EQ 11: GTCYS = GO

Dear Friends,

GTCYS = The Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies
GO = Great Organization

GTCYS is a great organization.  I serves 750 students in 7 orchestras from all around the Twin Cites (Minneapolis and St. Paul) as well as out state students.  Their highest level orchestra is currently touring Spain, including an invitation to be part of the prestigious International Festival of Music and Dance at the Manuel de Falla Concert Hall in Granada.  You can follow the tour on Facebook (here).  

There are other great youth orchestras around the country even in the Twin Cities.  They are important organizations that I hope you will support.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ 10: Equation for Greatness

Dear Friends,

I was going to write about another subject and was wondering if there was a mathematical symbol for greatness.  If there is, I did not find it but I did find this equation for determining greatness (here).  I thought it looked great so I copied and pasted it into this post.  I hope that you enjoy it and that somebody actually understands it.

Is Steve Jobs as good as Tiger Woods? Is Philip Roth better than Warren Buffett? Are any of them as great as Michael Jordan was? And how will their relative greatness be viewed in the future, say, fifty years from now? Are any questions so dumb as these? Well, this one: Why don't we answer them? We chose a dozen generally acknowledged living masters of their field and asked Garth Sundem, a math guru and author of Geek Logik, to develop an algorithm to quantify and rank their relative current and future greatness. And he did. This is his formula:
*KEY

• D = Directorships, boards

• BAT = Google hits: "full name" + average of "best all time," "greatest," and "preeminent"

• PQ = Positive Q score (the Q Scores Company)

• F = Google hits: "full name"

• S = Google hits: "full name + 'scandal' "

• BIOS = Number of published biographies

• F$ = Rank on Forbes wealth or celebrity lists

• YT = Highest view count of any (relevant) clip found by searching person's name on YouTube

• QF = Q score familiarity (the Q Scores Company)

• T = Google hits: "full name + average of 'transformed,' 'reinvented,' and 'revolutionized' "

• A = Percent of world population directly affected by person's actions

• CC = Copycats: number of currently famous people who are "in the mold of" subject

• IP = Number of iconic products directly associated with person (Jobs's iPhone, Dylan's essential albums)

• WS = Number of awards, elections, or major appointments

• MG = Number of media genres in which directly active

THE METHOD: We used quantifiable variables that reflect broad categories of performance excellence beyond just records and awards--including innovation, impact in their field, influence beyond that field, and cultural footprint--to yield a final score. See key above for a precise description of the variables used.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ 9: MA=D and I = V = A

Dear Friends,

In this equation, MA = military advisors, D = disaster, I = Iraq, V = Vietnam and A=Afghanistan.

When I heard today that President Obama had decided to send up to 300 military advisors to Iraq, all I could think about was that President Kennedy started our involvement in Vietnam with military advisors.  In May 1961, President Kennedy sent 500 military advisor, by the end of 1962 the number was 11,500 and by the end of 1963 it was 16,000.  We all know how the Vietnam war worked out for Americans, Vietnamese and the world.  We certainly do not want that again.

The United States has demonstrated over and over again that it is incapable of solving all the world's problems and particularly the problems of a countries like Vietnam and Iraq where we lack the basic knowledge of the people and culture.  We need to stay out of this fight except to keep our own personnel safe and the best way to do that is to evacuate them.

I can only hope that we will learn from this problem in Iraq and apply the lessons to Afghanistan.  The right course there is to get out asap.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal