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
Tony,
I was a little perplexed by that as well. On the very theoretical outside? I can see calculus maybe (maybe) having some utility in regression analysis if the statistical tools normally used for that don’t sufficient cover change over time, but that’s a huge stretch.
I admit I have no idea what “business calculus” might be. In 25 years of business I used calculus often for engineering problems, but never for a business problem per se. In actual business I have used quite a bit of statistics, curve fitting, least squares solutions, algebra and other such arithmetic, but what business problem can be described with mathematical functions well enough to warrant calculus?
Seriously, I am curious.
Elaine:
if you put 23,000,000 people to work at just $30,000 per year that is around 211 billion dollars of tax revenue. Assuming 15% for SS and 15% for federal taxes. Not to mention property taxes and sales taxes and the reduction in unemployment benefits, food stamps, etc.
Obviously people will make more and less than the $30k but you can see the potential revenue/savings.
Go back and look at tax revenues during the Reagan years, Carville and Begala called it the largest tax increase in history and Reagan lowered the marginal rate.
Bron 1, October 3, 2012 at 8:49 am
waldo:
a blue collar worker would probably be locked up and fired. But then it also doesnt take 6-8 years to learn a trade or how to dig a ditch and it doesnt cost 100′s of thousands of dollars. There are also fewer PhD’s in mathematics running around than day laborers.
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I have never used business calculus, and I knew I never would. Most of the other students felt the same way. Maybe the Professor’s rant was the conclusion that his efforts were being mostly wasted.
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?”
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I had to take two business calculus classes. Got A’s in both, but I don’t remember any of it.
OS,
Yeah, I’m familiar with the term Gish Gallop, but I’ve been calling that technique the W.C. Fields for so long it has become habit. 😀
Due to a significant disconnect between the effects of the interaction between the audio time course of my computer’s speakers and the electrochemical state of my cerebral cortex last night and an overwhelming majority of the commentary regarding said audio (and its video counterpart which I only glanced at occasionally—quite often to see one of President Obama’s 100 MegaWatt smiles), I am declining to participate in this discussion. My current hypothesis is that I was inoculated against Romney’s Gish Gallop (thanks OS!) because my own confirmation biases as well as my subjective evaluation of the data lead me to look for apparent evidence of dishonesty in Romney’s points (which I found). What matters is the aggregate effect of how this played to the many disparate groups of voters—simplistically (because it doesn’t account for high and low information voters), does it make the respective bases more or less likely to vote and does it make the undecided/weakly decided change their opinion? Remember that early voting is underway in 34 states (which is presumably locking in a portion of the vote at a particular day’s polling average). I’m going to wait for something empirical before I speculate on this aggregate effect.
A statement with which I feel great empathy right now.
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As for Professor McCarthy, I hope that the MSU math department (of which I am a proud alum) will ensure he gets the help that he needs rather than treating this putatively.
John,
If you’re reading this, you may not have been my favorite teacher, but I’m sorry for what happened to you and you have my best wishes for a speedy recovery. Remember, we are all of us broken and it is only through good fortune that the rest of us have avoided a fall like the one you’ve just taken. I hope your friends, family, and colleagues all give you a hand in helping you to pull yourself out of what must be the deepest hole you’ve ever been in.
Sincerely,
Kevin Kesseler
one of your former students
Mitt Romney’s Campaign Forced To Clarify His Claims After First Presidential Debate
The Huffington Post
By Sabrina Siddiqui Posted: 10/04/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/romney-2012-presidential-debate_n_1940184.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Excerpt:
Another false claim from Romney came in during his attack on the president’s green energy program — when he stated that “half” of the firms that received stimulus funds had gone out of business.
“These businesses, many of them have gone out of business,” Romney said. “I think about half of them — of the ones that have been invested in have gone out of business.”
Fact-checkers and media outlets quickly seized on the statement, pointing out that “only three of 26 recipients of 1705 loan guarantees have filed for bankruptcy, with losses estimated at just over $600 million.”
Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald said the Romney campaign confirmed to him that Romney’s assertion was inaccurate, tweeting:
“ICYMI: Romney camp told me (after my tweet-rants) Mitt didn’t mean to say half the #stimulus-funded green firms failed. Probably <1% so far.”
TPMDC
Top Romney Adviser: States Will Have To Cover People With Pre-Existing Conditions Under President Romney
Brian Beutler- October 3, 2012
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/top-romney-adviser-states-will-have-to-cover-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-under-president-rom.php
Excerpt:
After the first presidential debate at the University of Denver in Colorado on Wednesday night, one of Mitt Romney’s top advisers acknowledged that, as a result Romney’s plan to repeal Obamacare, people with pre-existing medical conditions would likely be unable to purchase insurance.
The admission directly contradicts the GOP candidate’s claim during the debate that “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan” — a contention Romney has repeated on the trail and that his campaign has repeatedly walked back.
“With respect to pre-existing conditions, what Governor Romney has said is for those with continuous coverage, he would continue to make sure that they receive their coverage,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, referring to existing laws which require insurance companies to sell coverage to people who already have insurance, or within 90 days of losing their employer coverage.
Pressed by TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, Fehrnstrom said those who currently lack coverage because they have pre-existing conditions would need their states to implement their own laws — like Romney’s own Massachusetts health care law — that ban insurance company from discriminating against sick people.
In my very limited experience I have seen this sort of aberrant behavior before with dual-diagnosis mental patients. It appears that those who indulge in smoking or snorting the Coca plant (benzoylmethylecgonine) “derivatives”, it seems to enhance latent schizophrenia (or at least that’s what I’ve been told by the experts). Also recently UK scientists have discovered that THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) can do the same thing. Guess what THC is in.
So if the good professor has been “smoking” some really “good stuff” I think it explains his psychotic break with reality.
Someone tried to explain to me “inhibited GABA release” at Brookhaven National Labs in Upton NY but I started to doze off. Started off (in a Professor Frink from The Simpson’s voice): “GABA modulates dopamine concentrations in the nucleus accumbens and corpus striatum… blah blah blah…” I was gonzo by the first sentence. All I heard near the end is that there is a “magic pill” (of sorts) to mitigate this made from a French anti-epilepsy seizure drug. I wonder why it’s not on the market yet by Eli Lilly et al.
Oh I forgot who what very politically powerful US family has a controlling interest in Eli Lilly. The same people that are secretly bringing the “good stuff” into our country under wraps? Nahh! That’s just another tin-hat conspiracy theory… forget I said anything… keep moving… nothing to see here… (LOL)
I know I wasn’t crazy when I heard the pundits praise the Romney performance and thought they were the crazy ones. Here are the results from a post-debate focus group in Denver.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1139991/-Post-Debate-Focus-Group-Obama-Wins-on-Likeabiity-Economy-Healthcare
The First Debate: Mitt Romney’s Five Biggest Lies
The truth behind that $5 trillion tax cut, pre-existing conditions and more
By Tim Dickinson
October 4, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-first-debate-mitt-romneys-five-biggest-lies-20121004
Mitt Romney turned in a polished performance in last night’s presidential debate – and revealed himself to be an accomplished and unapologetic liar. In an evening where he sought to slice and dice the president with statistics, Romney baldly misrepresented his own policy prescriptions, made up numbers to fit his attacks and buried clear contrasts with the president under a heaping pile of horseshit.
Here are mendacious Mitt’s five most outrageous statements:
1. “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut.” Romney flatly lied about the cost of his proposal to cut income-tax rates across the board by another 20 percent (undercutting even the low rates of the Bush tax cuts). Independent economists at the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for those cuts is $360 billion in the first year, a cost that extrapolates to $5 trillion over a decade.
2. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.” Romney has claimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes and deductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn’t named a single loophole he’s willing to close; worse, there’s no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts even if you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romney has not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percent capital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney’s proposal would create a “net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers.” Moreover, some of Romney’s tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly his proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons’ tax burden by tens of millions of dollars.
3. “We’ve got 23 million people out of work or [who have] stopped looking for work in this country.” Romney is lying for effect. The nation’s crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23 million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 million Americans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping 23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who hold part-time jobs as also being “out of work.”
4. Obamacare “puts in place an unelected board that’s going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have.” Romney is reviving Sarah Palin’s old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors.
5. “Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” In the biggest whopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal would guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just not true. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unable to obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than 90 days because you lost your job or couldn’t afford the premiums, you would be shit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny you coverage, as even Romney’s top adviser conceded after the debate was over.
Elaine,
Great article. I think in the long run, this performance by Romney will come back to haunt him when he gets hammered on the multiple lies that he kept repeating. President Obama needs to not only grow a pair for the next debate and use Mitt’s words in ads leading up to and we will see which Mitt shows up the next time.
The triumph of style over substance
By Steve Benen – Thu Oct 4, 2012
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/04/14219336-the-triumph-of-style-over-substance?lite
Excerpt:
One of the main drawbacks to televised political theatrics is that we tend to evaluate the events in an unconstructive way. We see players on a stage, after extensive rehearsals, playing to a packed house, and we judge them as if they are actors — who seemed “crisp” and looked “confident.”
In other words, we invariably value political theater on its theatrical qualities, watching to see who knew their lines and delivered them more effectively.
By this measure, when it comes to determining who “won” last night’s debate in Denver, I’d argue the conventional wisdom is right: it wasn’t close. Based on style and performance, Mitt Romney did all of the things a “winning” debater is supposed to do.
Did he know his lines? Obviously, yes. Did he deliver them well? Flawlessly. I argued last week that Romney’s “strength as a debater is wildly underappreciated” and “if Democrats expect Romney to falter in the debates, they’re making a big mistake.” Last night illustrated what I was talking about.
President Obama, meanwhile, was listless and timid. He stumbled on his words. At times he seemed distracted and unfocused. There were key opportunities for the president to go on the offensive, but for whatever reason, he chose not to engage. For pundits checking boxes — who gave the appearance of being “in control”? — Romney excelled.
But all of this overlooks an element I like to think it sometimes important: substance. The men on the stage last night aren’t actors; they’re candidates for the nation’s highest office. Delivering lines well is a nice quality, but as the dust settles, it’s worth pausing to reflect on whether those lines were true and reflect reality in any meaningful way.
Indeed, it seems to me Romney thrived in large part because he abandoned the pretense of honesty. And as it turns out, winning a debate is surprisingly easy when a candidate decides he can say anything and expect to get away with it.
I knew that debating technique had a name, but could not remember it until I read a blog post that reminded me. The Gish Gallop. Gene, you will appreciate the “appeal to authority” logical fallacy inherent in this approach. The old “dazzle ’em with BS” tactic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish
More from DailyKos to add to OS’ points. These links show that the CNN Snap poll saying that 67% thought Romney one was bogus:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1139860/-CNN-Snap-poll-all-southern-white-over-50
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/04/1139750/-Punish-CNN-for-Bogus-Poll-Remove-Candy-Crowley-as-a-Moderator
I tried to watch that math class masquerading as a political debate but turned on the baseball instead.
You want a debate? Here’s young Mr. Lincoln in reply to Judge Douglas on that “peculiar” domestic institution that enraptured our minds some years ago:
Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things; but in regard to that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes, when he says that I was engaged at that time in selling out and Abolitionizing the old Whig party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the position I took in that contest of 1854.
(…)
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world,—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,—criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North, and become tip-top Abolitionist; while some Northern ones go South, and become most cruel slave-masters.
(…)
When they [Southerners] remind us of their Constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the African slave-trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so long forbid the taking of them to Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the latter.
(First Joint Debate, August 21, 1858)
Now that’s debating the great issues of the day. Not that mealy mouth thing I heard last night.
Jim Lehrer Gets Pwned
Richard Kim
October 4, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170351/jim-lehrer-gets-pwned
Excerpt:
I’ll leave it to the horserace pundits to decide who won tonight’s debate and to the voters to decide who will win the election. I know who lost: Jim Lehrer, PBS, old media and the myth of the “sensible center.” Tonight’s moderator, Jim Lehrer, got utterly, totally, savagely pwned. The Lehrer/PBS school of moderation is fundamentally unequipped to deal with the era of post-truth, asymmetric polarization politics—and it should be retired. Time and time again, Romney deviated from the positions he took to win the GOP primary, and neither Lehrer nor Obama was able to effectively press him on it. Obama at least tried, at times.
The gulf between political reality and mainstream media mores has never seemed so wide and unbridgeable. Frankly, I came away with one new opinion, and that was to agree with Mitt Romney that PBS should go. (Big Bird, I’ll rethink this in the AM.)
But beyond the numbing boredom and bewilderment that tonight’s debate format and moderation caused, there are real costs. Not necessarily to the candidates—the media has called the debate for Romney, but I don’t think it will move the needle enough for Romney to win—but to democracy.
Many members of the MSM–at least the ones I heard this morning–appear to be much more impressed by style than by substance. I thought neither candidate won the debate last night–but the talking heads I listened to all said that they thought Romney had won–and won big. I guess little things like facts and the truth don’t matter as much and one’s “performance.”
Tony C.
@Blouise: Unfortunately, I do not think they are telling us how many of the undecided actually end up voting. Since they are re-interviewing only once, they won’t be able to do that.
The best we can do is that 20% say they “definitely won’t vote,” but I wonder about whether the other 80% really will vote or not.
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That’s why I like the after election day aspect of this study. I suspect we will not get the final results for some time.
Tony C.,
More ether crossings … 🙂
What I really like about this study is the after Election Day portion.
I link quite a bit to The Monkey Cage site but I figure JT won’t mind the augmentation as one of the owners of the site is John Sides, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at George Washington University.