Author Archives: JohnM

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The Plate Tectonics Revolution

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As late as the 1960s, US geology textbooks explained mountains using the principle of isostatic equilibrium according to which mountains are like icebergs floating on land. As icebergs have a smaller section above the surface and a deeper part beneath the surface, so with mountains.

Changes in mountains were a function of vertical, local forces.

The platetectonics revolution began with Alfred Wegner’s theory of continental drift. He noticed the similar shape of the South American and African coasts and gathered data showing that on opposite sides of the Atlantic similar species of animal and similar mineral deposits were found. He postulated that the continents had drifted apart.

But his theories were considered speculative and rejected by most scientists because he lacked any explanation for the force that could account for such drift.

The next line of evidence bolstering Wegner’s theory was the discovery of the mid-Atlantic ridge as the result of sonar searches for German submarines during World War II. Prior to the War it was assumed that the ocean floor was a flat featureless plain, “the abyssal plain.”

Far from it. The mid-Atlantic ridge is the largest single feature on the planet earth.

The next set of data leading toward the platetectonic revolution was the study of the ages of the islands in the Atlantic. It turned out there was a linear relationship between the age of the island and the distance from the ridge in a symmetrical relationship on either side of the ridge.

Finally came the discovery of a pattern of regular reversal of the magnetic field frozen in the rock on either side of the mid-Atlantic ridge.

 

A Poem Every College Graduate Should Know

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IF – Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
 If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Comment: over the last 40 years this is the only poem I have seen circulated in the workplace. It is the only one I have included in a public presentation – a speech on the
meaning of financial risk (the point being that the unquantifiable risk of character is more important than quantifiable risk like Sharpe ratios). An excerpt from this poem is to be found above the entrance to the center court at Wimbledon. An Indian writer has called this poem “the essence of the Gita in English.” It was included by the Boston Red Sox
in a tribute video to David Ortiz.
YOUR TURN: What poem or poems have meant the most to you over your life?

Simpson’s Paradox

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What hospital to go to: A or B? Well, hospital A’s patients survive 90% of the time and hospital B’s survive 10% of time.
Clearly hospital A is the right choice. Well, not necessarily. Hospital B’s patients could be a much sicker group to begin with. Should you buy stock in company A or company B? Well, A has higher margin and faster growth, So clearly company A. Well, not necessarily. Company A also has too much debt and its growth is all from acquisitions. Company B’s growth is organic and its balance sheet is debt free. Similarly, is there gender discrimination in at college x. Well, say 60% of women who apply are admitted while 90% of men are. Clearly there is discrimination, right? Not necessarily. Perhaps the women are applying to more competitive departments. It is extraordinarily easy to come to the wrong conclusion based on incomplete data. Demagogues love twisting your emotions with data that sound compelling when critical, granular data is omitted.
THE MOST FAMOUS EXAMPLE (from Wikipedia)

UC Berkeley gender bias

One of the best-known examples of Simpson’s paradox is a study of gender bias among graduate school admissions to University of California, Berkeley. The admission figures for the fall of 1973 showed that men applying were more likely than women to be admitted, and the difference was so large that it was unlikely to be due to chance.[14][15]
Applicants Admitted
Men 8442 44%
Women 4321 35%
But when examining the individual departments, it appeared that six out of 85 departments were significantly biased against men, whereas only four were significantly biased against women. In fact, the pooled and corrected data showed a “small but statistically significant bias in favor of women.”[15] The data from the six largest departments is listed below.
Department Men Women
Applicants Admitted Applicants Admitted
A 825 62% 108 82%
B 560 63%  25 68%
C 325 37% 593 34%
D 417 33% 375 35%
E 191 28% 393 24%
F 373  6% 341  7%
The research paper by Bickel et al.[15] concluded that women tended to apply to competitive departments with low rates of admission even among qualified applicants (such as in the English Department), whereas men tended to apply to less-competitive departments with high rates of admission among the qualified applicants (such as in engineering and chemistry).

Musical autobiography – Guitar Phase

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I started playing guitar 14 years ago upon my wife’s insistence. My son Alex, then 4, was inspired by his kindergarten teach to take up the guitar and my wife, Patti,  thought it was a good for me to take lessons with him. The guitar has brought me immeasurable joy ever since. I highly recommend picking up a musical instrument if you ever have a chance. My prior musical life involved the piano (age 14 – my Romanian grandmother taught me how when I broke my leg and was in a hip-high cast for 9 months) and voice (age 22 – Present) mostly German lieder (Schubert, Schumann)and French art songs (Faure), some opera (Mozart, Magic Flute).
Some of favorite guitar/vocal experiences:
1.     Scarborough Fair
2.     Morning Has Broken
3.     Feeling Groovy
4.     No Woman no cry
5.     One Love, One Heart
6.     Stir it Up,
7.     Don’t Worry About a Thing….Three Little Birds
8.     Edelweiss
9.     Favorite Things—chords and riff
10.  Rainbow Connection—- Sesame Street
11. Star of the County Down — Irish
12.  Loch Lomond  — Scottish
13.  Jamaica Farewell
14.  Sailed on the Sloop John B
15. The Circle Game
16. Piano Man
17. Ipanema
18. La Vie En Rose
19. Feuilles Mortes
20. La Mer
Please share your favorite

What are the three most original ideas on this site?

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1.) The Principles, Facts, and Solutions Matrix as the best civic literacy test.

2.) The Concepts and Examples Matrix as the best general education test for any discipline from physics and math to economics and ethics.

3.) The integrated vision of Seven Tools, Seven Disciplines and Seven Joys as an operational definition of the three aims of education: critical thinking, responsible citizenship, and well-roundedness.

The common theme is interactivity. And humility.

Welcome to the Liberal Arts Iron Man.

The Three Keys to Maximizing Fitness

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Nothing matters more in life than proper posture, breathing, and smiling.
Principle #1: build the core with every breath by maintaining proper posture.
But proper posture is hard to maintain. Especially if you were not taught
what it is. Proper posture does not feel right at first (for most people).
When instructed to stand tall, most people put the chin up. But this only
gives the illusion of being taller. To maximize your height you tuck the chin
ever so slightly in which raises the sternum and engages the core.
Principle #2: maximize oxygen inflow and nitrogen oxide production
through deep abdominal breathing – most easily accomplished
nasally with proper posture. This the wisdom of the meditative traditions from the four corners of the earth confirmed by the research of the likes of Herbert Benson,
cardiologist, professor at Harvard Medical School, and the founder of
the Mind/Body Institute at the Mass General Hospital.
Principle #3: Smile (ie. raise the zygomatic muscles ever so slightly)
Attitude is everything. You (in the form of negative thinking) are your
own worst enemy. Use the smile as a mnemonic for “I can” and
“I will” (be my best, play “as if” I were the player I want to be —
Nadal, Federer, WIlliams…..), visualizing that perfect, basket, that
perfect stop spin bounce deep in the court, focusing on the
proper preparation, angle of the body, contact point, follow through,
feeling the looseness, the relaxation, the weight shift, the instant
recovery….
YOUR TURN: What do you do for fitness?

Learning to Draw

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“I will condense the meaning of the body by seeking
its essential lines” (Henri Matisse)
I have always been astounded how few strokes
are required to capture the essence of something
extremely complicated – like the human body or
face.
Have you ever had training that took you there?
Any favorite examples of great drawing?
The best course I ever took in my life was
a drawing course: Betty Edwards’ Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain, taught by
her son, Brian Bomeisler, who is based in NYC
but comes to teach in Boston in March.
Highly recommended:

Justice Matrix

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Blindfold

 

Univesality – not one law for rich, another for poor.

Not one law for blacks, another for whites. Not one for women, another for men.

 

Aka: equality before the law, equal protection of the laws

 

 

 Scales

 

Proportionality of punishments to crimes.

 

Guilt or innocence a function of the evidence not the whim of the judge.

 

Is there a finger on the scales?

 

  

 

 

Sword

 

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Justice must be swift and certain or it is not justice.

But sword pointed   down

means justice should be minimized. Coercion

(aka violence) is bad.

Criminalize as little as possible.

 
 

Starting gate

 

Justice is about equality of economic opportunity.

If you are malnourished or lacking the same cultural capital at the starting gate, there is no equality of opportunity. Is there a diversity versus equal opportunity trade-off?

Are some values less conducive to upward mobility?

 Ladder

 

Does greater economic inequality make the rungs of the ladder too hard to reach?

Does a too high minimum wage rip off the bottom rung?

Is there a parental liberty versus equal economic opportunity trade-off?

 
 
 

 

Pie/Leaky Bucket

 

Is money being taken from the wells of the rich to the cups of the poor in a “leaky bucket” – much of it going to third parties and reducing work incentives for both rich and poor?

Is there a fundamental trade-off between growing the pie and splitting it more evenly?
 

Income and Wealth Inequality Statistics:

 

Current versus historical.

What is too much? What is too little? Who decides?

How?

 

  

Mobility Statistics

 

How much is enough?

What explains differentials in mobility?

Is the American dream

a fraud?

 

  

Tax Burden statistics

 

How much is too much vertical and horizontal inequality? Where are we on the spectrum? What would change your mind?

 

Religious Literacy

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Religions tell three big stories: how and when the universe began and how and when it will end

(cosmology), how to live

(morality), and how we

the enlightened came to acquire this knowledge.

 

  

All great religions have the same common ethical core – a message of gratitude (piety, obedience, humility, renunciation) and kindness (mercy, love).

  

All great religions acknowledge the difficulty of living according to these principles in the face of bad luck, the unkindness of others, and our own negative emotions.
 

All great religions offer

a recipe for a discipline

which should minimize deviations from the narrow path of gratitude and kindness

 

  

RELIGION:

 

     The Big Picture

 

A medieval set of answers to ultimate questions, a corrupt set of institutions bent on survival and expansion, a bunch of good people doing good things,

 

  

These disciplines incorporate prayer at many times during the day as well as a regular calendar of collective ritual events.
 

All religions have historically been a barrier to scientific and economic progress as the priestly class has sought to prevent the rise of competing castes.

 

  

There is no power more absolute than that of power over the souls of men. As all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, the historical consequences have been dire.

 

 

  

Separation of church and state and freedom of religion are critical to freedom of speech and human progress. But some sort of secular equivalent of religion must exist to answer all the ultimate questions of morality, cosmology, and history.