Example

x³ - 11x² - 26x - 16 = 0

???

x² + x - 3 = 3x
x² + x - 3x - 3 = 0
x² - 2x - 3 = 0
1x² - 2x - 3 = 0

ax² + bx + c = 0
a=1, b=-2, c=-3

δ = b² - 4ac

x₁ = -b + √ δ
______2a

x₂ = -b - √ δ
_____2a

δ = (-2)² - 4(1)(-3)
δ = 4 - -12
δ= 4 + 12
δ = 16

x₁ = -b + √ δ
_____2a

x₁ = - -2 + √ 16
_____2(1)

x₁ = +2 + 4
_____2(1)

x₁= 6
___2
x_{1 =3}


x₂ = -b - √ δ
_____2a

x₂ = - -2 - √ 16
______2(1)

x₂ = +2 - 4
____2(1)

x₂= -2
___2
x₂ = - 1

x= -1, 3

Mercenaries Are Legal

I heard a talking head in the news today say that the U.S. can't use mercenaries. Not only can we use them but our right to do so is explicitly spelled out in our constitution.

Now Machiavelli said using mercenaries was a bad idea because they can turn on you, and he was right, but their judicious and limited use to harass and remove our enemies is an option that has been on the table for well over 200 years.

Real 'Murcan

A brief summary of things you probably already know:

On Thursday, February 19, 2009 "CNBC's Rick Santelli called for a 'Chicago Tea Party' leading the charge for calls to revolt against the Obama Administration's mortgage bailout plan."

Later throughout the year there were dozens of spontaneous Tea Party protests and town hall meetings which coalesced into the amorphous and leaderless Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party is a sympton of public frustration with our current Congress's deficit spending. Bush famously increased our deficit during his time in office and the Tea Partiers have made clear that their stances for limited government and less spending do not translate into automatic support for Republicans. Cari Carender, the woman credited with leading the first Tea Party, demonstrated this with her response to a question about Sarah Palin:

"She will have to campaign on Tea Party ideas if she wants Tea Party support." "And if she were elected, she’d have to govern on those principles or be fired."

Of course, if one does not believe that we have increased the deficit, does not believe that the increase in the deficit is permanent, or believes that we are in a kind of economic emergency that justifies increasing the deficit, then the policies the Tea Party promotes need to be opposed.

Some Democrats have opposed these policies.

All of that is hopefully old news.

What's new is that in response to the Tea Party on February 10, 2010 the Coffee Party put up a website.

The Coffee Party website was originally registered to Real Virginians for Webb according to American Liberty Riders. However, a current check shows that it has been re-registered through a proxy company and the Webb connection is no longer shown.

Further checking reveals that the woman who started the Coffee Party, Annabel Park, was responsible for Real Americans for Democracy, Real Virginians for Webb, and Obama's Youtube channel during his 2008 campaign. She appears to be an experienced Democratic campaigner claiming to be a grass roots group.

This brings me to the point of this post. Even though some may consider Park's groups astroturfing * there are a lot of Americans who agree with the Democrats' ideas. That these people want to break with the American tradition of individual liberty to achieve greater economic equality does not necessarily make them "un-American" but rather people who seek to change what it is to be American. That is their right. However, when they give their groups names like Real Virginians for Webb and Real Americans for Democracy they communicate the idea that their opponents are somehow fake or unreal Americans. For a group that insists that its opponents not question their patriotism this is absurd.

So I would like to try a though experiment. Whether you're a Marxist, Objectivist, or Monarchist, imagine an incredibly popular senator gives an amazingly eloquent speech to summarize and communicate your ideas. Imagine that the country starts to agree with him and that the ideas you share with him become politically popular. Now imagine that this champion of your cause is found to have dead prostitutes in his freezer. Does that invalidate your ideas? Does it make them un-American? Slavery was at one time legal. So were segregation and prohibition. The defenders of these institutions firmly believed that they were American. It is possible to change what America is. It is possible to disagree with our legal and cultural traditions and still be a real American. I like our traditions. I believe they make America a great place to live, and most people who have a choice in the matter agree, but, for good or ill, America is what we make of it. And what we make of it changes with what we want. So if you're an American citizen, pay your taxes, and advocate your view peacefully, you're a real American.

And if you take down your Linked In page to hide the fact that you're a strategy analyst for the New York Times, opaquely register your website by proxy, and take steps to hide your political connections, you're astroturfing.




*The Wikipedia article that explains astroturfing gives almost uniformly Republican and right wing examples. This is rather surprising given that the Obama campaign is arguably the most successful instance of astroturfing in recent history. More surprising still is that the article stating this was referenced, but curiously unquoted, in the same Wikipedia article.

Edutainment 1

This and this

Santayana and Churchill on Obama

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else
--Winston Churchill

Captain America!

...is now available on Hulu.

Captain America is right up there with Remo Williams as a slice of awesome Americana.

This is also pretty cool.

Being concise is harder than I thought. I just deleted two paragraphs to say all this.