THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2016
Part 3—Ninety-one years later: "Mama tried," the late Merle Haggard once said.
So did Walter Isaacson.
"I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole," the Bakersfield country star later recalled, in a moment of introspection. "No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried."
Things turned out better for Isaacson, if not for readers of Time magazine, which Isaacson headed during the years when the famous journal, which was still influential, kept attributing lies and psychiatric infirmities to a certain White House contender.
Candidate Bush ended up in the White House; in a related development, people are dead all over Iraq. Presumably, Isaacson's professors once tried, but it seems that they too may have failed.
Whatever! We're not here to quibble about trivial piddle like that. In 2007, Isaacson—a very clear writer—published Einstein: His Life and Universe, a best-selling biography of Albert Einstein, one of human history's great intellectual giants.
In Chapter Six, Isaacson accepted a difficult challenge. He tried to explain the special theory of relativity, which Einstein brought forward in 1905 (his "miracle year"), when he was just 26.
When Isaacson's book appeared, it had been ninety-one years since Einstein tried to explain this same material in his own 1916 book, Relativity: The Special and The General Theory. To peruse Einstein's book, click here.
Einstein's book, which was very brief, was aimed at general readers. In chapters 8 and 9 of that book, Einstein described a hypothetical situation with which he tried to explain the special theory.
Ninety-one years later, Isaacson also tried to explain this "thought experiment." Yesterday, in Part 2 of this report, we showed you the way he introduced his effort.
Starting today, we'll continue on, hoping to discover what happened when Isaacson tried.
Last November, Nova tried to explain this same material. It did so around the ten-minute mark of its hour-long broadcast, Inside Einstein's Mind.
As we noted in Part 1 of this report, we'd have to say that Nova failed. What happened when Isaacson tried?
First, a quick review. In the material we showed you yesterday, Isaacson starts by citing a "eureka moment," a burst of insight which led Einstein to special relativity. Within five weeks, Isaacson says, Einstein had "sent off his most famous paper, 'On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,'" the scientific paper in which he introduced special relativity.
We're on page 123 of Isaacson's book when he describes these events. As we left off yesterday, Isaacson was on the verge of describing the famous "thought experiment" associated with Einstein's theory.
It's the same thought experiment which Nova tried to explain in last November's broadcast. It involves a fast-moving train and a pair of lightning strikes.
By page 124, Isaacson uses the word "revolutionary" to describe the fruit of this thought experiment. He says the insight Einstein gleaned from this rumination "did in fact transform science."
By page 128, he is referring to the "astonishing conclusion" which emerged from Einstein's thought experiment. Eight years later, Nova went down a similar path, describing Einstein's conclusion as "mind-blowing."
We're not telling you that any of that is "wrong." Instead, we're asking you a question:
Was Isaacson able to explain the famous thought experiment associated with Einstein's eureka moment?
Can he explain the "astonishing conclusion" which emerged from that thought experiment? The story here is familiar and gripping. How well was Isaacson able to elucidate the science?
We're going to say that he tried and failed. As a long string of professors have proven, explaining Einstein is hard.
That said, we've decided to wait another day before perusing Isaacson's text. Here's why:
When we look at Isaacson's text, we'll be visiting the "culture of incoherence" we've mentioned in recent weeks. Over the past many years, this disabling culture has gripped our Einstein-made-easy books and the silly reports we receive from big journals like Time.
Explaining Einstein turns out to be hard. But then, so is almost every task for the certified intellectual giants who people our academy and our mainstream news business.
Until the science hits the fan, Isaacson is a very clear writer. We're sure he's also a very nice person, though that didn't stop his journalists from publishing all that death-dealing, low-IQ crap when he was kingpin at Time.
We the liberals all agreed not to notice, speak up or complain. Tomorrow, we'll see how things went in 2007, when Isaacson tried something much harder.
Unlike a certain "rebel child," Isaacson went to Harvard, then became a Rhodes scholar. As history tells us, that's almost never a good combination!
What happened when Isaacson tried?
Tomorrow: What it says on page 123, then on to page 124
Assistant/associate professor watch: The '94 crime bill is very hot!
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016
So is the love of spin: All of a sudden, the 1994 crime bill is very, very hot.
So is the love of silly politicized spin. We're not sure when we've seen a matter of substance get spun in so many ways by so many spindrift people.
In our view, the most ludicrous aspect of this pseudo-discussion involves the heavy focus on something Hillary Clinton said on one occasion, in 1996, twenty years ago. In today's featured editorial, the New York Times helps feed this remarkable frenzy through a traditional play:
Will Andrew Rosenthal ever leave? The editorial includes other sad elements, including the statement that the crime bill "wasn’t solely responsible for the phenomenon known as mass incarceration."
It wasn't solely responsible? For a trend which had been underway for decades, and had basically peaked, by the time the crime bill passed?
(Will Andrew Rosenthal ever leave? People, we're just asking!)
Whatever your ultimate judgment about that crime bill may be, the spinning of that legislation has become a thing to behold. In our view, an opinion column in today's Times provides the latest case in point.
The column is written by three assistant/associate professors from the finest schools. Their headline asks a basic question:
"Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?"
Presumably, it all depends on what the meaning of "really endorse the crime bill" is! At any rate, as the assistant professors come out of the gate, their answer seems to be no.
Headline included:
At any rate, the assistant professors come firing out of the gate.
In their first paragraph, they imply a basic view of the bill. (It needs to be defended, not affirmed.) And they quickly seem to answer the question posed in that headline. They seem to say that "black citizens" really didn't "ask for" that crime bill.
"The historical record reveals a different story," the three assistants say. They keep this up until the middle of paragraph 13 (of a 15-paragraph piece), when they finally drop a rather basic fact:
(Partial disclosure: Bobby Scott, whose work we admire, was a college classmate.)
This column strikes us as terrible work—as propaganda almost all the way down. The assistants seem to have a point of view, and they seem to want to promote it.
To do so, they seem to be willing to push basic facts all the way to the end of their tale. Equally silly is the way the three assistants explain away the votes by those black members of Congress.
Can you spot the missing point of logic?
It doesn't seem to enter the assistants' heads that white lawmakers were presented with the same, extremely familiar type of political dilemma—a type of dilemma which affects a wide range of congressional votes. Also presented with a dilemma were the white and black folk in the White House, the ones our tribe's extremely small minds are now transforming into demons.
In the end, our liberal tribe is very unimpressive. So is the New York Times, who decided to publish this underfed cant.
Parents pay tuition for this: According to the New York Times:
"Elizabeth Hinton is an assistant professor in the departments of history and African and African-American studies at Harvard. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at Cornell. Vesla M. Weaver is an associate professor in the departments of African-American studies and political science at Yale."
Citizens, we're just saying.
So is the love of spin: All of a sudden, the 1994 crime bill is very, very hot.
So is the love of silly politicized spin. We're not sure when we've seen a matter of substance get spun in so many ways by so many spindrift people.
In our view, the most ludicrous aspect of this pseudo-discussion involves the heavy focus on something Hillary Clinton said on one occasion, in 1996, twenty years ago. In today's featured editorial, the New York Times helps feed this remarkable frenzy through a traditional play:
NEWS YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/13/16): Mrs. Clinton has said she regrets her past statements promoting the crime bill as a way to bring “to heel” the era’s young “super-predators.”There it is—the power of pluralization! One past statement from 1996 might seem a bit slight as a spur to furious discussion. For that reason, let's stick an "s" on the end! Let's turn one statement into "past statements," with a good solid "s" on the end!
Will Andrew Rosenthal ever leave? The editorial includes other sad elements, including the statement that the crime bill "wasn’t solely responsible for the phenomenon known as mass incarceration."
It wasn't solely responsible? For a trend which had been underway for decades, and had basically peaked, by the time the crime bill passed?
(Will Andrew Rosenthal ever leave? People, we're just asking!)
Whatever your ultimate judgment about that crime bill may be, the spinning of that legislation has become a thing to behold. In our view, an opinion column in today's Times provides the latest case in point.
The column is written by three assistant/associate professors from the finest schools. Their headline asks a basic question:
"Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?"
Presumably, it all depends on what the meaning of "really endorse the crime bill" is! At any rate, as the assistant professors come out of the gate, their answer seems to be no.
Headline included:
HINTON, KOHLER-HAUSMANN AND WEAVER (4/13/16): Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?It's normally said that columnists write their own headlines in the New York Times. We don't know if that privilege is granted to guest columnists, like the assistant professors.
As political candidates and pundits grapple with the legacy of the 1994 crime bill and the era of mass incarceration that has seen millions of African-Americans locked in the nation’s prisons, one defense keeps popping up: that black citizens asked for it.
When confronted about her husband’s pivotal support for the bill, Hillary Clinton argued, even as she admitted the legislation’s shortcomings, that the bill was a response to “great demand, not just from America writ large, but from the black community, to get tougher on crime.”
Yet the historical record reveals a different story. Instead of being the unintended consequence of the democratic process at work, punitive crime policy is a result of a process of selectively hearing black voices on the question of crime.
At any rate, the assistant professors come firing out of the gate.
In their first paragraph, they imply a basic view of the bill. (It needs to be defended, not affirmed.) And they quickly seem to answer the question posed in that headline. They seem to say that "black citizens" really didn't "ask for" that crime bill.
"The historical record reveals a different story," the three assistants say. They keep this up until the middle of paragraph 13 (of a 15-paragraph piece), when they finally drop a rather basic fact:
HINTON, KOHLER-HAUSMANN AND WEAVER: ...Ultimately, 26 of the 38 voting members [of the Congressional Black Caucus] supported the legislation. But those who broke ranks did so loudly: As Representative Robert C. Scott of Virginia explained, “You wouldn’t ask an opponent of abortion to look at a bill with the greatest expansion of abortion in the history of the United States, and argue that he ought to vote for it because it’s got some highway funding in it.”Among members of the CBC, the vote was 26-12 in favor of the horrible bill, the one black citizens didn't ask for. But don't pay any attention to that! One black congressman who broke ranks is said to have done so loudly!
(Partial disclosure: Bobby Scott, whose work we admire, was a college classmate.)
This column strikes us as terrible work—as propaganda almost all the way down. The assistants seem to have a point of view, and they seem to want to promote it.
To do so, they seem to be willing to push basic facts all the way to the end of their tale. Equally silly is the way the three assistants explain away the votes by those black members of Congress.
Can you spot the missing point of logic?
HINTON, KOHLER-HAUSMANN AND WEAVER: In final negotiations, Democratic leadership yielded to Republicans demanding that prevention (or “welfare for criminals” as one called it) be sliced in exchange for their votes. Senator Robert Dole insisted that the focus be “on cutting pork, not on cutting prisons or police.” The compromise eliminated $2.5 billion in social spending and only $800 million in prison expenditures.According to the assistant professors, Republican opposition presented the black lawmakers with a dilemma. That's why they voted for the bill.
This presented black lawmakers with a dilemma: Defeating the bill might pave the way for something even more draconian down the line, and lose critical prevention funding still in the bill. Ultimately, 26 of the 38 voting members supported the legislation.
It doesn't seem to enter the assistants' heads that white lawmakers were presented with the same, extremely familiar type of political dilemma—a type of dilemma which affects a wide range of congressional votes. Also presented with a dilemma were the white and black folk in the White House, the ones our tribe's extremely small minds are now transforming into demons.
In the end, our liberal tribe is very unimpressive. So is the New York Times, who decided to publish this underfed cant.
Parents pay tuition for this: According to the New York Times:
"Elizabeth Hinton is an assistant professor in the departments of history and African and African-American studies at Harvard. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at Cornell. Vesla M. Weaver is an associate professor in the departments of African-American studies and political science at Yale."
Citizens, we're just saying.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER: Einstein's eureka moment!
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2016
Part 2—Isaacson sets the scene: Just this once, just tell us the truth.
Do you understand—if necessary, could you explain—the "mind-blowing" nugget conclusion from Nova's presentation of Albert Einstein's "brilliant thought experiment?"
Tell the truth. We all know how to repeat script and cant, formulaics we may have received from academic authority figures.
We can all learn how to recite standard bumper stickers. But in the case of the Nova broadcast, could you really explain this conclusion:
"Simultaneity, and the flow of time itself, depends on how you're moving."
Let's simplify that a tad: "Simultaneity depend on how you're moving." Based on Nova's depiction of Einstein's thought experiment, could you really explain what that means?
Do you have a clear idea of what that statement actually means? Would you know how to explain it, especially if questions were allowed?
Bravely, we'll go first:
Based on Nova's presentation, we don't know how to explain that "mind-blowing" concept. Based on Nova's account of Einstein's thought experiment, we don't know how to invest that nostrum with something resembling clear meaning.
Quickly, let's review. Nova presented two characters—a man standing on a railway platform and a woman passing by on a fast-moving train.
In that sense, "how they're moving" is different. And Nova showed us something else—the light from a pair of lightning strikes would reach these two observers in a different sequence.
(For more detail, see yesterday's report.)
In Nova's example, the light from the two atrikes would reach the man at the same time. But for the woman, time would elapse between the arrival of the light from the two strikes.
"For him, the two strikes are simultaneous," Nova declared, using some shaky language. By implication, Nova also seemed to say that, for the woman, the lightning strikes weren't simultaneous.
The woman is moving, the man is not. "For him," the strikes "are simultaneous." For her, we're basically told that they aren't!
It seemed that things were moving along, until we imagined two more people. Man B was standing at the end of the railway platform. But uh-oh! Even though he's standing still, "for him, the strikes are not simultaneous."
Woman B is in the caboose of the train. But uh-oh! Even though she's moving as fast as the other woman, "for her, the two strikes are simultaneous."
"Simultaneity depends on how you're moving?" With the addition of these players, do you still feel sure you know what Nova means?
For ourselves, we don't know what Nova means. We don't know how to explain the "mind-blowing" conclusion offered by the PBS org.
If we might borrow from our Frost, something someone is withholding seems to have made us weak! And this is intriguing, because Nova really was describing the "thought experiment" which led Einstein to his special theory of relativity in 1905, when he was just 26.
Nova didn't invent its example. Einstein describes the same thought experiment in the book he published in 1916—a book intended to explain relativity to general readers.
That historic book bears the following title: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. You can peruse the short book here. Nova was working from chapters 8 and 9 (pages 30-35).
Nova didn't imagine that thought experiment; it comes from Einstein's own account of his work. That thought experiment has long been considered to be quite central to Einstein's revolution.
How central to Einstein's work is that thought experiment? For today, let's review the way Walter Isaacson introduces that thought experiment in his best-selling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe.
Isaacson's book appeared in 2007. As we noted a few weeks ago, it carried blurbs from an array of ranking professors, praising Isaacson for the way he'd managed to make Einstein easy.
Except when the science hits the fan, Isaacson is an extremely lucid writer. In Chapter Six, "Special Relativity," he starts us toward that thought experiment in the passage shown below.
In Isaacson's account, Einstein experiences a "eureka moment." Within five weeks, Einstein, then just 26, has written and submitted "his most famous [scientific] paper:"
Isaacson is about to start describing the thought experiment involving that fast-moving train. As he does, he offers this quote from Einstein: “Time cannot be absolutely defined, and there is an inseparable relation between time and signal velocity."
Isaacson hasn't tried explaining those statements yet, but he's already introduced an element of confusion. How many readers will have any idea what "signal velocity" means?
Because he's writing for general readers, the answer is "very few." But as he continues, Isaacson doesn't try to define this technical term. As best we can tell, the term appears nowhere else in his 551-page book—a book which is extremely lucid until the science starts.
We offer this as a minor point. Einstein actually used the term. There's no hard and fast rule which says it mustn't be quoted.
But just like that, a possible bit of confusion has wormed its way into Isaacson's text. For the general reader, the lucidity of this passage has already perhaps been eroded.
At any rate, Isaacson proceeds as shown below. As you can see, we're on our way to a seat on that fast-moving train:
Tomorrow, we'll see if Isaacson was able to craft a clearer account of that material. In our view, Nova tried and failed. Isaacson, a very clear writer, had a chance to do better.
For today, let's only note this:
Essentially, Isaacson says that the fast-moving train is part of Einstein's "eureka moment." After a few short weeks, he says this eureka moment led to Einstein's most famous scientific paper.
In his next paragraph, Isaacson starts describing the two lightning strikes. It's now his turn to try to explain the experiment's "mind-blowing significance."
How well was Isaacson able to do that? We'll leave you today with a minor warning:
You'll note he says that two events may not appear to be simultaneous to each of two observers. Is that the language Einstein used? We ask that question because, truth to tell, that isn't the language from Nova.
Final point:
Einstein's work is hard to explain. Truth to tell, we don't know if anyone has ever done it.
That said, no one made Nova and Isaacson say that they could do it. It's up to them to accomplish the task they chose to undertake.
Can you explain what Nova and Isaacson are saying about that thought experiment? Remember—it's up to them to explain the science to you. It isn't your job to nod your head, like Einstein's niece, and cover for these journalistic authorities.
According to Isaacson, Einstein always refused to blindly affirm his professors, to recite what he saw as their cant. We think you'd be well advised to trundle along in his shoes.
Tomorrow: Isaacson's attempt
Part 2—Isaacson sets the scene: Just this once, just tell us the truth.
Do you understand—if necessary, could you explain—the "mind-blowing" nugget conclusion from Nova's presentation of Albert Einstein's "brilliant thought experiment?"
Tell the truth. We all know how to repeat script and cant, formulaics we may have received from academic authority figures.
We can all learn how to recite standard bumper stickers. But in the case of the Nova broadcast, could you really explain this conclusion:
"Simultaneity, and the flow of time itself, depends on how you're moving."
Let's simplify that a tad: "Simultaneity depend on how you're moving." Based on Nova's depiction of Einstein's thought experiment, could you really explain what that means?
Do you have a clear idea of what that statement actually means? Would you know how to explain it, especially if questions were allowed?
Bravely, we'll go first:
Based on Nova's presentation, we don't know how to explain that "mind-blowing" concept. Based on Nova's account of Einstein's thought experiment, we don't know how to invest that nostrum with something resembling clear meaning.
Quickly, let's review. Nova presented two characters—a man standing on a railway platform and a woman passing by on a fast-moving train.
In that sense, "how they're moving" is different. And Nova showed us something else—the light from a pair of lightning strikes would reach these two observers in a different sequence.
(For more detail, see yesterday's report.)
In Nova's example, the light from the two atrikes would reach the man at the same time. But for the woman, time would elapse between the arrival of the light from the two strikes.
"For him, the two strikes are simultaneous," Nova declared, using some shaky language. By implication, Nova also seemed to say that, for the woman, the lightning strikes weren't simultaneous.
The woman is moving, the man is not. "For him," the strikes "are simultaneous." For her, we're basically told that they aren't!
It seemed that things were moving along, until we imagined two more people. Man B was standing at the end of the railway platform. But uh-oh! Even though he's standing still, "for him, the strikes are not simultaneous."
Woman B is in the caboose of the train. But uh-oh! Even though she's moving as fast as the other woman, "for her, the two strikes are simultaneous."
"Simultaneity depends on how you're moving?" With the addition of these players, do you still feel sure you know what Nova means?
For ourselves, we don't know what Nova means. We don't know how to explain the "mind-blowing" conclusion offered by the PBS org.
If we might borrow from our Frost, something someone is withholding seems to have made us weak! And this is intriguing, because Nova really was describing the "thought experiment" which led Einstein to his special theory of relativity in 1905, when he was just 26.
Nova didn't invent its example. Einstein describes the same thought experiment in the book he published in 1916—a book intended to explain relativity to general readers.
That historic book bears the following title: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. You can peruse the short book here. Nova was working from chapters 8 and 9 (pages 30-35).
Nova didn't imagine that thought experiment; it comes from Einstein's own account of his work. That thought experiment has long been considered to be quite central to Einstein's revolution.
How central to Einstein's work is that thought experiment? For today, let's review the way Walter Isaacson introduces that thought experiment in his best-selling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe.
Isaacson's book appeared in 2007. As we noted a few weeks ago, it carried blurbs from an array of ranking professors, praising Isaacson for the way he'd managed to make Einstein easy.
Except when the science hits the fan, Isaacson is an extremely lucid writer. In Chapter Six, "Special Relativity," he starts us toward that thought experiment in the passage shown below.
In Isaacson's account, Einstein experiences a "eureka moment." Within five weeks, Einstein, then just 26, has written and submitted "his most famous [scientific] paper:"
ISAACSON (page 122): It was a beautiful day in Bern, Einstein later remembered, when he went to visit his best friend Michele Besso, the brilliant but unfocused engineer he had met while studying in Zurich and then recruited to join him at the Swiss Patent Office. Many days they would walk to work together, and on this occasion Einstein told Besso about the dilemma that was dogging him.Quickly, note a small hint of a possible problem.
“I’m going to give it up,” Einstein said at one point. But as they discussed it, Einstein recalled, “I suddenly understood the key to the problem.” The next day, when he saw Besso, Einstein was in a state of great excitement. He skipped any greeting and immediately declared, “Thank you. I’ve completely solved the problem.”
Only five weeks elapsed between that eureka moment and the day that Einstein sent off his most famous paper, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” It contained no citations of other literature, no mention of anyone else’s work, and no acknowledgments except for the charming one in the last sentence: “Let me note that my friend and colleague M. Besso steadfastly stood by me in my work on the problem discussed here, and that I am indebted to him for several valuable suggestions.”
So what was the insight that struck him while talking to Besso? “An analysis of the concept of time was my solution,” Einstein said. “Time cannot be absolutely defined, and there is an inseparable relation between time and signal velocity.”
Isaacson is about to start describing the thought experiment involving that fast-moving train. As he does, he offers this quote from Einstein: “Time cannot be absolutely defined, and there is an inseparable relation between time and signal velocity."
Isaacson hasn't tried explaining those statements yet, but he's already introduced an element of confusion. How many readers will have any idea what "signal velocity" means?
Because he's writing for general readers, the answer is "very few." But as he continues, Isaacson doesn't try to define this technical term. As best we can tell, the term appears nowhere else in his 551-page book—a book which is extremely lucid until the science starts.
We offer this as a minor point. Einstein actually used the term. There's no hard and fast rule which says it mustn't be quoted.
But just like that, a possible bit of confusion has wormed its way into Isaacson's text. For the general reader, the lucidity of this passage has already perhaps been eroded.
At any rate, Isaacson proceeds as shown below. As you can see, we're on our way to a seat on that fast-moving train:
ISAACSON (continuing directly): More specifically, the key insight was that two events that appear to be simultaneous to one observer will not appear to be simultaneous to another observer who is moving rapidly. And there is no way to declare that one of the observers is really correct. In other words, there is no way to declare that the two events are truly simultaneous.Isaacson goes on to describe and discuss the same "thought experiment" Nova discussed in last November's program. Like Nova, Isaacson is working straight out of Einstein's book.
Tomorrow, we'll see if Isaacson was able to craft a clearer account of that material. In our view, Nova tried and failed. Isaacson, a very clear writer, had a chance to do better.
For today, let's only note this:
Essentially, Isaacson says that the fast-moving train is part of Einstein's "eureka moment." After a few short weeks, he says this eureka moment led to Einstein's most famous scientific paper.
In his next paragraph, Isaacson starts describing the two lightning strikes. It's now his turn to try to explain the experiment's "mind-blowing significance."
How well was Isaacson able to do that? We'll leave you today with a minor warning:
You'll note he says that two events may not appear to be simultaneous to each of two observers. Is that the language Einstein used? We ask that question because, truth to tell, that isn't the language from Nova.
Final point:
Einstein's work is hard to explain. Truth to tell, we don't know if anyone has ever done it.
That said, no one made Nova and Isaacson say that they could do it. It's up to them to accomplish the task they chose to undertake.
Can you explain what Nova and Isaacson are saying about that thought experiment? Remember—it's up to them to explain the science to you. It isn't your job to nod your head, like Einstein's niece, and cover for these journalistic authorities.
According to Isaacson, Einstein always refused to blindly affirm his professors, to recite what he saw as their cant. We think you'd be well advised to trundle along in his shoes.
Tomorrow: Isaacson's attempt
Dissembling watch: Gabler, Chotiner and Maddow hold court!
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016
The Band said we're just being childish: For years, Neal Gabler performed extremely well as a media critic on the defunct program, Fox News Watch.
This morning, the new Salon reprinted a piece he wrote for BillMoyers.com. His piece critiqued mainstream press coverage of Candidate Clinton, dating all the way back to the 1990s.
We saw our own frameworks again and again. That said, we were puzzled by this "quotation" from Sally Quinn:
Within a few months, that hatred would be seamlessly transferred to Candidate Gore as the liberal world slept in the woods.
In her very important report, Quinn didn't say that she hated the Clintons. She did something very different. Importantly, she recorded a string of major insiders telling the world that they did.
If anyone ever actually tries to do a history of that era, Quinn's report will be an invaluable reference. But every liberal seems aware of "the Sally Quinn rule." We're required to say how awful it is that she wrote that "huffy" report.
There was Gabler playing the game! We decided to fact-check his quote.
Readers, is it true? Did Sally Quinn say, in a huffy piece, that Washington had “been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president?"
Once again, we scanned Quinn's lengthy, invaluable piece. In the relevant passage, here's what she actually wrote:
When she wrote the bolded sentence, she was reporting what "Establishment Washington" felt. Rather plainly, she wasn't stating her personal view.
Note to readers of Salon—you just got played by Gabler!
Does anybody avoid this sort of thing at this point? Moments later, we were reading Isaac Chotiner's interview with Rachel Maddow at Slate. At one point, Chotiner invited Maddow to insult Megyn Kelly. Here's what Chotiner said:
"Her approach to the Black Lives Matter movement has been to call it 'obviously beyond the bounds of decency,' and to instead present it as a danger to police."
Wow! Did Megyn Kelly really call the Black Movement "obviously beyond the bounds of decency?" Did she "present the movement as a danger to police?"
It didn't quite seem to make sense to us. So we clicked another link, to a post for Vanity Fair.
Doggone it! This is what Kelly had actually said, as quoted by Evgenia Peretz:
Congratulations! You've just been played by Chotiner!
Does anyone just tell the truth any more, without all these silly demonizations? Flawlessly, we recalled the Dylan lyrics, as reworked by The Band:
Maddow's first answer: In her response to Chotiner's first question, a certain major cable star kept defending the guild:
No one has criticized cable nets for "having a camera there whenever Trump is talking." That's an obvious thing to do. Of course they're going to do that.
MSNBC has been criticized for something different—for having a camera there and broadcasting Trump's entire speeches. There is absolutely no reason to do that, so Maddow fudged it good.
Maddow bullshat the problem away; Chotiner let her do it. According to The Band, and they were quite good, it's silly to find this surprising.
The Band said we're just being childish: For years, Neal Gabler performed extremely well as a media critic on the defunct program, Fox News Watch.
This morning, the new Salon reprinted a piece he wrote for BillMoyers.com. His piece critiqued mainstream press coverage of Candidate Clinton, dating all the way back to the 1990s.
We saw our own frameworks again and again. That said, we were puzzled by this "quotation" from Sally Quinn:
GABLER (4/121/6): The media never much liked the Clintons to begin with. In this election season of anti-elitism, one reason why is instructive for its condescension. As Sally Quinn, Washington Post writer and society doyenne (she was executive editor Ben Bradlee’s wife), put it in a famous, huffy 1998 article, the Clintons had sullied the White House and Washington had “been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president.” What she was really saying was that they were country bumpkins, not part of the ritzy DC establishment that she inhabited, and they needed to be punished for it.In our view, that 1998 report by Quinn is one of the most valuable pieces of journalism from the whole Clinton-Gore era. In great detail, she recorded a very important fact—by 1998, "Establishment Washington" basically hated the Clintons.
Within a few months, that hatred would be seamlessly transferred to Candidate Gore as the liberal world slept in the woods.
In her very important report, Quinn didn't say that she hated the Clintons. She did something very different. Importantly, she recorded a string of major insiders telling the world that they did.
If anyone ever actually tries to do a history of that era, Quinn's report will be an invaluable reference. But every liberal seems aware of "the Sally Quinn rule." We're required to say how awful it is that she wrote that "huffy" report.
There was Gabler playing the game! We decided to fact-check his quote.
Readers, is it true? Did Sally Quinn say, in a huffy piece, that Washington had “been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president?"
Once again, we scanned Quinn's lengthy, invaluable piece. In the relevant passage, here's what she actually wrote:
QUINN (11/2/98): In addition to the polls and surveys, this disconnect between the Washington Establishment and the rest of the country is evident on TV and radio talk shows and in interviews and conversations with more than 100 Washingtonians for this article. The din about the [Lewinsky] scandal has subsided in the news as politicians and journalists fan out across the country before tomorrow's elections. But in Washington, interest remains high. The reasons are varied, and they intertwine.At the start of that passage, Quinn is explaining a point she stresses several times—average Americans didn't hate the Clintons the way "Establishment Washington" did. And uh-oh:
1. THIS IS THEIR HOME. This is where they spend their lives, raise their families, participate in community activities, take pride in their surroundings. They feel Washington has been brought into disrepute by the actions of the president.
When she wrote the bolded sentence, she was reporting what "Establishment Washington" felt. Rather plainly, she wasn't stating her personal view.
Note to readers of Salon—you just got played by Gabler!
Does anybody avoid this sort of thing at this point? Moments later, we were reading Isaac Chotiner's interview with Rachel Maddow at Slate. At one point, Chotiner invited Maddow to insult Megyn Kelly. Here's what Chotiner said:
CHOTINER (4/11/16): What do you make of Megyn Kelly being held up as this exemplar of good journalism? It’s a weird turn of events for anyone who regularly watches her race-baiting show.Chotiner dropped an R-bomb! He included a link to an earlier piece, in which he said this about Kelly:
"Her approach to the Black Lives Matter movement has been to call it 'obviously beyond the bounds of decency,' and to instead present it as a danger to police."
Wow! Did Megyn Kelly really call the Black Movement "obviously beyond the bounds of decency?" Did she "present the movement as a danger to police?"
It didn't quite seem to make sense to us. So we clicked another link, to a post for Vanity Fair.
Doggone it! This is what Kelly had actually said, as quoted by Evgenia Peretz:
PERETZ (1/27/16): One of these topics—the Black Lives Matter movement—came up during the course of our interview for my piece. Kelly's perspective on the issue was pointedly firm. “They're going out there and yelling in the cop's face ‘Pigs in a blanket. Fry 'em like bacon.’ It's obviously beyond the bounds of decency," she said of the protestors.We remember the incident. Kelly didn't say that Black Lives Matter was "obviously beyond the bounds of decency." She was referring to a particular incident, on one occasion, in which a small group of protesters were publicly calling for the death of police—rather, for the death of the pigs.
Congratulations! You've just been played by Chotiner!
Does anyone just tell the truth any more, without all these silly demonizations? Flawlessly, we recalled the Dylan lyrics, as reworked by The Band:
We pointed you the way to goAre we just being childish? As we keep discovering that no one will be true?
And scratched your name in sand
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand
I want you to know that while we watched
You discover that no one would be true
That I myself was among
The ones who thought
It was just a childish thing to do
Maddow's first answer: In her response to Chotiner's first question, a certain major cable star kept defending the guild:
CHOTINER (4/11/16): How would you assess the Trump coverage on cable news?While absolutely hearing the criticism, Maddow thinks it can be explained (away). Here's the problem with what she said:
MADDOW: I absolutely hear it when people complain that Trump gets too much time on television, but I do think it can at least be explained, if not excused. It’s part of his campaign style to be unpredictable, to not always say the same thing. Yeah, he does have a stump speech. That’s true of any candidate, but in addition to the stump speech repetition and that sort of discipline, his indiscipline, or at least his willingness to say unexpected things and go unexpectedly shocking places at unpredictable times, means that it’s worth it to have a camera there whenever he’s talking.
I think that the criticism is fair, but I also think that the coverage has been understandable. Other candidates are reasonably frustrated by it, but they should also take it as a challenge to up their own media game so that reporters think it’s worth having a camera there every time they talk too.
No one has criticized cable nets for "having a camera there whenever Trump is talking." That's an obvious thing to do. Of course they're going to do that.
MSNBC has been criticized for something different—for having a camera there and broadcasting Trump's entire speeches. There is absolutely no reason to do that, so Maddow fudged it good.
Maddow bullshat the problem away; Chotiner let her do it. According to The Band, and they were quite good, it's silly to find this surprising.
Public school watch: Some kids take Algebra 1 in eighth grade!
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016
What happened to "grade level standards:" In his latest column for the Washington Post, Jay Mathews discusses a fact we didn't know:
Under the Common Core curriculum, students don't take Algebra 1 until they're in the ninth grade. Or something! Here's how he actually puts it:
The Common Core suggests delaying algebra until ninth grade. He also says the eighth grade math course offered as an alternative is described by the Common Core in a way that's incoherent.
That's the way things often go when "education experts" hold sway.
As Mathews continues, he seems to say that 43 percent of the nation's eighth-graders took Algebra 1 in 2015. That would mean that 57 percent of the nation's eighth-graders didn't.
The specific number isn't important. Here's the question we'd ask:
What ever happened to "grade level standards?" What happened to the (daffy) idea that all students in a certain grade are supposed to follow a standard grade level curriculum?
That familiar idea is very familiar. It's constantly voiced within the press. Until signing on to the Common Core, every one of the fifty states had its own "grade level standards."
We have never had any idea how that's supposed to work.
We called that familiar idea "daffy" for an obvious reason. Presumably, many kids are ready to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade. We did so in San Mateo, California two years after Mathews, our fellow San Matean, did.
(We share the old school system tie.)
That said, many American kids aren't ready to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade. Many kids are years "behind" traditional norms in math by the time they're in eighth grade. They may not ever be ready to take Algebra 1 and pass, as we discussed years ago in an award-winning week-long series.
Fifth graders aren't all alike! There's a wide array of achievement levels found among the many kids enrolled in any particular grade.
Kids are substantially different from each other when they enter first grade. That state of affairs doesn't start at eighth grade, where many kids are ready for Algebra 1 and many other kids aren't.
A wide range of achievement levels will exist in any grade. There are several unhelpful ways to respond to this state of affairs:
You can hold kids back by refusing to let them advance at an appropriate pace—for example, by making them wait a year before they take Algebra 1. (You could call this a form of "low expectations.")
A teacher or school can hold kids back by expecting too little of them. Every pseudo-liberal on earth knows how to rail against this.
That said, there's another way to hold kids back—to ruin their time in school, to impede their progress. You can ask too much of kids. You can put them in Algebra 1 before they're ready to succeed with that work. In other subjects, you can give them textbooks which are too advanced for them to read and understand.
Every pseudo has heard about the scourge of "low expectations." This involves a type of standard cant all liberals have learned to emit. This led to last week's post by Kevin Drum, our favorite blogger, which we thought was ugly, lazy and disgraceful from its headline on down.
The original report at The Atlantic was bad enough. It was typical pseudo work, straight out of the "let's pretend we know and care about the lives of black kids" shop.
That Atlantic piece was extremely weak, though heavily loaded with script and cant. How perfect! Even as The Atlantic was complaining in a separate report about school systems which assign young inexperienced white teachers to teach black kids, The Atlantic was assigning an inexperienced young white reporter to write about what happens in urban schools.
Her report was awful; Drum's post was massively worse. It was ugly from that headline on down. Truly, that's horrible work.
Last week, we stopped discussing that Atlantic report because we felt Drum's post had fouled the waters so badly. Tomorrow, we'll bravely return to The Atlantic to finish what we planned to say.
It isn't the fault of a young reporter when she lacks an education background. But when famous journals assign such people to pretend to cover low-income schools, we see again what we've long told you:
No one cares about black kids, except to the extent that they can be used to make us "liberals" look and feel good.
Teachers can do substantial harm by asking and expecting too much from struggling students. Young reporters won't likely know such things, and won't therefore know how to care.
But it does happen, all the time. We'll return to The Atlantic and finish this topic tomorrow.
What happened to "grade level standards:" In his latest column for the Washington Post, Jay Mathews discusses a fact we didn't know:
Under the Common Core curriculum, students don't take Algebra 1 until they're in the ninth grade. Or something! Here's how he actually puts it:
MATHEWS (4/11/16): In Scarsdale, as well as many parts of the Washington area, few topics grab more parental attention than middle school accelerated math.What Mathews specifically says is this:
But now, the nation’s biggest school reform, the Common Core State Standards, suggests those families restrain their ambitions and delay algebra until high school.
[...]
Here is how the Common Core begins its explanation of the eighth-grade math course it offers as an alternative to Algebra I: “Formulating and reasoning about expressions and equations, including modeling an association in bivariate data with a linear equation, and solving linear equations and systems of linear equations.”
I was a good math student. I took calculus during my senior year of high school, a big goal for parents who want their children to take algebra in eighth grade. But I found the Common Core website to be inscrutable. Parents who need a clear reason for restraining math acceleration in middle school are not getting it.
The Common Core suggests delaying algebra until ninth grade. He also says the eighth grade math course offered as an alternative is described by the Common Core in a way that's incoherent.
That's the way things often go when "education experts" hold sway.
As Mathews continues, he seems to say that 43 percent of the nation's eighth-graders took Algebra 1 in 2015. That would mean that 57 percent of the nation's eighth-graders didn't.
The specific number isn't important. Here's the question we'd ask:
What ever happened to "grade level standards?" What happened to the (daffy) idea that all students in a certain grade are supposed to follow a standard grade level curriculum?
That familiar idea is very familiar. It's constantly voiced within the press. Until signing on to the Common Core, every one of the fifty states had its own "grade level standards."
We have never had any idea how that's supposed to work.
We called that familiar idea "daffy" for an obvious reason. Presumably, many kids are ready to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade. We did so in San Mateo, California two years after Mathews, our fellow San Matean, did.
(We share the old school system tie.)
That said, many American kids aren't ready to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade. Many kids are years "behind" traditional norms in math by the time they're in eighth grade. They may not ever be ready to take Algebra 1 and pass, as we discussed years ago in an award-winning week-long series.
Fifth graders aren't all alike! There's a wide array of achievement levels found among the many kids enrolled in any particular grade.
Kids are substantially different from each other when they enter first grade. That state of affairs doesn't start at eighth grade, where many kids are ready for Algebra 1 and many other kids aren't.
A wide range of achievement levels will exist in any grade. There are several unhelpful ways to respond to this state of affairs:
You can hold kids back by refusing to let them advance at an appropriate pace—for example, by making them wait a year before they take Algebra 1. (You could call this a form of "low expectations.")
A teacher or school can hold kids back by expecting too little of them. Every pseudo-liberal on earth knows how to rail against this.
That said, there's another way to hold kids back—to ruin their time in school, to impede their progress. You can ask too much of kids. You can put them in Algebra 1 before they're ready to succeed with that work. In other subjects, you can give them textbooks which are too advanced for them to read and understand.
Every pseudo has heard about the scourge of "low expectations." This involves a type of standard cant all liberals have learned to emit. This led to last week's post by Kevin Drum, our favorite blogger, which we thought was ugly, lazy and disgraceful from its headline on down.
The original report at The Atlantic was bad enough. It was typical pseudo work, straight out of the "let's pretend we know and care about the lives of black kids" shop.
That Atlantic piece was extremely weak, though heavily loaded with script and cant. How perfect! Even as The Atlantic was complaining in a separate report about school systems which assign young inexperienced white teachers to teach black kids, The Atlantic was assigning an inexperienced young white reporter to write about what happens in urban schools.
Her report was awful; Drum's post was massively worse. It was ugly from that headline on down. Truly, that's horrible work.
Last week, we stopped discussing that Atlantic report because we felt Drum's post had fouled the waters so badly. Tomorrow, we'll bravely return to The Atlantic to finish what we planned to say.
It isn't the fault of a young reporter when she lacks an education background. But when famous journals assign such people to pretend to cover low-income schools, we see again what we've long told you:
No one cares about black kids, except to the extent that they can be used to make us "liberals" look and feel good.
Teachers can do substantial harm by asking and expecting too much from struggling students. Young reporters won't likely know such things, and won't therefore know how to care.
But it does happen, all the time. We'll return to The Atlantic and finish this topic tomorrow.
ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER: Reviewing the problem we hope to address!
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2016
Part 1—This week's dramatis personae: What did Albert Einstein say in 1916, in Chapter 9 of a short, famous book?
The famous book bears this title: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. It was Einstein's attempt to explain relativity to non-specialist readers.
Einstein had propounded the special theory of relativity in 1905, when he was 26. In 1915, he presented the general theory of relativity.
One year later, he tried to explain this scientific revolution in his brief, famous book. To peruse that book, click here.
Last November, Nova presented an hour-long broadcast, Inside Einstein's Mind. The broadcast was timed to mark the hundredth anniversary of general relativity.
About ten minutes into the program, Nova presented an explanation of the "thought experiment" which led Einstein to the special theory of relativity in 1905. To watch that broadcast, click this.
To our eye and ear, Nova's presentation made and makes no apparent clear sense. Before the week is done, we're going to look at the part of Einstein's brief book from which the PBS program was working, almost one hundred years later.
One hundred years later, we ourselves are going to make a strange suggestion. Einstein's own explanation of his historic thought experiment is muddy, clouded, unclear.
One hundred years later, our professors and journalists don't seem to have noticed. But so it goes inside our society's ubiquitous "culture of incoherence."
Is it possible? Is it possible that Einstein's explanation of his own work didn't and doesn't exactly make sense? Is it possible that, one hundred years later, our most famous professors haven't yet noticed this fact?
It may seem hard to imagine such a state of affairs. That said, Einstein's own revolution started with his rejection of the professors of his own day.
Are our professors sharper than his? We'll explore that question this week.
For today, let's start by reviewing the problem which arose in Nova's broadcast. More specifically, let's produce a dramatic personae to which we'll refer all week.
To get started, let's list the characters of the "brilliant thought experiment" the PBS program tried to describe and explain. As described by Nova, there were two players in Einstein's thought experiment. The thought experiment involved two people along with two lightning strikes:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving." At first glance, that conclusion may appear to be sound.
(Warning! In street cons, the "mark" is always sure he knows under which shell the marble is hiding.)
At first glance, Nova's conclusion may appear to be sound. As described by Nova, the lightning strikes will at least seem to be simultaneous to the man on the platform. But the lightning strikes won't seem to be simultaneous to the woman on the train. And she is moving very fast, while the man is standing still!
Case closed, Nova has said! Simultaneity depends on how you're moving. If we leave the matter there, we can exit the Nova program with the sense that we've mastered some "mind-blowing" physics.
Unfortunately, Nova's limited, two-person presentation doesn't quite seem to make sense. When we watched the program last fall, we thought that presentation was one of the worst non-explanation explanations we had ever seen.
A few weeks ago, we began explaining that claim by introducing two more characters. Let's recall who they were:
First, we introduced Man B. This man is standing all the way down at the end of the very long railway platform.
(In his 1916 book, Einstein specifies that we're talking about "a very long train." He further specifies that the two lightning strikes occur "at two places A and B far distant from each other.")
Uh-oh! Even though Man B is standing still, he will experience those lightning strikes much as the woman on the train does. She will be directly adjacent to Man B's position when light arrives from the nearer strike. She is in motion, he is not. But in terms of simultaneity, they will experience the two lightning in much the same way.
For Man B, "time elapses between the two strikes," in the language used by Nova. For Man B, "the two strikes are [not] simultaneous," again using Nova's construction.
Man B introduced confusion into Nova's story-line. To him, the two strikes won't seem simultaneous, even though he's standing still, like the original man on the platform.
Man B introduced confusion into this story. Woman B made things even worse.
We said that Woman B was in the caboose of that fast-moving train. She's moving at the same high rate of speed as the original "woman on the train." But because she's at the rear of their train, she's directly adjacent to the original "man on the platform" when the light arrives from the two lightning strikes.
In terms of simultaneity, we'll allege that Woman B will experience the lightning strikes exactly as the original "man of the platform" does. As with him, so with her—the light from the two lightning strikes will reach her at the exact same time.
For Woman B, as for the original man on the platform, "the two strikes are simultaneous...there is no time between the strikes." But she's moving at a high rate of speed, and he is standing still.
We now have a more complex thought experiment, with a longer list of characters. For better or worse, our cast of characters will now look like this:
Presumably, he won't experiences the two lightning strikes in exactly the same way as the original woman. Because she's moving away from the more distant strike, it will take longer for the light from that strike to reach her eyes.
On the other hand, it seems that Woman B will experience the two lightning strikes in exactly the same way as the original man on the platform. Because he's midway between the two strikes, the light from the two strikes will reach him at the same time. Why wouldn't she have the same experience?
Back in November, we instantly pictured Man B down at the end of the platform. For him, "time elapses between the two strikes," as is the case for the original woman on the train.
What then, exactly, was the point of Nova's formulation? What becomes of Nova's "mind-blowing" take-away:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
What becomes of that nugget formulation when we introduce Man B and Woman B?
In our new cast of characters, both of our men are standing still. But in the language of Nova, the strikes "are simultaneous" for the original man on the platform, but not for Man B.
Beyond that, though, a second problem is swimming around in Nova's presentation. The program makes no attempt to separate seeming from being. To wit:
The original woman on the train may initially judge that the two strikes were sequential, not simultaneous. That may be her first impression, based on the way the light reaches her from the two strikes.
That said, she will likely change her assessment when she's told that one of the strikes occurred closer to her position. We humans adjust our judgments in such ways about a wide array of phenomena involving light, sound and other sensory experience. We my such adjustments of judgement all the time.
(You experience two earthquake shocks. One shock rattles your dishes more; you judge that it was stronger. But you later learn the other shock occurred much farther away. You accept the claim you hear on the news—the shock which rattled your dishes less was in fact much stronger.)
Citizens, can we talk? To this day, we can't explain the point the Nova broadcast was making in the passage under review. Almost surely, you can't explain it either.
Tomorrow, we'll review the way Walter Isaacson described this same thought experiment in his best-selling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe. His book appeared in 2007, ninety-one years after Einstein published his brief book.
On Thursday, we'll go to the ultimate source. How did Einstein explain and describe this important thought experiment?
One hundred years later, is Einstein's explanation clear? If not, riddle us this:
They've had a hundred years to do it. One hundred years later, can our professors explain this part of his book?
Tomorrow: Einstein's "eureka moment"
Part 1—This week's dramatis personae: What did Albert Einstein say in 1916, in Chapter 9 of a short, famous book?
The famous book bears this title: Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. It was Einstein's attempt to explain relativity to non-specialist readers.
Einstein had propounded the special theory of relativity in 1905, when he was 26. In 1915, he presented the general theory of relativity.
One year later, he tried to explain this scientific revolution in his brief, famous book. To peruse that book, click here.
Last November, Nova presented an hour-long broadcast, Inside Einstein's Mind. The broadcast was timed to mark the hundredth anniversary of general relativity.
About ten minutes into the program, Nova presented an explanation of the "thought experiment" which led Einstein to the special theory of relativity in 1905. To watch that broadcast, click this.
To our eye and ear, Nova's presentation made and makes no apparent clear sense. Before the week is done, we're going to look at the part of Einstein's brief book from which the PBS program was working, almost one hundred years later.
One hundred years later, we ourselves are going to make a strange suggestion. Einstein's own explanation of his historic thought experiment is muddy, clouded, unclear.
One hundred years later, our professors and journalists don't seem to have noticed. But so it goes inside our society's ubiquitous "culture of incoherence."
Is it possible? Is it possible that Einstein's explanation of his own work didn't and doesn't exactly make sense? Is it possible that, one hundred years later, our most famous professors haven't yet noticed this fact?
It may seem hard to imagine such a state of affairs. That said, Einstein's own revolution started with his rejection of the professors of his own day.
Are our professors sharper than his? We'll explore that question this week.
For today, let's start by reviewing the problem which arose in Nova's broadcast. More specifically, let's produce a dramatic personae to which we'll refer all week.
To get started, let's list the characters of the "brilliant thought experiment" the PBS program tried to describe and explain. As described by Nova, there were two players in Einstein's thought experiment. The thought experiment involved two people along with two lightning strikes:
NARRATOR: In a brilliant thought experiment, [Einstein] questions what "simultaneous" actually means, and sees that the flow of time is different for an observer that is moving versus one that is standing still.In Nova's treatment, we have a man standing on a railway platform and a woman passing by on a fast-moving train. If we restrict ourselves to Nova's treatment, our cast of characters will therefore look like this:
He imagines a man standing on a railway platform. Two bolts of lightning strike on either side of him.
The man is standing exactly halfway between them, and the light from each strike reaches his eyes at exactly the same moment. For him, the two strikes are simultaneous.
Then, Einstein imagines a woman on a fast-moving train traveling at close to the speed of light. What would she see?
As the light travels out from the strikes, the train is moving towards one and away from the other. Light from the front strike reaches her eyes first.
For the woman on the train, time elapses between the two strikes. For the man on the platform, there is no time between the strikes.
This simple thought has mind-blowing significance. Simultaneity, and the flow of time itself, depends on how you're moving.
Dramatis personae, Einstein's thought experiment:If we restrict ourselves to Nova's account, that's our complete cast of characters. From the story as Nova tells it, Einstein deduced this "mind-blowing" conclusion:
The man on the railway platform: This man is standing at the midpoint of a very long railway platform.
The woman on the train: The woman is riding in the middle car of a very long fast-moving train. She's passing the man on the railway platform at a high rate of speed.
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving." At first glance, that conclusion may appear to be sound.
(Warning! In street cons, the "mark" is always sure he knows under which shell the marble is hiding.)
At first glance, Nova's conclusion may appear to be sound. As described by Nova, the lightning strikes will at least seem to be simultaneous to the man on the platform. But the lightning strikes won't seem to be simultaneous to the woman on the train. And she is moving very fast, while the man is standing still!
Case closed, Nova has said! Simultaneity depends on how you're moving. If we leave the matter there, we can exit the Nova program with the sense that we've mastered some "mind-blowing" physics.
Unfortunately, Nova's limited, two-person presentation doesn't quite seem to make sense. When we watched the program last fall, we thought that presentation was one of the worst non-explanation explanations we had ever seen.
A few weeks ago, we began explaining that claim by introducing two more characters. Let's recall who they were:
First, we introduced Man B. This man is standing all the way down at the end of the very long railway platform.
(In his 1916 book, Einstein specifies that we're talking about "a very long train." He further specifies that the two lightning strikes occur "at two places A and B far distant from each other.")
Uh-oh! Even though Man B is standing still, he will experience those lightning strikes much as the woman on the train does. She will be directly adjacent to Man B's position when light arrives from the nearer strike. She is in motion, he is not. But in terms of simultaneity, they will experience the two lightning in much the same way.
For Man B, "time elapses between the two strikes," in the language used by Nova. For Man B, "the two strikes are [not] simultaneous," again using Nova's construction.
Man B introduced confusion into Nova's story-line. To him, the two strikes won't seem simultaneous, even though he's standing still, like the original man on the platform.
Man B introduced confusion into this story. Woman B made things even worse.
We said that Woman B was in the caboose of that fast-moving train. She's moving at the same high rate of speed as the original "woman on the train." But because she's at the rear of their train, she's directly adjacent to the original "man on the platform" when the light arrives from the two lightning strikes.
In terms of simultaneity, we'll allege that Woman B will experience the lightning strikes exactly as the original "man of the platform" does. As with him, so with her—the light from the two lightning strikes will reach her at the exact same time.
For Woman B, as for the original man on the platform, "the two strikes are simultaneous...there is no time between the strikes." But she's moving at a high rate of speed, and he is standing still.
We now have a more complex thought experiment, with a longer list of characters. For better or worse, our cast of characters will now look like this:
Dramatis personae, Einstein's (expanded) thought experiment:For us, Nova's presentation broke down when we imagined Man B. Like the original woman on the train, he won't experience the two lightning strikes as simultaneous. But she is moving at a very high speed, and he is standing stock still.
The man on the railway platform: This man is standing at the midpoint of a very long railway platform.
The woman on the train: The woman is riding in the middle car of a very long, fast-moving train. She's passing the man on the railway platform at a high rate of speed.
Man B: This man is standing at the end of the railway platform. He is directly adjacent to the woman on the train when the first light arrives from one of the lightning strikes.
Woman B: This woman is in the caboose of the fast-moving train. She is directly adjacent to the man on the platform when the first light from the two strikes arrives.
Presumably, he won't experiences the two lightning strikes in exactly the same way as the original woman. Because she's moving away from the more distant strike, it will take longer for the light from that strike to reach her eyes.
On the other hand, it seems that Woman B will experience the two lightning strikes in exactly the same way as the original man on the platform. Because he's midway between the two strikes, the light from the two strikes will reach him at the same time. Why wouldn't she have the same experience?
Back in November, we instantly pictured Man B down at the end of the platform. For him, "time elapses between the two strikes," as is the case for the original woman on the train.
What then, exactly, was the point of Nova's formulation? What becomes of Nova's "mind-blowing" take-away:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
What becomes of that nugget formulation when we introduce Man B and Woman B?
In our new cast of characters, both of our men are standing still. But in the language of Nova, the strikes "are simultaneous" for the original man on the platform, but not for Man B.
Beyond that, though, a second problem is swimming around in Nova's presentation. The program makes no attempt to separate seeming from being. To wit:
The original woman on the train may initially judge that the two strikes were sequential, not simultaneous. That may be her first impression, based on the way the light reaches her from the two strikes.
That said, she will likely change her assessment when she's told that one of the strikes occurred closer to her position. We humans adjust our judgments in such ways about a wide array of phenomena involving light, sound and other sensory experience. We my such adjustments of judgement all the time.
(You experience two earthquake shocks. One shock rattles your dishes more; you judge that it was stronger. But you later learn the other shock occurred much farther away. You accept the claim you hear on the news—the shock which rattled your dishes less was in fact much stronger.)
Citizens, can we talk? To this day, we can't explain the point the Nova broadcast was making in the passage under review. Almost surely, you can't explain it either.
Tomorrow, we'll review the way Walter Isaacson described this same thought experiment in his best-selling biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe. His book appeared in 2007, ninety-one years after Einstein published his brief book.
On Thursday, we'll go to the ultimate source. How did Einstein explain and describe this important thought experiment?
One hundred years later, is Einstein's explanation clear? If not, riddle us this:
They've had a hundred years to do it. One hundred years later, can our professors explain this part of his book?
Tomorrow: Einstein's "eureka moment"
Cable clowncar watch: Joe and Mika rant and yell!
MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016
Dumbness, Wyoming style: Over the weekend, Wyoming's Democratic Party held its caucuses.
As is often the case with caucuses, it's hard to tell what happened. The official reporting looks like this, but as far as we know, these are not total votes:
"Vote totals for the Wyoming Democratic Party are state convention delegates won."
According to the Times, therefore, those percentages represent percentages of "state convention delegates" won by Sanders and Clinton, whatever that's supposed to mean. As of now, the Times and other newspapers don't seem to be reporting anything like "total votes."
What's it like when a small population state like Wyoming conducts statewide party caucuses? For one thing, almost no one comes!
The leading authority seems to report that 8,753 people took part in the 2008 Wyoming Democratic caucuses, although that may not be what its numbers actually mean. By way of comparison, Obama got 82,868 votes in Wyoming that fall.
Already, we've established a few key points. Within our "press corps," very few people seem to know how the various caucuses actually work in the various states. Beyond that, no one seems to care. In this case, we can tell you this:
Fourteen delegates to the Democratic convention were at stake in Wyoming this weekend. On whatever basis obtains in that state, Sanders and Clinton ended up with seven delegates each.
If delegates were awarded on a strict proportional basis, it looks like the split would have been 8-6 in favor of Sanders. That said, it all depends, in various states, on the way a candidate's total vote is spread throughout the various districts.
On whatever basis obtains in Wyoming, Clinton seems to have won one more delegate than she would have received from a straight proportional split. Sanders got one less.
Starting with the decision to hold caucuses instead of a primary, this is dumb, dull-witted stuff. But then, along come Mika and Joe to rant and yell of a morning.
Their screeching this morning went on for nine minutes. They made no attempt to explain any facts; this is good, since there's little reason to think that either cable star actually knew any facts.
To watch the nine-minute tape of their screeching and yelling, you can just click here, then scroll down and click again.
Joe and Mika did have a script, so they bellowed and yelled. Regular sidekicks Wallace, Halperin and Heilemann all agreed not to say how remarkably stupid their co-hosts were being, although you can see that they all understood.
(In cable news, the agreement not to mention the transcendent stupidity of the host is, of course, a basic part of the standard guest-star deal.)
The nine-minute clown car you see on that tape is our cable "press corps" in action. The pair of clowns you see screeching and yelling are each paid millions per year.
Just so you'll know: To enable their screeching and yelling, Mika and Joe added Wyoming's four "super-delegates" to the weekend's delegate count. In line with basic rules of cable screeching, they never explained that they'd done this.
This weekend's caucuses had nothing to so with the selection of those super-delegates. There's an extremely slim outside chance that Mika and Joe may have actually known that. If so, they knew something else:
For purposes of maximum ranting, they knew they mustn't tell.
Dumbness, Wyoming style: Over the weekend, Wyoming's Democratic Party held its caucuses.
As is often the case with caucuses, it's hard to tell what happened. The official reporting looks like this, but as far as we know, these are not total votes:
Results of the Wyoming Democratic caucusesAs noted, those percentages don't seem to be percentages of total votes. The New York Times reports it like this:
Sanders: 55.7%
Clinton: 44.3%
"Vote totals for the Wyoming Democratic Party are state convention delegates won."
According to the Times, therefore, those percentages represent percentages of "state convention delegates" won by Sanders and Clinton, whatever that's supposed to mean. As of now, the Times and other newspapers don't seem to be reporting anything like "total votes."
What's it like when a small population state like Wyoming conducts statewide party caucuses? For one thing, almost no one comes!
The leading authority seems to report that 8,753 people took part in the 2008 Wyoming Democratic caucuses, although that may not be what its numbers actually mean. By way of comparison, Obama got 82,868 votes in Wyoming that fall.
Already, we've established a few key points. Within our "press corps," very few people seem to know how the various caucuses actually work in the various states. Beyond that, no one seems to care. In this case, we can tell you this:
Fourteen delegates to the Democratic convention were at stake in Wyoming this weekend. On whatever basis obtains in that state, Sanders and Clinton ended up with seven delegates each.
If delegates were awarded on a strict proportional basis, it looks like the split would have been 8-6 in favor of Sanders. That said, it all depends, in various states, on the way a candidate's total vote is spread throughout the various districts.
On whatever basis obtains in Wyoming, Clinton seems to have won one more delegate than she would have received from a straight proportional split. Sanders got one less.
Starting with the decision to hold caucuses instead of a primary, this is dumb, dull-witted stuff. But then, along come Mika and Joe to rant and yell of a morning.
Their screeching this morning went on for nine minutes. They made no attempt to explain any facts; this is good, since there's little reason to think that either cable star actually knew any facts.
To watch the nine-minute tape of their screeching and yelling, you can just click here, then scroll down and click again.
Joe and Mika did have a script, so they bellowed and yelled. Regular sidekicks Wallace, Halperin and Heilemann all agreed not to say how remarkably stupid their co-hosts were being, although you can see that they all understood.
(In cable news, the agreement not to mention the transcendent stupidity of the host is, of course, a basic part of the standard guest-star deal.)
The nine-minute clown car you see on that tape is our cable "press corps" in action. The pair of clowns you see screeching and yelling are each paid millions per year.
Just so you'll know: To enable their screeching and yelling, Mika and Joe added Wyoming's four "super-delegates" to the weekend's delegate count. In line with basic rules of cable screeching, they never explained that they'd done this.
This weekend's caucuses had nothing to so with the selection of those super-delegates. There's an extremely slim outside chance that Mika and Joe may have actually known that. If so, they knew something else:
For purposes of maximum ranting, they knew they mustn't tell.
Narrative watch: The Washington Post calls Sanders all wet!
MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016
You won't see these questions addressed: We were struck by the featured editorial in Saturday's Washington Post.
In Sunday's featured editorial, the editors said that Candidate Trump is all wet about several topics. But uh-oh! On Saturday, they said the same thing about Candidate Sanders concerning the Panama Papers and the Panama trade deal.
Are the editors right in what they said? We have no idea. That said, their editorial ran under this headline:
"The Panama Papers prove Mr. Sanders was wrong about a trade pact with Panama"
As they closed their review of the facts, the editors voiced this judgment: "To us, it looks like the Obama administration’s diplomacy resulted in real progress, and that if anyone’s entitled to say 'I told you so' about that, it would be Ms. Clinton."
Are the editors right in the various things they said? We have no idea—and most likely, we'll never find out. Similarly, we aren't like to find out if Paul Krugman was right about these claims, in in last Friday's column:
Why won't you see these questions discussed? In large part, because they're questions of substance.
The bulk of our press corps longs, above all, to avoid all discussion of substance. Especially on "cable news" channels, this is the most basic part of their flyweight culture.
You won't see such questions discussed; in cable culture, such questions are judged to be disqualifyingly "hard." Instead, you'll see the constant frisking of the latest polls, along with pointless discussions of naughty words said long ago, perhaps on one occasion.
There's a second reason why you won't see such questions discussed. It isn't simply a matter of culture; it's also question of narrative.
In the narratives controlling the current election, Candidate Clinton is the one who's inauthentic, dishonest, untrustworthy. It flies in the face of this decades-old, memorized story to suggest the possibility that someone else may be slip-sliding along in some way or other.
That narrative explains something else. It explains why Candidate Sanders was able to stage this absurd exchange on yesterday's This Week.
To watch that exchange, click here:
Candidate Clinton didn't quite say that? Her surrogates implied that? They used the word, or their surrogates have used the word?
With apologies: Four days after his rather dumb remark, Candidate Sanders was still being a bit "Clintonesque," at least in that part of his discussion, not unlike his wife before him.
In fairness, Candidate Sanders is running for office. Understandably, he probably didn't want to say that he simply said one thing that was inaccurate and another thing that was dumb.
But as the person who's been cast as "authentic," he gets to shimmy around quite a bit in resolving matters like this, in the manner of Candidates Bradley and McCain before him. He is allowed to be "Clintonesque." Candidate Clinton is not.
(Candidate Clinton didn't quite say that? Earth to dude, four days later: she didn't say it at all!)
Inevitably, a candidate will say dumb things in the course of a long campaign; in this instance, Candidate Sanders said something that was basically dumb. But because he's been cast as the official "authentic" candidate, he gets a lot of leeway in spinning such matters. And, because of prevailing press corps culture, no one is going to examine that other question:
When he's pushed on matters of substance, is it possible that Candidate Sanders doesn't exactly know what he's talking about?
We don't know the answer to that. Because of the culture of the "press," we don't expect to find out.
Just for the record: Candidate Clinton has said some things along the way which are just flatly bogus. We'll post a few striking examples by the end of the week.
That said, narrative rules above all! Even she is allowed to misstate in certain pre-approved ways. It all depends on what type of inaccurate thing has been said!
You won't see these questions addressed: We were struck by the featured editorial in Saturday's Washington Post.
In Sunday's featured editorial, the editors said that Candidate Trump is all wet about several topics. But uh-oh! On Saturday, they said the same thing about Candidate Sanders concerning the Panama Papers and the Panama trade deal.
Are the editors right in what they said? We have no idea. That said, their editorial ran under this headline:
"The Panama Papers prove Mr. Sanders was wrong about a trade pact with Panama"
As they closed their review of the facts, the editors voiced this judgment: "To us, it looks like the Obama administration’s diplomacy resulted in real progress, and that if anyone’s entitled to say 'I told you so' about that, it would be Ms. Clinton."
Are the editors right in the various things they said? We have no idea—and most likely, we'll never find out. Similarly, we aren't like to find out if Paul Krugman was right about these claims, in in last Friday's column:
KRUGMAN (4/8/16): The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?Is Krugman right in that analysis? You're very unlikely see that discussed. You also won't see much debate about the claim which emerged last week—the claim that Sanders bungled a series of substantive questions during his interview with the board of the New York Daily News.
Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to both questions were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big. And the financial reform that President Obama signed in 2010 made a real effort to address these problems. It could and should be made stronger, but pounding the table about big banks misses the point.
Yet going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done. On the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he didn’t seem to have anything more to offer.
Why won't you see these questions discussed? In large part, because they're questions of substance.
The bulk of our press corps longs, above all, to avoid all discussion of substance. Especially on "cable news" channels, this is the most basic part of their flyweight culture.
You won't see such questions discussed; in cable culture, such questions are judged to be disqualifyingly "hard." Instead, you'll see the constant frisking of the latest polls, along with pointless discussions of naughty words said long ago, perhaps on one occasion.
There's a second reason why you won't see such questions discussed. It isn't simply a matter of culture; it's also question of narrative.
In the narratives controlling the current election, Candidate Clinton is the one who's inauthentic, dishonest, untrustworthy. It flies in the face of this decades-old, memorized story to suggest the possibility that someone else may be slip-sliding along in some way or other.
That narrative explains something else. It explains why Candidate Sanders was able to stage this absurd exchange on yesterday's This Week.
To watch that exchange, click here:
STEPHANOPOULOS (4/10/16): We saw that exchange you had with Cecilia Vegas over whether or not Secretary Clinton is qualified. You said this week once that she was unqualified. Did your emotions get the best of you there?Fellow citizens, please!
SANDERS: Well look. You know what I think, it's very clear and I'm sure you got the press releases and the memos from the Clinton people.
After we won Wyoming, there was a change in tone on the part of the Clinton people. And essentially, they said we're not going to be very nice to Bernie Sanders any more. We're getting beaten every week, we're going to start beating him up when we go to New York City.
And that's what they have done. Their tone has changed. They used the word, or their surrogates have used the word, about whether or not I am qualified.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It was a headline. She didn't say you were unqualified.
SANDERS: Well, she didn't quite say that. But her surrogates implied that.
Candidate Clinton didn't quite say that? Her surrogates implied that? They used the word, or their surrogates have used the word?
With apologies: Four days after his rather dumb remark, Candidate Sanders was still being a bit "Clintonesque," at least in that part of his discussion, not unlike his wife before him.
In fairness, Candidate Sanders is running for office. Understandably, he probably didn't want to say that he simply said one thing that was inaccurate and another thing that was dumb.
But as the person who's been cast as "authentic," he gets to shimmy around quite a bit in resolving matters like this, in the manner of Candidates Bradley and McCain before him. He is allowed to be "Clintonesque." Candidate Clinton is not.
(Candidate Clinton didn't quite say that? Earth to dude, four days later: she didn't say it at all!)
Inevitably, a candidate will say dumb things in the course of a long campaign; in this instance, Candidate Sanders said something that was basically dumb. But because he's been cast as the official "authentic" candidate, he gets a lot of leeway in spinning such matters. And, because of prevailing press corps culture, no one is going to examine that other question:
When he's pushed on matters of substance, is it possible that Candidate Sanders doesn't exactly know what he's talking about?
We don't know the answer to that. Because of the culture of the "press," we don't expect to find out.
Just for the record: Candidate Clinton has said some things along the way which are just flatly bogus. We'll post a few striking examples by the end of the week.
That said, narrative rules above all! Even she is allowed to misstate in certain pre-approved ways. It all depends on what type of inaccurate thing has been said!
RETURNING TOMORROW: The culture of incoherence!
MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016
Preview—One hundred years later: Starting tomorrow, we'll return to our ongoing study of the academic/journalistic/publishing phenomenon we've memorably dubbed "the culture of incoherence."
In this week's reports, we'll extend our study of last November's hour-long Nova program, Inside Einstein's Mind. After this week, we'll proceed to several weeks of rumination about the later Wittgenstein, king of the search for coherence.
At that point, we'll return to our perusal of Einstein-made-easy best-sellers and broadcasts. Concerning this week's course of study:
We'll start by reviewing the striking non-explanation explanation which occurs around the ten-minute mark in the Nova broadcast. To watch the whole program, click here.
At that point in its program, Nova is attempting to explain the general theory of relativity, which Einstein adumbrated in 1905, when he was just 26. As Nova explains the situation, it all comes down to "a brilliant thought experiment" which led Einstein to a "mind-blowing" realization.
What occurs in this brilliant experiment? As you may recall, a man is standing on a railway platform. A lady moves by on a fast-moving train.
Then, there are two lightning strikes. According to Nova, a mind-blowing conclusion results:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
It sounds impressive, but alas! When we watched that part of Nova's broadcast, we thought it offered one of the most obvious non-explanation explanations we had ever seen.
In our last week of reports on this subject, we offered our reason for saying that. This week, we'll make a small tiny minor attempt to be more fair to Nova. Here's how we'll proceed:
Tomorrow, we'll review the basic incoherence at the heart of Nova's presentation, and thus at the heart of its murky claim:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
Based on Nova's presentation, that's a very murky statement. This week, though, we'll try to be a bit fair.
We'll note that Nova was working fairly closely from Einstein's own 1916 book, Relativity: The Special and The General Theory, in that part of its hour-long broadcast. After reviewing Nova's presentation, we'll look at what Einstein said, in his own words, in that hundred-year-old book—a book he wrote in the hope that he could explain relativity to non-specialists.
We'll also look at Walter Isaacson's treatment of this topic. In his 2007 best-seller, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Isaacson tried to explain that thought experiment, just as Nova did.
(In his book, Isaacson says this thought experiment contains the great "eureka moment" which led to the "most famous [scientific] paper" of Einstein's entire career. See pages 123-125 for his muddled explanation.)
That thought experiment is described in Chapter 9 of Einstein's own book. One hundred years later, Isaacson and Nova have each tried to explain it.
Note: Because Einstein's chapters are quite short, his account of that thought experiment comes rather early in his book. To peruse the whole book, click here.
Nova has had a hundred years to get clear about Chapters 8 and 9 of Einstein's book. Let's put that another way:
Nova has had a hundred years to notice a very important fact. As with Nova and Isaacson, so too with Einstein himself. His explanation of that thought experiment is murky, clouded, unclear.
Important note:
Albert Einstein didn't gain fame as a writer of popular science. It isn't clear that he had those skills. There's no reason why he should have.
Beyond that, Isaacson tells an amusing story about the way Einstein determined that his book would be understandable to non-specialists. To recall his method, click here.
That method was destined to fail. That story reminds us that Albert Einstein wasn't a popular writer.
Einstein's explanation of his own thought process is murky, cloudy, unclear. That said, you know the way our culture goes. Given a hundred years to notice that fact, our professors and journalists have, inevitably, crafted their typical fail.
We live in an academic/journalistic culture which is devoted to incoherence. One hundred years later, our professors' treatment of Chapter 9 provides a case in point.
Tomorrow: Reviewing Nova's fail
After this week: On to the later Wittgenstein!
Preview—One hundred years later: Starting tomorrow, we'll return to our ongoing study of the academic/journalistic/publishing phenomenon we've memorably dubbed "the culture of incoherence."
In this week's reports, we'll extend our study of last November's hour-long Nova program, Inside Einstein's Mind. After this week, we'll proceed to several weeks of rumination about the later Wittgenstein, king of the search for coherence.
At that point, we'll return to our perusal of Einstein-made-easy best-sellers and broadcasts. Concerning this week's course of study:
We'll start by reviewing the striking non-explanation explanation which occurs around the ten-minute mark in the Nova broadcast. To watch the whole program, click here.
At that point in its program, Nova is attempting to explain the general theory of relativity, which Einstein adumbrated in 1905, when he was just 26. As Nova explains the situation, it all comes down to "a brilliant thought experiment" which led Einstein to a "mind-blowing" realization.
What occurs in this brilliant experiment? As you may recall, a man is standing on a railway platform. A lady moves by on a fast-moving train.
Then, there are two lightning strikes. According to Nova, a mind-blowing conclusion results:
NARRATOR: In a brilliant thought experiment, [Einstein] questions what "simultaneous" actually means, and sees that the flow of time is different for an observer that is moving versus one that is standing still.Based on this thought experiment, Nova says, Einstein reached a mind-blowing realization:
He imagines a man standing on a railway platform. Two bolts of lightning strike on either side of him.
The man is standing exactly halfway between them, and the light from each strike reaches his eyes at exactly the same moment. For him, the two strikes are simultaneous.
Then, Einstein imagines a woman on a fast-moving train traveling at close to the speed of light. What would she see?
As the light travels out from the strikes, the train is moving towards one and away from the other. Light from the front strike reaches her eyes first.
For the woman on the train, time elapses between the two strikes. For the man on the platform, there is no time between the strikes.
This simple thought has mind-blowing significance. Simultaneity, and the flow of time itself, depends on how you're moving.
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
It sounds impressive, but alas! When we watched that part of Nova's broadcast, we thought it offered one of the most obvious non-explanation explanations we had ever seen.
In our last week of reports on this subject, we offered our reason for saying that. This week, we'll make a small tiny minor attempt to be more fair to Nova. Here's how we'll proceed:
Tomorrow, we'll review the basic incoherence at the heart of Nova's presentation, and thus at the heart of its murky claim:
"Simultaneity...depends on how you're moving."
Based on Nova's presentation, that's a very murky statement. This week, though, we'll try to be a bit fair.
We'll note that Nova was working fairly closely from Einstein's own 1916 book, Relativity: The Special and The General Theory, in that part of its hour-long broadcast. After reviewing Nova's presentation, we'll look at what Einstein said, in his own words, in that hundred-year-old book—a book he wrote in the hope that he could explain relativity to non-specialists.
We'll also look at Walter Isaacson's treatment of this topic. In his 2007 best-seller, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Isaacson tried to explain that thought experiment, just as Nova did.
(In his book, Isaacson says this thought experiment contains the great "eureka moment" which led to the "most famous [scientific] paper" of Einstein's entire career. See pages 123-125 for his muddled explanation.)
That thought experiment is described in Chapter 9 of Einstein's own book. One hundred years later, Isaacson and Nova have each tried to explain it.
Note: Because Einstein's chapters are quite short, his account of that thought experiment comes rather early in his book. To peruse the whole book, click here.
Nova has had a hundred years to get clear about Chapters 8 and 9 of Einstein's book. Let's put that another way:
Nova has had a hundred years to notice a very important fact. As with Nova and Isaacson, so too with Einstein himself. His explanation of that thought experiment is murky, clouded, unclear.
Important note:
Albert Einstein didn't gain fame as a writer of popular science. It isn't clear that he had those skills. There's no reason why he should have.
Beyond that, Isaacson tells an amusing story about the way Einstein determined that his book would be understandable to non-specialists. To recall his method, click here.
That method was destined to fail. That story reminds us that Albert Einstein wasn't a popular writer.
Einstein's explanation of his own thought process is murky, cloudy, unclear. That said, you know the way our culture goes. Given a hundred years to notice that fact, our professors and journalists have, inevitably, crafted their typical fail.
We live in an academic/journalistic culture which is devoted to incoherence. One hundred years later, our professors' treatment of Chapter 9 provides a case in point.
Tomorrow: Reviewing Nova's fail
After this week: On to the later Wittgenstein!
Human capability watch: PolitiFact tries to quote Candidate Sanders!
SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2016
We humans aren't up to this task: Staggering? Remarkable? Astounding? Bizarre?
What word would you apply to PolitiFact's attempt to report the flap which broke out this Wednesday night when Candidate Sanders made this statement about Candidate Clinton:
"She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president."
The ensuing dispute was the type of silly, unfortunate flap which often occurs in campaigns. In this case, as in so many others, the real chaos began when we the humans attempted to discuss, or pretended to discuss, the silly, unfortunate flap.
As we've told you in the past, we the humans simply aren't up to such basic tasks. Quickly, a few examples:
In the past few days, we've been surprised to think that we might see the old Chris Matthews back.
Over the past eighteen years, Matthews went from vicious Clinton/Gore/Clinton attack dog to sycophantic Hillary Clinton supporter, all before a recent halting shift which seemed to harden this week. As we watched his weird performance on yesterday's Hardball, we flashed back to the decade in which we liberals sat and stared as Matthews seemed to do ownership's bidding, relentlessly savaging Candidate Gore and helping send Bush to the White House.
(Matthews was much more influential at that time, when there were many fewer cable "news shows.")
We saw flashes of the old Matthews this week. But then, hapless pseudo-journalism was involved in this week's flap from the start.
By some accounts, the flap began with this attempt at news reporting by CNN's Jeff Zeleny. The report displays extremely weak journalistic skills. (File under: "provocative paraphrase in the absence of direct quotation.")
The flap also involved Morning Joe, where slightly odd questioning of Candidate Clinton helped lay the groundwork for the brouhaha. (Morning Joe has been a state-of-the-art journalistic gong-show for most of the past year.)
That said, nothing can match what happened when the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact org attempted to fact-check the flap. Impossible? Amazing? Bizarre? What would be the appropriate word to describe this org's performance?
We've often warned you about a basic possibility. It often seems that we the humans simply aren't up to the task of performing basic journalism. Absent guidance from powerful gatekeepers, it often seems that we simply aren't sharp enough to conduct our own affairs.
(Down through the ages, literary greats have explored variants of this general notion. In recent weeks, we've often thought of The Grand Inquisitor, a famous piece which explores one variant of that idea.)
That said, we were amazed by PolitiFact's attempt to fact-check this latest flap. Its piece was written by C. Eugene Emery, a forty-year veteran of the Providence Journal. It was edited by Angie Drobnic Holan, who won a Pulitzer in 2009 with the PolitiFact team.
Good God! Holan is the editor of PolitiFact, full freaking stop! She and Emery aren't the inexperienced kids who now people so much of our press corps, helping owners save money on wages. A pair of veterans tried to fact-check what happened in this flap.
Holan edited Emery's piece, and she's a Pulitzer winner! That said, try to believe that PolitiFact's account started out like this:
That said, our report isn't an attempt to assess the performance of Candidate Clinton or Candidate Sanders. We're judging the PolitiFact org, and through them our whole "human race!"
Bizarre? Impossible? Beyond belief? With what expression would you describe what PolitiFact did in that highlighted passage—in the part of their report where they haplessly tried to quote what Sanders said?
Question:
Is any journalistic task so basic that our journalists can handle it? Below, you see the words Sanders actually said, as compared to PolitiFact's attempt at "quoting" his statement:
They omitted two words—"quote unquote." There was no reason to omit those words. PolitiFact provided no sign that words had been omitted.
Beyond that, those are actually important words in Sanders' statement that night. In a head-slapping act of incompetence, PolitiFact didn't record them!
Let's recall what we said above. We aren't trying to judge Clinton or Sanders here. We're assessing the competence of two veteran journalists, including one Pulitzer winner.
These journalists tried to quote a statement by Sanders. Strangely and weirdly, they failed.
Humans, can we talk? When you "quote" a statement by someone, you're supposed to record every word! If you decide to leave words out, you're supposed to show you left words out by using an ellipsis (a dot-dot-dot).
That said, you're not supposed to leave words out if the words are important. In this case, the words these giants chose to omit actually were.
Fellow humans, please! By saying "quote unquote," Sanders heightened the sense that he was quoting Candidate Clinton, which he actually wasn't doing.
For that reason, it's stunning to think that PolitiFact would simply decide to omit those words as they presented their "quotation."
Nothing will turn on this peculiar decision, of course. Partisans, fans, supporters and hustlers will present the facts of this flap in a wide array of ways. In the end, PolitiFact's weird account of what Sanders said will make no particular difference.
Having said that, let us also say this. Emery and Holan remind us of an important fact:
This is no journalistic act so basic and simple that our "press corps" is able to handle it. Within our ongoing American drama, the people cast in the role of professional journalists lack even the most basic skills.
It may seem hard to believe that two veteran journalists could have so much trouble quoting something somebody said. That said, we recall the various ways these life forms "quoted" Candidate Gore all through Campaign 2000.
It may be the most significant bungled "quotation" in modern political history. We refer to the claim which defined, transformed and decided that election:
Al Gore said he invented the Internet!
Presented that way, it isn't a quote; it's just an inventive paraphrase of a slightly jumbled statement Gore made in March 1999. At that time, though, we constantly told you this—the power to paraphrase is the power to spin.
During the twenty months of Campaign 2000, the truth of that adage was constantly proven as the mainstream press corps inventively paraphrased statements by Gore. That said, the mainstream press wasn't prepared to restrict itself to inventive paraphrase.
All too often, inventive paraphrases of Gore slipped inside quotation marks, thus becoming flatly bogus "quotations." Here was USA Today's Mimi Hall in June 1999, reporting Gore's baffling problems in the polls. Note her one-word "quotation:"
Mimi Hall was an experienced reporter; so are Emery and Holan. The moral to our story is this:
Absent rule by powerful gatekeepers, we the humans simply aren't up to even the most elementary tasks. The actors hired to pose as reporters keep making this fact crystal clear.
We the liberals sit on our ascots, too dumb and compliant to notice. "Look over there," we constantly cry. "Look how dumb Those People are!"
As we've told you for many years, we simply aren't up to this task.
We humans aren't up to this task: Staggering? Remarkable? Astounding? Bizarre?
What word would you apply to PolitiFact's attempt to report the flap which broke out this Wednesday night when Candidate Sanders made this statement about Candidate Clinton:
"She has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president."
The ensuing dispute was the type of silly, unfortunate flap which often occurs in campaigns. In this case, as in so many others, the real chaos began when we the humans attempted to discuss, or pretended to discuss, the silly, unfortunate flap.
As we've told you in the past, we the humans simply aren't up to such basic tasks. Quickly, a few examples:
In the past few days, we've been surprised to think that we might see the old Chris Matthews back.
Over the past eighteen years, Matthews went from vicious Clinton/Gore/Clinton attack dog to sycophantic Hillary Clinton supporter, all before a recent halting shift which seemed to harden this week. As we watched his weird performance on yesterday's Hardball, we flashed back to the decade in which we liberals sat and stared as Matthews seemed to do ownership's bidding, relentlessly savaging Candidate Gore and helping send Bush to the White House.
(Matthews was much more influential at that time, when there were many fewer cable "news shows.")
We saw flashes of the old Matthews this week. But then, hapless pseudo-journalism was involved in this week's flap from the start.
By some accounts, the flap began with this attempt at news reporting by CNN's Jeff Zeleny. The report displays extremely weak journalistic skills. (File under: "provocative paraphrase in the absence of direct quotation.")
The flap also involved Morning Joe, where slightly odd questioning of Candidate Clinton helped lay the groundwork for the brouhaha. (Morning Joe has been a state-of-the-art journalistic gong-show for most of the past year.)
That said, nothing can match what happened when the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact org attempted to fact-check the flap. Impossible? Amazing? Bizarre? What would be the appropriate word to describe this org's performance?
We've often warned you about a basic possibility. It often seems that we the humans simply aren't up to the task of performing basic journalism. Absent guidance from powerful gatekeepers, it often seems that we simply aren't sharp enough to conduct our own affairs.
(Down through the ages, literary greats have explored variants of this general notion. In recent weeks, we've often thought of The Grand Inquisitor, a famous piece which explores one variant of that idea.)
That said, we were amazed by PolitiFact's attempt to fact-check this latest flap. Its piece was written by C. Eugene Emery, a forty-year veteran of the Providence Journal. It was edited by Angie Drobnic Holan, who won a Pulitzer in 2009 with the PolitiFact team.
Good God! Holan is the editor of PolitiFact, full freaking stop! She and Emery aren't the inexperienced kids who now people so much of our press corps, helping owners save money on wages. A pair of veterans tried to fact-check what happened in this flap.
Holan edited Emery's piece, and she's a Pulitzer winner! That said, try to believe that PolitiFact's account started out like this:
POLITIFACT (4/7/16): Presidential candidates spend a lot of time explaining why they are the best qualified for the job. But now a brouhaha has broken out between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over whether the other is qualified at all.PolitiFact went on to judge Sanders' statement "Mostly False."
During an April 6 rally at Temple University in Philadelphia, Sanders contended that in the wake of Clinton's loss in Wisconsin, she is getting a little nervous. "And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, 'not qualified to be president,’ " he told the crowd.
Sanders then said, "I don't believe that she is qualified if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don't think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your Super PAC. I don't think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don't think you are qualified if you've supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs."
[...]
So is Sanders correct that Clinton has been saying the he was "not qualified to be president"?
That said, our report isn't an attempt to assess the performance of Candidate Clinton or Candidate Sanders. We're judging the PolitiFact org, and through them our whole "human race!"
Bizarre? Impossible? Beyond belief? With what expression would you describe what PolitiFact did in that highlighted passage—in the part of their report where they haplessly tried to quote what Sanders said?
Question:
Is any journalistic task so basic that our journalists can handle it? Below, you see the words Sanders actually said, as compared to PolitiFact's attempt at "quoting" his statement:
The words Sanders actually said:In the passage in question, Candidate Sanders said nineteen words. In its hapless attempt at quoting the hopeful, PolitiFact recorded just seventeen.
"And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president."
PolitiFact's attempt at quoting what Sanders said:
"And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, 'not qualified to be president,’ " he told the crowd.
They omitted two words—"quote unquote." There was no reason to omit those words. PolitiFact provided no sign that words had been omitted.
Beyond that, those are actually important words in Sanders' statement that night. In a head-slapping act of incompetence, PolitiFact didn't record them!
Let's recall what we said above. We aren't trying to judge Clinton or Sanders here. We're assessing the competence of two veteran journalists, including one Pulitzer winner.
These journalists tried to quote a statement by Sanders. Strangely and weirdly, they failed.
Humans, can we talk? When you "quote" a statement by someone, you're supposed to record every word! If you decide to leave words out, you're supposed to show you left words out by using an ellipsis (a dot-dot-dot).
That said, you're not supposed to leave words out if the words are important. In this case, the words these giants chose to omit actually were.
Fellow humans, please! By saying "quote unquote," Sanders heightened the sense that he was quoting Candidate Clinton, which he actually wasn't doing.
For that reason, it's stunning to think that PolitiFact would simply decide to omit those words as they presented their "quotation."
Nothing will turn on this peculiar decision, of course. Partisans, fans, supporters and hustlers will present the facts of this flap in a wide array of ways. In the end, PolitiFact's weird account of what Sanders said will make no particular difference.
Having said that, let us also say this. Emery and Holan remind us of an important fact:
This is no journalistic act so basic and simple that our "press corps" is able to handle it. Within our ongoing American drama, the people cast in the role of professional journalists lack even the most basic skills.
It may seem hard to believe that two veteran journalists could have so much trouble quoting something somebody said. That said, we recall the various ways these life forms "quoted" Candidate Gore all through Campaign 2000.
It may be the most significant bungled "quotation" in modern political history. We refer to the claim which defined, transformed and decided that election:
Al Gore said he invented the Internet!
Presented that way, it isn't a quote; it's just an inventive paraphrase of a slightly jumbled statement Gore made in March 1999. At that time, though, we constantly told you this—the power to paraphrase is the power to spin.
During the twenty months of Campaign 2000, the truth of that adage was constantly proven as the mainstream press corps inventively paraphrased statements by Gore. That said, the mainstream press wasn't prepared to restrict itself to inventive paraphrase.
All too often, inventive paraphrases of Gore slipped inside quotation marks, thus becoming flatly bogus "quotations." Here was USA Today's Mimi Hall in June 1999, reporting Gore's baffling problems in the polls. Note her one-word "quotation:"
HALL (6/2/99): Vice President Gore, lagging in early presidential polling and facing growing criticism for his sluggish campaign and stiff style, will formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on June 16.Back in March 1999, Gore never said "invent" or "invented" in his slightly jumbled comment about the Net. But so what? By now, the one word Candidate Gore never said had become the one word reporters like Hall were choosing to place inside quotes!
Gore's sudden decision to move up the date—after aides had said for months that he wouldn't announce until fall, then more recently said an announcement would come in July—follows a spate of bad publicity.
[...]
A series of negative news stories unnerved Gore's campaign staff, aides say. President Clinton told The New York Times he had been concerned about the campaign's lackluster start and had urged Gore to loosen up. And big Democratic donors complained publicly about disorganization in the campaign. A couple of Gore gaffes, including his assertion that he "invented" the Internet, didn't help.
Mimi Hall was an experienced reporter; so are Emery and Holan. The moral to our story is this:
Absent rule by powerful gatekeepers, we the humans simply aren't up to even the most elementary tasks. The actors hired to pose as reporters keep making this fact crystal clear.
We the liberals sit on our ascots, too dumb and compliant to notice. "Look over there," we constantly cry. "Look how dumb Those People are!"
As we've told you for many years, we simply aren't up to this task.
Campaign watch: Who is Montgomery Blair Sibley?
FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016
Cable star disgusted by salacious material again: Wednesday night, a certain major cable star found herself troubled, once again, by all the salacious material.
Near the end of her opening segment, she held up a copy of the National Enquirer. You could tell she found it completely disgusting. Also, she told us this:
The cable star returned to the salacious tabloid in her final segment. Once again, she held it up and told us how "raunchy" it is.
As she did, she presented her latest segment on the so-called D.C. Madam, who died in 2008. Truly, it was salacious stuff. But somebody had to pimp it.
Why was the cable star pushing this raunchy story again? It's all about a frequently disbarred lawyer named Montgomery Blair Sibley, who's a bit of a crackpot and of course a major ginormous birther.
Montgomery Blair Sibley comes from one of Maryland's finest very old families, or then again maybe not. His possible namesake abolitionist ancestor, Montgomery Blair, has his own Wikipedia page. A large high school in Maryland's Montgomery County is named for that Montgomery Blair, Lincoln's postmaster general.
Sibley himself is another story. He was once the attorney to the D.C. Madam. He says he wants to release her records, saying they may affect the presidential campaign.
For years, he's been under a restraining order not to release the records. He has petitioned the Supreme Court to vacate that order, and he says he'll release the records anyhoo if the Supreme Court says no.
That said, Sibley seems to be a serial crackpot, a major birther, and a small bit of a nut. A certain major cable star has now devoted several segments on her program to her fervent wish that Sibley will release the records and that they'll vindicate the unfairly treated Ted Cruz.
Disgustedly, she told us this at the end of Wednesday's show:
"Already, there's plenty of speculation about whether one of the presidential candidates might be mentioned in these records," the star disgustedly said.
"Today, the front page of the blessed National Enquirer makes insinuations about Ted Cruz's name being there, which, of course, sounds raunchy and implicating," she disgustedly continued, plainly feeling disgusted. She went on to disgustedly say that this is nothing but speculation, and that's it's sickening to think that the Enquirer would be spreading this crap around.
"The article itself amounts to absolutely nothing," she disgustedly said. "There's nothing substantive in it at all." This major cable star was disgusted, you can feel quite sure about that!
To read about Sibley's birther lunacies, you can just click here. Also, his 2012 White House campaign!
Our view? It's great to have a cable star who's willing to express her disgust with all these unfounded speculations about this fellow Cruz. Why, she'll even hold the Enquirer up, in two separate segments, as a way of letting us know that we should all try not to read it.
In recent weeks, this cable star has been disgusted by that "SALACIOUS AUDIO" down in Alabama, where a red state governor may have "shtupped" another person without getting the cable star's permission. Wednesday night, she made it plain that she's also disgusted by this "salacious" material concerning Candidate Cruz.
It would be very unfair to Candidate Cruz if people believed all those rank speculations. This cable star was eager to tell us how inappropriate such unsourced material is.
The other stars ignore this stuff! Only one big star complains.
Cable star disgusted by salacious material again: Wednesday night, a certain major cable star found herself troubled, once again, by all the salacious material.
Near the end of her opening segment, she held up a copy of the National Enquirer. You could tell she found it completely disgusting. Also, she told us this:
MAJOR CABLE STAR (4/6/16): If the Republican Party looks like it might seriously consider giving Ted Cruz the nomination, you should expect to very quickly learn a lot more about Ted Cruz's past, because now everybody's going to be trying to figure out who he is. And I think there's a lot of substantive reporting to be done there, because he has had sort of a strange rise to power.You could tell she just hates the salacious stuff—like, for example, that new issue of the Enquirer, which she held up and said she'd return to later.
Honestly, there's also a lot of junk out there about him. Like today's National Enquirer, running their second big Ted Cruz story today, which has no sourcing, it makes no specific allegations, it has no quotes, but it sure sounds salacious and it's on the front page of the National Enquirer. We'll have more on that later.
The cable star returned to the salacious tabloid in her final segment. Once again, she held it up and told us how "raunchy" it is.
As she did, she presented her latest segment on the so-called D.C. Madam, who died in 2008. Truly, it was salacious stuff. But somebody had to pimp it.
Why was the cable star pushing this raunchy story again? It's all about a frequently disbarred lawyer named Montgomery Blair Sibley, who's a bit of a crackpot and of course a major ginormous birther.
Montgomery Blair Sibley comes from one of Maryland's finest very old families, or then again maybe not. His possible namesake abolitionist ancestor, Montgomery Blair, has his own Wikipedia page. A large high school in Maryland's Montgomery County is named for that Montgomery Blair, Lincoln's postmaster general.
Sibley himself is another story. He was once the attorney to the D.C. Madam. He says he wants to release her records, saying they may affect the presidential campaign.
For years, he's been under a restraining order not to release the records. He has petitioned the Supreme Court to vacate that order, and he says he'll release the records anyhoo if the Supreme Court says no.
That said, Sibley seems to be a serial crackpot, a major birther, and a small bit of a nut. A certain major cable star has now devoted several segments on her program to her fervent wish that Sibley will release the records and that they'll vindicate the unfairly treated Ted Cruz.
Disgustedly, she told us this at the end of Wednesday's show:
MAJOR CABLE STAR: Whether or not the Supreme Court rules in his favor and lifts this gag order, Mr. Sibley has made it clear that he wants these phone records out there. He says if his requests are denied, he'll release these files anyway. Already, there's plenty of speculation about whether one of the presidential candidates might be mentioned in these records.You could tell the cable star was sickened by what the Enquirer had done.
Today, the front page of the blessed National Enquirer makes insinuations about Ted Cruz's name being there, which, of course, sounds raunchy and implicating, right? But the article itself amounts to absolutely nothing. There's nothing substantive in it at all.
Sooner or later, though, the story is going to get settled, if Mr. Sibley has these records and they do have what he says they have in them and he releases them; it's just a matter of time. It remains to be seen whether this thing is going to get settled in the courts or outside of it.
That does it for us tonight. We'll see you again tomorrow.
"Already, there's plenty of speculation about whether one of the presidential candidates might be mentioned in these records," the star disgustedly said.
"Today, the front page of the blessed National Enquirer makes insinuations about Ted Cruz's name being there, which, of course, sounds raunchy and implicating," she disgustedly continued, plainly feeling disgusted. She went on to disgustedly say that this is nothing but speculation, and that's it's sickening to think that the Enquirer would be spreading this crap around.
"The article itself amounts to absolutely nothing," she disgustedly said. "There's nothing substantive in it at all." This major cable star was disgusted, you can feel quite sure about that!
To read about Sibley's birther lunacies, you can just click here. Also, his 2012 White House campaign!
Our view? It's great to have a cable star who's willing to express her disgust with all these unfounded speculations about this fellow Cruz. Why, she'll even hold the Enquirer up, in two separate segments, as a way of letting us know that we should all try not to read it.
In recent weeks, this cable star has been disgusted by that "SALACIOUS AUDIO" down in Alabama, where a red state governor may have "shtupped" another person without getting the cable star's permission. Wednesday night, she made it plain that she's also disgusted by this "salacious" material concerning Candidate Cruz.
It would be very unfair to Candidate Cruz if people believed all those rank speculations. This cable star was eager to tell us how inappropriate such unsourced material is.
The other stars ignore this stuff! Only one big star complains.
Campaign watch: When do misstatements turn into lies?
FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016
From Tsongas and Bradley to Sanders: As everyone knows, Bernie Sanders is the "authentic" candidate in this year's Democratic race.
In the past quarter century, there has often been such a candidate. In 1992, Paul Tsongas was the authentic candidate, as opposed to the untrustworthy Bill Clinton.
In 1999, Bill Bradley was dubbed the authentic truth-teller. He was running against Candidate Gore, who had a serious problem with the truth, just like his dishonest boss.
This year, Candidate Sanders is highly authentic, unlike Candidate Clinton. If Sanders wins the nomination, we'll be first in line to vote for him, as would have been true with Tsongas and Bradley before him.
That said, we thought we saw an old pattern emerge on our TV machine last night. The whole thing started with Jane Sanders' appearance on the Maddow Show.
Jane Sanders is a major adviser to her husband's campaign. After substantial song and dance, she seemed to tell Rachel that Bernie was trying to dump this whole "unqualified" thing.
Bernie Sanders has moved on, Jane Sanders plainly said.
Jane Sanders even seemed to agree with Maddow on a very basic point. Candidate Clinton never said that Candidate Sanders was unqualified.
That exchange went like this:
But Sanders seemed to acknowledge, at several points, that Clinton never actually made the statement in question—that reporters simply took it as her implication.
In reality, "reporters" tend to say the things that feed their narratives and stimulate their wars. At any rate, Jane Sanders then proceeded to say that Bernie has said good-bye to all that:
Clinton never actually said that Sanders was unqualified. In Jane Sanders' generous assessment, that was simply what those honest reporters thought they heard!
Coming from the authentic camp, that struck us as an air-filled presentation. But then, just two hours later, there was Candidate Sanders himself, appearing with Seth Meyers.
As this exchange occurred, we thought of Tsongas and Bradley and others. We also found ourselves asking a question: When does a basic misstatement turn into a lie?
To watch that exchange, click here. Let's return to the statement by Sanders which caught our attention:
"It was said after she and her campaign said that I was unqualified."
There the authentic candidate goes again, one of the analysts cried.
As we've told you in the past, it happens every time. Whoever is running against a Clinton or Gore is dubbed more honest, more authentic. Apparently as a result, this too happens every time:
When these candidates come to see that they're receiving that slack from the press, they tend to take advantage by "misstating."
In 1992, everyone knew that Tsongas was the honest one, while Clinton was slick and dishonest. Later, we learned that Tsongas had lied about the state of his health—and that he would have died in office had he gone to the White House.
In 1999, the press corps was especially sure that Candidate Bradley was honest and authentic, especially compared to Gore, who just couldn't stop his inexplicable lying. By December of that year, Bradley was disgracing himself with the utterly bogus claim that Candidate Gore was the race-baiting fellow who brought us Willie Horton.
(A few years before, in his best-selling book, Bradley had explicitly explained how false that old RNC canard actually was. Now that he'd been deemed honest/authentic, he had room to "misstate.")
Saint McCain was also deemed honest and authentic that year. Result? By the South Carolina and Michigan primaries, he was lying through his teeth about his beliefs and his campaign's actions. Later, he apologized for one of his lies in South Carolina. Inevitably, the press corps swore that this apology once again showed how authentic and honest he was.
Last night, the more authentic candidate appeared with Seth Meyers. Rather quickly, he repeated a claim that simply ain't true. As with Trump, so with Sanders—even his wife can't seem to stop him!
In November, we'll be first in line to vote for Candidate Sanders. That said, this ancient, tremendously stupid pattern really does get a bit old.
From Tsongas and Bradley to Sanders: As everyone knows, Bernie Sanders is the "authentic" candidate in this year's Democratic race.
In the past quarter century, there has often been such a candidate. In 1992, Paul Tsongas was the authentic candidate, as opposed to the untrustworthy Bill Clinton.
In 1999, Bill Bradley was dubbed the authentic truth-teller. He was running against Candidate Gore, who had a serious problem with the truth, just like his dishonest boss.
This year, Candidate Sanders is highly authentic, unlike Candidate Clinton. If Sanders wins the nomination, we'll be first in line to vote for him, as would have been true with Tsongas and Bradley before him.
That said, we thought we saw an old pattern emerge on our TV machine last night. The whole thing started with Jane Sanders' appearance on the Maddow Show.
Jane Sanders is a major adviser to her husband's campaign. After substantial song and dance, she seemed to tell Rachel that Bernie was trying to dump this whole "unqualified" thing.
Bernie Sanders has moved on, Jane Sanders plainly said.
Jane Sanders even seemed to agree with Maddow on a very basic point. Candidate Clinton never said that Candidate Sanders was unqualified.
That exchange went like this:
MADDOW (4/7/16): I don't mean to get too granular and specific about it, but I am struck by the fact that she was asked, over and over again, "Is he not qualified? Is that what you're saying? Is he not qualified? Is he not qualified?" And she wouldn't say, "No, he's not qualified." She was asked three times.There was a lot of song and dance, and a lot of air, in Jane Sanders' full discussion of this matter. That's especially true since she represents the more honest, authentic campaign.
SANDERS: She also didn't say, "Of course he is."
MADDOW: "Yes he is." Right.
SANDERS: But if you look up in the definition of what unqualified is, and read a lot of things that she and her surrogates were saying, that's why reporters—
MADDOW: You think that was the implication.
SANDERS: That was why the reporters saw it as the implication.
But Sanders seemed to acknowledge, at several points, that Clinton never actually made the statement in question—that reporters simply took it as her implication.
In reality, "reporters" tend to say the things that feed their narratives and stimulate their wars. At any rate, Jane Sanders then proceeded to say that Bernie has said good-bye to all that:
JANE SANDERS (4/7/16): Now, I think they should all go back to the issues and deal with that and Bernie—Bernie has moved on. He has said, OK, let's not use the word "unqualified." Let's use the word "contrast." Why do I think I'm better than her on trade, on Keystone pipeline? Your story just now, I mean, he was very much opposed to it. Secretary Clinton was for it.Bernie has moved on, she said. He has said, "Let's not use the word unqualified." But along the way, she repeatedly acknowledged the obvious:
Clinton never actually said that Sanders was unqualified. In Jane Sanders' generous assessment, that was simply what those honest reporters thought they heard!
Coming from the authentic camp, that struck us as an air-filled presentation. But then, just two hours later, there was Candidate Sanders himself, appearing with Seth Meyers.
As this exchange occurred, we thought of Tsongas and Bradley and others. We also found ourselves asking a question: When does a basic misstatement turn into a lie?
MEYERS (4/7/16): A lot of news this week. You made a comment about Hillary Clinton being unqualified for the office of president. Is that something you regret saying?The more authentic candidate avoided that rejoinder for a while, then said, “I hope very much that we can have an issue-oriented campaign...But if people attack me and distort my record, we will respond.”
SANDERS: Well, it was said after she and her campaign said that I was unqualified.
MEYERS: Well, I didn't hear her say you were unqualified. I heard her fail to say you were qualified. But I didn't—she didn't say unqualified.
To watch that exchange, click here. Let's return to the statement by Sanders which caught our attention:
"It was said after she and her campaign said that I was unqualified."
There the authentic candidate goes again, one of the analysts cried.
As we've told you in the past, it happens every time. Whoever is running against a Clinton or Gore is dubbed more honest, more authentic. Apparently as a result, this too happens every time:
When these candidates come to see that they're receiving that slack from the press, they tend to take advantage by "misstating."
In 1992, everyone knew that Tsongas was the honest one, while Clinton was slick and dishonest. Later, we learned that Tsongas had lied about the state of his health—and that he would have died in office had he gone to the White House.
In 1999, the press corps was especially sure that Candidate Bradley was honest and authentic, especially compared to Gore, who just couldn't stop his inexplicable lying. By December of that year, Bradley was disgracing himself with the utterly bogus claim that Candidate Gore was the race-baiting fellow who brought us Willie Horton.
(A few years before, in his best-selling book, Bradley had explicitly explained how false that old RNC canard actually was. Now that he'd been deemed honest/authentic, he had room to "misstate.")
Saint McCain was also deemed honest and authentic that year. Result? By the South Carolina and Michigan primaries, he was lying through his teeth about his beliefs and his campaign's actions. Later, he apologized for one of his lies in South Carolina. Inevitably, the press corps swore that this apology once again showed how authentic and honest he was.
Last night, the more authentic candidate appeared with Seth Meyers. Rather quickly, he repeated a claim that simply ain't true. As with Trump, so with Sanders—even his wife can't seem to stop him!
In November, we'll be first in line to vote for Candidate Sanders. That said, this ancient, tremendously stupid pattern really does get a bit old.
THE TRIBE IN THE MIRROR: Paul Krugman's ugly motive revealed!
FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016
Part 4—One more of our brilliant tribe's bombs: Republican voters are "bat-shit crazy," full stop.
Jonathan Chait, who has never been wrong, thoughtfully told us that back on March 29.
He didn't say that these voters are wrong, or wrong in his opinion. He didn't content himself with saying that these voters are misinformed—that they've been deliberately misinformed by arrays of corporate elites.
He said Those People are "bat-shit crazy," a type of judgment which feels much better. He wasted no time with qualifiers, with words like some or many. He didn't drop any R-bombs that day, but his headline referred to "Haters."
Chait was indulging himself in one of our great tribal pleasures. Over There, Those People are very dumb. The Others are stupid, in fact.
Life forms like Chait have reasoned this way since our ancestors crawled from the swamp. Generally, a tribe's intellectual leaders—sun gods like Chait—have reasoned this way. After that, they've sent their spear-chuckers to war.
For decades, our tribe has loved the idea that The Others are massively stupid. In fairness, it's easy for Us to get this impression, given the massive intellectual brilliance we constantly see Over Here.
What does Chait see when he surveys our tribe? He sees such brilliance as this:
We think we should judge a 68-year-old candidate on things she thought when she was 15. A selective account of her thoughts as a high school sophomore helps define her "atrocious race record."
Chait also sees brilliance like this:
We geniuses may decide to let Candidate Trump get elected. This sublimely sagacious act will bring on the revolution!
That said, there's more, much more. We also find ourselves diagnosing the anti-Semitism of the running dog Paul Krugman. That chapter in our tribe's unfolding intellectual history tends to go something like this:
As such rodents always do, the anti-Semite is trying to pose as the victim today. Right at the start of this morning's column, Krugman slickly bellows about the way he's been treated:
People, pay no attention to that! It's just the intellectuals again! They're trying to confuse you!
Krugman's analysis of the big banks will produce zero discussion. Our "press corps" doesn't discuss such topics. If we want to be truthful for once, we liberals avoid such talk too.
As Press Corps Barbie once memorably said, math—and discussing the big banks—is hard! "Immediately accusing" deviants like Krugman is the better road. This recalls the time when the running dog Krugman had the A-S bomb dropped on his head.
It was Friday, March 11. In his column, the running dog said that Candidate Sanders had been "demagoguing" the issue of trade.
The D-bomb is a divisive term. We'd be slow to use it ourselves, whether here or anywhere else.
For our money, Krugman may sometimes be a bit tone deaf about such political matters. But out in beautiful Mission Viejo, "first responder" Rima Regas understood what he had done.
With amazing frequency, Regas often posts the first comment to columns in the Times. Typically, she then appends a second comment to her own original comment. Frequently, this second comment links us to something she's written somewhere else.
On this day, the first responder posted a two-part comment. In Part 2, the "visionary from Viejo" explained Paul Krugman's "blind rage."
Regas speaks for herself, no one else. But our own brilliant tribe reasons this way with amazing frequency:
To Krugman, Candidate Sanders is "a Brooklyn Jew who looks and sounds like a ghetto Jew who made it." By way of contrast, Krugman has "made a meticulous conscious effort to shed every shred of [his] Judaism to achieve a level of parity with what we used to call the WASP."
In short, out came an A-S bomb. Attitudes like Krugman's can't be allowed to stand.
Everything is possible, of course, including this explanation. It's also true that Regas is just one person, just like everyone else.
It's silly to think that Regas speaks for everyone else in our glorious tribe; or for most people in our tribe; or even for many such people, even though a fair number of subsequent commenters said she seemed to have nailed it.
This particular first responder is just one person. She doesn't speak for our whole tribe, or for anyone else at all. She speaks for herself.
We assume that she's a good decent person, although we think she may be inclined to get over her skis at times, perhaps in something resembling the approach Krugman describes today. That said, this general impulse—the impulse to drop bombs on the heads of those whose views we judge to be wrong—is extremely widespread in our self-impressed tribe.
In one way, our instincts don't quite make sense. If Those People are so stupid, why do they have to be racist bigoted xenophobe nativists too? Why can't they just be stupidly wrong? Why do they have to be evil?
Whatever the answer, it's clear that our tribe tends to treasure both stories. They're our most basic tribal narratives. And when we drop our various bombs, we tend to be extremely lazy—or perhaps, just very dumb—about our use of qualifiers, like many, a few or some or "maybe like ten percent."
Instead, we love to tell the world that Trump supporters are racists, full stop! We may include a grudging statement saying we don't mean all Those People. But that's about as far as we'll go in denying ourselves tribal joy.
In our view, our performance when we "reason" this way tends to be very dumb on the merits, equally bad on the politics. But now, we're at the end of the week, and we haven't gotten to the low-IQ work we had in mind at the start of the week, when we said we'd be taking a look at the tribe in the mirror.
That said, our low-IQ work when we drop our bombs is extremely widespread. It can be found wherever our tribe exhibits our admittedly flawless work.
Hillary Clinton was wrong at 15! Letting Trump win will produce the revolution! Krugman says Sanders is wrong on the banks because he hates that kind of Jew! And after that, we reach Dana Milbank's attempt to explain his use of our bombs—to justify the bombs he keeps dropping on Those People's heads.
We're about to tell you the world's biggest secret. Brace yourselves. Here it is:
Over Here, we aren't super sharp! Our analytical skills are extremely weak. Our love for our bombs is quite strong.
Over Here, we aren't real sharp. In that sense, we're not unlike Those People, The Others, the ones found Over There.
That said:
All through the annals of time, the endless tribes who prayed for war have been unable to see such things. The Others have always been evil and dumb. One's own tribe has always been flawless.
This is the way our wars come on. It's also how Ron Paul wins.
Next week: Milbank and an array of bombers help attain Ron Paul's dream
Ron Paul's dream: Ron Paul's dream—let's dissolve into many small republics!—is now visiting war-torn Belgium.
For more information, click here. As we keep dropping our low-IQ bombs, we help bring that dream Over Here.
Part 4—One more of our brilliant tribe's bombs: Republican voters are "bat-shit crazy," full stop.
Jonathan Chait, who has never been wrong, thoughtfully told us that back on March 29.
He didn't say that these voters are wrong, or wrong in his opinion. He didn't content himself with saying that these voters are misinformed—that they've been deliberately misinformed by arrays of corporate elites.
He said Those People are "bat-shit crazy," a type of judgment which feels much better. He wasted no time with qualifiers, with words like some or many. He didn't drop any R-bombs that day, but his headline referred to "Haters."
Chait was indulging himself in one of our great tribal pleasures. Over There, Those People are very dumb. The Others are stupid, in fact.
Life forms like Chait have reasoned this way since our ancestors crawled from the swamp. Generally, a tribe's intellectual leaders—sun gods like Chait—have reasoned this way. After that, they've sent their spear-chuckers to war.
For decades, our tribe has loved the idea that The Others are massively stupid. In fairness, it's easy for Us to get this impression, given the massive intellectual brilliance we constantly see Over Here.
What does Chait see when he surveys our tribe? He sees such brilliance as this:
We think we should judge a 68-year-old candidate on things she thought when she was 15. A selective account of her thoughts as a high school sophomore helps define her "atrocious race record."
Chait also sees brilliance like this:
We geniuses may decide to let Candidate Trump get elected. This sublimely sagacious act will bring on the revolution!
That said, there's more, much more. We also find ourselves diagnosing the anti-Semitism of the running dog Paul Krugman. That chapter in our tribe's unfolding intellectual history tends to go something like this:
As such rodents always do, the anti-Semite is trying to pose as the victim today. Right at the start of this morning's column, Krugman slickly bellows about the way he's been treated:
KRUGMAN (4/8/16): From the beginning, many and probably most liberal policy wonks were skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues—including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform—he seemed to go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic.Krugman goes on to pretend to discuss his concerns about Candidate Sanders' policy views concerning the big banks."
Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these concerns were raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about their hero of being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?
People, pay no attention to that! It's just the intellectuals again! They're trying to confuse you!
Krugman's analysis of the big banks will produce zero discussion. Our "press corps" doesn't discuss such topics. If we want to be truthful for once, we liberals avoid such talk too.
As Press Corps Barbie once memorably said, math—and discussing the big banks—is hard! "Immediately accusing" deviants like Krugman is the better road. This recalls the time when the running dog Krugman had the A-S bomb dropped on his head.
It was Friday, March 11. In his column, the running dog said that Candidate Sanders had been "demagoguing" the issue of trade.
The D-bomb is a divisive term. We'd be slow to use it ourselves, whether here or anywhere else.
For our money, Krugman may sometimes be a bit tone deaf about such political matters. But out in beautiful Mission Viejo, "first responder" Rima Regas understood what he had done.
With amazing frequency, Regas often posts the first comment to columns in the Times. Typically, she then appends a second comment to her own original comment. Frequently, this second comment links us to something she's written somewhere else.
On this day, the first responder posted a two-part comment. In Part 2, the "visionary from Viejo" explained Paul Krugman's "blind rage."
Regas speaks for herself, no one else. But our own brilliant tribe reasons this way with amazing frequency:
REGAS (3/11/16): What is dismaying are the lengths to which Paul Krugman has gone to disparage Bernie Sanders. Why?Finally, we had our answer. Krugman's blind rage could be explained:
Other than the ultra-Orthodox there are varying degrees of Jewishness from conservative to reform, who look and sound as most Americans in their locales, but are still unmistakably Jewish. After that, we have varying levels of assimilated Jews. There are those who, while they are not observant, like Bernie Sanders, are unmistakably Jewish not only in their outward appearance and manner of speech, but in their culture, values and thinking. Lastly, there are those who made a meticulous conscious effort to shed every shred of their Judaism to achieve a level of parity with what we used to call the WASP. These are your secular high-achievers. Educated at the finest schools, their mannerisms are Waspish, right down to their speech. The inside is as clean of their origin as the outside.
What makes a member of the intelligentsia with a carefully manicured atribal persona tick? A Brooklyn Jew who looks and sounds like a ghetto Jew who made it.
Watching Paul Krugman's blind rage at Bernie Sanders has been baffling. So virulent is the hate that Krugman has been willing to eschew long-held positions just so he can demolish the object of his disdain.
Paul writes about hate-filled Sanders Twitter timelines. Judge for yourselves. Two days' worth, right here:
The ugliness has sourced from here and much of the rest of the mainstream media. Et tu, Brother Krugman, projecting much?
To Krugman, Candidate Sanders is "a Brooklyn Jew who looks and sounds like a ghetto Jew who made it." By way of contrast, Krugman has "made a meticulous conscious effort to shed every shred of [his] Judaism to achieve a level of parity with what we used to call the WASP."
In short, out came an A-S bomb. Attitudes like Krugman's can't be allowed to stand.
Everything is possible, of course, including this explanation. It's also true that Regas is just one person, just like everyone else.
It's silly to think that Regas speaks for everyone else in our glorious tribe; or for most people in our tribe; or even for many such people, even though a fair number of subsequent commenters said she seemed to have nailed it.
This particular first responder is just one person. She doesn't speak for our whole tribe, or for anyone else at all. She speaks for herself.
We assume that she's a good decent person, although we think she may be inclined to get over her skis at times, perhaps in something resembling the approach Krugman describes today. That said, this general impulse—the impulse to drop bombs on the heads of those whose views we judge to be wrong—is extremely widespread in our self-impressed tribe.
In one way, our instincts don't quite make sense. If Those People are so stupid, why do they have to be racist bigoted xenophobe nativists too? Why can't they just be stupidly wrong? Why do they have to be evil?
Whatever the answer, it's clear that our tribe tends to treasure both stories. They're our most basic tribal narratives. And when we drop our various bombs, we tend to be extremely lazy—or perhaps, just very dumb—about our use of qualifiers, like many, a few or some or "maybe like ten percent."
Instead, we love to tell the world that Trump supporters are racists, full stop! We may include a grudging statement saying we don't mean all Those People. But that's about as far as we'll go in denying ourselves tribal joy.
In our view, our performance when we "reason" this way tends to be very dumb on the merits, equally bad on the politics. But now, we're at the end of the week, and we haven't gotten to the low-IQ work we had in mind at the start of the week, when we said we'd be taking a look at the tribe in the mirror.
That said, our low-IQ work when we drop our bombs is extremely widespread. It can be found wherever our tribe exhibits our admittedly flawless work.
Hillary Clinton was wrong at 15! Letting Trump win will produce the revolution! Krugman says Sanders is wrong on the banks because he hates that kind of Jew! And after that, we reach Dana Milbank's attempt to explain his use of our bombs—to justify the bombs he keeps dropping on Those People's heads.
We're about to tell you the world's biggest secret. Brace yourselves. Here it is:
Over Here, we aren't super sharp! Our analytical skills are extremely weak. Our love for our bombs is quite strong.
Over Here, we aren't real sharp. In that sense, we're not unlike Those People, The Others, the ones found Over There.
That said:
All through the annals of time, the endless tribes who prayed for war have been unable to see such things. The Others have always been evil and dumb. One's own tribe has always been flawless.
This is the way our wars come on. It's also how Ron Paul wins.
Next week: Milbank and an array of bombers help attain Ron Paul's dream
Ron Paul's dream: Ron Paul's dream—let's dissolve into many small republics!—is now visiting war-torn Belgium.
For more information, click here. As we keep dropping our low-IQ bombs, we help bring that dream Over Here.
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