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We’ve got a packed, super-sized show for you this week, so let’s get right to it: first up (right at the top of the show), tech columnist Benedict Evans who takes us through the Facebook v. Apple privacy controversy and explains why Apple may not have the moral high ground they think they do. Then, Grace Church High School math teacher Paul Rossi (you must read the article he wrote for our friend Bari Weiss’ site explaining what happened to him) on the insane (that’s really the only word for it) dynamics that are playing out in some of our schools right now. It’s an eye opening and very worrying conversation. Also, was Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins really “the loneliest man in the universe” during his moon mission? We ponder that one and who might go to Mars with Elon Musk and who definitely won’t be going.
Music from this week’s show: I Was in the House When the House Burned Down by Warren Zevon
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No group is monolithically identical. People exist along a spectrum. Some will be blindly devoted believers that care nothing about apparent inconsistencies. But there are also others who did come to realize, and more to come who will realize, that the inconsistencies signal unsustainable nonsense that cannot even live with its own principles.
@peterrobinson asked Thomas Sowell what led him to leave Marxism. His reply: “Facts.”
Never forget that some who had bought into a system do wake up when they see it doesn’t add up or fit reality. Example:
Stories of Us: Gina Florio
who worked for a while as a freelance writer for leftist publications.
A relevant part starts at 4:42.
All computers (not just old ones) use binary (base 2) representations of numbers so that each bit (binary digit) is either a zero or a one.
To easily represent the value of a group of 3 bits, there are 2^3 possible values. So one wants to use a digit in base 8 (=2^3), which are referred to as “octal” digits/numbers.
To easily represent a group of 4 bits, there are 2^4 possible values. So one wants to use a digit in base 16 (=2^4), which are referred to as “hexadecimal” digits/numbers. The 10 normal digits are supplemented with the six letters from A through F as digits representing the values 10 through 15.
Actually there were some old decimal computers, but the hardware was much more cumbersome.
Also, you didn’t explain WHY computer programmers might use octal or hex rather than just binary, but I did in my earlier comment.
6046 for TLS on a PDP-8 is much easier to remember than 110000100110 especially when 6 is ALWAYS an I/O instruction, device 04 is ALWAYS the TTY printer/paper tape punch and 03 is ALWAYS the TTY keyboard/paper tape reader…
Mr Rossi’s description of the Manhattan woke world , Grace, Stanford, eventually Masters of the Universe sounds a lot like Orwell’s Inner Party as opposed to us proles who neither know of or care about such things. Also interesting that even the parents in that world, the ‘Masters’, live in fear of running afoul of ever changing rules.
I’m with Rob on Trigonometry, on day one I felt like I walked in to the middle of a movie, I never figured out what was going on.
Please, let us dispense with the idea that the left wants to solve any of the problems they prattle on about, they have no intention of solving anything ,they want the ‘problem’ to go on forever in order to amass more power. The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the Revolution .
We are fully in agreement here.
Having heard from afar, with amazement and horror, Joe Biden’s Alice-in-Wonderland speech, I wondered how the Tremendous Trio could mention it only in passing–and only to suggest, it seems, that we should all be more optimistic…Being old, I have remarked more than once to friends that visions of Ragnarök are much more entertaining when one is young. Thus, I am all in favor of being upbeat and hoping that the current madness will pass like a bad dream. Ah, but let us remember what Paul Rossi said in response to Peter Robinson’s question: With a qualified “yes,” he said that there are indeed parallels to Natan Sharanksy’s Soviet Union…As someone who in long-ago youth was on the totalitarian left, I can say at least semi-confidently that the lunatics today are quite serious about what they seek–and that is general misery. It really is a kind of ersatz-religion, in which everyone does perpetual penance–except those in charge.
A quibble: As a linguist and sometime Austronesianist, I winced at the reference to Kon-Tiki. The evidence is overwhelming that the Polynesians’ ultimate ancestors came not from South America but rather from Taiwan and Melanesia.
I’m 57, and I save all my my NRA magazines and will hope my estate gives them to a liberty loving youth organization.
I would like to remind our hosts that none of the COVID vaccines have been licensed yet. The clinical trials are not over. The “first race of the new cold war” is unfinished.
Ah, so that’s one reason no one is legally required to rattle off their possible side effects when they are promoted in the media.
Seems to me there is a world wide trial of the vaccines going on all over the world. Israel is doing really well for example.
Shutupyouracist!