Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: Politics

  • What Ph.D. Means

    I can, and occasionally do, put the letters Ph.D. behind my name. I know what the letters signify – and I just saw a commentary that Canada and Mexico have both elected leaders with Ph.D. behind their names, while the US has Trump.

    So let’s look at what the letters Ph.D. actually imply – that I have done original research in a satisfactory manner while supervised by a Ph.D. holding faculty member. That’s all the title actually tells of what I, or anyone else who holds the Ph.D. has accomplished. I take some quiet pride in the fact that current researchers are still citing my dissertation – but that isn’t a necessary part of getting the letters behind your name. And, despite the fact I feel good about those citations, there aren’t nearly so many people citing the dissertation as read this blog. Most dissertations are filed away and never cited.

    Einstein’s dissertation was “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions.” In his thesis, he developed a methodology for calculating Avogadro’s number from the Brownian motion in sugar water. It was original research – which means that nobody had done it before. It was good quality research. But when we associate Einstein with research, we tend to recall his later research – the spot where he quantified Energy as equal to mass times the square of light speed. The point being, we don’t recall Einstein because of his first piece of original research.

    Generally speaking, whenever someone tells you “If you want to know about X you should read my dissertation.” you probably don’t want to read it. The document represents several years work, and we tend to think of our dissertations as important – but most are not.

    Research for a Master’s degree doesn’t need to be original. It doesn’t even need to be done – a Master’s can be awarded just for coursework. If there’s no thesis, the degree is called a terminal masters, not qualifying for admission into a Ph.D. program. (My M.Ed. was a non-thesis masters, so I had to research and write a separate thesis to make up for the lack of a thesis.)

    Jill Biden’s Ed.D. thesis is available online (all 137 pages) at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20407101-jill-jacobsbiden_dissertation/ and can be downloaded without cost – the title is Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs. It is nice to have this available to help people understand what can go into a doctorate.

    We (the United States) elected a guy with a Ph.D. to the office of President once – well, actually twice, over a century ago. Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D. Once he was elected, he segregated the federal work force. I don’t have any evidence that he belonged to the KKK – but they missed a great prospect if they didn’t recruit him. His dissertation – from back in 1885 – it titled “Congressional Government” and describes the government of the United States. There is nothing in Woodrow Wilson’s dissertation that you can’t get out of a high school government text.

  • Outsourcing Your Security

    I was reading the Bugscuffle Gazette, and saw an article about outsourcing your security. The author was looking at how long it took the Aussie cops to get to the shootings at Bondi – and it turned out four were right there on the beach, and they were keeping under cover as a couple of half-assed jihadis shot about 20 people. He stressed that one of the shooters had a bolt gun (4 shots), while the other had a pump shotgun. The one with the pump gun was the one neutralized by a middle-aged bystander.

    The author mentioned the Uvalde police – where the crew hung around outside the school as a jerk shot up kids. Then he stressed that you can’t afford to outsource your security.

    The author explained “If the government is going to take the right of self-protection away from the citizens, then it is incumbent on that government to actually, you know, provide protection. If the government can’t provide that protection, then get out of the citizen’s way.

    This is what happens when you out-source your personal security to the government.“

    So I got to thinking about Montana History, as it started in Bannack and Virginia City. There, the baddies were the police. The good guys were the Vigilantes. Nobody read Miranda rights – the phrase was “Men, do your duty.” Outsourcing security to a government police force does seem to provide more options for the bad guys and better treatment. Vigilantes, lacking jails and jailers, tended toward more permanent solutions.

    I’m in Trego – I figure it takes (on a good day) about 20 minutes to get a cop out here from Eureka. That will be close to an average – if the dispatcher radios and there is an office at milepost 168, it will probably be a little less. If the officer is north or west of the big town, it can be a little longer. Somehow, I don’t believe that my neighbors have outsourced their security. There may be a gun-free home in Trego – but it isn’t the way I would bet.

  • The Australian Attack

    I’m tired of anti-Semites. As I look back on 75 years, I’ve been blessed to somehow find several friends. Not necessarily people who see the world the same way as I do, but generally good people. Several of those friends have been Jews. None have been anti-Semitic. That will not change – hating a person because of skin color, or religion, etc. just isn’t right.

    When I was a young man, some of the older generation had the forearm tattoos – from Auschwitz. They are gone now, but during the sixties and seventies, there was a time when my consciousness of the Holocaust was rudely brought to the front of my mind by a tattoo forced upon someone before 1945. The Hamas and Isis types have more in common with the Nazis than with me. And it makes me wonder about the narrative, the story that has convinced them.

    I’m remembering Bob Mendelsohn – my teacher, my colleague, my friend. His tongue-in-cheek description of Nick’s Hamburger shop in Brookings – where cheese was added to a burger as a condiment, not cooked with the burger, thus maintaining a kitchen he could regard as kind of Kosher. When Bob retired, he moved from secular college professor to studying the religion he was born to, and eating according to Jewish teaching. He described how he missed deli ham sandwiches. Bob was a Jew who loved Christmas – the trees, the decorations, the songs. He’s gone now, but part of his lessons included leaving the campus – there is nothing less needed than a retired professor.

    I recall Trinidad, Colorado – when I was there, volunteers from the local Catholic church were doing maintenance work on Temple Aaron – the town’s Jewish population was too old to do the work. There was no publicity – just younger neighbors helping maintain the synagogue that their older neighbors could no longer accomplish. That’s the way to treat people.

    In Suriname, I saw Paramaribo’s mosque and synagogue adjacent to each other – here’s what it looks like there:

    Somehow, I want a world where the tolerance I saw in Suriname is the norm.

  • Capital, Labor and Lincoln

    Somehow, 160 years after the war between the states, there are a lot of people who have forgotten (or never learned) that the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln wasn’t exactly a capitalist. It has been fun to look at Lincoln’s writings, and quotations. I never wrote a test asking students to identify whether the author was Lincoln or Marx – but I kept these quotes on hand in case I ever decided to write an extremely tough test.

    “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln

    “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln

    “A commodity has a value because it is a crystallization of social labor. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labor necessary for its production.” Karl Marx

    “Labor, being itself a commodity, is measured as such by the labor time needed to produce the labor-commodity. And what is needed to produce this labor-commodity? Just enough labor time to produce the objects indispensable to the constant maintenance of labor, that is, to keep the worker alive and in a condition to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is no other than the wage minimum.” Karl Marx

    “All that serves labor serves the Nation. All ^ that harms labor is treason to America. No line can be drawn between these two. If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.” Abraham Lincoln

    “The values of commodities are directly as the times of labor employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labor employed.” Karl Marx

    “And, inasmuch [as] most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To [secure] to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” Abraham Lincoln

    “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” Karl Marx

    “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” Abraham Lincoln

    “The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.” I didn’t say I would give all of the answers – figure out who this sounds most like.

  • Thinking of That Congressional Dormitory

    I’ve been thinking more of the implications of housing all Congresscritters in dormitories, much like college freshmen (who are often required to reside in university housing). This meme suggests building that dorm might make congressional service more accessible to the average American:

    Part of the problem appears to be that congresscritters don’t want to leave DC once they get there. I can’t explain it – from the moment my plane hits the ground there, I feel that I’m “in the presence of mine enemies” and I want to go home. Dormitories aren’t places where you get so comfortable that you want to stay. Look at Jon Tester – he got to DC and stayed 18 years before the election results forced him back to Big Sandy. Compare him to Marc Racicot – who took a job in DC, then lobbied there, and then made up his own mind to move back to Montana. Think of Nancy Pelosi – 37 years in DC representing San Francisco. John Thune was running for Senate when I hired on with SDSU (2000). Admittedly he didn’t get to DC until 2005, but he hasn’t made it back to a home in Sioux Falls yet. His predecessor, Tom Daschle also served as senate majority leader, spent 26 years in DC, and when South Dakota’s voters sent Thune in, Daschle stayed in DC until a few years ago, when he moved to South Carolina. He has yet to make it back to Aberdeen to live. The list of people who get to Congress and never go home is long.

    My proposal to counteract the incumbency advantage will work – every time an incumbent runs, he or she is limited to a campaign spending limit that is half of their previous election spending. Under that limit, Nancy Pelosi would have been down to three bottle caps, a subway token, and a half-stick of Wriggly’s gum for her last election.

    A Congressional dormitory might help bipartisanship – but it would definitely make congresscritters more anxious to travel home for weekends and holidays – Dormies like going home. I recall AOC’s challenges in finding an apartment when she first went to Congress – the congressional dorm would eliminate that problem. Who knows – with affordable housing for congresscritters in Washington, and reform that would counteract the incumbency advantage, we might wind up with less than half of Congress being millionaires and more.

  • Village Idiot or Village Midwit

    Time was when our phraseology suggests a belief in one idiot per village. Then came the internet and Facebook. The postings bring suggestions that we have more than one idiot per village. Fortunately, the internet is available, so we can hopefully download a measurable definition, and then use the old bell curve to find out if idiots are actually so common.

    So a search for ‘clinical definition idiot’ led me to this website: https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-the-difference-between-a-moron-imbecile-and-idiot.htm This is the fourth sentence (emphasis added):   “Those with an IQ of 0 to 25 (an IQ of 100 is average) were called idiots, 26 to 50 were called imbeciles and 51 to 70 were called morons. “

    That makes idiots pretty darned rare – the likelihood of encountering an idiot is the same as that of encountering someone with an IQ of 175 or more. Using a 15 point standard deviation, the chance of encountering an idiot is 0.0000287105%. ( https://iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx )

    So, taking the definition and the probability, it doesn’t look like idiots are something we encounter daily, or even monthly. We don’t have a great increase in village idiots. I think the problem has to be village midwits – so here’s what I get for a definition of midwit: “Noun. midwit (plural midwits) (neologism, chiefly Internet slang, mildly derogatory) A person of middling intellect; someone who is neither particularly dumb nor notably intelligent, especially if they act as if they are smarter than they are.” Again the emphasis is added. I think the problem is that we have a lot more people who “act as if they are smarter than they are.“

    So I assume midwittery begins with an IQ of 108 (half a standard deviation above the norm) the chart tells me that 30% of the population will score above 108. If I arbitrarily put the cap on at 115, I have a group that includes 14% of humanity – and that’s basically one out of every 7 people I encounter.

    I don’t believe we have more village idiots than ever before – but we do have more opportunities for education. According to the Census:

    “In 2022, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States ranged from less than high school to advanced degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree.

    9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.

    28% had high school as their highest level of school completed. 

    15% had completed some college but not a degree.

    10% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.

    23% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.

    14% had completed advanced education such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate. 

    When we add those numbers – 15, 10, 23 and 14 – we come up with a total between 62 and 63% of Americans (over 25) who have attended college. That’s five out of every eight people.

    When 5/8ths of the adult population has attended college – and 47% hold one level of college degree or another – perhaps there is nothing particularly elite about attending college. Sometimes we’re just one more village midwit. I’m not certain that village idiots aren’t less harmful than village midwits.