the homeless.
That's about 50 helmet tickets per year for the homeless. That leaves
the remaining 50 helmet tickets per year for those who are not
homeless.

My guess(tm) is about 50% of those went to school children riding to
and from who knows where. So, that's 25 helmet tickets per year for
all races to those who are neither homeless or school children.
Assuming that the Seattle skools are defacto segregated by
neighborhoods, with that few tickets per year, it wouldn't take much
for one overly zealous enforcer at one of the predominantly Black
schools to change the balance.

Black people make up about 8% of Seattle's population; yet,
they received more than 17% of the helmet violations from
2003-2020...

Out of the 50 helmet tickets issued per year to those who are neither
school children or homeless, in order to get equality between the 8%
Black population and 17% tickets issue, the difference would be:
17 + 8 / 2 = 12.5 ticket for perfect equality
with a difference of:
0.17 - 0.125 * 100 = 4.5 tickets difference.

Therefore, to solve the problem and insure perfect equality between
Blacks and everyone else in the area of helmet tickets issued per
year, simply randomly issue 5 helmet tickets per year to anyone who is
not Black or homeless, at a total cost to the victims of $150 plus
taxes, and be done with this nonsense.



You have either not read or understood Gramschi. To destroy
a society, groups must be incited against other groups and
where there are not disparate groups one must invent them.
..
Lenin, a master sloganeer, had a short version: "Before things get better, they must first get worse."
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
..
Dzerzhinsk's version, as an instruction for the First Great Terror, fleshed out Lenin's vicious principle into executive action (pun unintended but apt):
"We don't ask what he did. We ask to what class does he belong. Then we shoot him."
..
Andre Jute
Well read even in the enemies of society.

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 1:34:27 PM UTC-5, wrote:

In this case, the problem is a mandatory helmet law. The author of
the paper did a fairly good job of inflating a minor statistical
anomaly in crisis level proportions. I have the irritating habit of
annualizing numbers so that they can be prepared. Had I not done
that, I probably would have missed the authors clever manipulation of
the available numbers. While I agree that mandatory helmet laws
should be repealed, methinks some better reasons could be contrived
than claiming they are discriminatory.

Agreed. And good work catching the math tricks.


Slight change of subject:
Recently, I suggested that readers of R.B.T. might be interested in
viewing some videos that involve urban planning:
https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes/videos
The results in R.B.T. were under whelming, where proponents of various
points of view immediately restated their positions without much
consideration for the videos. So, I'll try again. The author
mentioned one trivial item in one of the videos (I forgot which one).
The bicyclists in Amsterdam seem to not wear helmets. Like most
people, I assumed that this included everyone on a bicycle in
Amsterdam. Nope. In an interview with a resident, they point out in
the crowded streets, the cars are not able to travel much faster than
the bicycles. The upright or comfort bicycles used also don't lend
themselves to fast riding. The result is that cars and bicycles seem
to get along with each other in the city streets for Amsterdam. The
resident also mentioned that those outside the city, who ride on road
bikes, generally wear helmets because they ride faster.

My riding there was only in Amsterdam's city and a bit of suburbs, so I'm just speculating; but I suspect the reason those riding road bikes outside the city wear helmets is not their faster speeds. I strongly suspect it's because Road Bike Riders Wear Helmets. Period.

I suspect if you stopped and interviewed them, you'd get the usual nonsense: "I might crash and die of a brain injury" or "I have a friend who knew a guy killed by a car" or "My helmet has already saved my life three times."

But the real reason is different. To ride a Road Bike, you don your shorts, your riding tights, your jersey, your aero sunglasses, your proper socks, your special shoes, your gloves, just the right jacket and your helmet. If you skipped part of the ensemble, you wouldn't be properly identifying with your intended clan.

Fashion is weird and powerful.

- Frank Krygowski

On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 2:25:27 p.m. UTC-5, wrote:
Snipped

But the real reason is different. To ride a Road Bike, you don your shorts, your riding tights, your jersey, your aero sunglasses, your proper socks, your special shoes, your gloves, just the right jacket and your helmet. If you skipped part of the ensemble, you wouldn't be properly identifying with your intended clan.

Fashion is weird and powerful.

- Frank Krygowski

I do? Gee, that's news to me. I usually wear normal everyday clothes when riding my road bike. This is more so in winter when I might wear bicycling shorts under my street clothes if going for a long ride. the chamois in the shorts simply makes long rides more comfortable.

Cheers