(And how you can't say who is better off, a person who experiences, x1y1z3, vs x2y2z1 vs x1y4z1.5)

_____

Actually I think that some forms of privilege not only can be quantified, but should. In fact, quantification is what allows us to determine whether a given social category is a form of privilege or oppression, and this has real consequences.


Examples:

When people want to deny trans women access to women's resources like emergency shelters, they usually argue that trans women have too much male privilege. Without quantification, this can only be contested through an ideological argument that ultimately has no measure of falsifiability (it can't be proven to be wrong) and thus is irresolvable. This then leads to a decades-long stalemate between the (thankfully increasingly rare) women's organizations with moderate to low resrouces and trans people with low to no resources. If, instead, we ask what the criteria are for admission to this shelter (limited income, risk of violence from partner, in society and in men's shelters) we can establish that trans and cis women both need to get into these things - actually, trans women, on average, need them more. Were the people trying to exclude trans folk to actually listen to this form of argument, access would improve and with it, quality of life.

Another example is the frequent claim in politics that indigenous people have it easy and clearly have a form of privilege over white people - due to band bursaries, reduced taxes and government programs. If one quantifies the very limited value of these (frequently slow) bursaries (which are limited to people with membership of a band that can afford them), the marginal gain from buying goods tax-free less the opportunity cost that comes from living on reserve (which is necessary to get these discounts), and the actual value of these government programs, and then if one compares it to the cash value of white employability, reduced police harassment and the average intergenerational wealth transfer, one can conclude that the average's individual's person's experience, it is actually the case being white that is a form of privilege versus being indigenous. This has policy implications. And it has numerous parallels in other discussions over equity measures.

While many incidents of privilege are still hard to quantify, the social categories through that determine when and how they occur often track with quality of life data, and from this, you ca get a picture of what's easier. This can allow apply within one form of privilege - for example, the 1965 book The Vertical Mosaic quantified different forms of racial privilege in Canada, and this ranking of racial ancestry versus life outcomes and political power still holds. From this, one can also state that, for example, all forms of neurodiversity (mild ASD vs Schizophrenia) are not equal burdens - and this too can be quantified, as is done with physical ability in the Paralympics.

Using this method, you actually can answer the questions above. You can do so holistically, or for each variable or combination thereof as experienced differently by two people of differing social situation. When the numbers are so close as to be swayed by small difference in interpretation, you can conclude that both can expect roughly equal but different outcomes. But when there is no reasonable equivalence, you can say who has it worse off in a given category (and the situations in which it has an effect), or overall.



Warmest things,

On this special day, I wish to wish you all a wish for a wish of light and dark portions of the twenty-four-hour cycle of approximately equal length, as well as a sunset and sunrise that are about twelve hours apart. For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, I offer my sincerest hopes that in the roughly three months to come, the derivative of x where x="day length" will be continue its proud  course of being less than zero while the derivative of the derivative of x will be greater than zero until sometime in late March. The reverse holds for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere. Regardless, I hope will will all carry the following message in your heart: if the above fails to transpire, we're seriously fucked.


    Sincelery,

    Amy

Queer math

Sep. 11th, 2007 11:15 pm
I just sent this email off to a queer speed-friending/dating site.

.......................................

I would love to know how you solved the combinatoric/organizing problem inherent in queer speed friending/dating. I've filled many a piece of paper trying (and failing) to figure it out and present it in a simple form so that participants could follow instructions.

Hetero speed dating is fairly simple - everyone in group A (i.e. women who like guys) has to meet everyone in B (i.e. guys who like women), but neither A nor B is to meet anyone in their own group - you just form an inner and outer circle and one rotates. There are n people; n/2 in A and n/2 in B and you have n^2/4 meetings with n/2 happening at per turn with n/2 turns.

Same-sex speed dating is a more complicated as it requires n*(n-1)/2 meetings and the double-circle method fails to introduce everyone to everyone else. How did you do it so that everyone meets each-other without making the instructions too complicated for participants to follow? Did you group everyone into groups A and B, do the double-circle for one complete rotation then subdivide A and B and repeat with two double circles, repeating until done?

I could see it work if you had 4, 8, 16, 32 and so on people and could give everyone a slip of paper with who they need to talk to next, or a number slightly below an exponent of two, with a few people sitting out each round

I'd love to know how you did it - and I'd like to attend the next 19+ Rhizome event too,

- Amy
(Sin)'      =  Cos
(Cos)'    =  -Sin

When Sin = 1, then (Sin)' = Cos = 0
When Sin = 0, then (Sin)' = Cos = 1 or -1
When Sin = -1, then (Sin)' = Cos = 0

What does this mean?
In a sine wave, the derivative (meaning "rate of change") of Sin is greatest when it is closest to equilibrium.
The closer to the middle ground that a wave is, the greatest its rate of change.

This occurs in many places in nature, but my favorite is the Sine wave that describes the length of the day and night over the course of the year. The length of the day and that of night changes every day. The days and nights are of equal length on the equinoxes and at their longest/shortest at the solstices.

However the change in the length of the day and night is greatest when they are closest to equal. It is at the Fall equinox that the days shorten at the greatest rate, and in the Spring that they grow at the greatest rate - the date before the Spring solistice, the day is about four minutes shorter than on the solstice, and again about four minutes longer on the day after.

Conversely, at the summer soltstice, when the day is longest, there is very little change in the length of the day - the date before the solstice, the sun is up perhaps thirty seconds less than on the solstice, and after the solstice, the sun is up about half a minute less.


I'm sure there's some lesson here.


In any case, Calculus is awesome.
I've spent a good chunk of time now watching movie trailers and studying calculus and have come to be intrigued by the possibilities of some related mathematical functions.

1. Length of any given cut in a movie trailer as a function of year, genre and length of trailer. (cf. X-Men 3)

2. Prevalence of attention deficit disorder in the general population as a function of function #1, or vice-versa

3. Fraction of trailers with voice over by Hal Douglas and Don LeFontaine as a function of year.

4. Length of time between original movie and remake, or remake and re-remake as a function of year and genre. (cf. King Kong, The Island of Dr. Moreau)

According to my calculations, the year 2056 will see AI emulations  of Douglas and LeFontaine squabbling over the audio track of the simulataneous fifith threugh seventh remake of the 1897 classic  "Studies of Time and Motion: Ascending a Staircase." This will prove a less a challenge to narrate as market as future projectors will be unable to diplay cuts that are shorter than planc's time.
It scares me when I'm productive in a conventional sense.

While I once took a semester of Queer Women's Autobiographies, Eugenics and Urban Social Geography, or Chinese Lit, Candadian Sci-Fi, Antropological Methodology and Theories of Urban Economic Development now I'm studying French, Spanish, Economics and Calculus. I'm editing. I seem to be in a relationship (very weird). I warked for two candididates in the election an now I soom to be knee deep in the student election.

I was largely idle for eight months, nom I'm... doing things.

Creepy.

God help me if I ever get a job, especially if it's something especially "useful." I don't think I could take it.
I think I may see math differently than do other people.

Subtraction is sneaky wihle addition is likable, but bufuddled.
Multiplication is pleasantly direct and division has to be cruel to be kind.
Negative numbers, though not always welcome, need extra representation.
When handling radicals, be sure not to cut yourself on their sharp edges.
Squares have fine perhipheries.
Polynomials sit like a loaf of savoury bread on a kitchen counter.
Absolute value makes eyes go in opposite directions.
Greatest integer functions jar and momentarily disorient.
Double-variable equivalency equations skirt along the edge, sending sensual, even erotic signals along their curves: less-than equations are wallflowers, and greater than equations tend to spill out; so messy and over-ambitious are they so often.
Root functions slip between your fingers, like fine sand.
Manipulating infinities is making balloon animals out of the wrong kind of balloons.
Straigt-up logarhythms make me a little nauseous.
E is pretentious and oblate, like royalty.

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