Murderous Pi

Political Pi
 

When π thought that she’d never want to be associated with gun violence and senseless death, was she just being politically positive or naive?

Pi’s fear has now come true. Without repeated funding from gun manufacturers and pollution-enabled organizations, an obscene number of morally corrupt halfwitted lawmakers in TrumpLand would never get elected or reelected.

Even as you’re reading this, the odds of another senseless shooting or tragedy currently being witnessed in some red-pilled states are anything but zero.

It looks like if only those GOP selfish lawmakers and their loved ones or friends were the victims, maybe then they’d eventually do something about gun control; otherwise, it’s all NATO (No Action Talk Only).

Should Math Teachers Be Armed?

The Blame Game

People are sick of hearing the years-long canned story from inept and morally bankrupt politicians, who simplistically blame mental health, inequality, racism, or whatever social ills, rather than the free flow of guns for the recurring senseless deaths. It’s like the political equivalent of scapegoating the forced learning of algebra for the nation’s high innumeracy rate.

The U.S. is the only “civilized” nation in the developed world that has continually shortchanged its schoolchildren and their teachers. When profits and politicians triumph over principles and people.

Or, only in TrumpLand do we read about these senseless school gun deaths—when students shoot teachers and their peers because they can do it. And those preventable school shootings have only got more frequent and resulted in higher casualties in recent years.

Murderous Statistics

Below are some “murderous statistics” I’d tweeted over the years following numerous school shootings:

Sadistic Statistics from the National Rifle Association (NRA): “No guns, very high murder rates; more guns, very low murder rates.”

Murderous Math: People in the U.S. are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than someone else in another developed country.

Gun Ownership: Singapore ranks among the bottom 10 for the number of privately owned guns per 100 people.

It’s said that the chance of a 15-year-old boy dying by the age of 50 is now higher in America than it is in Bangladesh. The odds might even be higher now with Trumpism and moral bankruptcy plaguing Trumpublicans.

Deadly Statistics: The positive correlation between the coronavirus and the growing gun sales in the U.S., which has the highest crime rate in the developed world.

Dark Problem Solving

Ironically, school and gun shootings in the U.S. have provided math educators with real-life math problems, which could be used to hone students’ guesstimation skills. Two such questions are:

Political Math: Guesstimate how many “corrupt zeros” Trump and his billionaires-donors (and the mostly morally corrupt GOP lawmakers) pocketed, by protecting profiteering guns, insurance, and pharmaceutical companies.

Death Statistics: How many students in the U.S. senselessly die every year from gun violence?

No Gun Reduction, but God’s Protection

Let’s end with a haiku I recently X-ed in the aftermath of Trump’s lackey saying that school shootings are a “fact of life.”

Serial School Shootings

Money politics
that support gun businesses.
That’s a “fact of life.”

If the U.S. is dead serious about protecting schoolchildren and teachers from gun shootings, maybe it’d do it the Singapore way: Zero tolerance for gun sale to 99.99% locals. Vote out politicians who’re funded by weapon manufacturers.

Safely & securely yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, October 14, 2024.

Is Age Just a Number?

Cartoon © Anon. (being memeified)

I admit that I’m guilty of ageism, but I make zero apologies for exposing criminality or hypocrisy, especially among (past and present) heads of state.

For the majority of us, oft-reluctant law-abiding citizens of the world, few would admit that the criminal mind is a “creative” mind in disguise—one that we’d learn a thing or two from if we put aside our prejudices.

A Tale of Two Senior Presidential Candidates

What are the odds that the world might soon witness a presidential debate between a patient and a prisoner? If reelected, could either folk serve his full term?

Arguably, we’ve two power-hungry weak “leaders” that America could do without—when both seniors should be grandfathering (or con-sulting) rather than mis-leading or weakening the country for another four years (assuming their Creator doesn’t call them before their term is due).

Cartoon by Rick McKee (@Rick_McKee_Ink)

An Age Limit for Presidency

If the present president and his predecessor are too old to competently serve the challenges or demands of another term, shouldn’t lawmakers pass a constitutional law that no elected president shall be of a certain age on the date of inauguration?

What should that age limit be so that voters feel comfortable that any elected presidential candidate would fulfill his or her responsibilities of office? 65, 70, 75, or some other age?

Bitter Root ≡ Better Fruit?

If a bad tree can’t produce good fruit, it’s preposterous to see millions of voters expect a serial dishonest or corrupt “I-me-myself” candidate to deliver them from their years-old financial, social, and religious ills.

The theological or political argument that voters shouldn’t put too much emphasis on a candidate’s past manifold wrongs (who’s continually denied any wrongdoings) to assess or judge him sounds dangerously frightening. Understandably, the criteria to electing a president must be much lower than those used to choosing a pope. Really?

Cartoon by @DennisGoris (buff.ly/3VlEyaz)

King Saul 2.0

What are the chances that in Biden or Trump, we’d be witnessing a modern-day version of King Saul, whose rule would be cut short? Would those mostly morally bankrupt or corrupt appointees, who condone their lies and falsehoods, expect to operate in a blessed political environment? It looks more likely that political entropy would be the new normal come January 2025.

In politics, irrationality and hypocrisy often prove that a string of wrongs has near-zero bearing on the electability of a corrupt or rogue politician.

When one senior isn’t much younger than the other, the choice isn’t that difficult. You choose the one with (more) character, humility, and honesty. Voting for the alternative is flirting with ineptitude, dishonesty, and chaos—more pain and suffering for the majority of the population, who expect their next president to behave more like a priest or pope.

US Math: An Age Problem

Let’s end with a birthday joke on the two most senior presidential candidates in U.S. politics:

Q: Why even their diehard supporters see both Biden and Trump as old, who should be banned from taking part in a presidential election again?

A: At their last birthday, the candles cost more than the cake.

Electorally yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, June 27, 2024.

Crime Watch and Crime Math

Singapore is known for its low crime rate in the developed world, and those who occasionally peek at what’s happening in the island-state might be surprised to read about more local and foreign shoplifters being recently caught in CCTV-equipped supermarkets and shopping centers islandwide.

Dark Data

Below is an immoral statistics question that could serve as a “teaching moment” to warn both elementary and middle school (or upper primary and lower secondary) students against shoplifting and crime, especially when inflation around the world is at an all-time high.

The 2020–2022 estimated losses from the thefts of milk powder at retailers in Singapore are as follows:

2020: $18,000 (73 cases)

2021: $26,000 (96 cases)

2022: $27,000 (80 cases)

2023: $XY,000 (Z cases)

Based on past crime statistics, and in the light of a gloomy global economy that could bring about a financial apocalypse if the war in Ukraine dragged on, and should Mother Nature lose her patience with earthlings in spite of frequent natural calamities visiting the planet in recent years, predict the number of milk powder thefts and the accompanying monetary loss that would occur in the “fine” city of Singapore, in 2023.

How much revenue (or fines) could the authorities generate from these shoplifters-turned-resellers of milk powder (contaminated or not) in the coming decade?

Would there be a (higher) jail sentence for repeated offenders of infant formula? Or is caning in the pipeline for hardcore thieves? Or hundreds of community service hours for those unfit to be behind bars for whatever health or wealth reasons?

A Moral/Social Issue 

How many of these shoplifters genuinely couldn’t afford to feed their kids, especially when there is quasi-zero government assistance for the unemployed or underemployed, or for senior citizens with zero pension or savings in their “golden” years?

Do the shoplifters (and potential rioters) belong to some demographic groups that need the authorities to step in to avoid social disorders like public strikes and hate crimes perpetrated by racists-supremacists-turned-opportunists, which we’re witnessing in some right-wing political circles or red-pilled states?

From Profit to Profiteering

Like pharmaceutical companies that are notoriously known to overprice or overcharge their products, milk powder manufacturers don’t seem to be any morally different from them. Unless their dear milk powder came from holy cows or goats that have been anointed by Vatican-approved priests!

A Formula for an Equitable World

The social and political chaos plaguing many parts of the globe provides math educators worldwide an opportunity to step up and speak out against rogue politics and profiteering, poverty and inequality, and crime and robbery.

Some degree of equality or equity could come to pass via creative mathematical problem solving and active moral mindfulness on the part of math educators to help right some of the social ills, political hypocrisies, and business malpractices.

Remember: Low crime doesn’t mean no crime.

© Yan Kow Cheong, January 27, 2023.