Tag: The Breakfast Club

Well, it’s been 10 years and I hope I’m constantly surprising you with facets of my character I have not yet revealed even when I write within a restricted format (which is the essence of poetry).

I hate Borodin, just because of that commercial.

My therapist is leaving the medical group (oh, don’t worry, it’s all related) with which I am associated and in our final session they asked me-

“Do you answer to ek hornbeck?”

Yes, of course I do.

It’s not a common name so it’s easily picked out of the crowd whereas regular names like Robert or Bob have instantly a dozen heads spinning.

Well, I’m not like that.  Not that my head doesn’t spin because it might be someone I know personally, but because I don’t share myself on the Internet.  Personally I Google rather poorly, ek hornbeck much better, and my onion layers are part of the fascination-

Is he in Heaven?  Is he in Hell?  That damned elusive Pimpernel.

Except I’m more on the Robespierre side.

Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

Yup, one of 500 and ignored on a rainy day.

But by 1833 when Borodin was born the struggles of 1789 were far in the past (hah). and he…

Well, he was an award wining chemist.

He dabbled in music and wrote several things but rarely finished any of them, still he attracted the attention of the more serious composers who saw flashes of talent and was considered one of The Balakirev Circle of new wave nationalist Russians because he was so conciously derivitative of popular folk tunes.

The Polovtsian Dances referenced in the commerical above were a part of his (unfinished) opera, Prince Igor, which was about the suppression of native Mongolians (the Polovtsians) by Prince Igor and has all the charms of Opera…

Let’s review the rules, shall we?

The 3 rules of Opera.

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

with an admirable mixture of genocide of the culture you are stealing.  It has all the charm of a musical about Greasy Grass in which Custer wins.

Oh and it and several other snippets were stolen by Broadway for Kismet.  Someday I’ll chat about Nellie Forbush, a thoroughly unsympathetic character.

To his credit Borodin was an early advocate of Women’s Rights and despised by his “revolutionary” contemporaries in ‘The Five’ for writing in conventional formats like Quartets, Concertos, and Symphonies of which I offer you the two that he indesputedly finished all on his own.

So what does this say about me (aren’t we all the star of our own movie)?  I like this role.  He’s exactly like me only more in your face-

I’m not trying to prove anything. All I want to do is teach my students that man just wasn’t planted here like a geranium in a flowerpot. That life comes from a long miracle; it didn’t just take seven days.

But it’s against the law. A school teacher’s a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to.

Has the accused have anything to say in his own defense? If not, I sentence you to life as a public servant. A silent butler in the service of your school board. Waste baskets for ideas on sale in the outer lobby.

I don’t see anything funny in this Mr. Hornbeck.

Objection sustained. Neither do I.

Then why don’t you just leave us alone? You newspaper people have stirred up enough trouble for Bert. What do you want anyway?

I came to tell Boy Socrates here that the Baltimore Herald is opposed to Hemlock and will provide a lawyer.

Who?

Who? I don’t know yet but what’s the difference? A new lawyer with old tricks, an old lawyer with new tricks. Wake up Copernicus! The law is still on the side of the lawmakers and everything revolves around their terra firma.

Then why bother, you and your newspaper?

Because I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.

Sigh.  I have to break in a new therapist.  I think I’ll start with this one-

What do you call a schizophrenic Buddhist?

Someone who is at two with the universe.

And actually, that’s multiple personality disorder and I’ve never been diagnosed as anything except depressed and anxiety prone.

Yet.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Cuban exiles invade Bay of Pigs; Three astronauts of Apollo 13 land safely in pacific ocean; Benjamin Franklin dies at age 84; JP Morgan born in Connecticut; Ford rolls out the Mustang convertible.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Well, I was going to talk about planetary science today (about which you’ll find plenty of links below) but instead I spent all night puzzling over what is supposed to be a simple 5th grade math problem.

Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl, and they want to know when her birthday is.  Cheryl gives them a list of 10 possible dates.

May 15	May 16	May 19
June 17	June 18
July 14	July 16
August 14	August 15	August 17

Cheryl then tells Albert and Bernard seperately the month and day of her birthday respectively.

Albert: I don’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know too.

Bernard: At first I don’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know now.

Albert: Then I also know when Cheryl’s birthday is.

(note: copied by me directly from the picture)

If you don’t want spoilers you’d better stop reading and figure it out now.

What is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths.  Are mine the same as yours?- 39 Lashes

Let’s start with one truth.  This is not a simple 5th grade math problem.

You see the meme is that this is a regular old word problem from a 5th grade math test that Singapore children are expected to pass in order to graduate to the 6th grade which led of course to much Internet hand wringing about the abysmal state of U.S. education in general and particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) where the privatizing looters of our School funds and fiscal conservatives in general bemoan the lack of a qualified work force that must be supplemented by smarter (and cheaper) H-1B imported slave labor.

Here’s some tangential truth to start off- there is no shortage of STEM qualified native labor, in fact there is a surplus.  The problem is that they expect salaries commensurate with their expensive multi year training.

Irrespective of that, almost every element of the meme is untrue.

This question is actually one of the more difficult math nerd questions given to high school students at a Math Olympiad.

Then there is some dispute about the semantics of the question.  The New York Times goes so far as to re-write it so it is undisputably true that “seperately” in this case means that Albert knows only the month and Bernard only the day instead of another fair interpretation of the word that would mean merely that Cheryl told them independently.  I’ll point out the official language of Singapore is not just English, but British English (hell, they even drive on the wrong side of the road) so that’s kind of a minor, if glaring, quibble; the sort that ought to make Alex Trebeck blush if not adjust the score during the commercial break (I give it a 25% chance, but what the heck).

There is however a deeper, logical flaw that allows for two (count ’em, 2) “correct” answers that is explained by The Guardian’s James Grime.

The 3 Easy Steps

1. Albert knows that Bernard doesn’t know.

2. Albert deduces Bernard can’t have a unique date such as 18 or 19.

3. Albert, smugly taunts Bernard, announcing Bernard doesn’t know.

As we’ve seen above in The New York Times discussion, step one is dependent on what the definition of “is” is.  Clearly if knowing the date (as Bernard does) provides a unique solution, Bernard knows all which he admits he does not.  This eliminates the 18th and 19th (you know my methods Watson).

The Difficult 4th Step

4. Bernard realises what Albert has realised, which is that Bernard does not have 18 or 19. Now if Albert was holding June he would know the answer, because there is only one remaining date in June, namely June 17. So Bernard deduces it is not June.

The “Wrong” Answer- QED

5. Bernard announces he knows the answer. This is the second statement of the problem.

6. If Bernard is so confident, he must have a unique date. We know it’s not 18 or 19. What other unique date can it be? There are two 14s, two 15s, two 16s and two 17s – but Bernard has eliminated June 17 – leaving him with August 17 only. That’s how he worked it out.

7. Albert is furious Bernard beat him to the answer. Albert puts himself in Bernard’s shoes, running through the six steps above. Finally Albert reaches the same conclusion we have, Bernard must have 17. Albert announces he knows the answer too.

So August 17 is a valid answer.

Or is it?

It is all about how you interpret the first statement. If Albert has to deduce that Bernard doesn’t know, then we get July 16.

But if Albert knows that Bernard doesn’t know – in other words, that this is a statement of fact, rather than a deduction – then we get August 17.

This incredibly subtle change – deduction vs fact – completely changes the nature of the question. Indeed, with fact interpretation the reader can now deduce the answer from just the first two statements of the conversation, whereas the argument for July 16 does require all three statements.

So, can we accept August 17?

Not any more. The originators of the question, Singapore and Asian School Math Olympiads, have rejected this alternative answer.

I’ll point out that in most classic logical problems all the statements are to be taken as fact rather than bluffs.  On the other hand usually (but not always) all the information is relevant.

In any event I’m taking Alex to the mat on this one.  Jeopardy is an incredibly lucrative franchise and they give away only a pittance in prizes.  I know plenty of lawyers (looking at you PhilJD) and I think I get at least a settlement and an invite back.

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science and Technology News and Blogs

• Pluto’s First Color Portrait From the New Horizons Probe, by Neel V. Patel, Wired
• Target Pluto: fastest spaceship set for epic encounter with our remotest planet, by Robin McKie, The Guardian
• Weird Bright Spots on Dwarf Planet Ceres Still a Mystery in New Maps by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com
• Rise and shine: Rosetta’s Philae probe could be awake within weeks, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Here’s mud in your eye: Rosetta’s ‘star trackers’ muddled by comet dust, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery, by Peter Kelley, University of Washington Today
• Nasa’s Curiosity rover finds water below surface of Mars, by Hannah Devlin, The Guardian
• Scientists hope Venus will give up the secret of how life evolved on Earth, by Robin McKie, The Guardian
• SpaceX Comes Close to Recovering Rocket, By KENNETH CHANG, The New York Times
• The Pacific Ocean has been slowing global warming down. That could be about to change, by Chris Mooney, Washington Post
• Mighty Rio Grande Now a Trickle Under Siege, By MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times
• In California, a Wet Era May Be Ending, By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times
• For Drinking Water in Drought, California Looks Warily to Sea, By JUSTIN GILLIS, The New York Times
• Four-year-old discovers 100-million-year-old dinosaur, By Joseph Dussault, The Christian Science Monitor
• Julius Caesar may have suffered mini-strokes, say doctors, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Cracked it! Scientists solve puzzle of why knuckles pop when pulled, by Ian Sample, The Guardian

Science Oriented Video

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

The Titanic sinks off the coast of Newfoundland; President Abraham Lincoln dies; Jackie Robinson becomes first African American player in MLB; US launches air raid against Libya; Pol Pot dies; Joey Ramone dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

No, not that Right, your other Rite.

Ah, screw it.  Just make three lefts and while you wait for oncoming traffic I’ll passive aggressively stew here with my shotgun and whistle tunelessly.

Do I stress you out?

Oh, you don’t even know.

Le Sacre du printemps

Allow me to review the 3 Rules of Opera-

The 3 rules of Opera.

1. It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
2. The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
3. Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.

Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.

I’m not afraid if the Terpsichorean Muse though I do like a nice bit of cheese-

I was a DJ after all and I know what (shudder) drags them out on the dance floor and it ain’t this-

You see, people only dance to the thoroughly familiar and cliched.

Those are ones I actually like.

Anyway the story of the Ballet goes something like this, the celebration of spring begins in the hills and a Crone enters to foretell the future which isn’t really even as interesting as a cold reading because this is a simpler, more primitive time and every Groundhog Day is pretty much exactly the same.

What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

That about sums it up for me.

Except that today is different.  Today we go and kidnap us some virgins.  I dunno, I kind of agree with that part about the railroad tracks.

And then we celebrate Festivus with the airing of grievances until the Sage comes and tells us to stop it and get on to the orgy.

End of Act I.  Time to hit the lobby and get blasted because things are only going to get worse.

Act II

Evidently the ballerinas were out in the lobby too as they straggle on stage and wander around in circles for no particular reason.  It’s just like a Sigma Alpha Epsilon party at UVA only with more roofies.  One particularly befuddled co-ed is selected for sacrifice, sent off to perform goodness knows what kind of unspeakable acts with a bunch of dirty old men and then dances herself to death much to the amusement of the other performers and outrage of the audience.

Curtain

Yeah, dance your way out of that Stravinsky.

As you might imagine this tale of pedophilic murder created quite a stir, even in Paris a city not noted for Puritanism.  At the debut there was a riot between the wealthy patrons of art and the bohemian hip crowd that liked it for it’s novelty.  From all accounts Nijinsky’s choreography sucked, but I think the whole concept was a bad idea from the git.

Despite my opinion it’s one of the most frequently recorded and performed ballets.

Oh wait, that’s Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.  This is Le Sacre.

Don’t agree with my assessment?  Well, that’s the Politics of Dancing-

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Peace talks conclude in Northern Ireland with Good Friday agreement; the Titanic sets sail; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ published; Comedian Sam Kinison killed.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Khalil Gibran