Category Archives: Movies

Relativity’s twin paradox explained, and why time is at right angles to space.

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One of the most famous paradoxes of physics is explained wrong — always. It makes people feel good to think they understand it, but the explanation is wrong and confusing, and it drives young physicists in a wrong direction. The basic paradox is an outgrowth of the special relativity prediction that time moves slower if you move faster.

Thus, if you entered a spaceship and were to travel to a distant star at 99% the speed of light, turn around and get here 30 years, you would have aged far less than 30 years. You and everyone else on the space ship would have aged three years, 1/10 as much as someone on earth.

The paradox part, not that the above isn’t weird enough by itself, is that the person in the spaceship will imagine that he (or she) is standing still, and that everyone on earth is moving away at 99% the speed of light. Thus, the person on the spaceship should expect to find that the people on earth will age slower. That is, the person on the space ship should return from his (or her) three year journey, expecting to find that the people on earth have only aged 0.3 years. Obviously, only one of these expectations can be right, but it’s not clear which (It’s the first one), nor is it clear why.

The wrong explanation appears in an early popular book, “Mr Tompkins in Wonderland”, by Physicist, George Gamow. The book was written shortly after Relativity was proposed, and involves a Mr Tompkins who falls asleep in a physics lecture. Mr. Tompkins dreams he’s riding on a train going near the speed of light, finds things are shorter and time is going slower. He then asks the paradox question to the conductor, who admits he doesn’t quite know how it works (perhaps Gamow didn’t), but that “it has something do do with the brakeman.” That sounds like Gamow is saying the explanation has to do with deceleration at the turn around, or general relativity in general, implying gravity could have a similarly large effect. It doesn’t work that way, and the effect of 1G gravity is small, but everyone seems content to explain the paradox this way. This is particularly unfortunate because these include physicists clouding an already cloudy issue.

In the early days of physics, physicists tried to explain things with a little legitimate math to the lay audience. Gamow did this, as did Einstein, Planck, Feynman, and most others. I try to do this too. Nowadays, physicists have removed the math, and added gobbledygook. The one exception here are the cinematographers of Star Wars. They alone show the explanation correctly.

The explanation does not have to do general relativity or the acceleration at the end of the journey (the brakeman). Instead of working through some acceleration, general relativity effect, the twin paradox works with simple, special relativity: all space contracts for the duration of the trip, and everything in it gets shorter. The person in this spaceship will see the distance to the star shrink by 90%. Traveling there thus takes 1/10th the time because the distance is 1/10th. There and back at 99% the speed of light, takes exactly 3 years.

The equation for time contraction is: t’ = v/x° √(1-(v/c)2) = t° √(1-(v/c)2) where t’ is the time in the spaceship, v is the speed, x° is the distance traveled (as measured from earth), and c is the speed of light. For v/c = .99, we find that √1-(v/c)2 is 0.1. We thus find that t’ = 0.1 t°. When dealing with the twin paradox, it’s better to say that x’ = 0.1x° where x’ is the distance to the star as seen from the spaceship. In either case, when the people on the space ship accelerate, they see the distance in front of them shrink, as shown in Star Wars, below.

Star Wars. The millennium falcon jumps to light speed, and beyond.

That time was at right angles to space was a comment in one of Einstein’s popular articles and books; he wrote several, all with some minimal mathematics Current science has no math, and a lot of politics, IMHO, and thus is not science.

He showed that time and space are at right angles by analogy from Pythagoras. Pythagoras showed that distance on a diagonal, d between two points at right angles, x and y is d = √(x2 + y2). Another way of saying this is d2 =x2 + y2. The relationship is similar for relativistic distances. To explain the twin paradox, we find that the square of the effective distance, x’2 = x°2 (1 – (v/c)2) = x°2 – (x°v)2/c2 = x°2 – (x°v/c)2 = x°2 – (t°2/c2). Here, x°2 is the square of the original distance, and it comes out that the term, – (t°2/c2) behaves like the square of an imaginary distance that is at right angles to it. It comes out that co-frame time, t° behaves as if it were a distance with a scale factor of i/c.

For some reason people today read books on science by non-scientist ‘explainers.’ I These books have no math, and I guess they sell. Publishers think they are helping democratize science, perhaps. You are better off reading the original thinkers, IMHO.

Robert Buxbaum, July 16, 2023. In his autobiography, Einstein claimed to be a fan of scientist -philosopher, Ernst Mach. Mach derived the speed of sound from a mathematical analysis of thermodynamics. Einstein followed, considering that it must be equally true to consider an empty box traveling in space to be one that carries its emptiness with it, as to assume that fresh emptiness comes in at one end and leaves by the other. If you set the two to be equal mathematically, you conclude that both time and space vary with velocity. Similar analysis will show that atoms are real, and that energy must travel in packets, quanta. Einstein also did fun work on the curvature of rivers, and was a fan of this sail ship design. Here is some more on the scientific method.

Two French generals who fought each other in 19 duels over 30 years, and the purpose of creation

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Humans are funny little creatures. I suspect that God keeps us around for our entertainment value. Each culture provides God its own entertainment. The British by invading basically every country on earth wearing tall, furry hats. We Americans provide grand stunts, like landing on the moon, or an automobile race around the world in 1908 when there were no roads or gas stations. And the French took love, dining, and dueling to a high, almost comic level. In France, the great and near great dueled well into the 20th century. The great French mathematician, Galois dueled to the death over love or politics. The great rationalist philosopher, Descartes, fought a duel, disarmed his opponent, and forgave him because of love. The science fiction writing philosopher, Cyrano de Bergerac, was famous for many duels, typically over the insults in his writing (or his nose).

In France, the great and near-great dueled well into the 20th century.

Instead of writing about those fellows, this post is about two Napoleonic generals, Pierre Dupont de l’Étang and François Fournier-Sarlovèze, who fought 30 duels with each other over 19 years writing a contract to kill each other whenever possible. They didn’t start as generals, of course, but rose through the ranks, though dueling was illegal, in theory, most of the time. They dueled on foot and horseback, mostly with swords, but also with pistols, and managed to wound each other at every meeting. They never quite managed to kill one another, or settle things, but they kept going at it till they became friends, of a sort. They were not that bad dualists, Fournier was a crack shot with a pistol and had killed others in duels. DuPont was better with the sword, but both were good at dodging death by blocking their vital organs.

The antaganism started with a duel, as one might expect. Fournier, a lieutenant at the time, had just killed a popular Strasbourg townsman named Blumm in a pistol duel. The townsman had no experience with pistols so this was sort-of murder, and resented. There was to be a party that evening, and Fournier’s commanding officer sent captain DuPont with a message to Fournier to keep him away until tempers subsided. Fournier attempted to attend anyway, and felt insulted by DuPont’s efforts to keep him out. Fournier challenged DuPont, and DuPont accepted, choosing military swords. Fournier would have challenged the commanding officer, but one does challenge so far above one’s station in France.

They met the next day at dawn. DuPont won the first duel, injuring Fournier by a severe cut to the shoulder. At this point, first blood, most American dualists would have called it quits, and might have become friends. In the duel between Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Jackson, Benton put two bullets into Jackson but didn’t kill them, and they went on to become friends, and colleagues in congress. But for these two, one deadly meeting was not enough. They decided to duel again as soon as Fournier recovered. That took a month. Fournier rechallenged, they fought again with military swords. This time DuPont was injured. At the next duel, both were injured. Again and again, whenever they met, with swords, cutlases, lances, rapiers, and at last with pistols.

Fournier (left) and DuPont (right). Fournier fought for Napoleon in the Spanish and Russian campaigns, and went on to help write the military code of conduct. DuPont fought in the Austrian, Dutch, and Spanish campaigns, eventually becoming Minister of War for Louis XVIII and deputy of the Charente “The Dualsts” film was shot in and around Fournier’s home town. The painting at left hangs in city hall.

They drew up a contract that they would try to kill each other whenever they were 30 leagues from each other (90 miles) and not otherwise occupied with a war. The duels would pause whenever one of them was promoted since one didn’t duel with someone of higher rank. The two proved to be excellent officers and advanced at a good rate, with occasional stops in prison because of the political turmoil of the time, but not because of their dueling. Fournier went to jail for financial mismanagement and for insulting Napoleon after the Russian Campaign, DuPont went to jail too, for losing to the Spanish, and later for supporting the Royalists. They were released because the army always needs good officers who are brave and successful (Read about their lives on Wikipedia, or here).

Sometimes they would meet by accident and try to kill each other in bars, restaurants, and hotels. Mostly they would meet by arrangement at appointed times in the woods, sharing a hearty meal and good insults before dueling. Sometimes they chatted with each other through the duels. They appreciated each others skill and complimented each other on promotions, especially when it allowed them to try to kill one another (there is a comic movie like this — Mr and Mrs Smith?). During one encounter, DuPont stuck Fournier to the wall through the neck with his sword, and Fournier requested that he move closer so they could continue fighting this way. Now that’s dedication.

Eventually, DuPont got engaged and they decided to fight to the death, hunting each other in a woods with pistols (two each). As it happened, DuPont disarmed Fournier, and forced him to agree to fight no more. It was a happy ending suitable to a movie. Actually, a movie made about them, “The Dualists, 1967.” DuPont became minister for War for Louis XVIII (released for being too royalist), and wrote poetry including “the art of war”. Fournier helped write the French code of military conduct.

Dueling didn’t stop here, but continued in France well into the 20th century. The last dual between members of the government was in 1967, see photo below. René Ribière, Gaullist speaker of the National Assembly fought Gaston Differe, Mayor of Marseilles and Socialist candidate for the French presidency. They used epees, long, sharp swords. Differe wounded Ribiére twice, both times in the arm, and Jean de Lipkowskiin called an end to the duel “. Several French duels of the 20th century, are caught on film.

Le député maire socialiste de Marseille et bon escrimeur Gaston Defferre (C) et le député gaulliste du Val d’Oise René Ribière s’affrontent en duel le 21 avril 1967 dans le jardin d’une maison de Neuilly sous le regard d’un des témoins M. Cassagne (de dos). René Ribière avait demandé réparation par les armes à la suite d’un différend survenu à l’Assemblé nationale au cours duquel Defferre l’ayant traité d'”abruti” avait refusé de lui présenter des excuses. / AFP PHOTO

The point of this essay, assuming there is one, is the love of God for us. A less loving God would have had the comedy of the generals end after only two or three duals, or after one killed the other. Here, He allowed them to fight till friendship prevailed. Also of note is that that French are not surrender monkeys, as some claim. They are masters of honor and history, and we love them.

Robert E. Buxbaum, December 28, 2022. In the US, dueling is more like gang warfare, I include here pirates like William Kidd and John Lafitte, the Hamilton-Burr duel with trick pistols, the western shootouts of Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, etc., the Chicago rivalries of the 1930s and the drug wars of Detroit. At present, Detroit has four shootings per day, but only one death per day. The movie “8 Mile” includes fights, shooting, and several rap duels, fought with deadly words. If you won’t fight for something, there is a sense that it isn’t worth much.

Religions unite to condemn “Life of Brian”, 1979

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Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” presents the fictional story of Brian, someone born in the stable next door on Christmas Day, who is repeatedly mistaken for the messiah by a crowd that never gets the message right. We follow Brain as he grows and preaches wisdom, like “Think for yourselves, work it out, you’re all individuals.” The crowd then answers, in unison, “Yes! We’re all individuals.” Eventually Brian joins the People’s Liberation Front of Judea and is crucified by the Romans. Brian’s thoughts aren’t bad, but the humor is how completely his followers mess them up. Another example, near the end of the film, happens with Brian on the cross. A band of fanatical followers comes to the rescue, his “suicide squad”. They proceed to commit suicide, See it here. Brian can only say, “You silly sots.” It’s comedy. It’s a funny/sad take on religious martyrs, and it provoked a united condemnation by the three great religions because the comedy is relevant, and thus dangerous.

The movie opened in the Us, and was called “blasphemous” by the Catholic Church, and “a crime against religion.” The Catholic film-monitoring office rated it “C” for Condemned. Among Jewish leaders, Rabbi Abraham Hecht of Chabad/Lubovich asked to have the movie banned as a danger to civic peace. Chabad/Lubovich was promoting their own leader as the messiah (he had not proclaimed himself) so the film must have touched a particularly sensitive nerve.

Brian, center top, is thought to be the messiah, and reluctantly accepts the role, only to have it screwed up.

Rabbi Hecht claimed, in The New York Times, Aug 28, 1979, “This film is so grievously insulting that we are genuinely concerned that its continued showing could result in serious violence.” He was joined by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of Syrian and Near Eastern Sephardic Communities of America, asking to have the movie banned. They had not asked to have any other movies banned before or since.

The US protestant opposition was headed by Robert Lee of the Lutheran council, who called it “a profane parody” in a broadcast carried by 1,000 radio stations. The religions united to buy a 1 page protest in “Variety,” a rare show of unity. The movie was banned in Italy, Ireland, Chile, Norway, parts of Britain (as a health danger), and likely many other countries. Ireland waited 8 years for a showing; Italy waited twenty years; Aberystwyth, Wales waited thirty years. The ban hasn’t yet been lifted in any of these places, by the way, nor have the religious bans been lifted. It seems that all religions agree you should not think for yourself abut God, or imagine that the leaders might have got things wrong.

The bishop of Southwark, on TV, making the case that “Life of Brian” was an attack on Christianity. It was just an attack on leaders like him.

In Britain, the effort to ban the movie were spearheaded by the “Festival of Lights,” a Protestant group. A leader of that group, Malcolm Muggeridge, debated two of the Pythons on TV, joined by Mervyn Stockwood, bishop of Southwark. See the full Life of Brian 1979 Debate, here. Malcolm Muggeridge had been editor of Punch, Britain’s top humor magazine. He argued that the movie was unfunny. Bishop Stockwood was considered a liberal, known to favor homosexual marriage within the church. He would not tolerate religious deviance, though and argued that the movie was sacrilegious, especially the song at the end. Neither individual seems to listen to anything the Pythons say. Stockwood ended the debate by saying that the Pythons “would get their 20 pieces of silver, that’s for sure”.

Abraham Hecht before the man he claimed was the messiah-king; He called “Life of Brian” a grave danger, and called for Israeli assassinations.

Despite being banned in many countries and by all major religions, the movie was financial success, in part because of the controversy. Its enemies too, in part for their controversy. The Festival of Lights gained notoriety for the protests of sex and violence in the movies. The Catholic Church banned more movies: Shaft, Rambo, Friday the 13th, and all the Borat movies. Rabbi Hecht protested the Israeli rabbinate for making conversion too easy, then pushed the idea that gentiles have to live by a Lubovich interpretation of “The Laws of Noach.” And finally, in June 1995, Hecht pressed for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: “Such people should be killed before they can perform the deed.” [the Oslo accords]. Rabin was assassinated five months later — after the accords were signed. Hecht was presented with a 6 month leave from his pulpit. There were no general condemnations of the banners within their sects, though. All seem to agree that religion is about loving your neighbor, and banning or assassinating those who are not loving enough.

The most contentious part of the movie is the song at the end. It has become popular at funerals and with the terminally ill: “Always look on the bright side of life.” It’s comforting without being preachy: “When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle, and this will help things turn out for the best. And always look on the bright side of life….” Bishop Stockton found this song the most offensive part, and my sense of why is that, as a bishop, he feels he must be seen to stand between you and God. No one like that wants a terminally ill person to look at him and “give a whistle.”

Robert Buxbaum, September 2, 2022. I’ve previous written about the use of miracles in religion, and that total loyalty does not serve the follower, and doesn’t even help the leader.

Ron Weasley plays great chess, better than Voldemort.

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Every now and again a book or movie includes a chess game. Generally, it’s in a story where death is on the line. It’s a literary device used to indicate high mental acumen of the people involved, particularly the one who wins. As an example, in “Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows”, 2011, Holmes plays Moriarty, each calling out moves far advanced for the 1800s. It emphasizes these individuals’ super-smarts. Holmes wins at the end, of course. The Ingrid Berman film, “The Seventh Seal” is similar, with the chess game played against death himself. The knight shows himself a more-than-worth opponent. And that brings us to Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, book 1 of the series, and movie, Ron Weasley is presented as a sort-of fool throughout the series. He’s mostly as source of background information about wizarding, but in one episode standout, he plays brilliantly with giant-size chess men against a magical intelligence, and wins. After the game, one that is described as one of the best ever, Ron goes back to being the goof-ball he was throughout. His chess skills don’t come up again, or do they. It’s a well written series, so what’s the point of including the game?

Position of pieces in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone (movie).

To see how brilliant Ron’s play is, recall that Ron is eleven years old in book 1. He, Harry, and Hermione enter a mysterious room filled with menacing statues. Ron immediately realizes it’s a chess board, and infers that they must win as black to pass through. He further infers that the piece representing Harry must make the checkmate. Two or three pieces are missing, and Ron infers that Harry’s character must replace one of these and become the mating piece. If you’ve ever played a decent computer, you know it’s very hard to win as white (in the 90s you could still win). This ghost intelligence plays quite well, and it’s almost impossible to win if you need to have a particular minor piece make the mate. In the movie, Ron plays as black and reaches the position shown with Harry as the king’s bishop and Hermione as a rook. He is down in material, but has laid a very good trap. The white queen captures the “free pawn” on d3, violently threatening the Harry-bishop. Ron interposes the rook to c3 forcing the white queen to take the rook. At this point, Ron could win by B-c5+, QxB, N-h3 mate, but that would sacrifice Harry and leave Ron as the winning piece. Both Ron and Hermione realize this, and Ron causes Harry to make the checkmate by N-h3+, QxN, B-c5+, Q-f3, BxQ mate. Ron is injured when QxN — a sacrifice in both senses of the word.

Death plays chess, painting by Albertus Pictor, 1480

It’s an impressive display of chess skill, and Dumbledore is right in saying it’s one of the best games. No normal player could manage a game like that, certainly no eleven year old. Normally such a display would be used to present Ron as the group brain, or at least as a very deep thinker. If so, why does the author have Ron revert to his care-free, stupid persona with chess never showing up.

We see that Voldemort, the arch villain, won his game too, and only lost a few pieces doing it. That Voldemort is good at chess is no surprise; it goes with his deep-thinking persona. We don’t see Voldemort’s game, but I can infer that he won via the Trailer gambit. It’s a fairly tricky win, but the only way that I know where you win as black losing only a kings bishop, a rook, and a knight, the pieces that Ron and his friends replaced. The Queen is the winning piece, though, and that’s a lot simpler than winning with a bishop. Ron’s win is far more sophisticated, a surprise given Ron’s behavior and how he is treated.

Perhaps it’s just bad writing, or an effort to show Ron is good at something, but I thought to do a quick re-read of Ron’s early appearance in book 2. Here I find that Ron is bright and motivated, but overshadowed. Early in the book, we find 12 year old Ron picking a lock using a hat pin, and driving a flying car reasonably well. We don’t think this is exceptional because his brothers do all this first, but it is exceptional: imagine tryin to drive a regular car with no instruction at 12. Later we find that Ron learns the fine points of Quidditch without native skill or a coach, just using a book, and we find that Dumbledore picks him to prefect, instead of Harry, a job he does well. Finally, we find that Hermione prefers Ron to Harry. It’s a somewhat surprising turn because she’s supposed to be the brains of the trio. How could she stand to be with Ron? Perhaps she is one of the few people who sees that Ron is bright. Dumbledore is too.

Viewed this way, the chess game becomes the first of the examples of Ron’s brainpower, and becomes an important foreshadowing to a surprise at the end of the last book/movie, to the final battle against Voldemort. In that battle, while everyone else is throwing hexes, Ron is the one who realizes that, to win the war, he must go to the basement chamber and collect basilisk teeth. It’s chess thinking: he’s focused on the king, on Voldemort, while everyone else is dealing with side threats. In a sense, it’s Ron who defeats Voldemort. The chess game is a foreshadowing, and fits with Hermione’s choice of Ron over Harry.

Robert Buxbaum, August 26, 2022. If you like chess puzzles, find some here. And in “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey,” 1991, the brilliance idea is sort-of reversed. Bill and Ted play against death in battleship, twister, and clue, and win. It’s used to show that death is sort of random, and sort of stupid.

Three identical strangers, and the genetics of personality

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Inheritability of traits is one of the greatest of insights; it’s so significant and apparent, that one who does not accept it may safely be called a dullard. Personal variation exists, but most everyone accepts that if your parents are tall, you are likely to be tall; If they are dark, you too will likely be dark, etc., but when it comes to intelligence, or proclivities, or psychological leanings, it is more than a little impolite to acknowledge that genetics holds sway. This unwillingness is glaringly apparent in the voice-over narration of a popular movie about three identical triplets who were raised separately without knowing of one another. The movie is “Three identical strangers”, and it recounts their meeting, and their life afterwards.

Triplets, raised separately, came out near identical.

As one might expect, given my introduction, though raised separately, the three showed near identical intelligence, and near identical proclivities: two of them picked the same out-of-the way college. All of them liked the same sort of clothes and had the same taste in women. There were differences as well: one was a more outgoing, one was depressed, but in many ways, they were identical. Meanwhile, the voice-over kept saying things like, “isn’t it a shame that we never saw any results on nature/nurture from this study.” Let me clear this us: genetics applies to psychology too. It’s not all genetics, but it is at least as influential as upbringing/ nurture.

This movie also included pairs of identical twins, raised separately, they also showed strong personality similarities. It’s a finding that is well replicated in broader studies involving siblings raised separately, and unrelated adoptees raised together. Blood, it seems, is stronger than nurture. See for example the research survey paper, “Genetic Influence on Human Psychological Traits” Journal of the American Psychological Society 13-4, pp 148-151 (2004). A table from that paper appears below. Genetics plays a fairly strong role in all personal traits including intelligence, personality, self-control, mental illness, criminality, political views (even mobile phone use). The role is age-dependent, though so that intelligence (test determined) is strongly environment-dependent in 5 year olds, almost entirely genetic in 25-50 year olds. One area that is not strongly genetic, it seems, is religion.

In a sense, the only thing surprising about this result is that anyone is surprised. Genetics is accepted as crucial for all things physical, so why not mental and social. As an example of the genetic influence on sports, consider Jewish chess genius, Lazlo Polgar: he decided to prove that anyone could be great at chess, and decided to train his three daughters: he got two grand masters and an international master. By comparison, there are only 2 chess grand masters in all of Finland. Then consider that there are five all-star, baseball players named Alou, all from the same household, including the three brothers below. The household has seven pro baseball players in all.

Most people are uncomfortable with such evidence of genetic proclivity. The movie has been called “deeply disturbing” as any evidence of proclivity contradicts the promise of education: that all men are equal, blank slates at birth that can be fashioned into whatever you want through education. What we claim we want is leaders — lots of them, and we expect that education will produce equal ratios of woman and men, black and white and Hispanic, etc. and we expect to be able to get there without testing for skills, — especially without blind testing. I notice that the great universities have moved to have testing optional, instead relying on interviews and related measures of leadership. I think this is nonsense, but then I don’t run Harvard. As a professor, I’ve found that some kids have an aptitude and a burning interest, and others do not. You can tell a lot by testing, but the folks who run the universities disagree.

The All star Alou brothers share an outfield.

University heads claim that blind testing is racist. They find that some races score poorly on spacial sense, for example, or vocabulary suggesting that the tests are to blame. There is some truth to these concerns, but I find that the lack of blind testing is more racist. Once the test is eliminated, academia finds a way to elevate their friends, and the progeny of the powerful.

The variety of proclivities plays into an observation that you can be super intelligent in one area, and super stupid in others. That was the humor of some TV shows: “Big Bang Theory” and “Fraser”. That was also the tragedy of Bobby Fischer. He was brilliant in chess (and the child of brilliant parents), but was a blithering idiot in all other areas of life. Finland should not feel bad about their lack of great chess players. The country has produced two phone companies, two strong operating systems, and the all time top sniper.

Robert Buxbaum, May 15, 2022

Dark Academia, the new mood.

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Old libraries and old books play a big part in the aesthetic.

The movie version of academia is typically a leafy campus, with great libraries, bright minds, and deep intellectual discussions. It’s a happy grove where the young and talented go to bloom to superiority, eclipsing their parents and their well-meaning, but fuddy-duddy teachers. It’s also where oppressed middle-agers go to complete a journey of self -discovery. To the extent that professors are there in older movies, it’s to confer degrees and, eventually praise.

But there is a new mood in literature and movies where professors are sinister, and competition is darker and more dangerous place, both for the body and the soul. It’s called “Dark Academia.” Consider the recent hit movie and book, “The Secret History,” by Danna Tartt. It follows a talented person without any particular view or direction. The person arrives, looking to make friends and to become special, and through misguided efforts, students end up damaged or killed. Any friendships that result are sinister, and often exploitive.

An early version was Hitchcock’s “Rope,” where two students get excited by a professor expounding the ideas of Nietzsche. They go on to kill one of their fellows who they come to decide isn’t, quite as enlighten as they. Secret History is similar, except that the professor teaches Greek. Another early version was Frankenstein, whose early chapters are of crazed collegians pushing the limits of science in a dark laboratory and similarly dark library settings. For Dr. Frankenstein, the crushing pressure is from inside the student, and not so much from his professors or classmates. University is still a place of refuge, without the pressure of drugs, sex, or fashion.

Harry Potter and friends in dark academic garb. Casual, clean, active, hip-academic.

The evil professor trope of Dark Academia first appears in Harry Potter, I think. The school is both helpful and hurtful, both refuge and enemy. It’s education in a building that tries to trip you, with sadistic professors, plus slave labor, and some murderers or “death eaters.” There are friends too, with the friendship bound by fire-whiskey, or butter-beer, and an intense desire to excel over each other at ones craft, in this case magic. Fashion becomes important in dark academia. Harry Potter’s round glasses, robes, and school neckties, but the alcohol isn’t excessive in HP and the books are pretty chaste where sex is concerned.

Alcohol abuse, fashion, and sex are more central in “The Secret History”. There is a cultish professor, Morrow, and students fashions are described in detail. Most dress in tweeds, and all of them wear round glasses, like Harry Potter’s– in this case with metal rims. All are rich. And as in Hitchcock’s “Rope,” they conspire to murder the least special of their group in the goal of understanding the ancient Greeks. Unlike in Rope, they get away with it.

A yet more recent example is “Kill your darlings” — the main character is played by Daniel Radclift, the same actor who was Harry in the HP movies. It takes place in Columbia University in 1943-46 and portrays the young Alan Ginsberg. As in “Secret History” there is a cultish leader and a murder. Alan enters school not knowing what sort of poetry he’d like to write, or if he’ll write poetry. In the movie, Jack Kerouac, William Burrows and a few others who introduce him to drugs, including heroin, gay sex, wanton destruction, and benzedrine. As in Secret History, there are no bad effects from the drugs, though he tries suicide and one of his group murders another — the least special one as in other dark academia. He gets away with it, as in Secret History, the cult leader is rejected, and the others become special — a happy ending of sorts. Ginsberg writes a great “absurdist” essay and goes on to become a great poet.

Danna Tartt, author models the Dark Academic look. Notice the cigarette.

The mood of dark academia is a mix of repressed anger and innocence that takes place on a campus, but might as easily taken place in bohemian Paris. The movie architecture includes vast dining halls, gothic bell towers and forbidding libraries. The devoted student searches here for hidden light but finds only darkness. Murder follows. Students stare into space like Oscar Wilde with a heartburn, smoking like well-dressed longshoremen on break. See Danna Tartt at left.

The main contributions of Dark Academia is the fashion: Shades of brown, black and gray mostly, casual and active, but clean. The look says, “I’m both sexually active and criminally active; I do drugs think great thoughts, but don’t do homework. I might do murder too, but it’s OK since I plan to submit a killer final project. Morality is for losers, and “Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” It’s a line from “The secret History,” appears, slightly altered, in Hitchcock’s “Rope.” The tremendous desire to be pure and special; great in a word, and that involves a destruction of the ordinary: an academic aesthetic where murder is the crowning creative act.

Robert Buxbaum, April 2-5, 2021.

The equation behind Tinder, J-swipe, and good chess matchups.

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Near the beginning of the movie “The social network”, Zuckerberg asks his Harvard roommate, Saverin, to explain the chess rating system. His friend writes an equation on the window, Zuckerberg looks for a while, nods, and uses it as a basis for Facemash, the predecessor of Facebook. The dating site, Tinder said it used this equation to match dates, but claims to have moved on from there, somewhat. The same is likely true at J-swipe, a jewish coating site, and Christian mingle.

Scene from the social network, Saverin shows Zuckerberg the equations for the expected outcome of a chess match between players of different rankings, Ra and Rb.

I’ll explain how the original chess ranking system worked, and then why it works also for dating. If you’ve used Tinder or J-swipe, you know that they provide fairly decent matches based on a brief questionnaire and your pattern of swiping left or right on pictures of people, but it is not at all clear that your left-right swipes are treated like wins and losses in a chess game: your first pairings are with people of equal rating.

Start with the chess match equations. These were developed by Anand Elo (pronounced like hello without the h) in the 1950s, a physics professor who was the top chess player in Wisconsin at the time. Based on the fact that chess ability changes relatively slowly (usually) he chose to change a persons rating based on a logistic equation, sigmoid model of your chances of winning a given match. He set a limit to the amount your rating could change with a single game, but the equation he chose changed your rating fastest when you someone much better than you or lost to someone much weaker. Based on lots of inaccurate comparisons, the game results, you get a remarkably accurate rating of your chess ability. Also, as it happens, this chess rating also works well to match people for chess games.

The knowledge equation, an S curve that can be assumed to relate to the expected outcome of chess matchups or dating opportunities.

For each player in a chess match, we estimate the likelihood that each player will win, lose or tie based on the difference in their ratings, Ra -Rb and the sigmoid curve at left. We call these expected outcome Ea for player A, and Eb for player B where Ea = Eb = is 50% when Ra = RB. It’s seen that Ea never exceeds 1; you can never more than 100% certain about a victory. The S-graph shows several possible estimates of Ea where x= Ra-Rb, and k is a measure of how strongly we imagine this difference predicts outcome. Elo chose a value of k such that 400 points difference in rating gave the higher ranked player a 91% expectation of winning.

To adjust your rating, the outcomes of a game is given a number between 1 and 0, where 1 represents a win, 0 a loss, and 0.5 a draw. Your rating changes in proportion to the difference between this outcome and your expected chance of winning. If player A wins, his new rating, Ra’, is determined from the old rating, Ra as follows:

Ra’ = Ra + 10 (1 – Ea)

It’s seen that one game can not change your rating by any more than 10, no matter how spectacular the win, nor can your rating drop by any more than 10 if you lose. If you lose, Ra’ = Ra – 10 Ea. New chess players are given a start ranking, and are matched with other new players at first. For new players, the maximum change is increased to 24, so you can be placed in a proper cohort that much quicker. My guess is that something similar is done with new people on dating sites: a basic rating (or several), a basic rating, and a fast rating change at first that slows down later.

As best I can tell, dating apps use one or more ratings to solve a mathematical economics problem called “the stable marriage problem.” Gayle and Shapely won the Nobel prize in economics for work on this problem. The idea of the problem is to pair everyone in such a way that no couple is happier by a swap of partners. It can be shown that there is always a solution that achieves that. If there is a singe, understood ranking, one way of achieving this stable marriage pairing is by pairing best with best, 2nd with second, and thus all the way down. The folks at the bottom may not be happy with their mates, but neither is there a pair that would like to switch mates with them.

Part of this, for better or worse, is physical attractiveness. Even if the low ranked (ugly) people are not happy with the people they are matched with, they may be happy to find that these people are reasonably happy with them. Besides a rating based on attractiveness, there is a rating based on age and location; sexual orientation and religiosity. On J-swipe and Tinder, people are shown others that are similar to them in attractiveness, and similar to the target in other regards. The first people you are shown are people who have already swiped right for you. If you agree too, you agree to a date, at least via a text message. Generally, the matches are not bad, and having immediate successes provides a nice jolt of pleasure at the start.

Religious dating sites, J-swipe and Christian Mingle work to match men with women, and to match people by claimed orthodoxy to their religion. Tinder is a lot less picky: not only will they match “men looking for men” but they also find that “men looking for women” will fairly often decide to date other “men looking for women”. The results of actual, chosen pairings will then affect future proposed pairings so that a man who once dates a man will be shown more men as possible dates. In each of the characteristic rankings, when you swipe right it is taken as a win for the person in the picture, if you swipe left it’s a loss: like a game outcome of 1 or 0. If both of you agree, or don’t it’s like a tie. Your rating on the scale of religion or beauty goes up or down in proportion to the difference between the outcome and the predictions. If you date a person of the same sex, it’s likely that your religion rating drops, but what do I know?

One way or another, this system seems to work at least as well as other matchmaking systems that paired people based on age, height, and claims of interest. If anything, I think there is room for far more applications, like matching doctors to patients in a hospital based on needs, skills, and availability, or matching coaches to players.

Robert Buxbaum, December 31, 2020. In February, at the beginning of the COVID outbreak I claimed that the disease was a lot worse than thought by most, but the it would not kill 10% of the population as thought by the alarmist. The reason: most diseases follow the logistic equation, the same sigmoid.

Locked down so long, it’s looking up: the up-side of COVID-19.

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I’m not crazy about the COVID isolation, but there are up-sides that I’ve come to appreciate. You might too. Out of boredom, I was finally got into meditation. It was better than just sitting around and doing nothing.

It’s best not to look at isolation as a problem, but an opportunity. I’ve developed a serious drinking opportunity.

And it’s an opportunity to talk to myself. I told myself I’ should quit drinking. Then I figured, why should I listen to a drunk who talks to himself.

A friend of mine was on drugs, but then quit. Everyone in his house is happy, except for the lamp. The lamp won’t talk to him anymore.

The movies are closed, and the bars, and the gyms. It gives me another reason not to go to the gym.

Did you know that, before the crowbar was invented, crows used to drink at home.

The real reason dogs aren’t allowed in bars: lots of guys can’t handle their licker.

There’s time to spend with my children. And they look like me.

I like that I don’t commute. Family events are over zoom, funerals (lots of funerals), meetings, lectures. They come in via the computer, and I don’t have to dress or attend. No jacket, no pants… no travel …. no job.

My children are spending more time with us at home. We have virtual meals together. I discovered that I have a son named Tok. He seems to like my dad-jokes.

My wife is finding it particularly tough. Most every day I see her standing by the window, staring, wondering. One of these days, I’ll let her in.

I asked wife why she married me. Was it for my looks, or my income, or my smarts. She smiled and said it was my sense of humor. 🙂

My wife is an elementary school teacher. She teaches these days with a smart board. If the board were any smarter, it would go work for someone else. It’s necessary, I guess. If you can’t beat them, you might as well let the smart board teach. I think the smart board stole the election. It began by auto-correcting my spelling. Then it moved to auto correct my voting. The board is smarter and better than me (Hey, who wrote this?)

some mask humor
I’ve learned to love masks, though some of them are hot.

You’d think they’d reduce the number of administrators in the schools, given that it’s all remote. Or reduce the price of college. It would be nice if they’d up the number of folks who can attend. So far no. Today the Princeton alumni of Michigan is sponsoring video-talk by Princeton alumnus, George Will. I wanted to attend, but found there was limited seating, so I’m on the waiting list (true story). By keeping people out, they show they are exclusive. Tuition is $40,000 / year, and they keep telling us that the college is in service of humanity. If they were in the service of humanity, they’d charge less, and stream the talk to whoever wants to listen in. I have to hope this will change sooner or later.

Shopping for toilet paper was a big issue at the beginning of the pandemic, but I’ve now got a dog to do it for me. He goes to the store, brings it back. Brings back toothpaste too. He’s a lavatory retriever. (I got this joke from Steve Feldman; the crowbar joke too.)

I don’t mind that there are few new movies. There are plenty of old movies that I have not seen, and old TV shows too.

This fellow is the new head of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. He’s got a science-based plan for over-population and the disease.

I like that people are leaving New York and LA. It’s healthy, and saves on rent. Folks still travel there, mostly for the rioting, but lockdowns are nicer in Michigan.

More people are hunting, and hiking, and canoeing. These are active activities that you can do on lockdown. The old activities were passive, or going out to eat. Passive activities are almost a contradiction in terms.

We’re cooking more at home, which is healthier. And squirrel doesn’t taste half bad. If I live through this, I’ll be healthy.

I’m reading more, and have joined goodreads.com. I’ve developed a superpower: I find can melt ice cubes, just by looking at them. It takes a while but they melt.

A lot more folks have dogs. And folks have gotten into religion. Wouldn’t it be great, if after death we fond that dyslexic folks were right. There really is a dog.

Let’s love the virus. If we don’t, the next crisis will be worse.

There was an election last week. My uncles voted for Biden, which really surprised me. They were staunch Republicans when they were alive. My aunt got the ballot and convinced them. She was a Democrat when she was alive.

I got pneumonia vaccine shot, and a flu shot. That wasn’t a joke. I think it’s a good idea. Here’s why. People mostly die from pneumonia not the virus.

Before COVID, the other big crisis was global warming. Al Gore and Greta Thunberg claimed we had to shutter production and stop driving to save the planet. COVID-19 has done it. The next crisis is over-population. COVID is already curing that problem — not so much in China, but in the US, Europe, and South America.

Just As a final thought, let’s look at the bright side of the virus. If we don’t, the next crisis will be worse. Take Monty Python’s advice and Always look at the bright side of life.

Robert Buxbaum, November 20, 2020.

Seize the day

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It is forbidden knowledge what our term of years, mine and yours.
Don’t scan the tables of your Babylonian seers.
Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past.
Whether Jupiter has many years yet to give,
Or this one is our last:

This, that makes the Tyrrhene waves spent against the shore.
Strain your wine and strain your wisdom.
Life is short; should we hope for long?
In the moment of our talking, precious time has slipped away.
Seize the moment. Trust tomorrow little as you may.

by Horace (23 BC Roman poet) Odes, 1.11

This poem by Horace, in 23 BC is the first appearance of the phrase “carpe diem,” translated as seize he day. I’d decided to look over the translation from Wikipedia, and to correct and update the translation as I saw fit, to some extent to extract the meanings better, to some extent to make the grammar less-clunky, and to some extent to make it rhyme. Seen in context, the whole poem looks  romantic, and the intent of the famous phrase seems more like ‘seize the moment’ when read in context. Either translation is acceptable from the Latin, as I understand it.

The phrase, “seize the day” appears in several important movies. Robin Williams speaks it to a class of literature students in the sense that I read it here — seize the moment — in this scene of “The Dead Poets Society,” He’s trying to get the boys to appreciate the purpose of poetry, and the preciousness of their years in prep-school. A well-done movie, IMHO. The newspaper sellers sing the phrase for different intent in this song in “Newsies.” For them, the intent is more like seize the opportunity, or maybe even seize power. It’s not Horace’s intent, but it’s sung in front of the statue of Horace Greeley, and it works.

In either context, there is a certain young masculinity about this phrase. In both movie, the cast experiencing the idea is male and young. I don’t think either movie would work as well with women dancing or singing to this idea.

Robert E. Buxbaum, March 9, 2019. In case you should wonder what happens to Frank Kelly (Sullivan) after the movie ends, I’ve written about that.  Also, a friend of mine notes that the grammar used in these movies is wrong:  “Carpe diem” is singular, for this 3rd declension noun. The equivalent Latin plural is “Carpite diem:” That’s the equivalent of you-all, should seize the moment. Unlike in the movies, much of classic education is spent on pedantic, uninspiring, minutia, like Latin grammar, but that’s what’s necessary to permit distinction of meaning. Thank you, David Hoenig for grammar help.

The Great, New York to Paris, Automobile race of 1908.

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As impressive as Lindberg’s transatlantic fight was in 1926, more impressive was George Schuster driving and winning the New York to Paris Automobile race beginning in the dead of winter, 1908, going the long way, through Russia. As of 1908, only nine cars had ever made the trip from Chicago to California, and none had done it in winter, but this race was to go beyond California, to Alaska and then over the ice through Russia and to Paris. Theodore Roosevelt was president, and Americans were up to any challenge. So, on February 12, 1908 there congregated in Times Square, New York, a single, US-made production car, along with five, specially made super-cars from Europe; one each from Italy and Germany; and three from France. The US car, a Thomas Flyer (white), is shown in the picture below. The ER Thomas company sent along George Schuster, as an afterthought: he was a mechanic and test-driver for the company, and was an ex bicycle racer. The main driver was supposed to be Montague Roberts, a dashing sportsmen, but the fellow dropped out in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Schuster reached the Eiffel tower on July 30, 1908, 169 days after leaving New York. The Germans and Italians followed. None of the French super-cars got further than Vladivostok, and one dropped out after less than 100 miles.

The race was sponsored by The New York Times and Le Matin, a Paris newspaper. They offered a large trophy, a cash prize of $1000, not enough to pay for the race, and the prospect of fame. The original plan was for drivers to go from New York to San Francisco, then to Seattle by ship, and Northern Alaska, driving to Russia across the Arctic ice. That plan was abandoned when Schuster, the first driver to reach Alaska, discovered ten foot snows outside of Valdez. The race was modified so that travel to Russia would be by ship. Schuster took his Thomas to Russia from Alaska, the other two drivers reached Russia from Seattle by way of Japan. Schuster was given a bonus of days to account for having taken the longer route. Because of his detour, he was the last to arrive in Russia. From Japan, the route was Vladivostok, Omsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, 21,900 miles total; 13,341 miles driven. Schuster drove most of those 13,341 miles, protected by his own .32-caliber pistol, and mostly guided by the stars and a sextant. He’d taught himself celestial navigation as there were no roadmaps, and hardly any roads.

George Schuster driving the Thomas Flyer, the only American entry, and the only production motorcar in the race.

George Schuster driving the Thomas Flyer with another mechanic, George Miller, the Flyer was only American entry, and the only production motorcar in the race. Note that the flag has only 45 stars.

The ship crossing of the Pacific was a good idea given that, even in the dead of winter, global warming meant that the arctic could not be relied upon to be solid ice. As it was, Schuster had to content with crossing the Rockies in deep snow, and crossing Russia in the season of deepest mud. He reached the Eiffel tower at 6 p.m. on July 30, 1908. The German car had arrived in Paris three days ahead of Schuster, but was penalized to second place because the German team had avoided the trip to Alaska, and had traveled some 150 km of the Western US by railroad while Schuster had driven. The Italian team reached Paris months later, in September, 1908. That the win went to the only production car to compete is indicative, perhaps of the reliability that comes with mass production. That Mr. Schuster was not given the fame that Lindberg got may have to do with the small size of the prize, or with him being a mechanic while Lindberg was a “flyer”. Flyers were sexy; even the car was called a flyer. The Times saw fit to hardly mention Schuster at all, and when it did, it spelled his name wrong. Instead the Times headline read, “Thomas Flyer wins New York to Paris Race.” You’d think the car did it on its own, or that the driver was named Thomas Flyer.

The Flyer crossing a swollen river in Manchuria.

Schuster in his Flyer crossing a swollen river in Manchuria.

The Times could not get enough of Montague Roberts; the driver of the first leg was famous and photographic. They tried to get Roberts to drive the last few miles into Paris, “once the roads were good”. And Roberts was the one chosen to drive in the hero-parade in New York, Schuster rode too, but didn’t drive. Schuster was feted by Theodore Roosevelt, though, who said he liked people “who did things.” Schuster said he’d never do a race like that again, and he never did race again.

The race did wonders for the reputation of American automobiles, and greatly spurred the desire for roads, but it did little or nothing for the E.R.Thomas company. Thomas cars were high cost, high power models, and they lost out in the marketplace to Henry Ford’s, low-cost Model T’s. You’d think that, in the years leading up to WWI, the US Army might buy a high cost, high reliability car, but they were not interested, and the Thomas company did little to capitalize on their success. The Flyer design that won the race was discontinued. It was a 60 hp, straight 4 cylinder engine version, replaced by lower cost Flyers with 3 cylinders and 24 hp. Shortly after that, Edwin R. Thomas, decided to drop the Flyer altogether. His company went bankrupt in 1912, and was bought by Empire Smelting. The original Flyer was sold in 1913 at a bankruptcy action, lot #1829, “Famous New York to Paris Racer.”

ER Thomas went on to found another car company, as was the style in those days. Thomas-Detroit went on make similar cars to the Flyer, but cheaper. The largest, the K-30, was only 30 hp. The original Thomas Flyer is now in the National Automobile Museum, Reno Nevada. after being identified by Schuster and restored. Here is a video showing the original Flyer being driven by a grandson of George Schuster. There is a lower-power Thomas Flyer (black) in a back space of the Henry Ford museum (Detroit). Protos vehicles, similar to the one that came in second, were produced for the German military through WWI. Their manufacturer, Siemens, benefited, as did the German driver.

Advertisement for the Protos Automobile, a product of Siemens motor company. The race did not include a production Protos but one made specially for the race.

Advertisement for the Protos Automobile, a product of Siemens motor company. The race did not include a production Protos but one made specially for the race.

The Thomas engine (and the Protos) engine) live on in a host of cars with water-cooled, four-cylinder, straight engines. In 1922, Chalmers-Detroit merged with Maxwell and continued to produce versions of the old Flyer design, now with an internal drive-shaft. The original Flyer was powered via a gear-chain, like a bicycle. In 1928, Maxwell was sold to Chrysler. Chrysler persists in calling their high-power, four-cylinder engines by the name Chalmers. As for Schuster, when ER Thomas closed its doors, he had still not been paid for his time as a race driver. He went to work for Pierce-Arrow, another maker of large, heavy vehicles. The “cheaper by the dozen” family (two parents, 12 kids) drove a Pierce-Arrow.

The Great race appears in two documentaries and two general audience movies, both comedies. The first of these was Mishaps of the New York–Paris Race, released by Georges Méliès, July 1908, just about as the Flyer was entering Paris. The second movie version  “The Great Race” was released in 1965. It’s one of my favorite movies, with Jack Lemon as the Protos driver (called Dr. Fate in the movie), Tony Curtis as “The Great Leslie”, the Flyer driver. For the movie, the Flyer is called “The Leslie”, and with Natalie Wood as a female reporter who rides along and provides the love interest. In the actual race reporters from the New York Times, male, traveled in the Flyer’s rear seat sending stories back by carrier pigeon.

Path of the Great Race

Path of the Great Race

As a bit of fame, here’s George Schuster in 1958 on “What’s my secret.” He was 85, and no one knew of him or the race. Ten years later, in 1968, Schuster finally received his $1000 prize, but still no fame. A blow-by-blow of the race can be found here, in Smithsonian magazine. There is also an article about the race in The New York Times, February 10, 2008. This article includes only two pictures, a lead picture showing one of the French cars, and another showing Jeff  Mahl, the grandson of George Schuster, and a tiny bit of the flyer. Why did the New York Times choose these pictures? My guess is it’s the same reason that they reported as they did in 1908: The French car looked better than the Flyer, and Jeff Mahl looked better than George Schuster.

Robert Buxbaum, July 20, 2018. What does all this mean, I’ve wondered as I wrote this essay. There were so many threads, and so many details. After thinking a bit, my take is that the movie versions were right. It was all a comedy. Life becomes a comedy when the wrong person wins, or the wrong vehicle does. A simple mechanic working for a failing auto company beat great drivers and super cars, surpassing all sorts of obstacles that seem impossible to surpass. That’s comedy, It’s for this reason that Dante’s Divine Comedy is a comedy. When we see things like this we half-choose to disbelieve, and we half-choose to laugh, and because we don’t quite believe, very often we don’t reward the winner as happened to Schuster for the 60 years after the race. Roberts should have won, so we’ll half-pretend he did.