Michigan State University students had an unconventional math class this week after professor John McCarthy, 57, reportedly stripped naked in Calculus 1 class and began screaming that “there is no f—ing God” and “It’s all an act and none of it’s real.” In the age of laptop computers, the most surprising thing is that the students noticed and looked up from their computers. Presumably one student asked the standard question of “will this be on the test?”
Witnesses said that McCarthy was going through a routine derivative equation when he started to talk about his colleagues and how “they’re all actors.” He added that “It’s all an act and none of it’s real.”
McCarthy was arrested but not actually charged with a crime. He can certainly be charged with indecent exposure but I hope that he is not and that the police show a modicum of discretion. He obviously had a psychological meltdown. Brilliance sometimes comes with such mental issues as vividly shown in movies like “A Beautiful Mind.”
I would also hope that the faculty treats this matter as a mental illness and allows McCarthy to seek treatment rather than simply fire him. I realize it will be difficult for him to return to the classroom, but we need to treat mental illness like other forms of illness. Thus far the school has merely reassigned his classes. I expect that he is unlikely to return to teaching but in my view the school should treat this matter as an illness rather than misconduct. What do you think?
Source: NY Daily News
PBS CEO Paula Kerger: Mitt Romney’s Debate Attack Was ‘Stunning’ (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post | By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 10/04/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/pbs-mitt-romney-debate_n_1939546.html
Excerpt:
The CEO of PBS fired back at Mitt Romney Thursday, saying that it was “stunning” that the Republican candidate had singled her network out in Wednesday’s debate.
Romney had one of his most memorable moments when he vowed to cut the federal subsidy to public broadcasting.
“I’m sorry Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS,” he told moderator Jim Lehrer, who has worked for PBS since the 1970s. “I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like you too, but I’m going to stop borrowing money from China to pay for things we don’t need.”
PBS chief Paula Kerger spoke to CNN’s Carol Costello on Thursday, and didn’t mince words in her response to Romney.
“With the enormous problems facing our country, the fact that we are the focus is just unbelievable to me,” she said. Later, she called it a “stunning moment.”
Noting that the debate touched on education, she called PBS “America’s biggest classroom,” adding, “This is not about the budget. It has to be about politics.”
Kerger also fact-checked Romney — who she has tussled with before — pointing out that PBS doesn’t get any direct money from the government.
“In fact, the money that comes from the government into the Corporation for Public Broadcasting goes to our member stations,” she said.
Slartibartfast,
I need to watch the Bond clip and the Mythbusters clip on YouTube so I can be a proper Bond Apologist. I saw neither. I did say Pinehurst Studios took a lot of creative license with the Bond gadgets. But a lot of them were Real gadgets in use or being developed. Some where quite bogus, you are right.
The new movie Argo was a true story about a CIA officer who rescued some people being held in Iran. He (and his wife) turns out to be the CIA DS&T inventors of the rubber mask disguise featured on the Mission Impossible TV shows where he claims he got the idea.
A lot of Star Trek gadgets were invented after the show like the Bluetooth earpiece from Lt Uhuru’s communications console earpiece. Now they are so ubiquitous that a spy can wear one and no one even notices he/she is talking to his handler back home at HQ. No need to embed a earpiece in their mastoid bone any more (ouch!).
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222366.Star_Man_s_Son_2250_A_D
Haven’t read that book. I don’t think you need to understand it.
Not sure she (Andre) understood Einstein’s theory of relativity when she was 40 in 1952 when she wrote “Star Man’s Son 2250 A.D.”. But to be honest how many people today truly understand it correctly?
SoTB,
I’ ve only read Zukov and Kaku, and can’t really elaborate on relativity, but I have at least a grasp of the possibility. If you’re going to write Sci Fi well you at least need to know the scientific basis of the stuff you write.
As for Q, as an old fart who read Fleming much prior to the movie Dr. No, I liked the original Q. as for Bond it has to be Connery, but I find Craig a close second. Moore was detestable, even Lszenby was better. The other two were mediocre at best.
Mike,
There’s a Larry Niven short story (part of the Known Space universe) where Beowulf Schaeffer does a hyperbolic of a neutron star (also the name of the story) and narrowly avoids being crushed by the tidal forces (by getting to the center of mass of the ship). At a con he told a story about how a group from some college (MIT maybe?) did the calculations and determined that the ship would have left the star spinning (which would kill the pilot even in his invulnerable spaceship hull). I always liked the authors who kept the science in their scifi…
Elaine M. 1, October 4, 2012 at 11:36 pm
I didn’t write that. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite did.
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Matt Johnson 1, October 4, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Elaine M. 1, October 4, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Oddly enough, however, it was neither President Obama nor challenger Romney whom many thought, myself included, who was the worst performer of the evening. Instead, that honor goes to the deferential moderator, Jim Lehrer. Time and again, Lehrer was “steamrolled” by Romney who simply talked over Lehrer and “lied his way through the debate with no challenge from moderator Jim Lehrer.”
President Obama, who also could have challenged Romney on these untruths, stuck to his narrative and didn’t decisively call Romney out on it. Obama didn’t win points for that. In fact, Americans, it seems from the sum of the post-debate polls, prefer aggressively told lies to explanations. At least, perhaps, until after a few days when they realize it was just a reality show.
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Maybe it was an act. Nobody likes a bully.
=================================
Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is a Senior Fellow at American Progress. She is also Professor of Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and its former president between 1998 and 2008. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, she is the author and/or editor of numerous books, and has worked on two different translations of the bible. Thistlethwaite is currently working in a new area she calls “Public Theology” and a new book on human nature and public policy. She writes a weekly column for the Washington Post “On Faith” online section and is a frequent media commentator on religion and public events.
——————————————————————————
She gets the credit.
SotB,
You’re missing the point—they showed pretty conclusively that you can’t deflect a bullet in any significant way with an electromagnet in a wristwatch. Bond isn’t going to tote an MRI and a diesel generator around—it would degauss his credit cards and he would lose quite a bit of savoir-faire. Just sayin’…
Personally, I think the Mythbuster’s dedication to the scientific method makes their show very educational—plus they blow shit up a lot.
I thought that what they said about Tesla’s device was pretty reasonable given their results—remember, overselling your evidence is a cardinal sin in science (c.f. “cold fusion”). Leonardo da Vinci couldn’t build an airplane given the tools that he had and there was a limit to what Tesela could do regardless of his genius. It is possible that Tesla got a significantly better result than they did (I don’t deny he was a genius)—but they can only go by the empirical data. Also, they’ve gotten access to a lot of serious high-tech on their show: rocket sleds and wind tunnels and vacuum chambers and such. The bottom line is that they busted the wristwatch magnet in Live or Let Die fair and square—along with many other Bond myths.
Will Romney’s debate lies become the story?
By Jonathan Bernstein
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/will-romneys-lies-be-a-thing/2012/10/04/fc9ba078-0e52-11e2-ba6c-07bd866eb71a_blog.html
The question for the press over the next few days is increasingly clear: Will the big story be about Mitt Romney’s debate victory — which, in turn, is almost certainly all about style points and Barack Obama’s flat performance? Or will it be about Romney’s repeated failures to stick to the facts?
The story here is that monolithic information flows can be fairly powerful, albeit limited both by basic partisanship and by those who, for other reasons, have already made up their mind. However, for those who might be still deciding, if everything they hear about the debate is positive for Romney, it certainly could affect their vote.
The most likely alternative story the press could wind up telling is pretty simple: Romney failed to tell the truth last night. That’s the story that the Obama campaign is pushing in their instant ad taken from the debate, which hits Romney on his tax plan; it’s the story that many of the liberal blogs are running with today, probably because that’s what wonky bloggers are apt to do anyway.
Will it be successful? It could. Paul Ryan’s convention speech wound up being covered mainly for its mendacity, and that became the story. It seems that there are at least as many factually challenged comments from Romney’s debate performance as there were in Ryan’s speech, although it may have lacked any screaming-headline lies. But if you want to know more about the short-term effects of the debate, I’d suggest keeping an eye on whether the neutral press starts devoting more time to fact checking Romney’s mendacity than it does to Romney’s presentation and stylistic victory. If it does, any potential large Romney bounce from the debate could well be undercut.
Gene,
You’re not telling me anything about Mitt “Master of the Universe” Romney that I haven’t known for a long time. He was governor of my state. He’s used to getting his own way. He’d lie about anything to achieve his goal of becoming president.
How can you tell when Romney’s lying? His lips are moving!
I thought Romney, Obama, and Lehrer all put on a bad show last night.
*****
Matt Johnson
1, October 4, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Elaine M. 1, October 4, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Oddly enough, however, it was neither President Obama nor challenger Romney whom many thought, myself included, who was the worst performer of the evening. Instead, that honor goes to the deferential moderator, Jim Lehrer. Time and again, Lehrer was “steamrolled” by Romney who simply talked over Lehrer and “lied his way through the debate with no challenge from moderator Jim Lehrer.”
President Obama, who also could have challenged Romney on these untruths, stuck to his narrative and didn’t decisively call Romney out on it. Obama didn’t win points for that. In fact, Americans, it seems from the sum of the post-debate polls, prefer aggressively told lies to explanations. At least, perhaps, until after a few days when they realize it was just a reality show.
======
I didn’t write that. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite did.
Matt,
I think he was talking about Yttrium Barium ceramic which is the heart of a superconducting magnet when it is super-cooled.
Slarti,
I don’t give much credence to those two guys. I watched their Tesla oscillator earthquake machine experiment in extreme incredulity that they even understood how Tesla’s machine even worked. At the end of the show they were amazed that their version did in fact work but they still were WAAAY under-informed as to how Tesla’s pneumatic-driven-eccentric-piston worked. NYPD can attest today that the Tesla gadget did work only too well. Tesla had to destroy it with a sledge hammer to make it stop while NYPD looked on in amazement.
So what’s my point? Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (i.e. Mythbusters) usually never have the “right stuff” to disprove anything in a credible way. Case in point. Go to any hospital and talk to their MRI technicians. They have a huge diesel powered generator in a trailer outside to generate the required power to fuel their nuclear magnetic resonance machine. But what will the technicians tell you about ANY loose metal around the magnet?
Just like in the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the improbable horseshoe magnetic, every metal knife, fork, spoon, and other loose metallic items will literally levitate and fly across the room toward the MRI machine in quite a lethal fashion. But if you don’t have a budget for a huge diesel genny then get yourself some new Bloomboxes. Enough of them to power up a SC electromagnet might not be that big. Maybe the size of a frig?
I’m pretty sure Dr. Ning Li’s (Univ of Alabama) and Dr. Yevgeny Podkletnov’s (BaE?) new “repulsion” and “attraction” devices will impact a lead bullet’s trajectory. It too involves a spinning (5k rpm) ceramic (YBa) disk in super-cooling gas. It SEEMS to impact GRAVITY around ANY object passing over it. Dr. Li was spirited away to US Army’s Red Stone Arsenal and Podkletnov is ??? maybe at BAE in UK?
As for the voltage and amperage—you’re not trying to kill someone, you’re trying to generate a big electromagnetic field You need a big voltage drop to generate the field and you’ll draw serious current when it deflects the bullet
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Wattage is voltage times amperage. The current (amperage) is what will kill you. Usually one-tenth of one amp is enough to kill people.
Matt said: “Ceramic isn’t flexible. And how much liquid nitrogen do you have.”
Which was his point (although he had enough liquid helium to get down to 3°K, so that wasn’t a problem…)
As for the voltage and amperage—you’re not trying to kill someone, you’re trying to generate a big electromagnetic field You need a big voltage drop to generate the field and you’ll draw serious current when it deflects the bullet (I think—I switched to math before taking the calc-based E&M course… 🙁 ). I looked at the Wiki entry on electromagnets, but I don’t have time to do an estimate. The relevant equations can be found there, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnet
Calculus. Took it within the company, twice, 2 different engineers “taught” it. I managed 2 Cs but didn’t have a clue. Recently bought The Teaching Company version. Learned more from the first DVD. Still need to watch the rest of it.
Slartibartfast 1, October 4, 2012 at 10:28 pm
He said something along the lines of “that’s great—come back when you’ve got 3 miles of flexible wiring”. The problem isn’t generating the magnetic field, it’s powering it with something that is even remotely portable. I believe that the Mythbusters tried full metal jackets (and possibly total metal jackets as well) along with hundreds of pounds of batteries and only managed to slightly deflect the trajectory. The problem is that the projectile is moving so fast that an enormous force has to be applied by the magnetic field to deflect it quickly enough to matter. This, in turn, requires a large voltage to generate. I’ll leave the numerical answer as an exercise for the class… 😉
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Ceramic isn’t flexible. And how much liquid nitrogen do you have.
Very low amperage, extremely high voltage. It isn’t the voltage that kills you, it’s the amperage. Ten million volts with a very low mere trace amount of amperage is harmless. Like radio waves.
Here are the two presidential campaigns in one simple graphic. Best political cartoon of the day. Possibly the year.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87178152@N02/8055427618/
SotB,
Your mention of superconducting magnets brings to mind something from my undergrad days—I was working as a professorial assistant doing research on high Tc superconductors and one of my parent’s neighbors gave me a tour of the MSU cyclotron (which he helped build). He was showing me the superconducting coils and the machinery needed to cool it to 3°K and I was going on about the ceramics I was making that were superconducting at liquid nitrogen temperatures. He said something along the lines of “that’s great—come back when you’ve got 3 miles of flexible wiring”. The problem isn’t generating the magnetic field, it’s powering it with something that is even remotely portable. I believe that the Mythbusters tried full metal jackets (and possibly total metal jackets as well) along with hundreds of pounds of batteries and only managed to slightly deflect the trajectory. The problem is that the projectile is moving so fast that an enormous force has to be applied by the magnetic field to deflect it quickly enough to matter. This, in turn, requires a large voltage to generate. I’ll leave the numerical answer as an exercise for the class… 😉
Wootsie – I love that Q too but we are talking about a DIFFERENT Q. Here he is in his debut:
Slartibartfast,
Oh I agree that Pinehurst Studios (et al) took a lot of creative license with many of the gadgets. However, you don’t need to defy the laws of physics you only need to make it LOOK like you did. A recent acting director of CIA (McLaughlin) said “people are easy to fool” – and they are! He is known as “the magician”. He once made the Russians at a meeting at Kremlin think he could turn a ruble note into a larger one (in amount) – and he did right in front of their eyes (and KGB/FSB was at table too). To this day he won’t explain how he did it. He claims it’s a simple trick. I think Putin still hates him.
I think the REAL Q-Branches have surpassed the fake one. You need to check out the new laser developed at InQtel that can ALMOST tell what’s in your pocket from a distance at the airport.
However, you are right about LEAD bullets. But FMJ ones can be magnetized by a superconducting magnet. Not sure about rocket ejectors but you know you have one in your car right now. It’s in your steering wheel facing you while you drive. It’s powerful enough to give you a split lip.
The NSA (aka puzzle palace) is an amazing place I agree. I get a kick out of that story about Chinese Furbie toys everytime I read it. I am still amazed at the story about the WW2 mpeg-like device the POTUS used to talk to allies and naval ships at sea that made NAZI Enigma machine look like a toy (See SIGSALY machine).
I’m still trying to duplicate their word-parsing-program that can give you the sense-stress of a large amount of text (wordiness?). It’s still a herculean work in progress but mine doesn’t work to well. Theirs, they won’t share. Forgot the name of it. It’s supposed to be a technology transfer thing. But I guess you have to be a university or something to get it.
Another one from NSA I think is really great extra-paradigm thinking is the IP address distance tracker. Supposedly they have a program that can tell how far in miles a particular IP address is from, let’s say, your IP address. It’s relatively simple but the math is quite daunting (I think).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkC8MZi0Es&feature=related
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkC8MZi0Es&w=420&h=315%5D