Gödel's Loophole
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Gödel's Loophole
Gödel's Loophole is a supposed "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Gödel told his friend Oskar Morgenstern about the existence of the flaw and Morgenstern told Albert Einstein about it at the time, but Morgenstern, in his recollection of the incident in 1971, never mentioned the exact problem as Gödel saw it. This has led to speculation about the precise nature of what has come to be called "Gödel's Loophole." It has been called "one of the great unsolved problems of constitutional law" by F. E. Guerra-Pujol. Background When Gödel was studying to take his American citizenship test in 1947, he came across what he described as an "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States, U.S. Constitution. At the time, he was at the Institute for Advanced ...
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Constitution Of The United States
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress ( Article I); the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers ( Article II); and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts ( Article III). Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. It is ...
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Self-elimination Of The Austrian Parliament
The "self-elimination of Parliament" () was a constitutional crisis in the First Austrian Republic caused by the resignation on March 4, 1933 of all three presidents (speakers) of the National Council, the more powerful house of the Austrian Parliament. The law had no mechanism for the National Council to operate without a president, and Engelbert Dollfuss, the Chancellor, stated that Parliament had eliminated itself and that his government had the authority to rule by decree under emergency provisions dating from the First World War. This was a decisive step in the transition from a democratic republic to the fascist Federal State of Austria, as opposition attempts to reconstitute the National Council were unsuccessful. Events of March 4, 1933 When railway workers learned that their salaries were going to be paid in three installments, they went on strike on Wednesday, March 1, 1933. This was the subject of the heated debate in the National Council on March 4, 1933. There wer ...
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Mathematicians In Love
''Mathematicians in Love'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Rudy Rucker. Plot summary Bela and Paul are working towards their Ph.Ds under the direction of a mad math genius named Roland Haut, they invent a para-computer called "GoBubble" that predicts the future. They are both involved in a love triangle with Alma. Reception ''Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...'' in their review said that "Rucker cleverly pulls off a romantic comedy about mathematicians in love" and that "While most of the mathematical flights may stun hapless mathophobes, Rucker's wild characters, off-the-wall situations and wicked political riffs prove that writing SF spoofs, like Bela's rock music avocation, "beats the hell out of publishing a math paper." Carl H ...
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Rudy Rucker
Rudolf von Bitter Rucker (; born March 22, 1946) is an American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, he is best known for the novels in the Ware Tetralogy, the first two of which (''Software'' and '' Wetware'') both won Philip K. Dick Awards. Until its closure in 2014 he edited the science fiction webzine '' Flurb''. Early life Rucker was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, son of Embry Cobb Rucker Sr (October 1, 1914 - August 1, 1994), who ran a small furniture-manufacture company and later became an Episcopal priest and community activist, and Marianne (née von Bitter). The Rucker family were of Huguenot descent. Through his mother, he is a great-great-great-grandson of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Rucker attended St. Xavier High School before earning a BA in mathematics from Swarthmore College (1967) and MS (1969) and PhD (1973) degrees ...
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Slate (website)
''Slate'' is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former '' New Republic'' editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company (later renamed the Graham Holdings Company), and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. ''Slate'' is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. ''Slate'', which is updated throughout the day, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. According to its former editor-in-chief Julia Turner, the magazine is "not fundamentally a breaking news source", but rather aimed at helping readers to "analyze and understand and interpret the world" with witty and entertaining writing. As of mid-2015, it publishes about 1,500 stories per month. A French version, ''slate.fr'', was launched in February 20 ...
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Federal Pardons In The United States
A federal pardon in the United States is the action of the President of the United States that completely sets aside the punishment for a federal crime. The authority to take such action is granted to the president by the U.S. Constitution. A pardon is one form of the clemency power of the president, the others being commutation of sentence, remission of fine or restitution, and reprieve. A person may decide not to accept a pardon, in which case it does not take effect, according to a Supreme Court majority opinion in '' Burdick v. United States''. In 2021, the 10th Circuit ruled that acceptance of a pardon does not constitute a legal confession of guilt, recognizing the Supreme Court’s earlier language as dicta. Under the Constitution, the president's clemency power extends to all criminal offenses, except in cases of impeachment. All requests for executive clemency for federal offenses are normally directed to the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice ...
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United States Electoral College
The United States Electoral College is the group of presidential electors required by the Constitution to form every four years for the sole purpose of appointing the president and vice president. Each state and the District of Columbia appoints electors pursuant to the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators). Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors. Of the current 538 electors, an absolute majority of 270 or more ''electoral votes'' is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves an absolute majority there, a contingent election is held by the United States House of Representatives to elect the president, and by the United States Senate to elect the vice president. The states and the District of Columbia hold a statewide or districtwide popular vote on Election Day in November to choose electors based upon how they have pled ...
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Gerrymandering In The United States
Gerrymandering in the United States has been used to increase the power of a political party. Gerrymandering is the practice of setting boundaries of electoral districts to favor specific political interests within legislative bodies, often resulting in districts with convoluted, winding boundaries rather than compact areas. The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts's redistricting maps of 1812 set by Governor Elbridge Gerry noted that one of the districts looked like a salamander. In the United States, redistricting takes place in each state about every ten years, after the decennial census. It defines geographical boundaries, with each district within a state being geographically contiguous and having about the same number of state voters. The resulting map affects the elections of the state's members of the United States House of Representatives and the state legislative bodies. Redistricting has always been regarded as a political exercise and i ...
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Constitutional Amendment
A constitutional amendment is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity. Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly altering the text. Conversely, they can be appended to the constitution as supplemental additions (codicils), thus changing the frame of government without altering the existing text of the document. Most constitutions require that amendments cannot be enacted unless they have passed a special procedure that is more stringent than that required of ordinary legislation. Examples of such special procedures include supermajorities in the legislature, or direct approval by the electorate in a referendum, or even a combination of two or more different special procedures. A referendum to amend the constitution may also be triggered in some jurisdictions by popular initiative. Australia and Ireland provide examples of constitutions requiring that all amendments are first pas ...
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Article Five Of The United States Constitution
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process for altering the Constitution. Under Article Five, the process to alter the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments, and subsequent ratification. Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; or by a convention to propose amendments called by Congress at the request of two-thirds of the state legislatures. To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must then be ratified by either—as determined by Congress—the legislatures of three-quarters of the states or by ratifying conventions conducted in three-quarters of the states, a process utilized only once thus far in American history with the 1933 ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment. The vote of each state (to either ratify or reject a proposed amendment) carries equal weight, regardless of a state's population or length of time in the Union. Ar ...
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Phillip Forman
Phillip Forman (November 30, 1895 – August 17, 1978) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and previously was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Education and career Born in New York, New York on November 30, 1895, Forman received a Bachelor of Laws in 1919 from the Temple University Beasley School of Law. He served in the United States Navy from 1917 to 1919 during World War I era. He entered private practice in Trenton, New Jersey from 1919 to 1932. He was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 1923 to 1928 and was the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 1928 to 1932. Federal judicial service Forman was nominated by President Herbert Hoover on June 11, 1932, to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey vacated by Judge William Nelson Runyon. He was confirmed by the Unite ...
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Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. It was the capital of the United States from November 1 to December 24, 1784.New Jersey County Map
New Jersey Department of State. Accessed July 10, 2017.
The city's metropolitan area, including all of Mercer County, is grouped with the New York combined statistical area by the