Pondering the Human Calculator’s “rule of nine”

Mike Rowe’s most recent podcast (ep. 241 the Maddest March Ever), with Scott Flansburg (aka the Human Calculator), Scott mentioned what he called the “Rule of Nine”.

Take any 2 digit number, for example, $$71$$, and:

• Add the digits (in this case that gives: $$8$$)
• Subtract that from the original number, giving, in this case: $$71-8 = 63$$
• The result will always be nine times the first digit.

Listening in double speed (and I think Scott may be a fast talker anyways), this sounds impressive, perhaps even mysterious, but it is easy to decode:

Let’s represent that two digit number as ‘ab’.  i.e:

$$a b \equiv a * 10 + b.$$

The algorithm gives us:

$$a * 10 + b \,- (a + b) = a * (10 – 1) = 9 * a$$

We see that this “Rule of Nine” algorithm above has a built-in distractor, the second digit.  You could express it more simply as:

Take any 2 digit number, for example, $$71$$, and:

• Ignore the second digit, giving in this case $$70$$
• Subtract that first digit from the original number, giving, in this case: $$70-7 = 63$$
• The result will always be nine times that first digit.

But it’s not as cool to point out that $$7*10 \,- 7 = 9 * 7$$.  It’s kind of cool that adding the digits of the result will again always be nine: $$6 + 3 = 9$$, which I am sure was also mentioned in the episode, but we can also decode that secondary rule of nine.  That second rule of nine you know from ancient history when you learned your time tables, but algebraically, it is nothing more than:

$$10 * (x \,- 1) + 9 \,- (x-1) = 9 * x – 10 + 10 = 9 * x.$$

For example, for $$x = 7$$

$$10 * 6 + (9-6) = 63$$

but we can also write that as

$$10 * (7-1) + (9-(7-1)) = 9 * (7-1) + 9 = 9 * 7,$$

which isn’t as cool.

Finally, some sensible cause and effect analysis of the Ukraine conflict.

When you see the media all moving in lock step beating the drums of war, it’s clear that there’s a heavy propaganda element to the story, and that there must be deeper issues at play.  It seemed obvious to me that there was surely US funded covert conflict undergirding this story, as has been repeatedly been the case in so many other world conflicts.

I’ve not been going out of my way to ferret out that info, but it was inevitable that some would eventually cross my path.  I’m sure there will be more, but here’s one little bit of the story:

Ep. 2074 Russia, Ukraine, and NATO

This was, in my judgment, a sensible cause and effect analysis on the Ukraine conflict, that doesn’t just try to paint things as a reaction to NATO incursion (which is surely some part of the story.)

In that interview, Tom Wood’s guest, Gilbert Doctorow, expounds on two specific points that are significant.  The first is that there has been an informal undeclared war against the Russian Ukrainian states for 8 years (with active shelling of Ukrainian/Russian civilians in those areas, and explicit disregard for the existing negotiated treaties).  The second point is that the Ukrainian President’s recently declared his intent to start a Ukrainian nuclear weapons program.

In addition to those points, recall that psychopathic elements in the US government and power broker circles financed a coup in the Ukraine for the tune of \$5 Billion dollars in 2014 (Obama era).  Some of that financing went to literal NeoNazis! We have multiple generations of US government corruption in play, with Trump keeping up the game by coordinating US weapon sales to Ukraine, and with Biden’s family playing money laundering games (and who knows what else) in the region.

I’m not excusing Putin and the psychopathic elements that surely also exist on the Russian side. There is plausible reporting on Putin’s use of bombing or attempting to bomb his own people in Moscow to justify the Chechen war. It takes a special kind of evil to kill your own people to justify killing other people. There’s also considerable reporting on the disappearing of and deaths of Russian reporters and dissidents. I’d be very surprised if there was not truth to a considerable portion of that reporting given Putin’s KGB origin story.  Putin is not a good guy in this story, even if there is unreported rationale for his actions.

It takes a lot of work to get a full scale conflict to play out, and this one is big enough that apparently everybody seems to have simultaneously forgotten all the covid fear mongering, and government and medical tyranny of the last two years. One thing that we can be certain of, is that a lot of people will make money from this war and the financial gouging that is enabled by it, regardless of the extent that it is taken.

Lots of people on both sides will die, as powerful factions on both sides profit from the chaos.

3×5 card of allowable opinion for war with Ukraine

February 24, 2022 Incoherent ramblings , , ,

Here’s a very illuminating poll from the Toronto Sun, as seen in a recent article:

The bias for war in the media is so blatant in a poll like this.  It’s a question a lot like “Do you regret beating your wife?”  If you answer Yes, then you admit to beating your wife but wish you hadn’t, and if you answer No, then you don’t regret having beaten her, but also admit to it.  Here we are asked to choose whether covert warfare with Russia is enough, or whether we really need overt warfare.  Observe that there is no option like:

o          Hey, wait a sec.  Last time these war drums were being beaten for war in Ukraine, the USA was caught financing a coupe to the tune of 5 billion dollars, some of which went to literal NeoNazis.  We also saw both protestors and police in a crowd shot by snipers to foment violence and confusion.  Maybe there’s something more to this story (perhaps that new Russian/German oil pipeline?) that not widely reported on, and for which real reporting will be conspicuously absent from the trash-media.

Ontario government spending tax money on LinkedIn propaganda.

Am I the only one who thinks that this advertising is abysmally pathetic given the circumstances?  After two years of endless mindless lockdowns and restrictions, it is a miracle that there is anything left of Ontario’s economy.  Sure, those businesses that have managed to survive the predations of the government itself, might now be getting stronger, as some of those restrictions are now tapering off.

Ontario Government, please get the fuck out of our lives.  Spending tax dollars on advertising that tells everybody how good you are, since nobody believes it anymore, is just transparent election pandering for weak minded individuals.

Brilliant political marketing: in a lawn sign of all things!

September 12, 2021 Incoherent ramblings , ,

I’m not a fan of political signs.  I don’t think they do any good, except to show off tribal affiliations.  Nobody is convinced by a lawn sign, and if reading a lawn sign changes your mind, then you haven’t looked at any of positions of the party.

The argument for political lawn signs must be one of marketing, but I’ve always wondered what the cost benefit ratio for this particularly stupid form of advertising is.  There is no room for any substantive content.  However, I’ve now been proved wrong, by the following sign:

(photo credit to Connor, who took this nighttime drive by in a car, sending it to me figuring I would be amused.)

Year after year, one is forced to conclude that there are no good options in any election, and this sign channels Brewster’s Millions, to point that out brilliantly.

I don’t believe any vote that I cast, assuming I do so, will do any good.  My vote, as always, has no meaning, and serves to perpetuate the fraud that we call democracy.  A small subset of the population will succeed in voting for somebody who has won enough of the popularity contest that they will get to enact their desires to become as corrupt as it is legally possible to be.  Those new corrupt popularity contest winners, will not be anybody’s representative in any real sense, not even to those that voted for them.  That is especially true here in Canada where the party whip rules forbid one’s “representative” from expressing or acting on their perception of their constituent’s desires.

Other than the PPC, here are my voting options:

• Voting liberal will aid the return of the vapid puppet, “hair-boy Trudeau”.
• Voting conservative will probably result in a federal clone of corrupt Ontario dictator Rob Ford.
• An NDP vote is like a vote for a tax hike.
• Voting green is pointless, as they probably still don’t have a well thought position on anything (in their defence, I haven’t re-read their party platform to see if it has changed.)
• There is no Libertarian candidate in my riding this year (and there has never been a strong one.)
• Believe it or not, there is actually a communist running in my riding this year.  How many millions of their own people have to be killed by communists before it is enough to acknowledge by those seeking to resurrect this evil?

It is certainly true that “The other options suck!”

Based on interviews with Maxime Bernier, not any sign, I had planned to vote PPC this year.  They seem to be the only party that is taking a stand against the abhorrent authoritarianism that is running rampant in the name of covid-19.  That should be the only issue people should care about right now, so it is clear how I will vote, if I decide to play the fraudulent democracy game.  I have no optimism that such a vote will do any more good than any previous one that I have ever cast.