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Date:	Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:36:24 -0700
From:	"John H. Lindsay" <jlindsay@kingston.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Help with Old Computer...? -- OT

Content Type: text/plain

On 09/05/07 Steven Levine wrote:
> What you say is all very reasonable, but politics is
> not always based on logic. All one has to do is look
> at how and why the government hands out money.

Two bits of background to the OT item below:
(1) In Mathematics there's a subject called Lie Theory
(pronounced "Lee Theory", named after the Polish
mathematician Sophius Lie (pronounced "Lee")), the study
of Lie Algebras and Lie Groups, one of the more mind-
bending subjects in all of Mathematics.
(2) In the Canadian Parliament (as in the British
Parliament and similarly in parliaments of many
Commonwealth countries) there's this thing called
Question Period where Members of Parliament (M.P.'s)
(especially opposition members) have a chance to ask the
Government Ministers questions, sometimes embarrassing
or devastating, always informative, and a few times
ridiculous. Some horrible situations and a few scandals
have been turned up because of question period.

A few years ago, one back-bench Canadian M.P. had
grabbed onto the idea that some government research
grants to university staff were frivolous or
unnecessary. He turned up a number of cases to make
his point, hammering them home one after another as
Question Period came around day after day. One day,
however, he attacked the government for giving a grant
to study lie theory, but was informed, when the minister
in charge of the grants had had time to check the facts,
that the applicant was a mathematician, and the grant
was for the study of Lie Theory. Oh well.

John.

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