Overstepping your authority

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Idaho Freedom Foundation on November 27, 2020 there is an article by Wayne Hoffman titled Idaho lawmakers must cut taxpayer support for left-leaning public radio. His article title displays a ridiculous level of arrogance toward lawmakers – ordering (must) rather than suggesting (should) how they act. Wayne is upset about Boise State Public Radio, who only get 15% of their support from the state while the rest comes from members.   

 

If he wanted to further alarm us, Wayne also could have said that over twenty percent of their content comes from a service supported by a foreign government. From 11:00 PM to 4:00 AM they carry the BBC World Service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Normally we would have expected Wayne to whine that our majority Republican state government should not support public radio because it is highly unpopular with the listening public. But based on the last ratings for Boise (shown above in a bar chart) that simply is not true. Boise State Public Radio news was third in the Top Twenty and just behind another news station, KBOI-AM. They are ahead of KIDO-AM, who carries Fox News and tied for seventh. And the other Boise State Public Radio station, which carries classical music tied for eleventh.   

 

The image was adapted from a Watch Your Step poster at Wikimedia Commons.

 

A million times too large

 Some people think about numbers in surprising ways. Back on March 6, 2020 on an MSNBC broadcast Brian Williams aired a tweet about how much money Mike Bloomberg had spent on the Democratic primary ($500 million). It said that since there were 327 million people in the country he could have given each person over $ 1 million.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At PolitiFact Bill McCarthy wrote about that in an article titled Bad math at MSNBC: Bloomberg’s ad spending wasn’t enough to give every American $1 million. As shown above, it really was just $1.53 per person, since the factor of a million cancels out. A YouTube video by Matt Parker at Stand-up Maths on March 24, 2020 titled Why do people keep getting this wrong? discusses how apparently folks are thinking of the Million as a unit rather than just part of a number. So, they do the division as 500/327 and then put the Millions back on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I never had that problem since back in high school. When I took chemistry, we learned to do math on a slide rule. The C and D scales were logarithmic and ran from one to ten (as shown above and explained in the Wikipedia article for Logarithm). You had to keep track of the exponent separately. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, you had to make sure the units were consistent, so figuring out a how many seconds are in a day involved the factor label method shown above. Factor label is a form of Dimensional Analysis.

 

 An image of a sliderule came from Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Will homeopathic Ambra Grisea relieve fear of public speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I doubt it. It is diluted so much that any effect likely is a placebo.

 

There is a web page from Rachel Riches Homeopathy from June 28, 2020 titled Anticipatory anxiety? Homeopathy can help in which she listed Ambra Grisea second of five remedies and also listed three others I long ago have blogged about: Argentum Nitricum, Gelsemium, and Lycopodium. She says for intense emotional feelings to select a potency of 200C. Her description begins:

 

“Those needing this remedy are shy and sensitive and generally quite introverted. They feel their emotions strongly and find it very difficult to express how they feel. So any upcoming situations which require performing or speaking in front of people such as an interview, a talk, oral exam can be incredibly difficult.”  

 

A second article from Geeta Hansaria at Thrive in on May 14, 2019 titled These homeopathic remedies can help you overcome social anxiety also mentioned Ambra Grisea, as did a third article by Vikas Sharma at DRHomeo titled Best homeopathic medicines for social phobia. Neither of these articles stated what potency should be taken though. A fourth article at Anxietytesting.com titled All about homeopathy for anxiety said 6C and 30C potencies were best and most widely available for minor complaints and that Ambra Grisea was used for:

 

“Anticipatory anxiety in those who are shy and easily embarrassed. Dreads the pressure of performing in front of others – at an interview, oral exam, social event, etc.”

 

 What the heck is Ambra Grisea? It’s just a fancy Latin name for ambergris (see the Wikipedia article), which my copy of Hawley’s Condensed Chemical Dictionary more briefly describes as:

 

“A waxy, opaque mass containing 80% cholesterol formed in the intestinal tract of the sperm whale and found on beaches or afloat on the ocean.”

 

And what do those potencies of 6C, 30C and 200C mean? The Wikipedia article about Homeopathic dilutions explains that 6C potency is a miniscule ratio of ten to the minus twelfth power, or in Parts-per Notation one part-per-trillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000). A 30C potency is a ratio of ten to the minus 60 power, and 200C is a ludicrous ten to the minus 400 power. Even at the 6C potency there would only be an absurdly tiny amount of ambergris in the remedy.

 

I looked at the Pubmed  and PubmedCentral medical databases to see if there were any articles with research to back up use of homeopathic ambra grisea or ambergris but found none. I did find mention of ambergris in an article by Paula De Vos in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology for October 28, 2010 titled European Materia Medica in Historical Texts: Longevity of a Tradition and Implications for Future Use.

 

Where did the connection of this homeopathic remedy and the symptoms come from? On the web you can find a page from the Materia Medica produced by William Boericke 1849 – 1929 (or the whole 1922 book at the Internet Archive). Under the heading of Mind it says:

 

“Dread of people, and desire to be alone. Cannot do anything in presence of others. Intensely shy, blushes easily. Music causes weeping. Despair, loathing of life. Fantastic illusions. Bashful. Loss of love of life. Restless, excited, very loquacious. Time passes slowly. Thinking difficult in the morning with old people. Dwells on unpleasant things.”

 

Under the heading of Urinary it has another truly awful set of symptoms. If you prefer a more recent (and even more bizarre) discussion of symptoms, then you can read a web page from another Materia Medica by George Vithoulkas at the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy.

 

A drawing of a sperm whale came from Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.    

 

Watch out for misspellings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Incorrect spelling in visual aids is not good for a speaker’s credibility. Spelling errors often slip through proofreading.

 

I just saw a hilarious example in an article by Nomaan Merchant at the Associated Press on November 19, 2020 titled Trump’s election lawsuits plagued by elementary errors. It said where they should have referred to ‘poll watchers’ they instead said ‘pole watchers’ - perhaps thinking about customers at a strip club.

 

A second article by Benjamin G. Shatz in For the Defense on February 2007 titled Watch out for tricky typos mentioned lawyer mistakes of statue for statute, pubic for public, trail for trial, and untied for united.

 

A third article at Re:word titled The difference one missed letter makes says in those cases you would get asses for assess, pubic for public, and heroin for heroine.

 

Adding an extra letter also can be awful, as pointed out in a fourth article at The poke on October 14, 2017 titled ‘Best legal typo of all time. Do not stop looking til you find it’ where an extra f changed from ‘assisting’ into ‘assfisting.’ Another article by Stacy Zaretsky at Above the Law on January 10, 2018 called it The most embarrassing typo in a lawyer letter, ever.

 

The image of Miss Pellings was adapted from this photo at the Library of Congress.

 

UPDATE

 

An article at The Hill by Jordan Williams on November 26, 2020 titled Ex-Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell files lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia reported:

 

"Both of the cases filed by Powell were riddled with typographical issues. The case in Michigan had a number of formatting problems that removed spacing between words, Bloomberg reported. In the Georgia suit, the word district was misspelled twice on the first page of the document: There was an extra c for 'DISTRICCT,' and then it was spelled 'DISTRCOICT.' "

   

 

 

Unmasking Wayne Hoffman and the Idaho Freedom Foundation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Wayne Hoffman at the Idaho Freedom Foundation on November 14, 2020 titled Masks are little more than a crisis communication tool. But it is based on very shallow research. If he had looked around before writing it, then he would have found another article from November 10, 2020 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) titled Scientific Brief: community use of cloth masks to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Their conclusion is:

 

“Experimental and epidemiological data support community masking to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The prevention benefit of masking is derived from the combination of source control and personal protection for the mask wearer. The relationship between source control and personal protection is likely complementary and possibly synergistic, so that individual benefit increases with increasing community mask use. Further research is needed to expand the evidence base for the protective effect of cloth masks and in particular to identify the combinations of materials that maximize both their blocking and filtering effectiveness, as well as fit, comfort, durability, and consumer appeal. Adopting universal masking policies can help avert future lockdowns, especially if combined with other non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, hand hygiene, and adequate ventilation.”

 

But instead Wayne made the following claim:

 

“The fact remains that there are states with observed high levels of mask wearing, according to Carnegie Mellon University. That includes California and New York. If masks worked as well as the public health experts now claim they work, occurrences of the virus would be negligible in places like California and New York, where mask wearing is near universal.”

 

The article he referred to shows maps of the rates for mask wear but not the rates for COVID-19. Wayne did not even finish making his argument. For those states and Idaho’s neighbors I looked up the number of new cases for the last month at the Johns Hopkins University web site, and the 2019 populations at the Census web site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The table shown above lists the rates expressed as cases per 100,000 population. Rates for coastal states (California and New York, and our two neighbors Oregon and Washington) are far lower than for inland states (Idaho and our other four neighbors). The average for those coastal states is 469 cases, or almost four times lower than Idaho’s rate of 1827. That’s not quite negligible but is strikingly different. So, masks are far more than just a crisis communication tool.

 

Wayne began by discussing his experience with crisis communication fifteen years ago. But he didn’t bother to check for more recent information. Back on May 30, 2014 I blogged about Remembering what is important in crisis communication – the CDC CERC pocket or emergency card. That little card lists these seven top tips:

 

Don’t over reassure.
Acknowledge uncertainty.
Express wishes (‘I wish I had answers’).
Explain the process in place to find answers.
Acknowledge people’s fear.
Give people things to do.
Ask more of people (share risks).

 

At the bottom is the slogan BE FIRST. BE RIGHT. BE CREDIBLE. But Mr. Hoffman and his foundation are neither right nor credible.

 

An image for acute dementia came from the 1896 Atlas of Clinical Medicine at the web site for the U. S. National Library of Medicine.

 

Smoothly meshing gears or jammed gears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A graphic designer could show us a set of three meshed gears (from a gif at Wikimedia Commons), as displayed above, to illustrate how different parts of an organization can work together smoothly.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A less careful designer instead might show us three gears jammed together and therefore stuck so none actually can move. That’s what the free Metroshuttle from Manchester Buses did. To engineers this is unintentionally hilarious. A blog post on February 13, 2008 was titled The Metroshuttle cogs “not a technical drawing.” There is a similar illustration on a poster at RJ Design titled “Education works best when all the parts are working” which shows teachers, students, and parents. A similar graphic also can be purchased elsewhere on a tee shirt.

 

You can get the Metroshuttle gears to move by assuming what was shown really just is a cross section of a three-dimensional assembly, as was shown on Reddit, in an article titled Explanation of the 3 stuck gears poster. I saw the education poster discussed at 5:08 in an hour-long YouTube video by Matt Parker at The Royal Institution titled What happens when maths goes wrong?

  

Turn your fear of speaking into joy using these four keys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the web site for Science magazine there is a worthwhile article by Alaina G. Levine from November 11, 2020 titled Do you dread giving talks? Turn fear into joy with these four keys. They are:

1]  You are not expected to be perfect

2]  The audience is rooting for you

3]  You are an expert – on what you know

4]  Storytelling is key

 

A cartoon of a speaker was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

How would Dr. Evil rig an election?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday morning I was listening to the Kevin Miller show on local AM talk radio station KIDO. A Tea Party guy began a long rant by explaining that the recent election had been rigged against Trump.  

 

But then he vastly expanded his narrative to claim the Deep State had been rigging our elections for decades. If that was true, then how did Donald Trump get elected in 2016 (along with a Republican controlled Senate)?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you tell a story you should consider whether everything fits together properly, or if it looks as impossible as the cube shown above. How would a movie supervillain like Dr. Evil go about rigging an election? Why wouldn’t he have made sure that this time the Democrats also had firm control of the Senate?   

 

Eventually that guy switched to whining how shortages were coming. Costco (wholesale club) was out of both toilet paper and paper towels. Kevin told him to the contrary - that he’d been to Walmart and they had both those items in stock.

 

Images of a Dr. Evil look-alike and a printing press came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

A prediction should be good for more than a single day

 

 

 

 

 

In an article at the Gem State Patriot News on November 7, 2020 titled Supply and Demand in Health Care Dr. John Livingston proclaimed that:

“What I do believe is that in Idaho we will always be able to absorb COVID patients easily - in addition to everyone else who needs care.”

 

But on November 8, 2020 his credibility as a pundit was belied by another article from Audrey Dutton in the Idaho Statesman titled As COVID-19 cases surge, St. Luke’s Magic Valley had to temporarily stop taking patients. Perhaps Dr. Livingston also should have read an article on November 6, 2020 at Coronavirus Utah titled Straining the System: What does it mean to have Utah hospitals at capacity? (Dr. Livingston also is the medical policy adviser for the Idaho Freedom Foundation).  

 

An image of a cannon firing was adapted from a drawing supplied by Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.

 

40 minutes of impromptu speaking by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At YouTube there is a video from Wired on March 13, 2020 titled Astronaut Chris Hadfield answers the web’s most searched questions – that begin with what, when, where, who, why and how. At 8:55 he tells us way back in Grade 8 he won the public speaking contest in his Sarnia, Ontario school. Another shorter video from Wired is titled Astronaut Chris Hadfield on 13 moments that changed his life. From Vanity Fair there is a 36-minute video where Astronaut Chris Hadfield reviews space movies from ‘Gravity’ to ‘Interstellar.’

 

I have blogged about Chris five times. On February 6, 2013 I posted about Is Somebody Singing (ISS) – A song from the International Space Station. Then on May 20, 2013 I posted about Filling the skies with music on Music Monday in Canada. On November 11, 2013 I posted about his demonstration that In space teardrops don’t stream from your eyes. On January 13, 2014 I posted on how he said to  Visualize failure and then plan for success. On July 20, 2014 I posted about Chris Hadfield’s amazing TED talk on What I learned from going blind in space.

 

An image of him speaking came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

8645

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To ‘86’ someone means to throw them out or get rid of them. Donald Trump is the 45th president, so 8645 means to get rid of him. Those four digits were shown on a pin by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer last month. Very likely that eventually will be the end result from our election. But for another seventy days we will get a stream of lies and lawsuits.

 

An article by Ron Blitzer at Fox News described an interview on November 3, 2020 - Trump, on ‘Fox & Friends,’ claims ‘solid chance of winning,’ won’t ‘play games’ in declaring victory. But early the next morning he of course said: “Frankly we did win this election,” as is described in a Snopes fact check. But on November 1, 2020 at Axios an article by Jonathan Swan already had headlined Scoop: Trump’s plan to declare premature victory.

 

On November 6, 2020 at CNN Politics there is an article by Daniel Dale titled Fact check: Donald Trump delivers most dishonest speech of his presidency as Joe Biden closes in on victory. In that November 5, 2020 speech he similarly said:

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. If you count the votes that came in late — we’re looking at them very strongly. But a lot of votes came in late.”

 

On Nov 7, 2020 Trump tweeted that: “I won this election by a lot!” In a longer statement (ignoring that he had no certified results either), he whined that:

“Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor.”

 

A childish, whining ‘Declaration’ about pandemic restrictions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Idaho Freedom Foundation put up a web page on October 1, 2020 titled Declaration to Idaho Residents and Officials, which also can be downloaded as a .pdf file. It says:

“We, the people of the state of Idaho, reaffirm our solemn commitment to the foundational principles that have made America the greatest country in the world. As noted in our state constitution and restated here, we remain grateful to Almighty God for our freedom.

We recognize that all of us are ‘by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, pursuing happiness and securing safety.’ The fact that a pandemic may or may not be occurring changes nothing about the meaning or intent of the state constitution in the preservation of our inalienable rights.

Despite this, in direct contravention of Idaho’s founding principles, state and local public officials have, for months, denied the people of our state basic and fundamental rights by issuing a long procession of emergency orders and edicts that have denied people freedom of movement, assembly, religion, possession and enjoyment of property, and the pursuit of happiness. This has been allowed to go on for too long.

By this letter, we demand an end to the emergency orders issued by state and local government officials and the restoration of our constitutionally-protected rights. We further resolve that any order issued in the future will be ignored, unless those orders recognize, honor, and uphold, without reservation or equivocation, our God- given rights.”

The second sentence of the first paragraph references the Preamble of our Constitution, which actually says that:

“We, the people of the State of Idaho, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, to secure its blessings and promote our common welfare do establish this Constitution.”   

 

Then the first sentence of the second paragraph misquotes Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of Idaho on INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF MAN by leaving out a pair of semicolons. It states:

“All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second sentence of the second paragraph is ridiculous for claiming that “a pandemic may or may not be occurring.” A pandemic definitely is occurring, as shown above by the national and Idaho case counts and deaths at the New York Times web site. The death toll of over 232,000 can best be visualized as almost the capacity of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (which holds 257,325 people).  An article by Audrey Dutton and Nicole Blanchard at the Idaho Statesman on November 5, 2020 titled Idaho hospitals are on the brink. Will it take ‘people dying in my ER’ to turn the tides? describes where we actually are as of today.

 

The third paragraph leaves out both “defending life” and “securing safety” – without which all the other cited rights are meaningless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third paragraph also claims that the emergency edicts and orders have “been allowed to go on for too long.” Those orders only will have gone on for too long if, as shown above, they were continued AFTER the case count finally had dropped to zero.  

  

Finally, the second sentence in the fourth paragraph inconsistently switches from a singular “any order” to a plural “those orders.”

 

On October 27, 2020 an accompanying two-minute video titled We the People of Idaho affirm our commitment to freedom was posted on YouTube. That video was discussed by Nicole Blanchard of the Idaho Statesman in an article at the East Idaho News on October 27, 2020 titled Idaho Republicans, including Lt. Gov. McGeachin, decry pandemic measures in new video. Another article by Chris Cillizza at CNN Politics on October 29, 2020 is titled Republican infighting in Idaho over the coronavirus has reached a new low. And yet another article by Andrew Mark Miller at the Washington Examiner on October 30, 2020 is titled Idaho lieutenant governor holds Bible and gun in video protesting coronavirus restrictions on ‘God given rights.’ Mr. Miller ended by incorrectly describing our governor as being Democratic!  

 

The Freedom Foundation should change its name to the Arrogant Idaho Anarchists!

 

An image of a crying girl was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.