Olde School

New School Algebra

by

George A. Wentworth

Copyright 1898

From the preface, a total of two pages from a small-format text:

The first chapter of this book prepares the way for quite a full treatment of simple integral equations with one unknown number. In the first two chapters only positive numbers are involved, and the beginner is led to see the practical advantages of Algebra before he encounters the difficulties of negative numbers.

The definitions and explanations contained in these chapters should be carefully read at first; after the learner has become familiar with algebraic operations, special attention should be given to the principal definitions.

Where to begin?

First, let's ignore the dated and politically incorrect use of the male pronoun as this was published well before women had the vote in the US or Eleanor Roosevelt published "It's Up To The Women." Then, the text is four hundred seven pages (not counting a whopping six pages of front matter) published in a four and a half by seven inch format starting with definitions and simple equations and covering multivariate equations, imaginary numbers, quadratics and simultaneous equations, properties of series and the binomial theorem. On average the book is more than fifty percent exercises (you know, where the learner does the work of learning by actually solving problems) with Chapter XII comprising fourteen pages with less than a page and a half of text and the remaining space dedicated to 66 exercises. Today's student might wonder what happened to all the pictures, the visual pop-outs of definitions and "further study," and the multi-cultural-correct photos of children having fun doing something that must be related to math if for no other reason than it is in a math book.

Today's pedagogical theorists would dismiss this as antiquated "drill and kill." Obsolete. Ineffective. Out of step with today's students. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is actually "skill and thrill." By progressively working thru exercises that demonstrate and elucidate the principles explained in the text the student learns--masters--techniques and concepts necessary for a deep understanding of and proficiency in more advanced mathematics.

This one book can take a learner from colours and counting to pre-calc. Yet you'll not see this in any modern school today. If you have a child you wish to see as a tiger-cub you don't need to subscribe to modernity in mathematics. Instead you should go to a used book sale and buy a text no less than fifty years old. Have your child learn alongside the minds that put a man on the moon. 

Dunwoody Slum Lords

Slum Lords are kinda mythical. We see them in cop shows, inevitably set in New York City, with plots driven by greedy landlords who are either just ripping off tenants or more dramatically are stuck with permanent renters with equally permanent rent caps. In the former case tenants freeze, cockroaches don't and any water that flows is neither clean nor hot. This is driven by profit motive with negligence only to the point that money comes in but not so much that tenants go out. The latter case usually has some underlying big-time greed motive, usually re-development at an obscene profit. The tenants don't represent benign hosts for parasitic landlords but obstacles to progress and no one gets in the way of progress. So the landlord takes immoral, and if it is a cop show, illegal measures to drive tenants out.

This is what is set to happen right here in DaVille.

And we're not talking about the downtrodden over by PIB or the aging units at 285. Nope. This is the City itself. See, we're poised to borrow 8+ million dollars (with interest we the taxpayers pay more) to buy a cute little building at the edge of the Real City to be our new City Hall. There's only one problem. OK, there are a couple of problems. First it is a real fixer upper but HGTV has not come forth with any reality star willing to reno a town hall that never was a town hall. The other problem is that the building has tenants. That's where slum-lordin' comes in.

There are four tenants and three can be kicked to the curb at the low, low rate of under $150,000. Now you might think that is a lot, but when you compare it to the reno costs it is chump change. Then there is tenant number four, an evil medical imaging service running an MRI operation and they gotta go. But setting up an MRI operation is costly and it ain't just the machine. There is quite a bit of infrastructure involved and this is expensive. Cost is more than four times the other three combined.

So what is a tax-hiking', cash-strapped City beset with a slew of losing law suits to do? Easy Peasy, just make life untenable for the tenant. As reported in the Blue Bag Rag:

Sheats offered a solution to isolate the MRI tenant from the rest of city hall, including a possible separate entrance.

Deutsch said she would hate to spend money to keep the tenant there and suggested the city make it more inconvenient for the tenant.

"Then maybe they would want to leave," said Deutsch. "Then maybe we could reach a compromise sooner."

We can only assume "compromise" means "get out, get out now and get out cheap."

If you did not already know why Dunwoody is on the losing end of lawsuits now you do. Being a smart resident of a smart city you must smile at the City's revulsion to having City Hall in the immediate proximity of a device that lets doctors see inside a patient. After all, transparency is governments' kryptonite. 

TANSTAAFL

The AJC reports on an "unintended consequence" of the growing "you breed 'em, we feed 'em" trend in public schools. As always that problem centers on money--your money and they getting their hands on it. The schools' logic, if you can stretch that definition far enough, is to reduce the stigma associated with getting free lunches. Can't wait to see how they address the stigma associated with NOT being in the talented and gifted programs.

The background issue is that schools have been (ab)using the free lunch program to claim federal funding. And it is big money. APS reports 75% enrollment in the 2014-2015 school year. That seems incredibly high. And incredible it is. Giving everyone a stigma-free free ride changes the schools' funding basis which shifts from unaudited fill-out-the-form-honey to "eligible for federal assistance" which apparently sets a higher bar. The predicted impact is a 50% reduction in funding.

We can only hope it also means a 100% improvement in integrity--but don't hold your breath, schools can be pretty clever when it comes to scamming the system.

Where Angels Fear To Tread

The courts will rush in.

Apparently someone has decided that a key battlefield in the war of gender equality is the right to bare one's breasts in public and the AJC reports that these folks are making a Federal Case out of the matter. As the reporter notes many of Georgia's local busybodies have laws prohibiting such actions. For women. And only women. This would include the self-proclaimed Smart City--we never said we were non-discriminatory.  To wit:

Sec. 24-4. - Public indecency.

(a)

It shall be unlawful for any person to perform any of the following acts in a public place:

(1)

Simulated acts of sexual intercourse;

(2)

An exposure of one's genitals, or of one's breasts, if female, except in a place designed for same.

So maybe it is time to set aside the DHA vs City pissing contest and have the DHA Board craft a new, constitutional ordinance for the City to pass.

Existential Threats

There's one problem with claims of City action posing an existential threat to the DHA--there is an existence proof to the contrary.

It wasn't that long ago there was no City of Dunwoody, but there was a DHA. How can that be? Did the DHA have a couple dozen folks down in Decatur sitting on zoning boards, planning commissions and the like? Hell no, they didn't. And yet the DHA existed. And the DHA will not cease to exist if it re-acquires the level of influence at Dunwoody City Hall that it formerly wielded at DeKalb County offices.

That the DHA views a reasonable separation, even a firewall, between DHA board negotiations with developers and official City decisions and actions regarding those same developers as an existential threat is the clearest proof that the DHA is indeed bartering with their influence at City Hall.

Comments and statements to the contrary do not pass the smell test.

First they claimed to be "just another homeowners group" which they later upgraded to "like the Buckhead Coalition." Still not quite right. The Buckhead Coalition represents the interests of the Buckhead community, not all parts of the City as the DHA lays claim to for Dunwoody. Because of that members of the Coalition suffer from a geographic constraint limiting their ability to dominate citizen boards and panels. Not so with the DHA.

Then there is the claim that members do not receive marching orders from their DHA superiors. Perhaps that is technically true. But they do go to the Sunday revival meetings where the folks in the pulpit describe the souls they've saved and how wonderful the glory. Folks come out with admiration for their workings and have certainly been singing from the same hymnal. Were they brought to the alter for the layin' on of hands to shouts of HEAL? Probably not. But there is little doubt they'll be bringing the Good Word to the unwashed down at the Big Hall.

Clearly the City does not pose an existential threat to the DHA. It is increasingly clear that the DHA poses such a threat to the City. 

Dunwoody Goat Rodeo

Rumours out of the Blue Bag Rag suggest that our hired-gun City Attorney has asked a higher authority, the State Attorney General, for an opinion regarding the executive session which breathed life into the no-DHA policy. Thankfully it is just an opinion and not an investigation being requested. Should someone with subpoena power embark on an actual investigation this could go pear-shaped in skinny minute.

First would be the City Hall investigation questioning not only the legitimacy of forming policy in closed executive session but singling out an individual organization. The former is surely a faux pas but the latter may light a fuse on a bigger bomb. It may be hard to limit this investigation to just City Hall as their actions were reactionary even if the risk is only perceived. One might question if there is any substance to the perception or has someone been licking some stamps from the sixties.

If the investigation were to expand to cover development protocols in DaVille, DHA genuflection costs and benefits and surety of back-room commitments we might find ourselves with a real goat rodeo on our hands. 

Which Dunwoody...

...do you live in?

Do you live in Millennialopolis? You know over by construction junction where Greedy Developers are building apartments to handle the Millennial Invasion? Those would be the ten percenters as the remaining Millennials are unemployed and living with relatives or so under employed they cannot afford high-rise living.

Walkerton? Are you going to move there? That's right, across from the butt-side of a dingy Post Office where equally Greedy Developers have abandoned the impoverished Millennials in favour of the more well-endowed Olde Farts.

Or are you in Normanville? That Rockwellian dreamscape where all kids are into sports, especially baseball in which they all excel. The one where the anti-thespians have beaten down opposition to another field of dreams that is inconveniently situated beneath a theatre.

You might expect to find out what kind of Dunwoody you now live in,or could hope to live in someday soon by checking in at City Hall. You'd be wrong because they haven't a clue.

It Is BROOKrun...

...not BROOKSrun!

The haters who've been laying the hatin' on local thespians seem to think the place was named after Tyrone Brooks mistaking it for another case of deepest darkest DeKalb shoving a famous black politician in their faces. Perhaps some of the pissy little megaphone mouths are upset thinking it is named after someone who shamelessly misappropriated funds. Even then it would still be about black except in this case it would involve a pot and a kettle. 

Fait Accompli

Fran's Tax Freeze is under assault from a peculiar foe--he and his comrades under the Gold Dome misspoke when crafting a Tax Increase for all of DeKalb. They wanted to increase sales tax for all manner of things, including a whimsical county center parked between the jail and the mulch piles but also added language that real lawyers have determined will remove Fran's Tax Freeze. This was an act either of stupidity or incompetence, or both, and is pretty much what we expect from same-ole-same-ole politics in Georgia.

What is interesting are quoted statements from a county commish:

"At this point, even if the project list was[sic] perfect, bringing this SPLOST forward for a vote in November is irresponsible. To go forward would mean a devastating tax increase on 10 years of property value growth that has been shielded."

There is so much to mine from this shaft. The ten years applies only to those properties that have not been maintained or improved such that pulling a permit was required (and done). Yes, we're going to call a roof replacement maintenance even when the owner upgrades to those trendy architectural shingles.  Or perhaps pushing a growing portion of property valuation off the books (shielding??) was ill conceived in the first place.

What is really interesting is the implication that if a tax referendum is on the ballot it will pass. Perhaps it will. And here's one to roll around in yer noggin: maybe this is what the citizens want. Or maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, those who vote on this referendum will be informed voters making an informed decision.

Or maybe the politicos under the Gold Dome and down in Decatur were confident they could craft ballot propaganda all but guaranteeing a new tax but are pretty sure it goes down in flames if passage kills a sweetheart deal with homeowners who tend to turn out at the polls.

No matter. They'll have to wait until next year to push the new tax thru.

Elementary, My Dear Lewis

In a phone conversation that never occurred John Lewis reportedly said:

My heart was saddened upon learning of remaining pockets of racism near my home in Georgia recently exposed with the naming of local schools. This came about when members of the school board found their moral compass did not direct them down the path of arbitrary and unjust rules. Their simple act of civil disobedience has shown a bright light into dark corners of the hearts harboring hate and racism. These modern day marchers have once again demonstrated that our cause, ever worthy, is never finished. I am heartened to see this cause, started so many decades ago, has gained new momentum in their courageous actions in DeKalb County. 

Unaware that he'd not ended the call (damn those smart phones) he was not overheard saying:

Where the hell is Brookhaven? Should we send Sharpton down there for one of his "Marchin' For Dollars" rallies? Check his calendar and figure out how much he'll get.