One the serious disadvantages of getting a secondary education in the late 1960's and early 1970's is that one was exposed to the first wave of "hippie radicals" to escape from our institutions of higher learning with a diploma. In the intervening years the subsequent waves have been merrily doing their damage to the system …
Local Stiffness Matrix for Combined Beam and Spar Element With Axial and Lateral Linear Resistance
Our objective is to develop an element with the following characteristics: Two-dimensional, two node element Euler-Bernoulli beam theory Axial stiffness (``spar'' type element) "Beam on elastic foundation'' characteristic Axial elastic resistance Although it is doubtless possible to start with a single weak-form equation and develop the stiffness matrix, it is more convenient to develop the …
Some Thoughts on the "Three Streams" Business
I've thought about writing this for some time, but Stand Firm in Faith is doing what they do best: standing firm, in this case against the "Three Streams" concept of Anglicanism. Since I have, indirectly, been accused of holding this idea--and more recently gotten myself bogged down in an unedifying debate on the subject of …
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Civil Marriage Gets It In The End
The top end of the income scale, that is: A 39.6% rate applies to income above a certain threshold (specifically, income in excess of the “applicable threshold” over the dollar amount at which the 35% bracket begins). The applicable threshold is $450,000 for joint filers and surviving spouses, $425,000 for heads of household, $400,000 for …
Going Over a Lower Cliff
Rubin nails it on this one: For those waking up this morning (January 2) wondering if the House passed the Senate bill, the answer is yes, they did. Thus, the country goes over the tax portion of the fiscal cliff, albeit a lower cliff than it was a few days ago. Other fiscal cliffs remain …
The Two Underlying Assumptions Behind the Opposition to Gun Control
The turn of the year is generally a time when I try to reflect on serious issues of a broad nature. My first one was on my sorry contemporaries the Boomers, who are as much a plague now as they were six years ago. But there have been other topics: the Muslims, the Manhattan Declaration, …
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Use of Netwon’s Method to Determine Matrix Eigenvalues
The problem here is to develop a routine that will determine one or more eigenvalues of a matrix using Newton's method and considering the eigenvalue problem to be that of a nonlinear equation solution problem. The simplest way to illustrate the problem and its solution is to use a 4 $latex \times$4 matrix. Let us …
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Rev. Ian Mitchell: The American Folk Song Mass
(FEL 7401-M) 1967 The 1960's were a time of ferment and change in the U.S., and, then as now, institutions had a hard time keeping up with them, let along getting ahead. One attempt to do so was The American Folk Song Mass, performed by the Canterbury Choir at Northwestern University under the direction of …
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The Fading Glory Problem Affects the Prediction of Hurricane Sandy
A few months ago I ran a piece entitled Fading Glory, where I made the following observation re the place where I'm working on my PhD in Computational Engineering: One of the things my advisor oriented us about were the substantial computer capabilities that the SimCentre has. “Substantial” is a relative term; at one point …
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Math and the Middle East: Some Things Never Change
Every now and then you'll hear a news item about someone's math problem being controversial (involving slavery, etc.) This gem has been around for a long time: it comes from Marvin Marcus' A Survey of Finite Mathematics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969). It's purpose is to illustrate the use of combinatorial matrix theory, and (stripping …
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Positive Infinity 