28-Oct-12 WV-Berlusconi threatens Italy's government

[John]

28-Oct-12 World View -- Silvio Berlusconi threatens to bring down Italy's government


Burma acknowledges a genocidal scorched-earth policy against Muslim Rohingyas

** 28-Oct-12 World View -- Silvio Berlusconi threatens to bring down Italy's government
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 28#e121028



Contents:
Pakistan's Imran Khan detained by US immigration during fund-raising trip
Burma acknowledges a genocidal scorched-earth policy against Muslim Rohingyas
Former Carter aide calls activist press a 'fundamental threat to democracy'
Silvio Berlusconi threatens to bring down Italy's government with him
Barack Obama unable to do math beyond seventh grade


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Pakistan, Imran Khan, Canada,
Burma, Myanmar, Rakhine State, Rohingya,
Pat Caddell, Jimmy Carter

[Higgenbotham]

Appearing on the Tonight Show earlier this week, President Barack Obama was asked about helping his daughters with homework, and said:

"Well, the math stuff I was fine with up until about seventh grade. But Malia is now a freshman in High School and I’m pretty lost."

This explains a number of things about the last four years. I have no idea how much math Mitt Romney understands, but it would be nice for our country's President, whoever he is, to at least be able to do simple algebra and geometry. In fact, he'd know a lot more about how the world works if he understood a little calculus as well.

What does it say about Harvard Law School that someone can graduate barely able to do 7th grade math? As an MIT graduate, I can say that this confirms a number of things that MIT students say about Harvard.

As I've written many times, the analysts on CNBC are too stupid to be able to a simple division of prices by earnings, to get a correct price/earnings ratio. They earn multi-million dollar bonuses, but they can't do simple math. Maybe they all went to Harvard Business School.

Technical competence doesn't matter in this society - that's why Obama got elected.

What "everyone" instinctively or otherwise understands is the real skill that gets you somewhere in America is knowing how to waddle up to the window for the biggest bailout. You can't need a bailout if you're competent. Incompetence pays - to the tune of billions if you have the waddling skills of a Jamie Dimon. Obama himself said in admiration that Jamie is "one of the best bankers we've got."

Obama apparently thinks it's really debonair and posh to either admit or feign ignorance for something as inconsequential in this society as math skills, yet shovel out hundreds of billions for education for worthless (post-collapse) degrees like the one he has.

I have had a chance to observe quite a few companies in the U.S. from the inside, and have spotted a certain constancy in the staffing profile. At the top, there is a group of highly compensated senior lunch-eaters. They tend to spend all of their time pleasing each other in various ways, big and small. They often hold advanced degrees in disciplines such as Technical Schmoozing and Relativistic Bean-counting. They are obsessive on the subject of money, and cultivate a posh country set atmosphere, even if they are just one generation out of the coal mines. Ask them to solve a technical problem — and they will politely demur, often taking the opportunity to flash their wit with a self-deprecating joke or two.

Somewhat further down the hierarchy are the people who actually do the work. They tend to have fewer social graces and communication skills, but they do know how to get the work done. Among them are found the technical innovators, who are often the company's raison d'être.

More often than not, the senior lunch-eaters at the top are native-born Americans, and, more often than not, the ones lower down are either visiting foreigners or immigrants. These find themselves in a variety of situations, from the working visa holders who are often forced to choose between keeping their job and going home, to those who are waiting for a green card and must play their other cards just right, to those who have one, to citizens.

The natives at the top always try to standardize the job descriptions and lower the pay scale of the immigrants at the bottom, playing them against each other, while trying to portray themselves as super-achieving entrepreneurial mavericks who can't be pinned down to a mere set of marketable skills. The opposite is often the case: the natives are often the commodity items, and would perform similar functions whether their business were biotechnology or salted fish, while those who work for them may be unique specialists, doing what has never been done before.

It is no surprise that this situation should have come about. For the last few generations, native-born Americans have preferred disciplines such as law, communications, and business administration, while immigrants and foreigners tended to choose the sciences and engineering. All their lives the natives were told to expect prosperity without end, and so they felt safe in joining professions that are mere embroidery on the fabric of an affluent society.

This process became known as "brain drain" — America's extraction of talent from foreign lands, to its advantage, and to their detriment. This flow of brain power is likely to reverse direction, leaving the U.S. even less capable of finding ways to cope with its economic predicament. This may mean that, even in areas where there will be ample scope for innovation and development, such as restoration of rail service, or renewable energy, America may find itself without the necessary talent to make it happen.

[shoshin]

Don't you recognize a self-deprecating joke, John??for goodness sakes!

[John]

Don't you recognize a self-deprecating joke, John??for goodness sakes!

You really think that he's able to solve a quadratic equation? I don't.
I wonder if Romney can?

[John]

There were two times in the 1970s when I saw Walter Cronkite make
really stupid mistakes about percentages, indicating that he couldn't
even do fourth grade math. On both occasions, he re-interpreted
percentages to further his political agenda. At least it's nice to
know that our President has gone beyond fourth grade.

[Higgenbotham]

You really think that he's able to solve a quadratic equation? I don't.
I wonder if Romney can?

I think both of them could if you laid the equation out that is to be solved, explained what a, b, and c are, then gave them the quadratic formula. Otherwise, if they haven't used the formula in the past year, I doubt either would remember it.

If you put an equation in front of them like x2 - 4x - 21 = 0, and asked them to give both solutions in less than 15 seconds by just looking at it, I doubt either of them could do it. I would wonder what fraction of the US adult population could. Maybe somewhere between 0.1 and 1%?

[Higgenbotham]

I worked in a manufacturing plant that employed a lot of technicians and engineers. Maintenance was working with a long section of pipe, I think it was 4 inches in inside diameter. The pipe was coiled (it was a heat exchanger). The maintenance manager (he was over the 3 shifts of maintenance in the plant) was trying to figure out how much oil was in the pipe.

The cool thing about the Internet is I can now go to his linkedin profile and get his background. It says, among other things:

"Past: Director of Engineering at PepsiCo - Quaker Oats
Education: US Navy Nuclear Power School"

We were working in a plant owned by PepsiCo and apparently he worked his way all the way to a Director of Engineering position at the company (without knowing how to do high school geometry - explained below).

He said we have a section of pipe so many feet long (it seems like it was somewhere around 150 feet long) lying horizontally and there's one inch of oil in the bottom of it. We want to drain it into a container. How much oil is in the pipe?

I would guess 1 person in 5 who has worked their way to a Director of Engineering position at a US corporation could solve that problem.

PS - I changed the ID to 4 inches. This way a student can get an exact solution to the area without using a calculator. The answer is the area covered by the oil is 4*pi/3 - 2 (square inches). Knowing that area, the engineer could then easily calculate the volume of oil.

I think this is a good problem for a high school math teacher to put in front of their class.

[John]

Dear Higgie,

> I think both of them could if you laid the equation out that is to
> be solved, explained what a, b, and c are, then gave them the
> quadratic formula. Otherwise, if they haven't used the formula in
> the past year, I doubt either would remember it.

> If you put an equation in front of them like x2 - 4x - 21 = 0, and
> asked them to give both solutions in less than 15 seconds by just
> looking at it, I doubt either of them could do it. I would wonder
> what fraction of the US adult population could. Maybe somewhere
> between 0.1 and 1%?

I believe that what Obama said is that he can't solve a quadratic
equation no matter how much time he has, even with his daughter's
textbook in front of him.

Recall that the quadratic formula contains a square root sign. Could
Obama, or any but 1% of the politicians, be able to answer the
question, "To the nearest integer, what is the square root of 10?" I
doubt it.

I realize that solving quadratic equations is not in the job
description to be president. But I'm making a deeper point. I've
written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times expressing enormous
contempt for politicians who don't have the vaguest clue what's going
on in the world. I've had a "scorched earth" policy for politicians
in America and in Europe, on the left and on the right, and for
so-called "experts" on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. If I had to pick one
that epitomizes the greatest stupidity of all, it would be Nobel Prize
Winner Paul Krugman.

Obama's remark to Leno really crystallized my thinking on this point.
If he's unable to help his daughter solve a quadratic equation -- even
while sitting with his daughter, with all the time in the world, and
with the quadratic formula right in front of him in his daughter's
textbook -- then how can he have any clue what's going on in the
world?

To understand what's going on in the world, then you have to
understand the difference between cause and effect, between causation
and correlation, as well as simple logical reasoning. All of that
would be well beyond someone who can't figure out how to help his
daughter's algebra homework.

** System Dynamics and the Failure of Macroeconomics Theory
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... acro061025

Higgie, you'll recall the above article that I posted in 2006. You
wrote to me at the time that you had no trouble solving Sterman's
system dynamics problem.

So you'll understand how serious the situation is. Sterman's problem
requires no more mathematics than the ability to count to 100. But it
does require the ability to do simple logical reasoning, much simpler
than the logical reasoning that a President would have to do every
day. But most MIT students get it wrong, and many are completely
stumped. It's totally hopeless among mainstream politicians and
economists. No wonder they all sound like idiots, and make decisions
and reach conclusions that reflect their innate idiocy.

This weekend, we have the European leaders in Brussels trying to
figure out how to solve the financial crisis. Can you imagine a
dumber bunch of baboons doing that?

Mathematics is a big part of Generational Dynamics theory, and I
personally don't believe that anyone who can't help his daughter solve
a quadratic equation, or who can't solve Sterman's simple system
dynamics problem, should be trusted to make any decisions more
complicated than whether they want pickles with their hamburgers.

Today we have Gen-Xers with no experience, absorbed with hatred of
Boomers and thus unwilling to learn from the experience of Boomers,
and incapable of anything close to logical reasoning, making
decisions. No wonder history is littered with catastrophes, with the
next catastrophe right around the corner.

[Higgenbotham]

Dear Higgie,

Obama's remark to Leno really crystallized my thinking on this point.
If he's unable to help his daughter solve a quadratic equation -- even
while sitting with his daughter, with all the time in the world, and
with the quadratic formula right in front of him in his daughter's
textbook -- then how can he have any clue what's going on in the
world?

I had no idea the man is that stupid. I agree with all your conclusions based on that.

I can understand why few would be able to solve the pipe problem I posted above, or really just the area part of the problem.

But, to me anyway, the quadratic formula seems so basic that anyone of average intelligence should be able to apply it, if the formula is in front of them. If Obama can't, then there's a real vulnerability with the man's lack of intelligence.

[John]

A couple of school-related memories.

When I was in 8th grade math, I remember that the math teacher was
teaching about exponents. One of the other students asked him,
"Suppose you have to figure out something like 7 to the power 59. Is
there is any simple way to do it, or do you just have to multiply it
out 59 times?"

I remember the 8th grade math teacher's response vividly: "I think
that there's some way to do 7 of them at a time. You'll learn about
it in high school." I remember thinking that this answer made no
sense at all. As I now recall, logarithms are taught in 9th grade
algebra, so I guess 8th grade math was the limit of this guy's
education. But at least he was teaching stuff at his level, so that's
ok.

But the same can't be said of my son's math teacher.

In the 1990s, when my son Jason was in high school, he showed me a
math test where he had been marked wrong on several questions that he
obviously got right. So I went to the school to talk to the math
teacher about the test. He kept me waiting for an hour, while he sat
there twiddling his thumbs pretending to be busy, then he told me he
was too busy to talk to me, and to make an appointment. So I said,
OK, let's make an appointment. He told me to call him next week. I
was REALLY pissed, but I left.

This guy was a total idiot, and he was in the Wayland, Mass, school
system which, my ex-wife never ceased telling me, was the best school
system in the world. So if the "best" school system in the world was
staffed by idiots, one can imagine what happens in lesser school
systems.

However, the outcome turned out to be OK anyway. After that, the
teacher didn't dare to screw with Jason any more, since he knew that
if he did, then I'd be back. I doubt that other students were
so lucky, however.