Thursday: Hili dialogue

59 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

1. I guess you’ve been asleep since 1905. Spacetime is called a PSEUDO inner product space because the inner product is not positive-definite; and one dimension can be considered imaginary. The zero hypotenuse is the trajectory of of every massless particle.

   1. I guess you’ve been uncivil since birth. First-time commenters never read the Roolz, and your first sentence is just rude. Besides that, your explanation is unclear. I suggest you go to some website where you’re allowed to insult the host.

      1. Further down, Mike had this to say in his quote from C.P. Snow

         Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language.

         I would like to think that Rick Shapiro was being (clumsily) provocative in this sense only.

2. “….but of course you can’t have a length of i”. Sure you can. I am looking at it right here in the drawing. Maybe I have spent too much time trying to read and understand post- modern and critical theories.

   1. Yeah, Imaginary axis going up.

   2. The length of I is five feet eight inches. It says so right here on my driver’s license.

      1. Made me laugh

   3. The vertical side of the triangle is the gender spectrum.
      So personality is complex (it sure is!): it has a real component and an imaginary component. s + ig.

      Q.E.D.

      1. Good one!

   4. It has recently been proven that quantum mechanics cannot be formulated without complex numbers. Our most sophisticated understanding of reality is therefore deeply intertwined with complex numbers.

      1. It is misleading to say that QM CANNOT be formulated without complex numbers, though it would be absurdly clumsy and stupid to do so. Formally a complex number is nothing more than an ordered pair (a,b) of real numbers which we conventionally write as a + bi. Anything one concisely says about complex numbers is, in fact, a lengthier statement about real numbers. In principle, I could write a mathematical treatise on complex analysis without ever mentioning a complex number, though it would be an absurdly stupid thing to do.

         1. Here is a short explanation:

            https://physics.aps.org/articles/v15/7

3. “Were I Harris, though, I’d choose Shapiro as a running mate.”

   Not going to happen. The Democrats will not support a Jewish candidate for VP, as evidenced by Kamala boycotting Netanyahu’s speech (first time the VP has not attended a Joint Session of Congress).

   They have become openly antisemitic and there were no condensations of the violent riots taking place outside the Capitol from the boycotting Democrats.

   How any Jew can vote for Democrats is beyond me.

   1. IIRC, Harris’s husband is a Jew. I wonder if The Squad has a problem with that.

      Would that a Hamas leader (from Qatar?) were invited to speak to Congress. I wonder if Harris would attend.

      1. His daughter is a Hamas supporter, so they’re fine with him. Same way Bernie Sanders is a “Jew”.

   2. You find it hard to imagine that her husband will vote for her?

      1. I would have no trouble voting against my wife for public office.

         First, how’s she ever going to know? (unless she gets only one vote. Oops.)

         Second, if I did confess I wasn’t going to vote for her, I would tell her, “Darling, I know you really want this office. I understand why, to get elected, you need to pander to voters who would put me in a small boat and tow me out to sea. Those people will probably never be numerous enough to actually do it, but with their votes you can get elected and, being you, make the world a better place. But I still can’t join those people in voting for you. Best of luck.”

         1. I think you’re special that way.

   3. JD Vance also “boycotted” Netanyahu.

      1. The sorority event that Harris attended was five days long – she could have requested and been granted a different day. She is President of the Senate and deliberately didn’t preside over a Joint Session of Congress for the first time. Ever.

         Imagine if the pro-Hamas protestors were instead screaming for “Blacks Back to Africa” or LBGTQA “Send to mental institutions”.

4. The car lurking in the background of what appears to be a parking garage certainly does seem to have a sinister motive …maybe some foundation under the eyes and some rouge nearby plus the right “lipstick” around the grill and we could have ourselves a dystopian queen named Tammy-Faye Studebakker.

   1. Naah, it’s just a perfectly congenial ’37 or 8 Buick. The black one @ R is a ’38. They’re nearly identical but for the spacing of the grille bars.

5. Apropos the triangle, there is also Euler’s equation, sometimes called the most beautiful equation in mathematics: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0 where I’m using ^ to denote “to the power of”, ‘i’ is the square root of minus 1 (like in the triangle), pi is the well-known ratio of the diameter of a circle to its diameter, and ‘e’ is the base of natural logarithms. To mathematicians, ‘e’ is as important as ‘pi’. They both play fundamental roles in many branches of mathematics, and both have the twin properties of being irrational (they cannot be expressed exactly as the ratio of two integers) and transcendental (they cannot be expressed as the root of any polynomial with integer coefficients).

   The fact that you can combine them in this way is very profound. To a mathematician, Euler’s equation is as moving and beautiful as any great painting or sculpture or piece of music or architecture.

   1. Beautiful indeed. Adding to your description, it’s notable that the equation contains the 5 most fundamental constants, the three essential arithmetic operations, the equality relation, and nothing else (the parentheses are omitted when using superscripts). Each of them appears exactly once. That is why this is always written “… + 1 = 0” instead of “… = -1”.

6. i must be in the Imaginary dimension – e.g. on an Argand diagram.

   I’m going to have to think that through though, it’d mean the hypotenuse should be a vector combination a + ib…. ermm… 0 + i0…?!…

   [ seeks coffee ]

   BTW I think this is the latest coolest thing I’ve ever seen in the grab bag of equations with e, pi, I, 0, 1,…

   1. i represents the square root of minus 1. For years, your maths teachers tell you “you can’t take the square root of a negative number”, and then one day, that special maths teacher (in my case, a wonderful lady called Mrs Wynn) says “let’s suppose that you’re allowed to take the square root of a negative number … shall we find out what happens?”

      And a whole new branch of mathematics opens up to you. And it is glorious and beautiful and mind-blowing and, as you subsequently learn, absolutely essential for entire fields of physics and applied maths. You literally cannot study quantum mechanics in any meaningful way without the square root of minus one.

      It’s more than forty years since Mrs Wynn (may her memory be a blessing) introduced me to complex numbers. And the thrill of it still brings a tear to my eye.

      1. I have the hypotenuse as

         0 = a + ib

         … so it will be interesting to know a and b here… because the sum makes no sense…

         1. The sides adjacent to the right angle have lengths 1 and i (square root of minus 1). Square those, and you get +1 and -1 respectively. Add the squares to get the square of the length the hypotenuse: (+1)+(-1)=0. So the hypotenuse has length zero.

            Alas, Pythagoras’s theorem is only valid when the lengths are real numbers, and ‘i’ is most definitely not a real number … hence the seemingly absurd result.

            Since you mentioned Argand diagrams, it’s worth clarifying that these represent complex numbers by projecting the imaginary component onto the y-axis as a real number. For example, a complex number such as 3+4i is represented by the point (3,4) i.e. x=3, y=4. But 3 and 4 are both real numbers, so we can plot that point on an actual sheet of graph paper.

            1. Ah haaa, thanks, this makes it clear then – an absurd result on purpose — but instructively so.

   2. Squareonthehypothenus, a devoted follower of Julius Caesar, is cross with you.

      1. That pretty much sums things urp.

7. Weinstein might have a conspiracy theory, and the principle of parsimony is the best approach to understand what is true about things as they are — but remember how George Soros operates – especially when the interacting objects are not inanimate matter, but human beings with output that serves as feedback input to a system :

   “Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth — that of alchemy, operational success.”

   -George Soros
   Supposedly from Alchemy of Finance, but this book is still MIA from my library, been waiting for months…

8. Well, the Ministry of Truth is doing its job for Harris.

   It started with Axios putting out a piece denying Harris was ever “border czar. The twitterati quickly refuted that with quotes from Axios itself. Axios then updated its story (first link) with a note: “Editor’s note: This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a “border czar” in 2021.” At least they didn’t go back and edit the original articles.

   Next a correspondant for CNN claimed that Biden never said he’d pick a black woman as VP.

   Then GovTrack edited a previous piece on Harris to eliminate its ranking of her “. . . as the most left-leaning senator in 2019.”

   Finally, The Wikipedia article on Harris has been edited to remove negative information about her.

   Seriously, where would we be without twitter? MSM is nothing but an arm of the Democratic Party.

   1. There is a famous quote from Marx:

      “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

      I believe that both the universities and the profession of journalism have been infected with the idea that understanding the world is no longer their job. Their job is now to change the world.

      1. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

         I’m reminded of CP Snow’s critique of the humanities and its ignorance of science & engineering in “The Two Cultures”:

         “A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.”

         Here we all are developing a smart clear interpretation of that clever triangle diagram, while that ignorant mob of queers for Palestine — who would tell us that hypotenuses are a tool of the oppressor — tries to change the world for the worse. I hope they are not effective but I fear the worst sometimes: Iran will win its proxy war, and shrink Israel’s influence and ability down to a size where (as Republicans used to say about government) it can be drowned in a bathtub.

   2. The Axios story makes it clear (if it wasn’t before) how very biased the media are.

      1. X100

   3. Combine that with Andrew Doyle’s observations on developments in Newspeak, mentioned in yesterday’s Hili Dialog. It is astounding to see how smoothly the Revolution proceeds. Those engaged in it hardly even try to hide what they are doing.

9. Thank you Dr. Coyne for reminding us all of the Roolz. We do seem to get fired up, especially about politics.
   I have to give points to BLM for staying consistent. I too agree that there should be a democratic, one-person / one-vote process. The fact that Biden chose to drop out so late does not give license to short-change the process, IMO, especially when his decline had to have been well-known to those around him.

   What’s interesting is that after watching that Trump clip, I came away with less of an opinion of him being a narcissist. Saying “I know more about X than anyone” is an interesting oratorical technique, but to me is not narcissism. I think that he honestly believes that he’s best suited to make decisions that benefit others as a result of his knowledge, and also that he tries to learn to improve that knowledge. I had been rabidly anti-Trump until this election cycle; I’ve come to appreciate some of his characteristics, and in terms of policy, I’m more aligned with his than with the Democrats the more I remove the emotion (fear) and look at the content. I still don’t like him, but we’re not electing someone to sainthood.

   1. Trump says some outrageous things, but policy-wise he is a moderate.

      If you get your news from the liberal media, you probably think former US president Donald Trump is a far-right extremist. He is, supposedly, someone who plans to be a dictator, who will jail journalists. He’s a ‘Hitler in the White House’, per some media personalities. ‘Democracy and freedom are on the ballot’, we’re told every single day in the run-up to this year’s election.

      And yet, the truth is almost the opposite, at least if you look at policy. Far from being far right or extremist, Trump’s policy agenda is extremely moderate. Much of it wouldn’t be foreign to a Nineties-era Democrat. He believes abortion should be legal up to 15 weeks. He supports gay marriage. He’s courting labour unions. He believes immigration drives down working-class wages. He’s pursuing the black vote. He wants trade with China to favour the American worker – not the Chinese elites – and has proposed a 10 per cent blanket tariff on all foreign imports.

      Indeed, it’s not despite Trump’s moderate agenda that his adversaries have sought to paint him in extremist terms. It’s because he has effectively co-opted some of the Democrats’ long-abandoned pro-worker policies. Nothing has made this clearer than the recent dust-up over ‘Project 2025’.

      https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/10/the-truth-about-trump-hes-a-moderate/

      1. It seems to me that the Democrats and media have done their best to manipulate emotions, especially inciting fear, rather than arguing policy. Which makes sense as a marketing policy since emotions tend to guide decisions. Hate and fear are very strong motivators.
         For me, I hate being manipulated and played.

   2. I’m thinking of the tradition in 12-step programs, “Principles over Personalities”. When the Democratic party still reflected my own views I also felt that the majority of what we now refer to as the MSM were practicing what I considered to be truthful journalism. They reported what were called the “five W’s (and 1 H)” of journalism. Now I’m not affiliated with any political party as I can’t find one I feel comfortable supporting. I simultaneously lost my trust in most major news outlets. I find it interesting, disappointing and odd that the illiberal shift of the Democratic party occured in precise synchronicity with the lowering journalistic standards of most MSM outlets. I’ve been asking myself, lately, if these two institutions really did change in lockstep with one another or if it’s more a case of my own changing perspective. I’m really not sure. I feel adrift in our current society in so many ways.

   3. Well, your definition of narcissism differs from various psychlogical definitions involving excessive preoccupation with oneself at the expense of inetrest in other. But at the very least you have to admit that, with all those statements, he has not an iota of self-awareness or any sense of reality about the world!

10. The New York Times reporting of Mr. Netanyahu’s speech is disgraceful. Imagine Winston Churchill addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress* in summer 1941, Britain’s hour of greatest need, and being criticized in the press for not atoning for German civilians killed in British retaliatory bombings against The Blitz. In those very early years they were a tiny fraction of what they would become, but for less military effect than the IDF achieves. And to have Nazi Party mobs carrying swastikas and burning the American flag in the streets outside?
    ———————
    * I don’t think he visited American soil during the war, other than meeting FDR, in 1941, on the quarterdeck of a U.S. Navy ship anchored in Newfoundland, then still a British colony. So we can’t know how he would have been received by the public or the politicians in person. And Lease-Lend was not wildly popular in the U.S. But I think the President of the Senate would have shown up. (The two leaders met personally in other locales several times during the war.)

    1. Actually, nay astonishingly, WC successfully made five trips to the WH during WWII, embarking on the first not even a week after Pearl Harbor and spending a couple wks at the WH, 1941/2.

       1. Well, I’ll be. And to think it’s at that visit that FDR coined “the United Nations”.
          Thank you!
          Loved the photo with Diana Hopkins and Fala the d*g.

11. I watched Netanyahu’s speech in real time on CSPAN, which covered the speech unsullied by commentators whose job it seems to be to tell you that what you are seeing and hearing with your own eyes and ears is not really true. The speech was powerful, clear, factual, excellent.

    I would urge your readers to watch it in its entirety. Try to watch and hear it as if you haven’t heard any of the commentary. I’m truly sick of commentators trying to frame and fashion things so that we consume only what they want us to consume.

    Kamala Harris should have attended Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. Even Rashida Tlaib showed up, but (predictably) she didn’t comport herself well and looked like a fool. No one wanted to be seen with her as she disrespectfully held up a “War Criminal” sign. Netanyahu called the protestors that have been supporting Hamas “useful idiots” and the epithet fit Ms. Tlaib like a glove.

    Nor did Senator Patty Murray of Washington State show up. In Kamala Harris’s absence, the role of sitting on the dais behind Netanyahu falls to her. As she is one of my two senators, I wrote her an e-mail in advance of the speech asking her to reconsider and telling her that by not showing up she is sending a message of disrespect to the State of Israel and to her Jewish constituents in Washington State. I was trying to help her do the right thing, but she didn’t listen. I’m done with her and I don’t forget.

    1. I also watched it (sans commentary) and had the same reaction, though I missed Tlaib’s antics. I went to The Times of Israel and they were airing PBS’s feed of the speech — maybe PBS chose not to turn the camera on the lack of decorum? Wishful thinking on my part, probably. I didn’t stick around for any afterwords. I was similarly struck by our VP’s decision to “miss” Netanyahu’s address. I keep wondering, if Harris wants to demonstrate a lack of support for Israel, to whom in the region will she turn her support?

12. re: Union Station and DC protests.
    It always pleases me when the “girls who aren’t doing well emotionally” and their (fewer) idiot boys mess up, burn American flags, shout utterly unacceptable hate and behave like the moral morons they are.

    I’m like: “YES! This is what they’re about. THIS is their level of dialogue and the best of their argument.” Show them on TV, everybody should see this disaster in human form.
    Ditto Islamicists threatening jihad and invasion on western streets. And of course the voices of Palestine in situ. They’re more eloquent in their genocidal hatred and mad religiosity than I could ever convey in my column.

    So listen to them – they’re not acting. This is what they want.
    Onwards Israeli heroes.

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

    1. I agree completely. If they are going to protest, let everyone see how they behave. Every desecration of the American flag and every defacement of an American monument broadcasts to all what they are really all about.

       1. I agree as well. This is one of the benefits of free speech – now you can form your own opinion as to others’ beliefs.

13. Charlotte Dujardin was certainly very wrong to mistreat an animal like that, but the timing of the release of the video is suspicious. If it had been shown when the incident took place, 2 1/2 years ago, she would have rightly received a ban of at least several months, but could have been rehabilitated in time to take part in the Paris Olympics.

    The client who took the video is Dutch, and the Dutch are one of the UK’s main rivals in dressage. Hmm…

14. Interesting JD Vance fact! He has changed his last name three times, and made other adjustments to his names. What’s up?

    1. His name changes aren’t cynical and the second one was done for him as a child. He did not have a stable upbringing.

       See “Early Life and Education” in his Wiki page.

       https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JD_Vance

15. Perhaps Zack might consider how popular Israel is making itself with Palestinians.

    1. Perhaps you should consider that the this video shows that Palestinians favor a terrorist group and hate Jews and want Israel erased. Yes, sure, that’s all the fault of Israel, of course. And as for Gaza, that’s Hamas’s fault; the IDF has adhered to the laws of war more carefully than any other army. (Remember, the war wouldn’t exist if Hamas hadn’t butchered Jews. But perhaps you think that is also the fault of Israel.)

    2. My friend, Peter:
       It’d be good if you listened to what the Pals have been shouting lately on all sorts of TV shows, online and for 70 years.
       Please don’t view the contest as a real estate battle or a negotiation where, at the end, all sides will get sorta what they want.
       This is an extremely Western secular way of viewing things.

       The goal of the Pals – they’re clear about it in English and crystal clear in Arabic – is the annihilation of all Jews in Palestine and the establishment of a Sharia Caliphate for the entire planet as a larger, long game goal.

       You’re looking at it – like a popularity contest – through blind western eyes.
       No disrespect. I’d say MOST westerners don’t understand the above points b/c they are out of their experience.
       My column addresses some of these. Give it a read.
       No disrespect intended,

       D.A.
       NYC
       here in its most elegant, non ad cluttered form, variously syndicated:
       https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

16. From the other day about NZ and Maori science.
    In the comments on Jerry’s twitter on that topic I noticed this gem from the land of my birth, Australia:

    https://www.teaching.unsw.edu.au/indigenous-terminology

    Prestigious UNSW decides on how we use language.
    It is the arrogance, the “cool kids table” social dictatorship tone that really riles me.
    That is SO post modern/woke – language policing. Petty and unpersuasive, such policing only leads to blow back and resentment.

    I really, REALLY despise it and have disputes with my own editors about language.
    Happy to say I won on using “morally retarded” and “Third World” which you can read in my column. My editors are tolerant. 🙂

    D.A.
    NYC

17. You have been told many lies about the Middle East.

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