Michael Hardy

@littleadv But your earlier comment mentioning "appeals" (in quotes) seemed to say that's what would happen.

So you mean "appeals" in cases where the IRS decides to allow the deduction, so that it is the IRS "appealing" from its lower-level officials' decision, rather than the taxpayer appealing?

"The reason for this rule is basically to prevent lower level IRS officials from setting national tax policy." END QUOTE Might the "level" of those officials depend on the amount of money involved? If a vast corporation's debt to the IRS for one year will be reduced by $100 million, would a much higher-level person, able to set IRS policy, be involved where a $10000 savings would be dealt with by a lower-level person whom the director of the IRS has never heard of?

@littleadv Sorry, I mangled a sentence. What I meant was: Might the court consider itself obligated to require the IRS to allow the second corporation that deduction if the situation were the same in all material ways?

@littleadv Might the court consider itself obligated to require the second corporation to claim the deduction because the IRS allowed that to the first corporation?

@littleadv What if the court found that in all material ways, the situations of the two corporations are identical?

So a corporation is allowed the tax deduction mentioned in my posted question. Then another corporation in the same situation is denied the tax deduction by the IRS, the same agency that allowed the deduction to the other corporation. If the second corporation sues in a federal court, how will the court view the IRS's interpretation in the first case?

@jmoreno The words "not exactly" seem to imply that something wasn't right I my comment, but your subsequent words don't seem to attempt to indicate what that is.

At the time of this amendment (1868) some indigenous tribes were considered not subject to U.S. jurisdiction; thus their members were not citizens. If I understand correctly, that was changed by legislation in the 1920s.

If the U.S.A. or some part of it is under occupation by a foreign military force, then, if I understand correctly, those foreign soldiers are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

@pmf : Does the law really require the pope to be single? The law requiring priests to be unmarried men applies to Catholics in Western countries, but in eastern countries (Slavic and Arabic, mostly, I think) those Catholic churches that are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church ordain married men to the priesthood, but forbid them to marry after getting ordained. Celibacy of priests has never been considered one of the infallible immutable doctrines of the Catholic Church.

@Jakobian History does not make me confident that anyone among the moderators can understand what an "unnecessary detail" is in this context. In the past some moderators have equated their ignorance of the reasons for some MathJax usage with knowing that there are no such reasons.

I think the moderators' complete silence on this clearly indicates what a number of other things clearly indicate: They do not want a continuing collegial relationship with users.

Is it in fact a violation of the moderators' norms to post on meta that the moderators have told me that the rules are thus-and-so? As far as I can tell, that is why I was suspended for the past year.

And I still think the moderators are wrong about those things I said they are wrong about, and no moderator has ever attempted to tell me why I'm wrong about that.

"you won't do wrong by just assuming whats allowed and what isn't using your own judgement, assuming its reasonable" The moderators told me I have a long history of disruptive posting. I do in fact have a long history of saying the moderators are wrong about certain things. I did not know that that was what would be meant by "disruptive posting", nor do I think that is reasonable, because it is claimed that the moderators are elected by the users.

@XanderHenderson For example, if I post on meta that the moderators told me not to correct MathJax usage unless the improvement is "substantial", would that posting to meta be considered disruptive?

@XanderHenderson Could you address the question I posted?

Then in 2023 that became more apparent. Then in 2024 it appears that reporting on meta what the moderators have told me the rules are is considered disruptive.

Is there some way to tell which postings the moderators will consider disruptive? Nine months went by before a community manager was willing to tell me for which posting I was suspended in 2022. My conjecture is that the reason it was considered disruptive is that it mentioned the moderators in a way that could be construed as unfavorable. I would not have thought that would be forbidden since it is claimed that the moderators are elected by the users.

Is there anyone among the moderators who values my genuine respect that would consist of putting my confidence in their competence and their honesty?

Paramanad Singh wrote: "There is another problem which I can see with this post. It discusses about your past suspensions and again users (including mods) are not supposed to discuss suspensions of individual users in public on meta site." That is not about respect; that is about a regime of lèse-majesté for the moderators. A sort of compulsory and false show of public respect for the moderators regardless of what they do.

Paramanand Singh also says a rule against discussion of past suspensions is about respect. But it is about preventing abusive and dishonest behavior by moderators from being seen in public.

Paramanand Singh tells me that "I think you are misinterpreting my comment. If you have to challenge any action of a moderator then you don't have to report it to any of the mods, but rather use 'contact' form which is handled by SE employees and not by any mod." That is a sham. The community managers' purpose is to protect the company from legal, political, or commercial liabilities, not to correct abuses by moderators.

@hft : Regardless of whether you use $v^2/r$ or $\sqrt{gR \,},$ you need two specific pieces of information about the planet. But my point was the the method I outlined in my question is easier to understand than the method that uses $v^2/r,$ because deriving the $v^2/r$ formula is not needed in that method.

"I think it is a cute method that is easier to apply for earth where everyone already know the local acceleration near the surface." $${}$$ You need two things: the local acceleration at a particular distance from the center ("at the surface," if you like) and the radius.

@hft : And you can find the exact answer without the gravitational constant or the mass if you know only the radius and the gravitational acceleration toward the center at that radius.

@hft : To use the $v^2/r$ formula, you don't need as much information about the mass of the planet and the gravitational constant. It's enough to know the radius of the orbit and the acceleration of gravity at that distance from the center.

@hft Your point escapes me. To use the $v^2/r$ formula, one would need certain data about Jupiter, and to use the technique I proposed in the question, one would need some data about Jupiter.

@hft I don't know, but given that quantity and the radius of Jupiter, one could find the orbital speed.

@hft I don't understand what makes you think I am presupposing anything of the sort. There is some distance that a dropped object falls in the first second, and there is some distance that is the radius of the earth. Given those, one can find the orbital speed.

Maybe what you mean by "obtain" is what I mean by "prove". What I meant was: prove that the absolute value of the second derivative of velocity with respect to time is equal to $v^2/r,$ where $v$ is the speed (the absolute value of the velocity) and $r$ is the radius.

@hft : Yes. Do you know a way to prove the $v^2/r$ formula that is simpler than what I did here?

$$ \qquad\uparrow \qquad \sqrt{ (2000\text{ miles}+3\text{ feet})^2 - (2000\text{ miles})^2 } \approx 1.5 \text{ miles}. $$

@PatoGalmarini The same way. Say the radius of the moon is about $2000$ miles, and on the moon an object falls about $3$ feet in the first second (rough approximations). One leg of the right triangle is $2000$ miles long and the hypotenuses is $2000\text{ miles}+3\text{ feet}.$ Then by Pythagoras, the distance to the horizon is about $1.5$ miles. Therefore $1.5$ miles per second will do it.

@DavidRoberts : You misrepresent what I wrote. I said that not interacting with people outside the field substantially more than what typically happens today is unethical.

@DavidRoberts : Is it a slur to assert that some practices that are nearly universal among mathematicians are unethical? Is it a slur to say that in those courses called "business calculus" at nearly all state universities the textbook knowingly lies, repeatedly? Is it a slur to say that mathematicians could design course for non-mathematically inclined management students that would be not only honest, but useful to the students, but are not doing that?

$\ldots\,$students in first-year calculus courses do not know the prerequisite material? In particular, they do not know that in mathematics, one normally works each day at coming to understand why things work the way they do, as opposed to following dogmas, and they do not know that in mathematics one should not expect to have been given an algorithm for each exercise before being given the exercise, but rather one should expect to be given enough information to figure it out.

@DavidRoberts : Mathematicians do have considerable influence over the elementary school curriculum, even if indirect in most (not all) instances. And there is a considerable amount of unethical conduct among conventional practices of mathematicians, some of which consists of not interacting with people in other fields enough. (For example, why are students in the prerequisite courses to calculus told in their textbooks and by their teachers that "log" with no base specified always means with base 10?) And is it not the fault of mathematicians that most$\,\ldots\qquad$

@GeorgEssl : Maybe you should make your comment into an answer.

@FrancescoPolizzi : And it is a crime.

@FrancescoPolizzi We have all encountered students who say they hate math and can be quickly seen to be unaware of what math is, to the extent that they think it's about mechanically applying memorized algorithms that are meaningless. They are usually innocent victims of a curriculum that has taught them that, even though it was not intended to teach them that. Mathematicians who design curricula that have that effect are just as unaware of what they're doing as that kind of student is of the nature of mathematics. But in their case, it's not an innocent mistake: it is deliberate stupidity.

@FrancescoPolizzi : I intended it as a moral judgement, not as an insult. There is massive and extensive and nearly universal dishonesty in the design of mathematics curricula.

@FrancescoPolizzi : To be clear: How is it inappropriate?

@FrancescoPolizzi : It is of great importance to publicize the fact that almost all mathematicians, despite being highly intelligent, believe this naked emperor's new clothes are magnificent, and that that can be understood very easily. Probably I will publish something about this at some point. It's been slowly forming in my mind over many years. It is a major ethical lapse and it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. If the plaintiff prevails against mathematicians in this, it will leave mathematicians far better off. They could get the same benefits far less expensively, if they wanted to.

In some places you used \cdots between "plus" signs and in some cases \ldots. How do you decide which?

$\ldots\,$kinds of students who are encouraged to take a calculus course today.

@DavidWhite : That was a rhetorical exaggeration. Some calculus textbooks put the mean value theorem in section 4.1 and some in section 4.2, etc., and even that is something of a rhetorical exaggeration (but it's true). But how many calculus textbooks do not have a chapter on limits and continuity that comes before derivatives are introduced, in which a variety of different kinds of limits $(0/0,\, \infty-\infty, \, \infty/\infty, \, 1^\infty, \, \, \ldots \text{ etc.) ?}$ There are sensible reasons to take a different approach with many of the$\,\ldots \qquad$

@HollisWilliams : Your comment might have made sense if it had been about a first-year calculus textbook, since all of those are identical (because all mathematicians have been entirely comatose in that respect for a half-century or more). But I would not expect this particular sort of deviation from convention to be a major impediment to the publication of a probability textbook.

This is somewhat interesting, but clearly it does not deal with the concern expressed in the posted question. When I wrote "textbook", I meant something one would use for a class of teaching somewhat typical undergraduates among whom many would have primary interests elsewhere than in mathematics.