8 thoughts on “Harvard”

  1. It’s interesting how toxic this new wave of ideology is to institutions like Harvard, the LA Times, and the World Economic Forum. Better that these are compromised first than more vital organizations.

  2. Noted on Gutfeld last night: The issues surrounding Harvard could so easily be avoided by adding plagiarist as a protected oppressed class. Along with, race, gender, gender-identity, etc.

    The intersectionality with a zero, is zero. – D. España

    1. On the subject of intersecting a set of measure zero with another such set, there was the first homework assignment in a class in Shannon’s Information Theory on counting the number of subsets of a set of things specified in the problem.

      I asked the professor for consideration my answer where I had counted the null or empty set as one of the subsets.

      That prompted a story about our professor’s friend who wrote the textbook we were using. He applied for the “null license plate” as his personalized license plate–in California, people called such a “vanity plate.” In other word, the author of our textbook wanted a blank license plate as his personalized plate.

      The clerk at DMV told him that he couldn’t have it. The resourceful textbook author replied that the rules specifically said that such a plate could not have a single letter or number, but the rules were silent on whether a license plate with nothing on it was prohibited.

      Again the answer was no.

      Ed, our professor, always saw the humor in a situation and mused what would happen if his friend Bob had indeed been granted the null license plate, and if he was seen speeding past a couple of Pasadena’s finest standing on a street corner, one officer would ask, “did you get this vehicle’s license” and the other officer would answer, “sure did”, ripping a blank page from his note-taking-pad of the type Sergeant Friday of the LAPD always had, handing it to the first officer and saying, ‘Here it is!”

      1. I would propose a new regulation for the near future. Blank vanity plates for driver-less vehicles.

    2. Is what Information Theory is, known to Rand’s fine cadre of space technology aficionados?

      I remember when the glossy alumni magazine had an article by Robert McEliece, the guy who wanted the “null license plate” attempting to explain this dry, math-theory of sets and probability that was foundational to communicating with the space probes sent to the far reaches of the solar system.

      McEliece called upon the readers familiarity with the Star Trek TOS episode “The Menagerie” where Dr. McCoy is frustrated by being unable to understand what Captain Pike, disfigured and bound to a 23rd century-style wheelchair after exposure to “delta radiation”, was trying to tell him. In this telling of the story line, “Bones” complains “he keeps blinking no, but no to what?”

      McEliece goes on to explain that given Captain Pike’s ability to blink “yes” or “no”, the good doctor could have rapidly figured out, by conducting a version of 20 questions”, that the former Captain of the Enterprise was objecting to a plot by Spock to hijack the Enterprise to take him to Talos IV, home to dangerously telepathic beings, a planet so severely off-limits that going there was the only offense for which The Federation gave out the death penalty.

      McEliece described Information Theory as explaining how McCoy could find all of this out, even if some of the yes/no answers were randomly switched.

      Boy, that really cleared up the puzzle of what Information Theory is about!

      1. The only character in ST:TOS capable of logically following a depth 20 tree of questions to uncover the plan to hijack the Enterprise was Mr. Spock. And he was the one performing the hijack in order to give his former captain an enjoyable remainder to his life.

        It might have been possible for Capt. Kirk to conduct such an interview, but doubtful. As we know from some of the final dialog in the episode “The Changeling” when Mr. Spock complements the captain on his flawlessly logical train of interrogatories to a dangerously mutated space probe (Nomad) that led to its self-destruction. Kirk responds to the complement with:

        KIRK: “Why thank you Mr. Spock. Didn’t think I had it in me did you?”

        SPOCK: “No sir.”

        “Recollections from a wasted childhood” – D. Spagna

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