by Hari Balasubramanian

Thoughts on the differences in math applied to the physical and social sciences.

The quote in the title is attributed to the statistician George Box. The term ‘model' could refer to a single equation, a set of equations, or an algorithm that takes an input and carries out some calculations. Box's point is that you can never capture a physical or biological or social system entirely within a mathematical or algorithmic framework; you always have to leave something out. Put another way, reality yields itself to varying degrees but never completely; something always remains unknown that is not easily describable.

And in any case, for the practical matter of achieving a certain outcome that extra effort may not be necessary. If the goal is to put a satellite into orbit, the equations that define Newton's laws of motion and gravity, though not 100% correct, are more than sufficient; you don't need Einstein's theories of relativity though they would provide a more accurate description. But if the goal is to determine a GPS device's location on earth you do need relativity. This is because for an observer on earth a clock on an orbiting satellite ticks at a different speed than a clock on earth and if the necessary adjustments are not made, your phone's location estimate will be inaccurate.

So there is this art in modeling, this choosing of some aspects and ignoring others, trying to create the the right approximations. As Box notes: "there is no need to ask the question 'Is the model true?'. If 'truth' is to be the 'whole truth' the answer must be 'No'. The only question of interest is 'Is the model illuminating and useful?'"

Models vary widely in the amount of truth they capture. In the engineering disciplines that exploit physical laws – mechanical, chemical, civil, electronics and communications engineering – the test of a model is whether the mathematical answers match empirical observations to the degree of precision needed and whether the results can be reproduced again and again.

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by Richard King

Not much fun is it – the age of Trump? The walls, the calls, the travel bans – it's all too much to process, don't you find? Alec Baldwin does his best to cheer us up, but this shit is about as funny as an orphanage on fire. Some mornings I can't get out of bed. My hair is coming out in clumps.

I wish I could spread a little sunshine, but I fear things may be about to get worse. Next month is almost certain to see a win for Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, where anti-immigration sentiment is running at alarming levels. Then, in April, we have the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. The National Front's Marine Le Pen looks set to progress to the second round, where she'll likely face off against Emmanuel Macron. It's possible she'll lose, of course, and that Wilders will lose or be unable to form a government, but I wouldn't put any money on it.

Trump. Wilders. Le Pen. That's three bad hombres, right there.

More worrying still, for those of us whose socialism is rooted in a qualified respect for the legacy of bourgeois liberalism (ah yes! now I'm feeling better) are the terms in which these golden-haired demagogues attempt to flog themselves to the demos, especially in the European context. Indeed, I think we need a new term with which to capture this discrete political language, a language that mashes up disparate ingredients into a sickly ideological paste, which is then forced down the public gullet like grain down the neck of a Strasbourg goose. I propose "Illiberal Liberalism".

What do I mean by "Illiberal Liberalism"? What I don't mean is the tendency of liberals and progressives to assume that their values are universal and true and to shout down anyone who doesn't share them. That is a thing, and it's irritating – as irritating as columnists who begin their articles with sentences like, "Not much fun is it – the age of Trump?", as if anyone who can read is bound to regard The Donald as a pus-filled boil on the arse of humanity, which, by the way, he absolutely is. But it's not what I'm referring to.

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by Mike Bendzela

The Smiling Toads of Darwin's Bluff

An obscure species of Bufo inhabits a remote point of land called Darwin's Bluff. Long ago, one of these toads learned to "smile," but this was a fluke: It was born with a congenital defect of the jaw. Like most toads, it spent its days in an inconspicuous spot in the dirt, just sitting. There it smiled.

Some crickets fresh from molting had been schooled in the appearance of various predators of the bluff — a disturbingly long course of study for these nymphs. Upon emerging from the earth these crickets fed cautiously. But a few of the more amiable insects were attracted to the new smiling thing in the dirt. The same went for some grasshoppers, slugs, flies and beetles. Even some spiders and small mice were attracted to the smile in the dirt.

And now all the toads of Darwin's Bluff are smiling.

The Flounder's Eye

The Atlantic herring (Clupea) lived wisely in schools and indeed never left them. Excitedly they darted above their flatfish neighbor, the flounder (Pleuronectoidei), and informed him of their newest lesson:

"It seems hard to believe, but we are one and the same! Your kind once swam upright like us and had eyes on the right as well as the left side of the head."

Gazing up at these herring the flounder quipped, "Right and left are myths. The world has two directions — fore and aft — as anyone with eyes can see."

Moral: Evolution bestows upon us no native insight into our makeup.

From Froglet to True Frog

Their metamorphosis now completed, the froglets (Rana) migrated out of the pond en masse and immediately set about gobbling down every Caelifera grasshopper nymph they could see. But as these baby grasshoppers emerged from the earth they molted and began to grow and hopped out of the froglets' reach. "Whatever shall we do?" shrilled the froglets, "the grasshopper nymphs have outstripped us!"

"Hop harder!" their mothers cried.

As these froglets matured they could galumph forward with more elan and gobble down the grasshopper nymphs again. But the grasshopper nymphs kept molting: they shed their exoskeletons and grew larger bodies, which allowed them to outstrip the froglets.

"The grasshopper nymphs have escaped us again!" shrilled the froglets.

Their mothers just repeated, "Hop harder!"

And on it went, the froglets growing and galumphing forward, gobbling up nymphs, which molted and outstripped the froglets . . . until one day some mature frogs caught up with adult grasshoppers — which up and flew away!

And in this way the frogs learned Darwin's great lesson: The better you become, the more incompetent you be.

* * *

Mike Bendzela grew up in Ohio and currently teaches English at the University of Southern Maine. He is also a seasonal apple and vegetable grower and an Old Time musician. These fables are from a book-length manuscript, Fit for Darwin: Evolutionary Fables and Other Emblematic Tales.

by Thomas R. Wells

The left has been at war with neoliberalism since the 1980s. The result has been intellectual, political, and moral collapse.

The first problem is that there is no such thing as neoliberalism. It exists entirely as a critique by the left. It thus mirrors the fantasy of political correctness that the right rages against – indeed the resemblance is so great that I can repurpose Moira Weigel's elegant turn of phrase in her essay ‘Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy'

[U]pon closer examination, "political correctness neoliberalism" becomes an impossibly slippery concept. The term is what Ancient Greek rhetoricians would have called an "exonym": a term for another group, which signals that the speaker does not belong to it. Nobody ever describes themselves as "politically correct neoliberal". The phrase is only ever an accusation.

Since no one admits to being neoliberal – unless they are trolling leftists for the lulz – the entire theoretical apparatus of neoliberalism is written by leftists, either for each other or for the general public. The theory of neoliberalism thus consists of whatever you want to argue against right now – it is a classic man of straw, invented anew by every critic. Some claim that neoliberalism is something to do with how neoclassical economics look at the world (Foucault), or else US capitalist imperialism (David Harvey), or else selfishness masquerading as meritocracy (George Monbiot), and so on. Neoliberalism has been terribly convenient for the left. They can blame it for anything they hate about the modern world.

But that very convenience is a problem.

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by Kent Willard

With the inevitable addition of a Supreme Court Justice, Republicans will control all three branches of federal government. Yet Democrats have some advantages going forward. They need to win 24 seats to gain control of the House, and Republicans won 23 seats in districts where Clinton beat Trump. If Democrats run compelling candidates in every Federal legislative race then they have a chance. And Trump is increasingly unpopular with the majority of people who don't watch Fox News. If Democrats can overcome the narrower margins of victory in state legislative contests which are created by gerrymandering, then they could in theory gain control of state legislatures and craft their own Congressional districts after the 2020 Census.

But Democrats appear to think they can run out the clock on Republicans. Protests against Trump are keeping moral high for now, but there's a decent chance that Trump won't be in office in two years due to health problems, invocation of the 25^th amendment, or impeachment. The problem for Democrats is far bigger and older than Clinton's loss. Over the years they have lost control of the majority of state upper and lower legislatures and governorships, plus the US House and Senate. In last year's election, Republican Congressional candidates got more votes in aggregate than Democrats. Clinton's victory in the popular vote, along with Trump's outrageousness, conveniently enable Democrats to not study themselves in the mirror too long.

Democrats can't wait for years until minority populations reach their middle to senior ages, when voter turnout is typically high … and hope that those minorities still vote Democratic. Worse, Democrats are historically bad about not showing up to vote in mid-term elections, particularly among younger voters. If they can't get young voters to show up in 2018, then Democrats have little chance of taking control of the House and rebuffing the Republican agenda.

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by Paul Braterman

How Darwin's name is taken in vain, with mini-reviews of some of the worst offenders

From Darwin's Notebook B, 1837

Don't say Darwin unless you mean it. Don't say theory when you mean historical fact. And don't say you believe in evolution, when you mean you accept it on the basis of the evidence.

Don't say Darwin unless you mean it. Above all, don't say "Darwin" when you mean "evolution". It's like saying "Dalton" when you mean atoms. Our understanding of atoms has moved on enormously since Dalton's time, and our understanding of evolution has moved on similarly since Darwin's. Neither of them knew, or could have known, anything about what caused the phenomena they were talking about, and both would be delighted at how thoroughly their own work has been superseded.

From John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy (1808)

Imagine if a lot of people decided that atomic theory was against their religion. We would see a parallel world of sacred science, in which molecules were "intelligently constructed", and real chemistry would be referred to as Daltonism, or possibly, these days, neo-Daltonism. The scientific dissidents from Daltonism would invoke Dalton's name on every possible occasion, and draw attention to the many inadequacies of atomic theory as he presented it in 1808. Dalton didn’t know anything about the forces that hold atoms together, which depend on electrons and quantum mechanics. In fact, he didn’t even know about electrons. Worse still, he was hopelessly muddled about the difference between a molecule of hydrogen and an atom of hydrogen. He thought that the simplest compound between two different elements A and B would have the formula AB, so that water must be HO, not H2O. And of course he knew nothing about the origin of atoms, a problem not solved until the 1950s, over a century after his death. Shot through with errors and inconsistencies; nonsense, the lot of it!

Darwin was ignorant of transitional fossils, and in words still quoted by creationists deplored their absence as the greatest objection to his theory. He was equally ignorant about the origin of biological novelty, which comes from mutating genes. In fact, he didn't even know about genes. And because he did not realise that inheritance occurred through genes, he could not explain why favourable variations were not simply diluted out.

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by Michael Liss

I was in a 7-Eleven last Sunday morning for a restorative post-jog donut, when a big, late-middle-aged man with a MAGA hat and a matching red face came in. He grabbed a few tall-boys and a bag of ice, and made his way to the check-out line. To my reasonably educated eye (and nose) those particular tall-boys weren't going to be the first of the day.

In all the kaleidoscope of images from the first two weeks of Trump's reign, there is something about this man that I cannot get out of my head. To say he seemed out of place in my 83%-for-Hillary Congressional District would be an understatement—but there he was. Wow—a perfect specimen of a stereotypical Trump voter as if drawn in an editorial cartoon! Obviously, I wasn't actually going to interact with him, but this rara avis had somehow wandered into my cloistered neck of the woods and even allowed himself to helped by the Pakistani staff in the store.

I know this sounds idiotic, like the crowing of a rock-hound who found a really exciting piece of quartz. But I'm a politics junkie, and I had just finished reading Barron's Magazine's annual Roundtable. Several of the ultra-wealthy panelists were absolutely giddy about the possibilities of a Trump Presidency. All they could see was the banquet of tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks and unlimited drilling, without those nasty environmental rules. In my naiveté, I expected some concern about international trade agreements, immigration, engagement with Europe, relations with China and Russia, and just "Presidentialness," but these shrewd businesspeople seemed quite blasé. Trump was going to be good for the balance sheet, and everything else was irrelevant.

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by Paul North

At key moments in policy speeches, Margaret Thatcher used to say "there is no alternative." After a few years and too many repetitions, the phrase became a joke. Journalists abbreviated it: TINA. There Is No Alternative. When TINA became a reflex, after it became her signature phrase, it lost its bite. Before becoming an empty slogan however, when Thatcher really meant it and the UK was listening, it was formidable. And it was already questionable too. One of the ironies about TINA was that Thatcher could only really say it in a situation where there was in fact at least one viable alternative. Why would you say There Is No Alternative if things couldn't possibly be otherwise? That would indeed make it a joke.

So, you only say TINA when there is another alternative so strong that you have to pretend it doesn't exist. A prime piece of rhetoric, TINA also alludes to a dearly held belief. The phrase was—and is—a statement about how we think things are, a belief about how the world is made. Say TINA and you imply this belief. As I say, you don't really call it an alternative, if there is only one. That is called reality. And this is just the point: TINA implies a single world with a single theory that fits all of the facts. So, if someone says TINA, listeners are reminded of their belief that, yes, there is one way that things are and one correct account of it. We can in good conscience ignore anything else. There is no decision left to make. The belief that goes along with TINA and which TINA reinforces we can call TOOT: There's Only One Theory. When she was saying TINA, Thatcher was implying TOOT at the same time. Mine workers striking? TOOT: there's only one theory and it tells us to break the back of their movement because the free flow of labor is best governed by the market. Jobless rate high? The same theory—the only one—says: inflation is the greatest evil in a post-industrial economy. That economy sluggish? The very same theory says: privatize national industries and increase worker productivity. Question is, can there really be only one theory covering human matters?

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..[Listen below]

Pattern Language

I take the sidewalk a step at a time,
shards of its exposed aggregate form archipelagos,
and there’s Jesus in a cloud, or is it Lao Tzu
explaining Is without a word

Deep clefts in the bark of a tree just passed
define the humps of Appalachians.
I saw Scranton strewn along a gully on the lichen side
of the fat trunk of a sugar maple when I glanced

A net of angst chokes a birch in the side yard
of a small house, but it’s just Bittersweet being a garrote.
Its hot orange berries are incendiary cherries.
Its network of vine is untamed thought

A wall of desiccated siding, its south face
so in need of paint some of it is dust
some parched raised grain, is the surface of Mars.
What’s left of its spent red pigment
is the feel of utter space

Hairline cracks in river ice in the dam pond
are rifts of splintered glass silvered on one side
full of mere reflections falling to the sea

A crow measures distance between
gutter pebbles with her beak
aligning as if she were a smart array of atoms
laying out the footings of a house or universe

The patterns in her brain must be
the forms she seeks

.
Jim Culleny
1/2/17.

by Dave Maier

Fatale (Ed Brubaker, writer; Sean Phillips, artist)

Once upon a time there were comic books about superheroes, which only juvenile delinquents read. Then there were graphic novels, which were respectable (and mostly not about superheroes). Comic books were still around, though, and it eventually became respectable to read them as well, if at first only under cover of irony. But just as TV viewers binge-watch whole seasons on DVD or stream, so now many comix readers spurn single monthly issues in favor of collected story arcs in books. However, although this does blur the line, they’re still comic books rather than graphic novels. Again, though, just as good TV is better than a lot of cinema, good comix are still well worth your time.

In any case, here are several such things I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years. There's nothing really obscure here, but I’ve omitted some rather better-known and/or justly famous titles like Hellboy, Sandman, Lucifer, Preacher, and Fables. Some I discovered from an article I saw a while back recommending such series as potential TV shows, so if we’re lucky we may eventually see those as well.

1. Fatale (Ed Brubaker, writer; Sean Phillips, artist)

Brubaker and Phillips have been around for a while, it seems, producing several series of mostly hard-boiled and noir-type stories (e.g. Criminal and The Fade Out, both excellent). Fatale, as the name suggests, is in this line as well, but with an important difference. The main character is indeed a femme fatale, with an unnatural power over men; but here “unnatural” is quite the operative word, as Fatale is an ingenious merger of two distinct genres, as if Raymond Chandler were channeling H. P. Lovecraft. I won’t go into the details – lest the mind-melting horror beyond time and space itself cause you to become hopelessly insane – but just think “tentacle noir” and you’ve got the general idea. This might simply strike you as a novelty, but this experienced team brings the same tight plotting and darkly effective art to this one as they do to their other works, achieving some truly creepy effects, even for hardened horror fans, and Fatale would indeed make an excellent TV show.

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by Leanne Ogasawara

Are we deranged?

In recent days, watching friends and family reeling over the Trump win, I keep thinking that climate disaster will be a disaster-of-denial just like this. Shell-shocked and busy blaming, who will be in a position to lead the way forward when the unthinkable happens?

Why do we remain in denial about climate change?

And by denial, I mean, why aren't we making the changes we need to make in our own lives to reduce our carbon imprint and step away from the systems and corporations that are destroying our planet? Is it because it seems too impossible to imagine that our beautiful and perfect earth will suddenly become less hospitable? Or hard to really understand that species of animals we love are disappearing? Impossible to wrap our minds around what warmer oceans mean?

For me, the most compelling description I have read of imagined things to come was the last chapter of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. By the time things fall apart in the world, according to Mitchell, it is too late for most people to protect themselves, as governments collapse and the world is divided into a few oil states with the rest of the world descending into pure chaos. In the novel, we find ourselves in rural Ireland, in 2043

as the electricity’s running out, the Internet seems about to crash for good and people are reduced to foraging for rabbits and eating dried seaweed.

Within months of what becomes known as the "global endarkenment," gangs are roving the countryside stealing and killing and even the most common medications are no longer available. It all happened so quickly so that no one had the time to really prepare before resource scarcity caused total collapse. Toward the end of the novel, a young gangster is robbing an old woman of her solar panels; and when she protests, he says,

"They had a better life than I did, mind. So did you. Your power stations your cars, your creature comforts. You lived too long. The bill; due today."

The old woman protests, "But it wasn't us, personally, who trashed the world. It was the system. We couldn't change it."

Not missing a beat, the young gangster retorts: "Then its not us, personally, taking your panels. It's the system. We can't change it.

Like Trump, the end of the world kind of crept up on people.

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by Bill Benzon

One day several years ago I waited an hour in traffic to go a quarter of a mile so I could enter the Holland Tunnel and cross under the Hudson River to my home in Jersey City. While sitting in the queue I kept thinking why why why? Why?

After saying a bit more about traffic to and from Manhattan, I answer the question with a boiling-frog story, a parable about Happy Island. I conclude by suggesting that the world is happy island and we’re stuck in traffic.

Tunnel Traffic

At that time I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan (I’m now living in Hoboken). Whenever I go to Manhattan I use public transportation, which is reasonably good, though just a bit inconvenient from my present location. But driving my car through a tunnel or over a bridge and parking it on Manhattan, that’s VERY inconvenient. And so I avoid doing it.

But I had to go to rural Connecticut to meet Charlie for a trip to Vermont. I could have taken public transportation to a point where Charlie could pick me up. But that’s a longish walk and four trains, or a longish walk and three trains and a long walk or a cab. Which was a hassle. So I decided to drive. Yes, I’d have to cross the Hudson River, but the Holland Tunnel is nearby and I could avoid rush-hour traffic on both trips, too and from. Driving in Manhattan would be a bit of a hassle, but not too bad on this trip because I’d be mostly on the West Side Highway.

So I drove. I left on Thursday morning at, say, 9:45 AM. By 11:30 I’d crossed off the northern end of Manhattan and was headed toward Connecticut. That’s an hour and forty-five minutes to go the first 15 miles, and probably an hour to go the first four miles, from my place in Jersey City through the Holland Tunnel and onto the West Side Highway headed North.

And that wasn’t rush-hour.

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