decisions to make before home-making

I told my friends that St. John's was starting to convince me that Utah isn't the place for me, and their response was, "we thought it was strange that you stayed so long."

Mostly, this made me sad, because I see so much of the same situation in Utah but in a very scaled down way. The reporting took a very clear viewpoint--a seven/eight year old who is afraid to walk down the street represents a shameful situation in the town; her mother, wearing a pencil skirt with a slit in the back, well, "nobody could say she isn't being modest." Except, Slaya (an orthodox Jewish friend who doesn't veil) would say she isn't--and so would a lot of moderate Mormons, though they probably wouldn't mention it. The frustrating thing for me, here, is that no one in the clip is talking about the real issues.

By the real issues, I mean: the behavior of individuals impacts the freedom of other individuals to live in the kind of community they want to live in. No one in this news clip is disagreeing with that premise--they disagree only on what the reasonable standard of behavior is to enforce upon individuals. On top of this, the narrator doesn't appeal to any sort of logic to describe why his standard is better than the ultra-orthodox one--it is presented as something that should be obvious to the viewer.

The real questions--what standards of behavior in a community ought to be accepted, how those standards should be arrived at, and how they should be enforced, need discussing. And you don't get very far into those discussions before you run into other questions, like, "should we just let people group together into like-minded communities?"

Why did I stay in Utah for so long? (From the news clip: Should we have stayed, and fought? Here I know my school will not be shut down. . .) Community is inevitable and inherently restrictive. Some kinds of diversity bring good things--certainly it makes St. John's more interesting. I would like to think that I'm doing some kind of good for my nieflings who correct strangers who swear in public parks, who are dreadfully concerned with whether the punch in "A Christmas Carol" is alcoholic, who are much of the time in need of attention but showered with it on the day they get baptized.

And I would like to think that we have something to learn from the fundamentalists; if nothing else, they should remind us that we, too, are enforcing a standard of behavior for the sake of our community, and that this standard ought not go unexamined. Is there anything deeply (fundamentally?) different between the fundamentalists, the moderates, and us (for this I'll say, both liberals and radicals), when it comes to our desire to enforce community behavior standards?

Is it possible to find a balance wherein we agree that we are all in this together?

one (Ogden Nash reading) for the nieflings

I didn't manage to get the pictures where I could show them to you, but hopefully you can find them in your own copy at home?

and now. . .

Why is definition 5 of Book V:

“Magnitudes are said to be in the same ratio, the first to the second and the third to the fourth, when, if any equimultiples whatever be taken of the first and third, and any equimultiples whatever of the second and fourth, the former equimultiples alike exceed, are alike equal to, or alike fall short of the latter equimultiples respectively taken in corresponding order.”

different from definition 20 of Book VII?

“Numbers are proportional when the first is the same multiple, or the same part, or the same parts, of the second that the third is of the fourth.”

VII.20 deals in number, and V.5 does not. Number creates (or perhaps is) a concise language with which to describe the basic concept of proportionality. As with any translation from one language to another, the new statement will imply more or less than the old one. To take these two definitions as equivalent implies that all magnitudes which can be in the same ratio can be expressed as numbers—or that magnitudes and numbers are equivalent in some way.

This makes some sense. Any magnitude which we can bisect can be expressed as a multitude of units—as a number—so long as we are free to define our base unit as we choose. However, despite this, numbers, magnitudes, and the mathematical entities that have magnitudes are all different. Numbers, while less complicated than magnitudes to talk about, introduce the problem of incommensurability; it is possible for there to be two magnitudes which are not possible to measure in number using the same unit, no matter how small we make that unit. This problem can't arise if we aren't talking about how to describe the magnitudes in terms of units. More specifically, it can’t arise if we aren’t insisting that more than one magnitude ought to be measured using the same unit. The presence of incommensurability as a problem may be the most important distinction that this “translation” out of the language of magnitudes (the language of all ratios?) and into the language of number has brought.

Some of the apparent simplicity of definition VII.20 comes from its use of the terms “part” and “parts.” A “part” is basically the same whether we’re dealing with magnitudes or numbers. A magnitude or number is “part” of another magnitude or number, the less of the greater, when the smaller measures the greater; this is from V.1, V.2 (which clarifies measure), and VII.3. For one number to be “parts” of another, however, means that the lesser number does not measure the greater number(VII.4). Why aren’t these terms used in V.5? We don’t have a definition of “parts” that applies to magnitude. If we extended the definition of “parts” from numbers onto magnitudes, we could say that any magnitude that was shorter than a second magnitude but did not measure it was “parts” of the second magnitude.

However, I think this equivalent definition is absent from Book V for a reason. Any group which only includes all numbers which are “the same multiple, or the same part, or the same parts” of some other number can’t include all possible ratios of magnitudes. This is, again, because some magnitudes which are in the same ratio are not commensurable with one another, and thus can’t be expressed at all within the same system (using the same sized base units) of number. Having no definition of “parts” which applies to magnitude highlights this difference, however subtlety.

From "Literacy With an Attitude"

"As working-class children progress through school, their reading scores fall farther and farther below their actual grade level. We presume they don't have the basics, and we give them more phonics. They don't need more phonics. They need to be introduced into and made to feel welcome in a community where explicit language makes sense, where it's necessary--a community where nonconformity is tolerated and even encouraged, where authority is exercised collaboratively, and where students do not feel powerless, where they have choices regarding the topics they will study and the materials they will use and where they are given freedom to work with others (preferably from backgrounds different from their own) and to move around the room. Such classrooms make negotiation possible and even necessary."

-Patrick J. Finn

(emphasis mine)