I was watching James Burkes’ Connections, a brilliant historical documentary that shows how various disparate inventions throughout history are brought together in unforeseen ways to create our modern society. For example, he discusses how the study of clouds, and a phenomenon known as a “glory” (your shadow in the clouds surrounded by a reversed rainbow) led to the atom bomb. In another show, he discussed the connection between the need to feed Napoleon’s troops ultimately made possible the rocket engine that sends various payloads to their ultimate destinations; “to the moon, or Moscow. The Planets, or Peking.” He does this through a chain of connections (thus, the name), each invention being built upon the previous. It is an incredible show, if you happen to enjoy thinking about things. One show, “Faith in Numbers” made a rather strange connection for me. At one point he (inadvertently, I am sure) made a connection between the Black Death and Bureaucracy. The essence was that one result of the Black Death was a surplus of used linen undergarments, which made paper very cheap. With the surplus of paper, bureaucracy grew to absorb the available paper surplus. Now, I may be reversing cause/effect here. If so, it’s because I am stupid. But arguing that point is like arguing that the sky is blue. Now, the reason this struck a chord with me is because I see this all the time in my profession – it’s a tongue-in-cheek truism that operating systems will grow to accommodate the currently available computational power of personal computers. Another way to think about it would be that the operating system exists to soak up not just the extra CPU cycles available on the latest CPU’s, but to demand more than they can provide. This is very similar to the way the economy seems to exist for no other reason than to absorb any extra cash you may have.

Marketing... So, it is Friday today, and I am off to 94th Aero Squadron for a social occasion known as "Happy Hour." During this hour we will drink beer, and mostly complain about things. The end result will solve exactly none of the problems we are facing. Afterwards, no one will feel any better, and there is an excellent chance that some of us will feel considerable worse, especially the next morning. And that, in a nutshell, is the power of effective marketing.

Awww... Cute kitty...

I just remembered the time that my mother went on a two week vacation to Hawaii, and left me with no clean socks. I was probably about 5 at the time. I thought I should post this on the internet.

This is a topic that has bothered me for a while. Countable infinities. The concept is simple enough -- if you can provide a given set a one-to-one correspondence with the the natural numbers, you have a countable infinity (Aleph Null). So, the number of digits in Pi, e, etc. are countable infinities. Now, the argument goes that if Pi is a "normal" number (if the digits 0-9 are distributed randomly), then in an infinite sequence, any given sequence of numbers must, at some point, appear. It's easy enough to imagine that your birthday appears somewhere in Pi -- 01-09-72 for instance -- but the idea is expanded for arbitrarily large sequences. Your personal genetic code, for instance, boiled down to a numerical sequence is present somewhere deep in the bowels of Pi. The collected works of Shakespear, along with the genetic makeup of the monkeys that could have typed it are present in the far reaches of infinity. But let's consider this. If it is true that in an infinite, random sequence of digits every possible combination of numbers must appear at some point, then that means that Pi itself would exist in that sequence. The astute reader instantly objects that that makes Pi repeating, and we know that it does not. But is that true? If Pi can be found somewhere in Pi, does it repeat? Pi is an infinite sequence... So it never ends and cannot repeat. The real question becomes what is the cardinality of an infinite set containing an infinite set? If it is still a countable infinity, it seems possible that Pi could contain Pi and not repeat. So, let's look at the even numbers. The even numbers can very easily be placed in one to one correspondence with the natural numbers (1=2, 2=4, 3=6, 4=8 and so on). So the set of even numbers is a countable infinity just as the set of natural numbers are. And the even numbers are contained within the set of natural numbers. So a countably infinite set can contain another countably infinite set -- they have the same cardinality. So, to me, it seems possible that Pi could contain Pi. But that's not the fruit filling I am after here. The real prize is that Pi could contain another famous transcendental number: e. Get it? Pi contains e. Pie. Lordy, I kill myself.

So I've decided to try this blogging thing. And I have nothing to write about. Well... That's not true. I have many things to write about, such as the way I think shared governance fails to help schools run any better. It seems to me that shared governance means that people hired to administer have to spend more time building consensus than actually administering. And the people hired to teach or provide support services start to spend too much time meddling in administration. I've heard arguments that without shared governance, the administration runs wild, and "we (the non-administrators) ensure that money is spent legally!" However, that seems to beg the question of whose job it is to ensure money is spent appropriately. It seems to me that it is the administrations job. So why are people who are not accountants and lawyers just as empowered to affect the types of decisions one would normally expect a lawyer or accountant to make as the actual professionals whose job it is (or should be) to make those decisions? I could write about that... But it would probably be an unpopular commentary if anyone at my work read about it. So perhaps it's best to leave that topic alone for now. At least until I am comfortable that no one is actually ever going to read my blog...