Ken's Blog

Officials in New York State, from Governor Hochul on down, have been preparing for months for the possibility of a military-style assault on the city by our federal government. There have been coordinated meetings, contingency plans, and strategic workshops on how to engage in peaceful protest without letting the invaders succeed in provoking violence.

A key player in all of this is the moneyed class. The fantasy that those people will flee the city because of higher taxes is just that — a fantasy.

If you have all the money in the world, New York City offers a life experience that cannot be duplicated anywhere else. You have, at your fingertips, world class theater and opera and concerts and museums and galleries and shopping and cultural events of all sorts.

This is important because in the defense of the city from military-style invasion designed to provoke violence, the wealthiest New Yorkers have a special role to play. More tomorrow.

Due to the results of our recent mayoral election, our vengeful federal administration is poised to wage war on New York City, as it has done in Chicago and Portland. NYC represents everything that MAGA fears: It supports diversity, welcomes immigrants (and in fact is kept in operation by immigrants), and embraces its role as a great hub of international culture.

So how can a 34 year old mayor fight such a foe? A clue to Mamdani’s strategy can be found in his choice to retain Jessica Tisch, a scion of one of the nation’s wealthiest families, as police commissioner.

Let’s circle back to one key fear-mongering talking point during the mayoral campaign. Right wing commentators claimed that if NYC raised taxes on the wealthy, the wealthy would go live elsewhere.

But what is the reality? I think the answer can be found in the Central Park Metaphor. More tomorrow.

One great thing about Central Park in NYC is the way it creates common cause between rich and poor. When Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park, they understood this.

The park is free and open to all — you don’t need to be wealthy to enjoy it. Yet at the same time, it caters to the wealthy in a brilliant way.

After all, one of the perks of being a billionaire in NYC is having a gorgeous apartment, perhaps a duplex, overlooking Central Park. Because the super-rich have homes that line the park, they are emotionally invested in it.

The takeaway point is this: The park creates common cause between rich and poor. It gives the rich and powerful a stake in caring for something that benefits the common citizen.

This all relates, in a good way, to the the outcome of yesterday’s mayoral election. More tomorrow.

Of course Mamdani won.

At some point our idiot president decided “I think Mamdani should be the next mayor of NYC.”

It’s not that he decided that on purpose — he doesn’t have the brain capacity for that.

But in whatever dim region of his brain that continues to function, he might have realized that New Yorkers would do the opposite of whatever he suggested.

And so he endorsed Cuomo, thereby ensuring that no self-respecting New Yorker will ever vote for Cuomo. For that, we owe him thanks.

It is the day before election day. I guess we will find out tomorrow exactly how fed up people are.

Wish us luck.

I’ve developed a style of teaching through the years. I vary it from time to time, but there is always a common thread.

In order to teach computer graphics techniques and algorithms, I create interactive visuals that let me guide the students through the various concepts. So it becomes a kind of magic show, with the promise that at the end of the class the students will become fellow magicians.

I’ve come to realize that this style of presentation is a sort of “procedural storytelling”. At the core is a strong narrative, which needs to built on compelling and exciting ideas.

But those ideas are presented visually as a live interactive demo, so that people are able see those ideas coming to life and coalescing before their eyes. Which, when you think about it, is pretty cool.

We watch in collective astonishment as an incompetent would-be dictator embarrasses us with his fixation on gold plated toilet bowls and bloated ballrooms and cruelly withholding SNAP funds and raising taxes (he calls it “tariffs” and thinks that means nobody will notice it’s actually a punishing tax on the American people).

The net effect this coming Tuesday will be that the farmers and struggling working class people who voted him in will stay home in disappointment and disgust. Meanwhile millions of other Americans will race to the polls to vote for Mamdani or Platner, or anyone else willing to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

The self proclaimed leader of the political right may turn out to be the best friend the political left ever had.

Isn’t it ironic?

I went to my dentist’s office for my regular teeth cleaning this morning. Everyone who worked there was wearing a Halloween costume, and there was a tray of candies on offer at the receptionist’s desk.

After the teeth cleaning, my dentist asked if I had any questions. So I asked her if she is the only dentist who gives candy to her patients.

She said no, and that in fact an endodontist she knows hands out Hostess Twinkies. And some dentists, she said, give out lollipops.

I remarked, somewhat tongue in cheek, that handing out candy might be good for business.

She agreed, and added that we shouldn’t really blame the dentists. “After all,” she said, “you’re the ones who eat them.”

Now our president want to test nukes
His message is “Put up your dukes.”
      Which just opens the door
      To a global hot war
Then we’ll all go kablooey. Gazooks!

If you really want to understand something, try teaching it to somebody else. One of the joys of being an educator is being forced to explicitly articulate what you think you know.

In the course of doing that, you often find that you have taken shortcuts, skipped steps, taken things for granted. But when you’re teaching the same concept to someone who hasn’t seen that concept before, you do not have that luxury.

For anyone who wants to really understand a subject well, I recommend trying to teach it to somebody else. You just might learn a thing or two yourself.