Politicians and Penguins

It has been reported that Trump just made fun of Romney for “walking like a penguin”:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-romney-walks-like-a-penguin/2016/05/25/613b5dd0-22c1-11e6-b944-52f7b1793dae_video.html

We are outraged at the insinuation.  Penguins walk nothing like that stumblebum Romney -- they have a natural grace and dignity.

"I shall not dignify that innuendo  by a reply..."

~

For your weekend reading pleasure,

we reproduce our earliest think-piece (from March 2013)

on the relations between politics and penguins.

(For further particulars, consult Prof. Dr.  H.D.G. von Vogelkunde, Die Pinguinistik in der Weltwissenschaft, 30 volumes, 1807 fff. )

~    ~    ~

(1)   One is not quite sure whether the following description of the French President, by his ex-mistress and songstress, is meant as a compliment …

Carla Bruni règle ses comptes avec Hollande

Sans le nommer, l'ex-première dame traite François Hollande de «pingouin» dans son prochain album.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2013/03/15/01002-20130315ARTFIG00579-carla-bruni-regle-ses-comptes-avec-hollande.php?m_i=WzZWqf4S4y3k7x6wXinJ2ITpXD2thSi21OvAHo80%2B%2BSQjgBWM

Well, here are the lyrics;  you be the judge:

«Il prend son petit air souverain

Mais je le connais, moi, le pingouin n'a pas de manière de châtelain.

Eh, le pingouin, si un jour tu recroises mon chemin,

Je t'apprendrai, le pingouin,

Je t'apprendrai à me faire le baisemain (…)

Ni laid ni beau, le pingouin,

Ni haut ni bas, ni froid ni chaud, le pingouin, ni oui ni non (…)

Tiens le pingouin  t'as l'air tout seul  dans ton jardin»…

For those of you whose French is rudimentary, the Translation Team here at the World of Dr Justice (headquarters:  Geneva)  offers the following free rendition (a certain poetic-license being naturally effected metri causâ)

Hooray for penguins, the King of Beasts!

Ruling the roost, from most to least!

Join us in our voyaging,

and let’s go visit  The Penguin King !!

(2)   You have doubtless read of the recent plebiscite in the Falklands, in which 97% of those voting elected to remain beneath the umbrella of Great Britain.  Omitted from the MSM reports were the vote totals of the indigenous (as opposed to colonialist) population, who surely should have a say.   These are, of course, penguins, and they far outnumber the other bipeds (the ones who lost their feathers in a long tragedy of evolutionary decline).  They voted almost unanimously to reject both British and Argentine overtures, and to become an Overseas Territory of Antarctica.

(The only dissent was a contrarian chick, who plumped for the North Pole.)

Note:  This is not the first time that penguin suffrage has altered the course of history:

Dr J a shoo-in for November

(3)  For an earlier thinkpiece on the political relevance of penguins, consult:
       http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/02/penguins-politics.html

[Footnote:  The present post is focused on strictly politicological aspects of Spheniscidae.  For the philosophical dimension, consult the following treatise

Scheinprobleme in der Pinguinologie  ]

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Does Trump wear a toupet ?

In Dickens’ final, unfinished, prophetic novel (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1870), he describes Mr Grewgious:

He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet;  it was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of anybody’s voluntarily sporting such a head.

Separated at birth!

Fixed That For You

This wonderful new Internet catchphrase  allows us at last  to rectify the most egregious of widely-quoted inanities.

"There are no second acts in American lives."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

“America has ever been, since its very origins, the land  par excellence  of second acts.”

-- FTFY

“Mission Accomplished.”

--  W.

“Mission Demolished.”

-- FTFY

“nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”

-- e e cummings

… with the possible exception of Donald Trump

-- FTFY

SCOOP! WDJ reveals Trump’s cabinet appointments !!

Those tiresome comparisons of The Donald to Hitler (or, somewhat more plausibly, to Mussolini;  even more plausibly, to Berlusconi)  quite fail to capture the rotundity of his appeal.   A substantial number of even quite well-educated and relatively liberal people, very far from the MSM stereotype of his supporters as merely ignorant haters, find him at the very least amusing, and even -- by comparison with the two-faced, scripted, often groveling other candidates (e.g. Hillary at AIPAC this morning) -- at times refreshing.   To grasp this, we need to evoke a different character from history:  Sir John Falstaff.

Sir Donald,  merry at his mead

Falstaff is totally unapologetic:  he revels in his lechery and chicanery, lies without scruple, and when caught in a lie, unabashedly seeks to turn everything to his own advantage.  But his knavery is so engaging  and his lust for life so keen, that he has become one of the favorite characters of the Bard.

Sir Donald, rebuking a Democrat

Owing to a mole inside the Trump campaign, the World of Dr Justice  -- renowned for xxx-clusive scoops -- has obtained an advance copy of the cabinet appointments contemplated by President-to-be Trump (inflect “to be” for the subjunctive, here):

Secretary of War: Ralph Mouldy

Secretary of Gaming: Thomas Wart

Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Miscellaneous:  Simon Shadow

Secretary of Free Enterprise : Peter Bull-calf.

 Secretary of This, That, and the Other Thing: Francis Feeble

Sir Donald, bidding defiance to the Islamic State

U heard it here first.

~  The World of Dr Justice™ ~

~ “RUMINT U can trust”© ~

[Update 26 March 2016]  Another plausible comparison:  Trump as "the white man's Marion Barry":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-the-new-marion-barry/2016/03/25/47fce1d4-f203-11e5-85a6-2132cf446d0a_story.html

Trump is a wimp

[ Trump ist Weichlingsweib ]

Okay right, so he talks tough;  but when the boots hit the asphalt,  can he do the deed?  Check this out, from Da Man -- Attila the Hun:

“For what fortress” (added Attila),

“what city, in the wide extent of the Roman empire,

can hope to exist,  secure and impregnable,

if it is our pleasure that it should be erased from the earth?”

-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)

Now, that guy’s a closer.

Write-in for 2016 !

~  A paid announcement  ~

~  ~  from Americans for Attila ® ~  ~

~  “Let’s stain the White House  red!”  ~

~

Wanna read about Mike Murphy,

a two-fisted private dick  that won’t take “No” for an answer!

The kind that the Trumpette would never read?

Check this out !

I Don’t Do Divorce Cases

(So Murphy would never take Trump as a client)

Kindle   Nook

“Ich bin Attila der Hunne,

and I approved this message

(and slew all who disagreed).”

~

[Update 7 February 2016]  The Donaldette struggles vainly to prove his manhood:

Donald Trump: I'd bring back 'a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding'

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/06/donald-trump-waterboarding-republican-debate-torture

For some reason, the Brits seem to be frontpaging this story  more than the Yanks:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/641795/Donald-Trump-Ted-Cruz-Republican-Presidential-Debate-Waterboarding-torture-terror-ISIS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/12144741/Republican-debate-Donald-Trump-and-Marco-Rubio-to-come-under-fire-live.html

The rest of Europe too, with hair-raising headlines:

http://www.tt.com/politik/weltpolitik/11093667-91/trump-f%C3%BCr-viel-schlimmere-folter-methoden-als-waterboarding.csp

http://diepresse.com/home/politik/aussenpolitik/4920810/Trump-fur-Waterboarding-und-hollisch-Schlimmeres?_vl_backlink=/home/politik/index.do

Trump für "schlimmere Methoden" als Waterboarding

http://derstandard.at/2000030521423/Rubio-im-Kreuzfeuer-der-Gouverneure

By contrast, the NYTimes merely runs  a short piece from Reuters, with the relatively bland title

Waterboarding Surfaces at Debate and Divides Republican Hopefuls

~ Celebrity Endorsement ~

~  Jack Bauer:  ~

~ ~  “At first I was thinking I’d go with Trump, ~~

~~ but Attila would absolutely schlong him! “ ~~

 http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/jack-bauers-advice-to-lovelorn.html


[Flash co-ord:  Michael Bloomberg --  R U busy ??? ]

[Update 9 February 2016]  Now Trump is cowering behind the skirts of a woman, himself not daring to brand Ted Cruz a “pussy”:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/08/trump-repeats-insult-from-crowd-member-calling-cruz-a-pussy

We contacted The Hun for his take on the matter.  His reply was a throaty chuckle:  “Look who’s talking!”

Verb of the Day: “schlong”

Suddenly that term is in the headlines, thanks to the latest outburst from The Donald (whom, by now, out of due respect, we should rather designate:  The Trump).

I worked for a while at Merriam-Webster, based in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Our dictionaries were rather good as regards the vocabulary of Roman Catholicism (and this, based largely on the makeup of the local workforce), not so good on Yiddishisms in English (“Yinglish”).  For that, you were better off with Random House.

I grew up near New York, and was sometimes surprised at the absence, from the M-W Collegiate, of terms derived from Yiddish, which to me were quite familiar -- though merely by osmosis;  I did not grow up in an especially Jewish environment.  Whereas Trump -- a New York macher -- would definitely know these things.

Anyhow:  schlong  (noun) ‘penis’  looks to derive (via Yiddish) from German Schlange ‘snake’ (via geometric resemblance -- though only in the flaccid state).  From that, to its use as a verb, is (as Bertie Wooster would say) “but the work of an instant”.  When Der Trumpmeister said that Obama “schlonged” Hillary, he meant (literally) that he defeated her, but (metaphorically) that he … shtupped her.  (Pardon my Yiddish.)

Today’s Washington Post has a commendable article “Donald Trump’s ‘schlonged': A linguistic investigation”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/22/donald-trumps-schlonged-a-linguistic-investigation/

Kudos in particular that they consulted Steven Pinker (whom, in these pages, we have often had occasion to praise) before posting.  Only … here, the professor is not at his best:  suggesting that the verbal use was a mere “malaprop” (i.e., malapropism), stemming from ignorance.   Whereas:  even had no-one ever before used the noun as a verb in this way, that use still lay ready to hand, for any competent native speaker.  Moreover, the whole shtick the Post appends, re verbing nouns, is quite périmé; it had a certain (erroneous) point, fifty years ago, but not now. And indeed, the very article adduces attestations, prior to the cause célèbre in question, that antedate the use.  Trump's offense was purely social, not linguistic.

Philological note:   Our (Yinglish) word schmuck, likewise derives  via Yiddish  from German: literally, ‘decoration’; metonymically, ‘membrum virilis’.  Yet thence, the term boogied semantically to designate … well … you know … a schmuck -- anglicè, a ‘dickhead’, a ‘dork’.

As for Schlange, it has no etymological equivalent in English, though it might be related to our word sling.   The word Schlange was coined (replacing earlier words like Natter (compare English adder) or Unke, as a deverbal, by reference to its slithering, looping motion.  English snake is likewise deverbal, being related to an old word meaning 'crawl'.

Finally, shtupp looks likely related to German stopfen ‘to stuff’;  if so, there is a parallel semantic evolution in (British) English, to ‘get stuffed’.

Doubtless it was such considerations as these, rather than mere churlishness, which prompted the glossophilic candidate to avail himself of so colorful a verb.

Herr Doktor Trumpf, pondering Teutonic etymologies

The BBC has an informative article on the matter here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35167332

For further merry musings on word origins, click here.

Is Trump Immortal?

The Trump camp  recently made a startling claim for their candidate:  namely, that he is immortal.

Liberals have frantically attempted to counter that claim, but without success.  All they can evince in contradiction  is this famous syllogism, credited to Aristotle:

All men are mortal.

Trump is a man.

Therefore Trump is mortal.

The fallacy comes in step 2.  The flamboyant billionaire is not a man, but a moron.   Hence the purported proof  does not go through.   And thus, by contraposition (pataphysical duality), his immortality stands as proved.

In conjunction with their remarkable revelation, the Trumpsters have put forward a central demand  as regards the institution of the Presidency itself:

     *  An end to term limits.

We have a hunch where this is going.

[Update 21 March 2016]  This just in --  The Trump camp  is floating a new slogan:

"Term limits are for losers."

.

Mathematical Epigrams

Last Man Standing:  a firefight implementation of the Euclidean Algorithm.

The Gunslinger's Dilemma

~

Hotel California:  an ergodic set.

Checkout time:  Doomsday

~

A person wearing a T-shirt that says “I’m with Stupid” is termed co-stupid.

A co-stupid person who is himself stupid  is termed bi-stupid.

Example of a non-stupid module showing
Universal Co-Stupidity

Just as there is a universal element in the Category of Co-stupidity, so too the dual category of Bi-stupidity has a universal element;  his name is Donald Trump.

Note that this does not imply that Trump himself is maximally stupid, nor even that he is especially stupid at all.  All that is required is that he qualify (marginally) as stupid (which isn’t hard to do, since stupidity appears to be nearly universal these days, a fact not lost on the Republican Presidential candidates, who have learned specifically to target that demographic).  Indeed, as it happens, he seems to be cleverer than most.

Note:  The Boolean inverse of stupidity is smartness.  A detailed proposal for developing this  can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/the-smartness-act-of-2015.html?_r=0

For more on the mathematical theory of stupidity, try this:

     De Stultitiâ

For the concept "pseudo-stupid", here:

     Difficulty is Hard.

For more on the pataphysical theory of categories, this:

     Categories for the Working Mom

.

Verb of the Day: auftrumpfen

German has a word for it:

 auftrumpfen (intransitive verb) to be full of oneself

“Ich trumpfe auf.”

.

Doctor J endorses The Donald!

[If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

 This train is pulling out of the station,

 with great chuffing of engine  and puffing of smoke.

 If you want a low-number party-card,

 time to get on board… ]

OK,  so -- Me?  I’m putting my chips on Trump.  -- Why?  Cause he’s a classy guy, a class act.  He got class coming out of his ass, class coming out of his wherever.  So yeah, him.   Whomever.

My new hero. 

Donald?  Have your people
call my people …

.

Trump: a Perturbative Approach

One learns early-on in calculus (or, if you are well brought-up, at your mother’s knee), to be wary of conditionally convergent series.   If the series is not absolutely convergent, then you may not arbitrarily rearrange the order of terms, as that could well alter the limit.  Indeed, Riemann proved a surprisingly strong result:   that with an appropriate permutation, you can come up with any ‘limit’ you like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_series_theorem

I was reminded of that caveat, reading the repeated strictures of Roger Penrose (in Road to Reality) on the ‘renormalization’ of divergent series (in QED and QFT), where many infinite bumps may be thus swept under the rug.    More generally, he questions many uses of perturbation theory,  which turns a problem into that of summing an infinite perturbation series.   These are admittedly tricky (“There is absolutely no guarantee that perturbative methods result in a convergent solution. In fact, asymptotic series are the norm.” -- Wiki), but widely used (and perhaps abused) in physics.

To illustrate the power of an unbridled perturbative approach, we now shall prove, by its methods, a surprising result:

Donald Trump is a feminazi

Proof:

(Step zero)  Begin with Trump in his ground-state.

(Step one)  Perturb this by addition of a couple of boobs.

(Step two)  Add a Hitler-style toothbrush-moustache.

(Step three)  Within the limits of experimental error, higher orders of perturbation can be ignored.

Voilà! ∎

(The technique used in that proof  is known technically as the "Mr Potato Head algorithm".)

Donald Trump, looking mildly perturbed

Thus we see that, using the powerful techniques of Perturbation Theory, we can achieve results scarcely obtainable otherwise.

~

[Update 28 August 2015]  The above was a sotie -- a learnèd jest.  But there is a deeper sense in which the notion of “perturbation” does apply.   Namely, in quantum theory, where the Schroedinger wave-function blithely evolves in smooth linear splendor, entirely non-committed as to the values of such parameters as location or momentum:  when suddenly, it is ‘perturbed’ -- probed, interfered with -- in the form of an ‘observation’.   At which point, “the wave-function collapses”, and out rolls a value for the parameter measured (orientation of the polarization, or whatever), like a silver dollar  rolling out of a slot-machine.

In the case of an amateur running for President (and this would apply to retired neurosurgeons, pizza moguls, generals, whomever, as well as to casino magnates or Miss Universe impresarios), the “perturbation” comes not from a physicist (‘observer’), but from a reporter or interviewer;  but the effect is the same.   Within the mists thitherto swirling within the novice’s head, there is no conception of a position on:  the Armenian genocide  (who did they kill?), quantitative easing, the independence of the continuum hypothesis, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the role of the Illuminati in the moon-landing hoax, or whether Jeb Bush was really born in Florida as he claims or rather in Communist China as the short form of his birth-certificate clearly states (the long form claims that he was never born at all).   To keep the conversation flowing, an opinion -- a position -- is required:  and voilà !   Suddenly our neophyte, without having given the matter a moment’s thought, has an actual stance on, say, the nuclear deal with Iran (the product of years of work by both diplomats and boffins, from several leading nations).

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String Theory for Trump Voters

A high-powered team of cybernetic linguisticians have run detailed studies and concluded that, from the standpoint of syntax,  Republican Presidential front-runner talks like a fourth-grader:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-4th-grader-linguistic-analysis/

That, as regards vocabulary and grammar, merely.  From the semantic-pragmatic standpoint, he speaks like a schoolyard bully.

~

This, however, is by no means to criticize our (potential) next President.   (How foolish would that be, after all;  he’ll have the power to revoke our Junior Woodchuck Blogger License.)   Nay more, we have concluded that it is time to board that train before it leaves the station;  and accordingly, we are preparing a series of scholarly monographs, written at a fourth-grade level, for exactly this audience. 

The debut volume is called String Theory for Trump Voters, Simply Explained.   It responds to an express desideratum from the top.  “So what are these stupid little … stringy things, anyway?” the candidate mused in a recent broadcast.  “Sounds totally bogus!”

(A prerequisite for this opus  is the prequel, written at a third-grade level,  Quantum Field Theory is our Friend!)

Other titles in the series:

The Homoousian Controversy:  a Trumponomic perspective.

The Gospel according to The Donald.

In a junior-auxiliary line aimed at lower-information voters will be versions of the smash-hit “for Dummies” series, rewritten in Googolian “Simplified English”.   Offerings include:

“Computers for Dummies” for Imbeciles

“Intermediate Arabic for Dummies” for Deaf-mutes

and the unique, twice-distilled

“ ‘Algebraic K-Theory for Dummies’  for Morons”  for Trisomy-21.

Major credit cards accepted.

Upcoming polar reversal event

Most of us are aware that the Earth’s magnetic polarity  periodically switches.

North and South flip: Earth's magnetic field may be on brink of switching, warn scientists

http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/521570/North-South-flip-earth-magnetic-field-switch-scientists

Strange things might happen:

Frogs levitate in a strong magnetic field

http://www.physics.org/facts/frog-magnetic-field.asp

(A frog just floated past my window.  Could that be a harbinger?)

Less well-known  outside of the physics community itself  is the fact that gravity too is about to reverse polarity -- probably before the end of the month.  Instead of being an attractive force, it will become repulsive.   Objects will fall upwards. 

As anyone knows who has been paying attention, this has happened before in cosmic history, during the era of the Inflaton Field, which put the “Big” in “Big Bang”.  (Or was it the “Bang”;  I forget. )  Anyhow, it’s That Time again.

All that may necessitate some changes in our daily routines.  Of particular concern is the possible impact upon women and minorities.

Going out on a limb a bit, some Democrats wonder whether this impending change might influence our planetary orbit.   Republicans, however, denounce such speculations as just more climate-change speculation.

Candidate Trump has charged

that these impending developments

will cause illegal Mexicans

to be sucked northwards.

Notice the effect of these disturbing reversals  upon The Donald's coiffure.
Seeing is believing.

~  The World of Dr Justice ~

~~  Science You Can Trust  ™~~

.

These creatures, by contrast,

have been adapted  by far-sighted, all-seeing

Natural Selection

for exactly this event.

 So who's smiling now??

The effect upon pigs

is expected to be

especially dramatic.

Official anthem for this grand event:

“The World Turned Upside Down”

Commemorative stamp

for the Great Gravity Polarity Event

Meanwhile, Pravda (“News U Can Trust”) is predicting that the polar reversal will lead to a Transvaluation of All Values:

War is peace; slavery is freedom; ignorance is strength

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/16-07-2015/131367-world_upside_down-0/

Fraternity boys will be delighted to learn that, in this new gravitational regime, “No” will in fact mean “Yes”!

Vanguard artists

embrace the new

gravitational regime

~

Another upcoming event that might effect your travel plans is that the Pacific Northwest is about to be utterly destroyed.   And no, not the old San Andreas fault -- something less well-known but potentially more deadly:  the Cascadia Subduction Zone.   Nor is the Big One quake the worst of it:  rather, the ensuing tsunami.  As one seismologist put it:  “We expect everything west of Interstate 5  to be toast.”  (Soggy toast, actually; FTFY.)

Anyhow, don’t take my word for it:  see  Kathryn Shulz's excellent feature article in this week's New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

For those of you who lack the time to read the entire detailed article, or who, not being subscribers, lack access to it, we shall summarize its contents:

For most of us, the phrase “Ring of Fire” connotes only the exasperation, the agony, and, yes, the ecstasy of hemorrhoids.   But for a seismologist …

No, sheesh, what kind of journalistic lead-in is that.  Anyhow, what I wanted to lead up to was, the New Yorker writer predicts a local post-seismic version of The Singularity (when the phone system goes sentient and robots take over the planet):

Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens,

unplugging themselves …

-- Kathryn Shulz, “The Really Big One”, The New Yorker (July 20, 2015, p. 57)

Now, frankly, we here at The World of Doctor Justice ™  run a pretty trim scientific ship, and can scarcely endorse such flights of fantasy (more Ferlinghetti than Wegener) as evidently appeal to the dope-smoking interns who run The New Yorker while the grown-ups are off at Martha’s Vineyard during the summer months.  Even so, there might be some truth in it, and we thought we should warn you, as you might wish to take some precautions against an insurrection among your appliances.