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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, and Gordon Chang, Daily Beast and Forbes,com,
 
Hour One
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block A: Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD; in re:
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block B: Seb Gorka, author, Defeating Jihad; in re: Terrorism and Pres Trump.
Barcelona:  a large cell of 17- and 18-year-olds, and some in their twenties, all clean-cut and respectable-looking.  We’ve least combatted the role of the ideological initiator--here, a jihadist imam with a prison record.  Use of vehicles and knives; fake suicide vests.  Note also the explosion in their safe house: 120 gas canisters—constitutes a major bomb factory of the sort we expect to see in Iraq. You cannot keep your citizenry safe with “mowing the grass”; how do you neutralize an entire cell? Need to find the center of gravity, the recruiter.  He never picks up a gun; rather, he’s on Twitter.
President’s speech last week: the best thinking of a military that has failed to achieve success in sixteen years.  Trillion spent, thousands who’ve died. Need to do strategy 101. Why does Afgh matter? What’s our vital natl interest? Our current president is excellent in his being a disruptor. Are our policies sound?
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Gordon Chang, Daily Beast and Forbes,com, in re: North Korea has fired a missile over Japan, 6 AM Tues local time (US Monday).  Japan condemned it as “a serious and grave threat that impairs the security of the region.”   Why is the US not shooting down these missiles? What to do? Crippling sanctions on both North Korea and on its critical enabler, China. For a long period we’ve place integrating China into the global system ahead of  security, which inter all pleases huge business interests. Over all. A gross failure of presidents to protect the American people. In peril by the failure of American leadership.  Japan can protect Tokyo, but not Hokkaido.  We don’t have UN authority to shoot down the missiles, but we do have authority under a treaty that North Korea has abrogated three times this century. Looks like the last days of the League of Nations. The enmities in the region work against the US; Japan and South Korea don't work with another and can’t come to terms in defense cooperation. Live-fire exercise by the PLA navy (China) over the Indian Ocean.
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 1, Block D:  Chris Harmer, Institute for the Study of War, in re:  Live-fire exercise by the PLA navy (China) over the Indian Ocean.
 
Hour Two
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  David M Drucker, Washington Examiner, and John Fund, NRO, in re:  Houston rains. Joe Arpaio.  Friday news dump.
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:  David M Drucker, Washington Examiner, and John Fund, NRO, in re:
EL AL REPORT WITH MALCOLM HOENLEIN
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Iran controls 70,000 troops in Syria. Teheran’s goal of establishing the highway and its hegemony from Iran to the Mediterranean.  Iran is rebuilding the Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor. Iran is establishing the Shi’a Crescent unfettered. No one is doing a thing about it.  Constant violations uncovered: shipping weapons to Russia for repair; sending fighters into Syria. S300 air defense system – powerful – is being replicated by Iran. By Christmas will test home-grown systems.  Qatar is opening cordial ties with Iran; UAE? weakening Qatar’s influence in Gaza;  Iran strengthening its ties with Hamas.  Qatar and Turkey. Today Abbas was in Istanbul with Erdogan: Turkey’s increasing presence in Jerusalem in order to recreate the caliphate/Ottoman Empire – “we’ve served Jerusalem for four centuries “ (excluding the Twentieth).  Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt were in the Middle East: the process remains alive.  Related to the Arab foreign ministers’s mtg in Cairo; hard for Abbas to go against them.
EL AL REPORT WITH MALCOLM HOENLEIN
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 2, Block D:  Indiana Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Ancient 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet ~1800 BC shows a thoroughly sophisticated trigonometry that’s amazingly more accurate than what we currently use: base 60 instead of base 10. MS is in Columbia University; was studied by Australians. Think it's Sumerian.
The Damascus Gate: a Greek mosaic floor in perfect shape with a full inscription, probably part of a church, mentions Justinian and Constantine. Fourteenth indiction (year 551 AD?). . . . The Talmud refers to radio signals!
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/24/mathematical-secrets-of-ancient-tablet-unlocked-after-nearly-a-century-of-study
Mathematical secrets of ancient tablet unlocked after nearly a century of study   Dating from 1,000 years before Pythagoras’s theorem, the Babylonian clay tablet is a trigonometric table more accurate than any today, say researchers
At least 1,000 years before the Greek mathematician Pythagoras looked at a right angled triangle and worked out that the square of the longest side is always equal to the sum of the squares of the other two, an unknown Babylonian genius took a clay tablet and a reed pen and marked out not just the same theorem, but a series of trigonometry tables which scientists claim are more accurate than any available today.
The 3,700-year-old broken clay tablet survives in the collections of Columbia University, and scientists now believe they have cracked its secrets.
The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney believe that the four columns and 15 rows of cuneiform – wedge shaped indentations made in the wet clay – represent the world’s oldest and most accurate working trigonometric table, a working tool which could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to construct temples, palaces and pyramids.
The fabled sophistication of Babylonian architecture and engineering is borne out by excavation. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, believed by some archaeologists to have been a planted step pyramid with a complex artificial watering system, was written of by Greek historians as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Daniel Mansfield, of the university’s school of mathematics and statistics, described the tablet which may unlock some of their methods as “a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius” – with potential modern application because the base 60 used in calculations by the Babylonians permitted many more accurate fractions than the contemporary base 10.
The tablet could have been used in surveying, and in calculating how to construct temples, palaces and pyramids. Photograph: UNSW/Andrew Kelly
Mathematicians have been arguing for most of a century about the interpretation of the tablet known as Plimpton 322, ever since the New York publisher George Plimpton bequeathed it to Columbia University in the 1930s as part of a major collection. He bought it from Edgar Banks, a diplomat, antiquities dealer and flamboyant amateur archaeologist said to have inspired the character of Indiana Jones – his feats included climbing Mount Ararat in an unsuccessful attempt to find Noah’s Ark – who had excavated it in southern Iraq in the early 20th century.
Mansfield, who has published his research with his colleague Norman Wildberger in the journal Historia Mathematica, says that while mathematicians understood for decades that the tablet demonstrates that the theorem long predated Pythagoras, there had been no agreement about the intended use of the tablet.
Ancient Babylonian tablet - world's first trig table
 “The huge mystery, until now, was its purpose – why the ancient scribes carried out the complex task of generating and sorting the numbers on the tablet. Our research reveals that Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius.
“The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry. This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3,000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education. This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new.”
The tablet also long predates the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, traditionally regarded as the father of trigonometry.
Wildberger said: “Plimpton 322 predates Hipparchus by more than 1,000 years. It opens up new possibilities not just for modern mathematics research, but also for mathematics education. With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trigonometry that has clear advantages over our own.”
He and Mansfield believe there is more to learn of Babylonian maths, still buried in untranslated or unstudied tablets.
“A treasure trove of Babylonian tablets exists, but only a fraction of them have been studied yet. The mathematical world is only waking up to the fact that this ancient but very sophisticated mathematical culture has much to teach us.”
They suggest that the mathematics of Plimpton 322 indicate that it originally had six columns and 38 rows. They believe it was a working tool, not – as some have suggested – simply a teaching aid for checking calculations. “Plimpton 322 was a powerful tool that could have been used for surveying fields or making architectural calculations to build palaces, temples or step pyramids,” Mansfield said.
As far back as 1945 the Austrian mathematician Otto Neugebauer and his associate Abraham Sachs were the first to note that Plimpton 322 has 15 pairs of numbers forming parts of Pythagorean triples: three whole numbers a, b and c such that a squared plus b squared equal c squared. The integers 3, 4 and 5 are a well-known example of a Pythagorean triple, but the values on Plimpton 322 are often considerably larger with, for example, the first row referencing the triple 119, 120 and 169.
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Hour Three
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block A:  Jed Babbin, American Spectator, in re: China-Pakistan economic corridor, CPAC: $46 billion investment by China;; leasing ag lands, bldg. railroads and road; is taking over Pakistan in a economic sense.  Bldg Pak infrastructure and removing minerals and ag; will tend to dictate Pakistani policy. Pres Trump: missing in action as this administration alarms Pakistan,, supports India, and thereby relinquishes Pakistan to China.  You have to question the [accuracy/intelligence] of the authors of the policy. “An honorable and enduring ending”??  Vide: Mattis and McMaster.
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:  Josh  Rogan,  , in re: North Korean weapons
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block C:  John Tamny, RealClearPolitics, in re: Business failures
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:  McKay Coppins,   , in re: The anti-Trumps
 
Hour Four
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block A: Sidney Blumenthal, Wrestling with His Angels
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block B: Sidney Blumenthal, Wrestling with His Angels
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block C:  A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age,  by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman
Monday   28 August 2017 / Hour 4, Block D:  A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age,  by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman