A Gift of Thanksgiving

Truth be told the bar is getting lower.  As far as my math course goes, I just want to finish all the while learning what I can.  Knowing that it is superficial and prone to being washed away the moment I stop attempting proofs in a particular section.  All of this is now a rehearsal to take this class again.  Getting back on the horse.  Hair of the dog.  yadda yadda yadda.  So far I haven't looked at my midterm grade because it will contribute to my disappointment, it will do nothing to make it any easier for me to work one problem at a time.  A post or so before, I likened this experience to pregnancy.  Now extending the metaphor, a stillbirth.  It will have a name and it will leave its traces and if you look closely you will see evidence of having had the experience.  But not the one I expected and hoped for.

So, a gift to me and to us all is Krista Tippett's interview with Brené Brown. 

I Am One Fit Short of A Psych Admission

No poetry, no nothing these days.  Having bad dreams about losing math tests, although losing them may be better than handing them in blank.  Anyway, a link to something so funny I had to stop.  It was starting to hurt and I stopped breathing.  Now, this is some good satire .... Laugh alone, they break out the syringe.  Laugh with others, the staff of life.

Enjoy.

Studying Math is Like Being Nine Months Pregnant

It's not really, but I have to same feeling of just wanting this to be the hell over with.  Each week this goes on I define success downward.  Today I feel finishing the class without withdrawing or taking an imcomplete is almost valorous.  Eeeeh.  Not much to report because it's all-math-all-the-time, but I found this succinct criticism about Libertarianism.  A movement, a politicaly philosophy I've not studied and yet have an instinctive aversion towards.  What follows is as good a response as any of what I see as some of the inherent contradictions of it all.  It's in reply to a Eunomia (Daniel Larison) blog post, Does the GOP Have a “Libertarian Problem”? Not Really: 

 
Sad Paul Ryan says: November 17, 2012 at 10:41 am

As Ken_L and mercurino suggest, the GOP does have a libertarian problem. More correctly, they have a LIBERTARIAN FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS PROBLEM. The Republican base feels that they are prospering in spite of the government that seeks to create dependency among “others”. That is to say, if the government would just get out of the way and leave them alone (economically), they would have even more money to spend as they please.
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, if the most ardent base supporters are really the Tea Party old white people with an aversion to a black president who is confiscating their assets to pay for “Obama phones” and the like, then you can’t be a bold truth-teller and serious policy wonk who solves the deficit by ignoring the fact that most federal government spending goes to old people. It comes FROM the young and rich, Republican and Democrat alike, but it goes to maintain the standard of living of the elderly, who are disproportionately white, Republican, and possessed of crotchety policy views. Get your government hands off of my Medicare people.
This is a problem that Republicans will continue to have, even as the Tea Party rump slowly dies off. There will always be people pushing for a more authentic libertarianism, whether that be in Ron Paul’s memory or not. However, there’s a reason that libertarianism does not a governing coalition make. If you want to live the Randian life, go and build your mansion, private roads, and private wells amid the squalor in developing countries where the government is so small and weak that it couldn’t harm or tax you if it tried.  (emphasis mine)  In these United States, however, if the Republican Party becomes the libertarian party, it will never be heard from again.

And now back to my regularly scheduled, "Truth or Dare! Use the PMI to prove that for all natural numbers, 8 divides 5²ⁿ – 1."

What Happened

Too weary to think, so cuttin' n' pasting from post election analysis.  I've been reading quite a lot of it -- after all, when math isn't going well for you, why not wallow in schadenfreude, eh?  (I'll stop mañana, because The Boot That Is Headed for My Teeth is never far away, and dag, I was in Ohio in 2004.  I know how it feels.)  Anyway, the story that's emerging (and damn if my NYT didn't go missing this morning) is that the election results as they rolled in were a complete and utter shock to the Romney campaign, much less the prospective celebrants in Boston.  There are few things worse than losing, but thinking you're winning only to be losing is one of them.  The evidence was there and had been there in abundance.  The Romney campaign chose to ignore it.  I'll allow voters or partisans that delusion, but a battle-hardened campaign staff, a person who's run for high office before and top-drawer political Svengali's?  That's pretty astonishing.  I can't wait for the book, and rest assured it won't be written by Mark Halperin.

Anyway, much fascinating commentary to glean. Got this comment from Eunomia:

CitizenE says: November 10, 2012 at 11:03 am

Romney presented himself as the ultimate politician. A weather vane in other words, a hologram, an etch a sketch. Even among his supporters, those to the far right presupposed he would kowtow, as he did through the greater part of the campaign, even in his selection of running mate and his endorsement of Senate candidate Mourdock, to their interests if elected. Those more moderate would tell themselves in an act of self-mesmerization, he only did all those things because that is what all politicians have to do, and his truer perspective, a moderate one, would win the day once elected to govern. He presented nothing actual or concrete in terms of policy proposals, so no one could pin him down about anything, and to the degree he did discuss policy, on one day of the week he would say one thing, the very next day, the exact opposite. And he managed to insult a majority of the voting electorate with a political tourettes, nowhere better exemplified than out of the country, when he assured the city of London, a city that famously rebuilt itself after being bombed to smithereens, that they were of course likely to screw up the Olympics somehow (of course, this was, and here’s the kicker, based on his own experience–the ironies abound). Romney was a horrible candidate, that won one round out of the fifteen, the first debate when he caught the President napping by basically aggressively arguing for things he had heretofore opposed.
If our economy were not foundering, and if Barack Obama were white, Mitt Romney would have lost the election by double digits. He overperformed at the polls, not underperformed.

This Country Belongs to Everybody

As a Close Contemporary and Associate who shares the same DNA (and still owes me money from junior high) so eloquently put it in response to my e-mail where I said I put my This-Shit-Is-Gonna-Stop-To-Day gameface on and marched to my polling station:

I was far more into it this time around as well. These arrogant muthafuckas don’t understand. This country belongs to everybody. Not just their plastic asses. Fuck them. First person who says something slick gets roasted. God bless Obama. Black people better step the fuck up.

 What he said.

It's snowing and blowing and I have tons of proofs to do (or be done in by).  But I am still both jubilant and mad.

2:11 am Nov. 7th Obama 303

The future has won.  As it always will.

That is all.

Apres Mardi

La Deluge ....

Obama was right:  Voting is the best revenge.  I've had an Obama bumper sticker, (perhaps even two) for almost a year.  Never fastened it to anything but kept it nevertheless.  It wasn't until I was talking to a Close Contemporary and Associate who shares the same DNA (and still owes me money from junior high) the other day and we both said, despite the fact that between us we haven't got 1 good knee that if Obama doesn't get the second term he deserves, we will be rioting in the streets.  Enough is enough.  I am so angry at all the 19th century, misogynistic, social darwinistic, smug, complacent, nativist worshippers of St. Reagan who have convinced themselves that Mitt Romney would be a good president because ... well because He's White!!!!™.  These people have lost they mother-effin' minds.  It's the 21st century all over the planet, bitchez.  Deal with it.

Once of the biggest lessons Husband No. 1 taught me:  You're in a bar.  Two guys are getting into it.  When they stop making noise, that's when the knives come out and the chairs start flying.  If they're still talking shit, finish your beer.

Well, I've stopped talking shit about this election.