Well, another year has passed, and we find ourselves again at Thanksgiving. And here at Blog Wyrm, we like to remind our fellow beings that the reason we commemorate this holiday isn’t the Black Friday deals, nor the triple-header football, nor even the feasting with friends and family. All those things are great but none of them would have been possible without the first major step that William Bradford took in his management of his fledgling colony. After several years of hardship and much internal turmoil and debate, Bradford decided to abolish the communal work arrangement that the pilgrims had signed in favor of private ownership. It was only after he made that move that there was enough bounty for feasting and leisure and so on. The notion of private ownership and peaceful coexistence while pursuing each person’s ‘happiness’ is the cornerstone of the American experiment as John Stossel’s Thanksgiving video shows:
Now onto the columns.
It is hardly an overstatement to say that the Gaussian distribution is a central if often unseen component of our lives. This distribution forms the underpinning for how we understand and model the world around us. Aristotle2Digital looks at how multivariate expectations and moments against this distribution can be calculated in a direct way.
This month’s introduction discusses the importance of private ownership in improving human lives and better achieving human potential. In addition, privatization also benefits nature by providing one of the most powerful tools for protecting vulnerable species from exploitation and destruction. CommonCents explores how that can be done in a way that benefits man and beast simultaneously.
How might someone lacking the benefit of modern physical instrumentation figure out the distribution of molecular speeds in a material in which the basic constituents are too small to be observed? Ludwig Boltzmann figured out how using just his knowledge of basic mechanics and fluid statics and his genius for relating concepts. UndertheHood presents Boltzmann’s brilliant argument and the distribution that bears his (and Maxwell’s) name.