Click here for Vagabond Scholar's Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2012 (The Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves).

Mathematics For Dummies?

Click here for a 15-article collection of articles by Steven Strogatz on mathematics for you and me.

Before going on vacation for a week, you ask your spacey friend to water your ailing plant.  Without water, the plant has a 90 percent chance of dying.  Even with proper watering, it has a 20 percent chance of dying.  And the probability that your friend will forget to water it is 30 percent.  (a) What’s the chance that your plant will survive the week?  (b) If it’s dead when you return, what’s the chance that your friend forgot to water it?  (c) If your friend forgot to water it, what’s the chance it’ll be dead when you return?

Although they sound alike, (b) and (c) are not the same.  In fact, the problem tells us that the answer to (c) is 90 percent.  But how do you combine all the probabilities to get the answer to (b)?  Or (a)?

Read the article Chances Are, on probability theory, for the answers. There's also discussion of a couple of other problems -- one involving percentages concerning the incidence of breast cancer among women, and another involving the O.J. Simpson murder case.

The Chronicles of Mitt

Click here for 135 episodes of The Chronicles of Mitt, from Daily Kos.

Here's the first, from May 10, 2012:

Hello, human diary! This is Mitt Romney, your better.

My adviser units have advocated that I begin writing a diary of my experiences during this election. They believe the exercise will encourage the development of human-like emotions, which according to focus groups are a desirable quality. I fail to see the point of the process, but according to my advisers, money cannot be exchanged for emotional gratification. (They cite a group of musically inclined hippies from the 1960s for the discovery, which made us all skeptical but seemed to hold up during initial experimental testing. Upon further historical examination it turns out that group of hippies became quite wealthy, which seems to lend credence to their claims.)

I shall therefore entertain this process as necessary. If human emotions are necessary to achieve a leadership position, and a leadership position is necessary to achieve reductions in taxation, then emote I shall!

Today news reporters discovered that while attending human preparatory school, Cranbrook (every decent institution of preparation requires a -brook suffix, thus implying calm and natural settings), I once assaulted a fellow student who may have had tendencies towards the homosexual. This is false: I assaulted the fellow because his haircut personally offended me. Surely this counts as this "emotion" that my advisers speak of, but for some reason this one counts as bad, further confounding me.

Let me be clear; I do not remember the incident, except for the parts I do. Also, I cannot reiterate enough just how deeply offended I was by said haircut, the shape and relative dimensions of which I felt was an insult to my personal honor, as well as the honor of my fellow students, as well as the money their parents had expended to place us in an environment in which all haircuts would be of the correct dimensions. I would also like to point out that I was younger then and not nearly as wealthy, and it is a known fact that less wealthy people are more prone to violent behaviors. No, by current standards I was quite poor indeed, and the lack of regular contact with my current amounts of money sometimes made me light headed. I was the victim in this incident; let it be a lesson on how modern wealthy Americans ought to be subjected to reduced taxation rates, so that their children have access to slightly more cash and do not, therefore, turn into gauche and violent little bastards.

I wish I could reach out now to the young lad in question, so that I could explain to that poorly coifed homosexual that it does "get better," as the current phrasing has it. I am far wealthier now, and am running for president, so things have indeed worked out quite correctly! I have instructed my staff that, should the fellow wish to apologize to me for the incident, they should express human satisfaction to him. Mr. Cheney received a quite adequate apology from the fellow whose face intercepted Mr. Cheney's expended ammunition during an animal-killing expedition in the American wilds; that would be a good model to follow in this case, as both incidents involve fellows whose heads received the brunt of a wealthier American's momentary impulses.

Hmm. Yes, upon reflection I feel this new experiment at documenting my human emotions is going along quite swimmingly, Mr. Diary. I shall continue the proceedings as necessary. I admit I am uncomfortable with the feel of this paper, and so have directed my staff towards procuring some pages that more directly mimic the feel of fine, crisp currency.

Look - Up In The Sky! It's A Bird! It's A Plane!

Here is the first Superman cartoon, from 1940.

The first nine Superman cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios from 1941 to 1942 are a wonder of animated retrofuturism, giving us a peek into a world that not only had a flying superstrong protector, but also filled viewers' heads with dreams of autonomous robots, comet-controlling telescopes, and machines that could shake the Earth.

These films are in the public domain and have been available on the Internet Archive (as well as other corners of the Internet) for quite some time, but now Warner Bros. has officially released the remastered initial nine from its DVD collection on YouTube. The Academy Award-nominated first short, "Superman," is embedded above, and you can see the other eight from the first series below. Click here.

Crony Chronicles: Miracle On Wall Street

Care To Go For A Little Drive - In Russia? Well, Maybe Not

Execute The Cameraman.