It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive. — Charles Peguy, Notre Patrie (1905)
All Cars Look the Same
I’m not a car guy but I do miss the days when every car on the road didn’t look like every other car. This occurred to me today as I was driving behind a Maserati that, if not for the Maserati logo, would have been indistinguishable from a Hyundai Sonata.
Also, if you Photoshop a BMW grill onto a Kia, you really can’t tell them apart.
The Woman in the Photo
Is that his wife in the photo? Because I’m about to divorce my wife after looking closely at this photo . . .
Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
PolitiFact has a article headlined “Donald Trump’s NRA speech, fact-checked”.
Here’s a sample:
“African-American unemployment has reached another all-time, in history, record low … And the same thing with Hispanic American unemployment, which is also at the lowest level in history — unemployment, lowest level in history. And women’s unemployment — women, many women — is at the lowest level in almost 20 years. Think of that.”
The “fact check” starts out like this:
As far as the numbers go, Trump is correct.
It then goes on for another five paragraphs to say that Barack Obama deserves “at least as much” credit as Trump for low unemployment.
That’s a fact check?!
Trump didn’t even say anything about who deserves the credit, although the listener is invited to make a favorable inference.
Had he added “. . . and I deserve all the credit,” it would be fair in that case for PolitiFact to add some context around why he might not deserve all the credit, but he didn’t say that.
I hate “fact checking.” I don’t hate the checking of facts but I hate the practice of “fact checking” as it’s done by media organizations.
Almost all media organizations are agenda-driven while pretending they’re not. “Fact checking” is a larger-than-usual deception in that we’re being told that someone made a false statement and the fact checkers are doing the Lord’s work in pointing it out.
But the “facts” being checked are often not facts at all. Here’s another “fact check” from the Trump NRA speech:
“We’re going to take people into our country but they’re going to come in based on merit, not based on picking somebody out of a bin”
I can’t even find a fact to be checked there, but PolitiFact objects to the diversity visa lottery being characterized as “picking somebody out of a bin”:
Trump claims countries send people, but the lottery is run by the United States, not foreign countries.
I copied the Trump statement just the way PolitiFact printed it — I didn’t take anything out — and there’s nothing in there about countries sending people.
Even when an actual fact is checked, like the unemployment numbers, and even when the fact is stated correctly, the “fact checkers” can’t resist putting their own spin on it.
Look! Even an undisputed fact that we don’t like can be “fact checked” in a way that makes us feel comfortable presenting it as false.
The fact checkers, in my opinion, actually torpedo their own efforts before even getting to the “fact checks.”
The article starts off like this:
After a week of news about Stormy Daniels, President Donald Trump headed to Dallas to speak to members of the National Rifle Association.
OK . . . credibility problem! “A week of news about Stormy Daniels”? The article has nothing to do with Stormy Daniels, she’s not mentioned again, there were other things — believe it or not — that happened in the country and the world last week that had nothing to do with Stormy Daniels.
The media love Stormy Daniels. Her attorney has been on CNN more in the last two months than most of the CNN hosts have been on in the last two months.
But putting Stormy Daniels in the lead sentence of an article about an NRA speech is a totally gratuitous swipe of the sort that you’d think impartial “fact checkers” would be able to resist.
Reflecting on Mathematical Techniques
Is Sustainability Sustainable?
We had a Sustainability Fair at work today . . . ironically, sustainability is a topic that I’m not able to sustain an interest in . . .
Things to Do With an Amputated Limb
I saw a guy in a men’s room today, on his way out, checking himself in the mirror and making a gesture with his hand like he was adjusting his hair, except he was totally bald.
Some people, after having a limb amputated, can feel the limb as if it were still there. Does this also happen with hair?
If you have a limb amputated, do you get to take it home with you? I’d like to stick my amputated arm up my sleeve and shake hands with people.
Think of how great that would be on Halloween: “Have some candy, kid. AAAAAAHHHHHHH! MY ARM!”
Someone to Love
When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.
Spam of the Day
“New drink will make you drop 10 by the end of the month”
10 what? 10 dollars? 10 teeth? 10 friends? 10 IQ points?
Alfie Evans, 2016-2018
Thank god this could never happen here in the US . . . at least until Bernie Sanders is inaugurated.
RIP Alfie Evans
We're heartbroken, say the parents of 23-month-old Alfie Evans, as they announce that the toddler died overnight https://t.co/HuaJV9UFIE
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) April 28, 2018
Generic LinkedIn Recommendation
Feel free to use it:
When you meet him, he will act upon you, whether you know it or not.
What he says or does may seem inconsistent or even incomprehensible to you. But it has its meaning. He does not live entirely in your world.
His intuition is that of the rightly guided, and he always works in accordance with the Right Way.
He may discomfit you. That will be intended and necessary.
He may seem to return good for evil, or evil for good. But what he is really doing is known only to the Few.
You may hear that some men oppose him. You will find that few men really do.
He is modest and allows you to find out what you have to find out slowly.
When you first meet him, he may seem to be very different from you. He is not. He may seem to be very much like you. He is not.
What to Do and What to Have Done
All wisdom can be stated in two lines:
What is done for you — allow it to be done.
What you must do for yourself — make sure you do it.
I Wish I Was the Moon
No pills for what I fear
This is crazy
I wish I was the moon tonight
Fish and Whistle
Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us and we’ll forgive you
We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue
And we’ll whistle and go fishing in heaven
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
A woman was sucked out the window of a Southwest Airlines plane . . . not a black woman, fortunately, so Southwest won’t have to shut down for racial bias training.
In other news, David Hogg is telling his Twitter followers to boycott the BlackRock and Vanguard investment firms.
“David Hogg’s Twitter followers” . . . might be a good name for an improv group.
See you in Hell!
Competitive Programming: POJ 1426 – Find The Multiple
Description
Given a positive integer n, write a program to find out a nonzero multiple m of n whose decimal representation contains only the digits 0 and 1. You may assume that n is not greater than 200 and there is a corresponding m containing no more than 100 decimal digits.
Input
The input file may contain multiple test cases. Each line contains a value of n (1 <= n <= 200). A line containing a zero terminates the input.
Output
For each value of n in the input print a line containing the corresponding value of m. The decimal representation of m must not contain more than 100 digits. If there are multiple solutions for a given value of n, any one of them is acceptable.
Sample Input
2 6 19 0
Sample Output
10 100100100100100100 111111111111111111
Solution below . . .
Passenger Sucked Out of Plane Window: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
Southwest passenger died after broken plane window nearly sucked her out — CNN
You are now free to move about the country!
Thanks, but I’d prefer to move about the country from inside the plane . . .
Competitive Programming: POJ 2084 – Game of Connections
Description
This is a small but ancient game. You are supposed to write down the numbers 1, 2, 3, . . . , 2n – 1, 2n consecutively in clockwise order on the ground to form a circle, and then, to draw some straight line segments to connect them into number pairs. Every number must be connected to exactly one another. And, no two segments are allowed to intersect.
It’s still a simple game, isn’t it? But after you’ve written down the 2n numbers, can you tell me in how many different ways can you connect the numbers into pairs? Life is harder, right?
Input
Each line of the input file will be a single positive number n, except the last line, which is a number -1. You may assume that 1 <= n <= 100.
Output
For each n, print in a single line the number of ways to connect the 2n numbers into pairs.
Sample Input
2 3 -1
Sample Output
2 5
Solution below . . .
Where it Went
I saw a child carrying a light.
I asked him where he had brought it from.
He put it out and said:
“Now you tell me where it is gone.”
Competitive Programming: USACO Big Barn
Farmer John wants to place a big square barn on his square farm. He hates to cut down trees on his farm and wants to find a location for his barn that enables him to build it only on land that is already clear of trees. For our purposes, his land is divided into N x N parcels. The input contains a list of parcels that contain trees. Your job is to determine and report the largest possible square barn that can be placed on his land without having to clear away trees. The barn sides must be parallel to the horizontal or vertical axis.
EXAMPLE
Consider the following grid of Farmer John’s land where ‘.’ represents a parcel with no trees and ‘#’ represents a parcel with trees:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 . . . . . . . .
2 . # . . . # . .
3 . . . . . . . .
4 . . . . . . . .
5 . . . . . . . .
6 . . # . . . . .
7 . . . . . . . .
8 . . . . . . . .
The largest barn is 5 x 5 and can be placed in either of two locations in the lower right part of the grid.
PROGRAM NAME: bigbrn
INPUT FORMAT
| Line 1: | Two integers: N (1 <= N <= 1000), the number of parcels on a side, and T (1 <= T <= 10,000) the number of parcels with trees |
| Lines 2..T+1: | Two integers (1 <= each integer <= N), the row and column of a tree parcel |
SAMPLE INPUT (file bigbrn.in)
8 3 2 2 2 6 6 3
OUTPUT FORMAT
The output file should consist of exactly one line, the maximum side length of John’s barn.
SAMPLE OUTPUT (file bigbrn.out)
5
Solution below . . .