When logic and proportion Have fallen sloppy dead And the White Knight is talking backwards And the Red Queen’s off with her head Remember what the dormouse said Feed your head Feed your head
From the beginning, she would read to me what I was interested in. I learned to read by listening to her and looking at words and the pictures. Not fairy tales, not silly stories, but from the natural world: she read from Time Life: The World We Live In.
She encouraged my passion of Science, to be the best I could be. She loved learning, I did too.
Teach Your Children well
She was an elementary school teacher for forty years. Everybody loved her, her fellow teachers, her students, their parents, her children and her grandchildren. She was my father’s best Advocate. And she was my Advocate too, for I was her son: the scientist.
She was the most positive person I knew. The energized bunny personified.
To Her Children’s Children Children Children
I quickly surpassed her in understanding the natural world, although she was always better with the people world. She was my first Teacher: she was my mother: all four feet, eight inches.
Experimental Narcotherapy vs Logical Consequences for Chronic Mischief in Classrooms, by Dr. David West Keirsey (1991)
Editor’s Note: It has been about 30 years since my father wrote this article, which was based on his experience in the 50s, 60’s, and 70’s in the American public school system. Unfortunately, the abuse of psychiatry on their victims has gotten much worse and has spread across the world, and not only children in the American public schools are being abused. Old people, babies, the military, and the general public in mostly the “developed world” — are being fooled and drugged to conformity: to the monetary benefit of psychiatry and the drug companies.
When a child gets up out of his seat at school without permission, his teacher tells him to sit down and get to work. If he is out of his seat every minute or so, say every six minutes in a 360 minute day, that makes 60 times a day. If he’s out of his seat that many times each day, five days a week, that’s 300 Out-Of-Seat-Without-Permissions (OOSWOPs for short). Now 300 is an impressive total of OOSWOPs. The teacher, now and then, reminds him to sit down and go to work, but with little effect. Pretty soon she adds scolding to reminding. Then maybe she gets the principal to spank him. Then maybe his parents are brought into the act. They either get after the school or their son or both. Maybe they take his bike away from him and send him to bed without dinner several times. Something like that. But all to no avail. No matter how many reminders or scoldings or whippings or deprivations, he still rings up his 300 or so OOSWOPs a week.
But the child doesn’t rest his case with just getting out of his seat. There are other kinds of disobedience, other ways to disrupt classroom proceedings. Like making motions and noises while seated. For instance, the disobedient child doesn’t raise his hand with restraint like the other children, but waves it wildly and maybe puffs and whistles to get the teacher’s undivided attention. And he gets it. By that time the child has had so much attention that just raising his hand won’t work, so he’s got to distract the teacher’s attention from the other kids with extra motions and noises, none of which are permitted. Let’s call motion and noise without permission MANWOPs to distinguish them from OOSWOPs. And of course the teacher must remind the child (again without much success) that that is not an acceptable way to get attention. Notice the child’s clever manipulation of the teacher: he is doing what he’s supposed to do — raise his hand to get the teacher’s attention –but in an unacceptable way. Now since an increase of reminding, scolding, threatening, paddling, and depriving doesn’t decrease the frequency of OOSWOPs and MANWOPs appreciably, there seem only two things left to do: remove the child from the classroom, or drug him into inaction. Both work. First, let’s look at drugging the child into inaction. To explain accurately what prescribed drugs are doing to our children, I must first describe in some detail just what drugs we are considering. There are many different kinds of drugs, but only those drugs called “narcotics” are of interest here.
I saw him there as he sat, with his classic slightly bemused grin before his lecture. I had nevergot a book autographed, until then. I am not easily enamored by fame, scientific or any other knowledge or skill domain. But I powered through my natural enryo, for I had brought his book with me intending to get him to sign it. I thought his book as one key to unlocking an important question.
I have studied the contents of the book for years. And continue to revisit and re-cycle his ideas contained within.
… To Subquotient, or Not Subquotient, That is the question!
The divisor status, of the lattice, oh my, Times, Rudvalis. Crack the Dirac, Landau beseech the damp Leech. It’s a Monster Conway Mesh, Mathieu’s Stretch, Jacques’ Mess, Janko’s Sprains, and Einstein’s Strain…
He had given me a quizzical look, since my hair was graying and I didn’t say anything. He said it was his “best book.” I nodded and I didn’t say anything. I am not a mathematician by training, and I was working on a slow idea, not ready for Prime time —On the nature of the universe.
Such a Prime rank, any such Milnor’s exotic sank No mess, no Stress, but Strain. Tensors Bohm and bain…
John Horton Conway, InventorRational, FRS (/ˈkɒnweɪ/; born 26 December 1937 – April 11, 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He had also contributed to many branches of recreational mathematics, notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. Conway was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Princeton University.
Now that John has passed from the scene, his Game of Life has ended, a new re–quest–ion will be continued. Conway’s Monster Mesh needs to be fleshed out and explained in more simple and complex terms: 1) in in-form-ation terms, 2) in phys-ical terms, 3) in mathe-mat-ical terms, 4) in in-volut-ionally and en-volut-ionally terms. But also explained with these four towers of Babel — integrated.
My slow idea was to use as a Framework based on Conway’s work on Symmetry and the Sporadic Groups, but also other mathematicians and scientists.
Many mathematicians including Conway regard the Monster Group as a beautiful and still mysterious object. Since there is no “physical meaning” attached to mathematical concepts and percepts, these “conceptual ideas” in mathematics will continue to be “beautiful and mysterious” and ABSTRACT. However, one can be more systematic in the use of ideas. It is about that Relational Thing: not only about Conway, Dirac, Einstein, Newton, or Hawking ideas.
Life Itself
When looking both at the details and the overall Gestalt, patterns can be seen. It might be called Existence Itself More and Less, A Gain.
The 27 Sporadic Groups with corresponding Physical Ansatz Concepts and PerceptsGestalt Science
“Only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis.”
Albert Einstein
Quantum mechanics, with its leap into statistics, has been a mere palliative for our ignorance.
Rene Thom
When logic and proportion fall soggy dead, and the white knight is talking backwards, with the Red Queen is on her head, Remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head. Feed your head!
We typically learn many words from context, rather than looking them up in a dictionary. Each person knows and uses many words which they cannot define exactly. Most of the words we know are not learned by someone telling us the definition. More typically, we learn words by extracting its meaning from context. The first encounter with a given word is usually not sufficient to gain any real understanding of the word.
Understanding can be achieved by comparing several examples. Each successive example can either augment understanding, confirm the understanding, or in some cases, uncover misunderstanding.
Learn, Unlearn, Learn
If you don’t understand something said, don’t assume that you are at fault. —David West Keirsey
The trouble with specialists is that they tend to think in grooves — Elaine Morgan
In 1900, Max Planck had created a theoretical explanation of Wien’s formula on black body radiation. But in that process, experimentalists aware of Planck’s interest in the matter, had recently looked into the matter at longer wavelengths and higher temperatures, and told Planck that the infrared region at high energies violated Wien’s formula — so his original explanation was wrong. To quickly solve the problem, Planck added a “correction” to his analysis. A resulting derived formula proved to correct, no matter the increase in frequency (looking at a wider range of energies) and the improved accuracy of experimental results. Planck went back to his quickly modified analysis and reformulated his ideas to justify the semi-ad-hoc correction and found that it implied that energy was emitted or absorbed in discrete units based on Boltzmann’s combinatorics. He had solved a problem by simply creating a “chimera:” adding a factor in his equation — but he did not realize its consequent was as significant until he tried to justify his change theoretically. Even then, he did not consider it as profound, until Niels Bohr and others started to apply his new idea “a quantum action” to atoms and molecules. Another problem was there was a flaw in Planck’s reasoning for which Satyendra Bose corrected later, but the idea of quantum action has proved to be one of the two key and major ideas of physics in the 20th century.
Niels Bohr became very successful in applying Planck’s quantum action idea when examining the spectrum of the hydrogen atom. The failure of Rutherford’s simple analog “orbit” model, whereas the precise predictions of Bohr using Fraunhofer spectral lines, signaled the death of 19th century physics in the realm of small. However, for more complicated atoms, Bohr’s model wasn’t as accurate, so his original fast idea [quantum theory] needed modification or to be added to. The initial progress of the ideas: Einstein’s 1) lichtquanten, 2) special relativity, 3) general relativity; 4) Schrodinger’s recursive function equation; and 5) Dirac’s delta functional; petered out into the “particle and force zoo” ending up with the not very well understood statistical and probability based Standard Model of particle physics.
Wandering towards Scientific Enlightenment 2.0
Time, Space, Mass, Energy, Charge, Spin? What do these words mean?
Editor’s Note: It has been about 30 years since my father wrote this article, which was based on his experience in the 50s, 60’s, and 70’s in the American public school system. Unfortunately, the abuse of psychiatry on their victims has gotten much worse and has spread across the world, and not only children in the American public schools are being abused. Old people, babies, the military, and the general public in mostly the “developed world” — are being fooled and drugged to conformity: to the monetary benefit of psychiatry and the drug companies.
Something is wrong with the idea of Attention Deficit. Not just a little wrong, but terribly wrong, and, as it turns out at the turn of the century, tragically wrong. Tragic because it gives the appearance of legitimacy to the practice of prescribing stimulant narcotics for children who are said to be short on attention.
Narcotherapy
During the 1950s the practice of experimental narcotherapy for so-called “hyperactivity” came into vogue. The drugs of choice were amphetamines such as Benzadrine and Dexedrine, and in the late 1950s, methylphenidate (Ritalin), and pemoline (Cylert). At first only the extremely active boys got zapped with stimulants, maybe one or two per school. But since only a few psychologists complained about this questionable practice, and since the “special education” movement was growing rapidly, more and more teachers demanded that somebody else should be held responsible to put a stop to disruptive behavior in the classroom.
During the 1960s and afterwards only the corrective counselors trained and experienced in the methods of Dreikurs, Erickson, and Glasser knew how to control disruptive behavior in the classroom. Not knowing this, parents turned to those local medics who claimed they could control disruptive behavior with drugs. These medics, knowing that activity level could be dampened with drugs that act on the brain, started experimenting with brain-disabling drugs. They’re still experimenting, but they have multiplied exponentially because the practice is so easy and so lucrative. Now there are millions of kids being drugged, whereas there were only thousands in the 1950s.
Richard Feynman invented a whole new way of talking about quantum electrodynamics when writing his PhD thesis at Princeton, which eventually helped him detail some of the properties of weak-force in particle physics in his Nobel prize winning work. Later he invented “Feynman’s diagrams” as an intuitive graphical representation of particle physics, which are still used in theoretical physics to this day.
However, he became famous in part through his maverick and distinctive antics. He was a real character: a very curious character. When at Los Alamos working on the atomic bomb, from picking the locks of his colleagues cabinets which contained top secrets, to playing games with the security personnel; naming a few of his antics which had earned him a well deserved reputation of being a trickster and an iconoclast. Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was “half-genius, half-buffoon”, but later changed this to “all-genius, all-buffoon”. Quickly recognized by the intellectual giants of theoretical physics as a brilliant and quick mind, Feynman was sought out by the innovative thinkers of the day. Contemptous of titles, like all Rationals, when awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, he tried to figure out a way to get out of accepting it.
“The Boss,” as he was called by those under him, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born in Gori, Georgia, in the Russian Empire in 1878.His father, “Besso,” became a drunk, and beat his wife, “Keke,” and son.They moved a lot, and finally Besso abandoned Keke and Iosif.Keke, born a serf, was a tough, but righteous and religiously pious woman; she also beat her son. Keke wanted her son to be a priest.
Gori was a rough and poor town.Street gangs and crime were common, and Iosif, small but wiry, was known to participate in the fighting.Nevertheless, Iosif was a good student.The Russian language was required in the Russian empire, and Iosif learned it, but always had a Georgian accent. Education was by rote and corporal punishment was rampant; one teacher rapping the students’ knuckles if their eyes wandered. Iosif won a scholarship to Seminary at the age of 16.The seminary was very Spartan, dogmatic, and severe corporal and psychological punishment was normal.
In the seminary, he discovered revolutionary material, including Darwin and Marx, destroying his belief in religion.“They are lying to us,” he said to a fellow student. Living a double life, one secret, at night, he got involved in Georgian revolutionary activities. He had chosen the name “Koba,” a Russian, fictional Robin Hood-like character. There, quite a few other students became revolutionaries from that Seminary at that time. Ioseph was dismissed for not taking an exam just before graduating, maybe because he couldn’t pay the rapidly rising fees.He had become a revolutionary, joining an organization that later became the violent part of the Communist party, the Bolsheviks. It was a life of safe houses, forged documents, and secrecy.Koba was brilliant at organizing workers and also mixing with criminal elements. He collected and directed “enforcers” like Kamo, a brutal, violent, sociopath.While in prison, he became the boss of the prisoners: he was inured to physical punishment.
Sent to Baku by the revolutionary committee, Koba ordered the murders of many Black Hundreds (right-wing supporters of the Tsar), and conducted protection rackets and ransom kidnappings against the oil tycoons of Baku. He also operated counterfeiting operations and robberies. He befriended the criminal gangs; Koba’s gangsterism upset the Bolshevik and Menshevik intelligentsia, but he was too influential with Lenin and indispensable to be opposed.As a revolutionary in Tsarist times, he was arrested eight times and escaped seven times, before the Russian Revolution in 1917; but he changed the facts after he was General Secretary, obscuring one of his arrests. It was suspected by some of his fellow Bolsheviks that Koba was a double-agent, a provocateur, for he seemed to go to-and-fro without any visible support, without difficulty, and was not arrested with everybody else in a particular Tsarist roundup.Koba, most likely known by Lenin as a double-agent, played the game well, with internal party members sometimes sacrificed for the cause. No doubt Koba used this policy for his own purposes also. At one point, when complaints were getting serious, he was arrested, and rumors were dropped for the time being. Continue reading →
New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized,
but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher
who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought
on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.
— Max Planck
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection [opportunity] of [under] the laws. [14th Amendment of the American Constitution, modified by DMK]
“All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground …” Sarah Grimke
The Notorious Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”
On June 8, 2013, ‘Congo’ — Season 1, Episode 7 of Parts Unknown was aired on CNN.
“It is the most relentlessly fucked-over nation in the world, yet it has long been my dream to see Congo. And for my sins, I got my wish.” Bourdain starts the episode off on a dramatic note as he tries to recreate his favorite book, Heart of Darkness.
On June 8, 2018, he committed suicide while on location in France for Parts Unknown. The suicide appeared to be an “impulsive act“.
The Blog of David Mark Keirsey 