Tantric Topology

It what has to be my most bizarre and disturbing mathematical thought so far, I spent a good twenty minutes today in the Sexuality section of my local Borders puzzling over an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra. After enduring many embarrassed glances from other shoppers and a few accusatory stares of employees, I satisfied myself that topologically speaking, there is really only one position, since all can be smoothly transformed into any other.

Summer School

Here's a interesting point-counterpoint on year-round schooling. I don't have any personal experience with this, having attended schools with more or less traditional schedules. The summer break, while enjoyable, has always seemed counterproductive to student learning to me, as well as more than a little archaic. We are no longer an agrarian society where kids need to quit their readin', writin', and 'rithmetic to help plow the field. I would certainly not be opposed to working in a school system with a year-round schedule, if it gets proven results.

Of course, many will argue that there is no proof of results. I certainly couldn't find any statistics on-line. There was plenty of anecdotal evidence on both sides, but no empirical data sources. I am beginning to suspect that summer breaks are just too woven into our country's culture for us to part with them. Does anybody out there have any ideas/experience with this issue?

With Limited Commercial Interruption

Occasionally an idea comes along that is so brilliant, so without flaws, that you wonder why exactly it hasn't already been put into place. This is one of those ideas. I'm not claiming it as my own, but I have decided to become its biggest campaigner. Let's begin.

I love to watch television. Whether its all-new or re-run, sitcom or drama, reality or scripted, educational or escapist, I love it. Like most people, I don't care for commercials. They spoil the flow of the show and they are largely a waste of my time. I also don't like paying for TV. I have tried surviving on broadcast only, with little success. I need the variety, and basic cable is a must. When I can afford it, I go for digital or better.

Cable companies want to make money. They have gone to a lot of effort to lay the lines and purchase rights to the programming. They are motivated by their desire to feed their families, drive fancy cars, and vacation in the Bahamas.

Businesses want to advertise their products. With the average pay-out per minute of commercial time climbing into the realm of scientific notation, their desire to get the word out is obvious. The more people who see the product, the more people buy it.

Now here's the plan.

What if you're TV worked just like your Google homepage? As you watch, channel surf, and mindlessly flip, it monitors your click-stream. Then it uses that viewing history to decide what products you might be interested in buying. It builds a list of those commercials most suited to you and puts them in a folder. Each month, you have the option of watching as many or as few of those spots as you choose. Every one you watch decreases your monthly cable bill by a certain amount. If you watch enough, your bill is zero. The businesses whose product you saw advertised make up the difference on your bill. Everybody wins. You get free TV with tons of variety, and you watch the commercials on your terms. The cable company gets to make tons of cash. Businesses get to advertise their products to their target audiences for a fraction of what they are paying now to blanket the market.

This is my dream. Please, share it with me.

Girl Power

It's pretty good to be a woman in America. I'm sure my female readers would beg to differ, and it's true that there is still rampant inequality and prejudice toward women. Women are overlooked for jobs, paid less than their male counterparts, and frequently deal with sexual harassment. They are criticized by one side for having a career and by the other for stooping to the stereotypical role of wife and mother. They are expected to do everything a man can do, only to do it backwards and wearing heels. But let's be realistic. Compared to most women around the world, American women are living the high life. I mean, there are still cultures where women are treated more as currency than as human beings.

Yes, it's true. Young girls in the USA can grow up to be electrical engineers, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians. The problem is, well, most of them don't. For whatever reason, little girls want to be Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. If that sad fact doesn't wake people up, I don't know what will. When we worry about how our nation can compete with the growing economies of China and India, most of us happily ignore the elephant in the room- that the most obvious and effective solution is to inspire more than 51% of our nation's children to pick up a calculus textbook and put down the Barbie doll.

Thankfully for the future of the world, there are organizations devoted to doing just that. Since 1950, the Society for Women Engineers has made it their mission to show young girls that careers in science and mathematics are not just for the guys. The host programs from kindergarten through college, and from coast to coast. Krystal Grube, an SWE representative says of an upcoming event in Minnesota,

On June 3rd, hundreds of girls in St. Paul, Minnesota will attend an event hosted by SWE called, “Wow! That’s Engineering!” Through hands-on activities, girls will learn how solar power works, the wonders of deep sea diving, and even develop their own lip-gloss. Most importantly, they’ll realize that engineering is not just about working behind a computer; it’s about making a difference in the world.

There has never been a better time for the next Marie Curie or Emmy Noether to show the world that women can not only compete with men in these subjects, but with the right touch of genius and self-confidence, can leave them in the dust.

Support our Troops

MarkCC over at Good Math, Bad Math pretty much sums up how I'm feeling today.

Sights and Sounds

In an earlier post about the SETI project, I pointed out that at the level of electro-chemical signals, there really isn't much difference between sight and hearing. Both translate data from the world around us into electric impulses. There is no reason to believe that an animal that tracks primarily by sound, like a bat for instance, "sees" the world differently than we do. They just translate the echoes into a three-dimensional map, similarly to the way our brain does with our eyes. Scientists have recently discovered that our own brains can be trained to map the world with sound.

When you identify an object's shape, a particular part of your brain called the LOtv "lights up". At first this area was thought to be purely visual, but several years ago Amir Amedi, now at Harvard Medical School, showed that touch could also activate it. Now Amedi and his team have shown that even "hearing" a shape can activate the area.

The research group built a device that measures a subject's ability to mentally model space using sound, and found that they could in fact improve a persons results. This explains the conventional wisdom that blind people have a heightened sense of hearing. I don't think there are any would-be Daredevils out there, but it's still pretty cool.

Despite My Better Judgement

I have debated for several weeks about what I am about to write. I have tried to suppress my feelings about this for fear of permanently alienating my female readership. My most loyal blog-friends are women. The only blogrolls that link to me are authored by women. But blogger, after all essentially means someone who just can't keep their damn mouth shut. So after much deliberation, and despite knowing that this is a bad idea, I'm going to put it into words. It has nothing to do with math or education, but everything to do with morality, humanity, and justice.

There was a much talked about case in the Massachusetts courts this past month. It concerned the definition of rape and it has been attacked by women from all ends of the political spectrum. What allegedly happened was that a man masqueraded as his own brother in order to trick his brother's girlfriend into having intercourse. Here is the court's response, as told by the Boston Globe.

The Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that a judge should have dismissed the rape charge against Alvin Suliveres, 44, of Westfield, Mass., because state law has for centuries defined rape as sexual intercourse by force and against one’s will, and that it is not rape when consent is obtained through fraud.

If the Legislature wants to make sex through fraud qualify as rape, it should follow the lead of several other states and change the law, the court said.

Now let me be abundantly clear. I have no doubt whatsoever that Suliveres did exactly what he is accused of having done. I think it is despicable and disgusting and thoroughly immoral. I still don't think it is rape.

The court's opinion that the state legislature ought to follow the lead of others is correct. The law, as it stands, was not intended to cover this kind of crime. And again, it is certainly a crime. But there has to be a legal difference between forced sex and that which occurs based on conditional consent. The first is rape; the second is fraud. Any effort to expand the definition is going to be an uphill battle, and will quickly lead to the slipperiest of slopes. To define sex as rape, simply because it was the result of duplicity is to suddenly add hordes of victims and predators to the ledger. The following is a brief list of common frauds used by both genders to solicit sex.

"I am over 18."
"I am a virgin."
"I am single."
"I love you."
"I am wealthy."
"I am on the pill."
"I am a powerful movie producer."
"I have no STDs."

Some of these lies are worse than others, but they are all designed to trick someone into doing something that they wouldn't otherwise do. Would couplings resulting from these subterfuges be rapes? If so, then we had better start building a whole lot of prisons, because the rapists are about to make the drug offender population look like small potatoes.

Again, I do not advocate the use of fraud to obtain sex. I feel that this man should be punished. But since we're talking about a serious capital offense, we have to define it very strictly with no room for error or interpretation. If we expand the definition of rape to include fraud, then all of the above lies could easily lead to life in prison. Is that a decision we are willing to make?