The Mathematics of Despair and Hope

The following theory is mine alone. Others may have posed similar ideas, but I have never encountered them if they exist. I have been looking at the general ideas behind network theory and “percolation theory.”  In percolation theory, imagine a porous rock containing oil or gas. The network through the rock is the collection of pores or blockages. The oil and gas driller and the mathematician are concerned whether there is a path through the rock to extract the oil contained in it. At the most basic level, networks are just collections of things joined together by something in common. For example, you could have the network of all parents of students at Sally Smith Junior High, or the network of all sparrows in Missouri, or all the people in Tinytown USA who earn $50,000 a year. These are finite networks with a limited number of members of each set. Mathematicians find it much easier to work on infinite sets, but we’ll deal with that later.

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Freedom

I will not be writing this column on July 4, so as the Memorial Day holiday approaches, I wanted to take this opportunity to write about freedom. First, let’s define the term itself. Unlike the Latin, libertas, or the Greek, eleutheria, which both imply a sense of independence, the word “freedom” comes from the German, “frei” which has the same Indo-European root as the word “friend” or “dear” or even “beloved.”  Liberty and freedom both carry the idea of not being a slave. Liberty implies privileges of independence while freedom implies the rights to belong to a group.

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Not Found in the History Books

This is a story I heard years ago from a bishop. I have no way of confirming the veracity of the story, but it is a story that makes me proud of the Episcopal Church. During the tenure of Episcopal Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, the 9/11 conflict began. George W. Bush was the US president at the time.

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Moore’s Law

In 1965, Gordon Moore, a co-founder of semiconductor chip company Intel, predicted that the number of transistors on a semiconductor chip would double every two years. After a rocky first decade, from 1975 to today, Moore’s Law has held true with a doubling of computer processor speed and memory capacity every two years since 1975. No one knows when Moore’s law will end.  With this as a backdrop, IBM unveiled this week[1] a breathtaking, 2 nanometer chip made in their labs.

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Three Forms of Justice

Beginning ethics classes will teach three forms of justice: 1. Procedural, 2. Distributive, and 3. Substantive. Procedural justice happens when laws or operating rules are changed to correct the harm done to one party by another. For example, voting rights laws attempt to create a level playing field for voting so that everyone has an equal ability to vote. Distributive justice provides a means of correcting a wrong by distributing something of value to the injured party or parties. For example, a class action lawsuit by people living around Pacific Gas and Electric’s disposal ponds for boiler discharge, enabled them to collect monetary damages for brain damage done to children and adults from the hexavalent chromium polluting their wells and groundwater.

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Rethinking Ordination

Our Book of Common Prayer tells us that only priests and bishops are ordained to “Absolve, Bless, and Consecrate” things. This is sometimes referred to as the “ABC theory of priesthood.” While this might give us a good operational delineation of the different things ordained clergy can do versus non-ordained laity, it has never felt like a good pointer for what clergy SHOULD be doing. At least not this clergy person.

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Helium and the Market

Helium, the upper right element on the periodic table. The first of the “rare gases” or “noble gases.”  Helium has two protons, two electrons and two neutrons. Its atomic weight is 4.0026. In case you are wondering, the extra .0026 mass is the rest mass of energy from nuclear spin and nuclear bonds. Pub chem gives us the basic scoop on Helium and compares it to “air” which is a mixture of elements. The most important property for Helium at STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure) is its density which is about 1/8 of air causing a Helium balloon to float in the air. Read more…


Off with their heads!

It seems like scarcely a week goes by without some statue being pulled down by a mob or some building being renamed or currency redesigned with a less morally fraught visage. The mob raises their fist in righteous indignation, “Thomas Jefferson was a bad person. He owned slaves. Pull him down.”

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fides quaerens intellectum (Faith Seeking Understanding)

Today, April 21, we commemorate Anselm of Canterbury on our church calendar. He is an 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury who served and quarreled with two English kings.  His motto of “faith seeking understanding” does not mean he hoped to replace faith with understanding. Anselm is the most significant theologian in the western church from Augustine to Thomas Aquinas, a span of 800 years. We would do well do consider his ideas.

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The Overview Effect

Ask any astronaut what the most awe-inspiring thing they observed in space and you will be surprised. It is not the utter blackness of outer space punctuated by brilliant points of light that never twinkle. It is not the moonrise or sunrise over the earth, it is in fact, the earth.  Astronauts who are sufficiently awed are said to be subject to the “Overview Effect” which is a cognitive shift in awareness caused by seeing firsthand the earth from outer space.

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