Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
One of the diciest spectacles we have in education these days is the rush to apply technology to the process. Our school systems are spending enormous amounts of money to equip students with the latest gadget (these days, it's a tablet) and make sure they know how to run these things. Textbook publishers are rushing …
Continue reading "Advice to Graduates: Every Wing has a Leading Edge and a Trailing Edge"
And they don't stand much of a chance, either: Palm Beach police picked up five illegal immigrants shortly after 5 a.m. Thursday at the corner of Hammon Avenue and South Ocean Boulevard, police spokesman Fred Hess said. Evidently the politically correct terminology has not quite penetrated this enclave. I think it should be noted, however, …
Continue reading "They're Still Called Illegal Immigrants in Palm Beach"
Most proofs of the characteristic polynomial of the companion matrix--an important specific case--proceed by induction, and start with a $latex 2\times2$ matrix. It strikes me that an inductive proof has more force (or at least makes more sense) if a larger matrix is used. In this case we will use a "large" (numerical analysts will …
It's that time of the year again, when some students turn into wage-earners, others just move on to another curriculum, and still others just tank. Once the mediaeval outfits return to the closet while some who just came out of the closet try to push others they don't like into the closet, college faculty are …
Continue reading "Advice to Graduates: The Importance of an Objective"
Some people think otherwise: State and local governments, the authorities best positioned to understand their own needs and capacities, should have a greater say in directing the flow of immigration. To that end, Washington could let states sponsor regional visas. Like H-1B employment visas, regional visas would last three years and could be extended to …
Continue reading "Internal Passports: The Bad Idea of Regional Visas"
But Palm Beach County sheriff Ric Bradshaw's going to try: Florida House and Senate budget leaders have awarded Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw $1 million for a new violence prevention unit aimed at preventing tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., from occurring on his turf. Bradshaw plans to use the extra …
Continue reading "In South Florida, Taming the People Won't Be Easy"
Looks that way: The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”. As I noted last year in my piece Go Where the Future Is: That last point …
Continue reading "Christians in the Military: They Really Don't Want Us Anymore"
As a slight departure from the usual subjects of this blog, we offer this paper for discussion and consideration: This article is an overview of the current state of both forward and inverse analysis of wave propagation in piling. It begins with a summary of the typical acceptance procedure for the wave equation as applied …
I recently noted an article about how the American Dream has downsized. The decline of our society as "aspirational" is one of the biggest shifts in attitude that has taken place in my lifetime, and is one I have noted on many occasions. But in the middle of the article, a survey was taken with …
Continue reading "When the Fence Went Away, So Did the American Dream"
Standpoint's Mary Eberstadt hits the nail on the head: Specifically, because the churches need vibrant families — including families that reproduce themselves, as secular people tend not to do — they must also understand that strengthening the natural family is the first order of business in bringing people back to God. As has been amply documented by the British …
Continue reading "The Best Way for the Church to Restore the Family–and Itself–is to Be One"
Positive Infinity 