Category Archives: Business

The future of steamships: steam

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Most large ships and virtually all locomotives currently run on diesel power. But the diesel  engine does not drive the wheels or propeller directly; the transmission would be too big and complex. Instead, the diesel engine is used to generate electric power, and the electric power drives the ship or train via an electric motor, generally with a battery bank to provide a buffer. Current diesel generators operate at 75-300 rpm and about 40-50% efficiency (not bad), but diesel fuel is expensive. It strikes me, therefore that the next step is to switch to a cheaper fuel like coal or compressed natural gas, and convert these fuels to electricity by a partial or full steam cycle as used in land-based electric power plants. 

Ship-board diesel engine, 100 MW for a large container ship

Diesel engine, 100 MW for a large container ship

Steam powers all nuclear ships, and conventionally boiled steam provided the power for thousands of Liberty ships and hundreds of aircraft carriers during World War 2. Advanced steam turbine cycles are somewhat more efficient, pushing 60% efficiency for high pressure, condensed-turbine cycles that consume vaporized fuel in a gas turbine and recover the waste heat with a steam boiler exhausting to vacuum. The higher efficiency of these gas/steam turbine engines means that, even for ships that burn ship-diesel fuel (so-called bunker oil) or natural gas, there can be a cost advantage to having a degree of steam power. There are a dozen or so steam-powered ships operating on the great lakes currently. These are mostly 700-800 feet long, and operate with 1950s era steam turbines, burning bunker oil or asphalt. US Steel runs the “Arthur M Anderson”, Carson J Callaway” , “John G Munson” and “Philip R Clarke”, all built-in 1951/2. The “Upper Lakes Group” runs the “Canadian Leader”, “Canadian Provider”, “Quebecois”, and “Montrealais.” And then there is the coal-fired “Badger”. Built in 1952, the Badger is powered by two, “Skinner UniFlow” double-acting, piston engines operating at 450 psi. The Badger is cost-effective, with the low-cost of the fuel making up for the low efficiency of the 50’s technology. With larger ships, more modern boilers and turbines, and with higher pressure boilers and turbines, the economics of steam power would be far better, even for ships with modern pollution abatement.

Nuclear steam boilers can be very compact

Nuclear steam boilers can be very compact

Steam powered ships can burn fuels that diesel engines can’t: coal, asphalts, or even dry wood because fuel combustion can be external to the high pressure region. Steam engines can cost more than diesel engines do, but lower fuel cost can make up for that, and the cost differences get smaller as the outputs get larger. Currently, coal costs 1/10 as much as bunker oil on a per-energy basis, and natural gas costs about 1/5 as much as bunker oil. One can burn coal cleanly and safely if the coal is dried before being loaded on the ship. Before burning, the coal would be powdered and gassified to town-gas (CO + H2O) before being burnt. The drying process removes much of the toxic impact of the coal by removing much of the mercury and toxic oxides. Gasification before combustion further reduces these problems, and reduces the tendency to form adhesions on boiler pipes — a bane of old-fashioned steam power. Natural gas requires no pretreatment, but costs twice as much as coal and requires a gas-turbine, boiler system for efficient energy use.

Todays ships and locomotives are far bigger than in the 1950s. The current standard is an engine output about 50 MW, or 170 MM Btu/hr of motive energy. Assuming a 50% efficient engine, the fuel use for a 50 MW ship or locomotive is 340 MM Btu/hr; locomotives only use this much when going up hill with a heavy load. Illinois coal costs, currently, about $60/ton, or $2.31/MM Btu. A 50 MW engine would consume about 13 tons of dry coal per hour costing $785/hr. By comparison, bunker oil costs about $3 /gallon, or $21/MM Btu. This is nearly ten times more than coal, or $ 7,140/hr for the same 50 MW output. Over 30 years of operation, the difference in fuel cost adds up to 1.5 billion dollars — about the cost of a modern container ship.

Robert E. Buxbaum, May 16, 2014. I possess a long-term interest in economics, thermodynamics, history, and the technology of the 1800s. See my steam-pump, and this page dedicated to Peter Cooper: Engineer, citizen of New York. Wood power isn’t all that bad, by the way, but as with coal, you must dry the wood, or (ideally) convert it to charcoal. You can improve the power and efficiency of diesel and automobile engines and reduce the pollution by adding hydrogen. Normal cars do not use steam because there is more start-stop, and because it takes too long to fire up the engine before one can drive. For cars, and drone airplanes, I suggest hydrogen/ fuel cells.

Dada, or it’s hard to look cool sucking on a carrot.

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When it’s done right, Dada art is cool. It’s not confusing or preachy; it’s not out there, or sloppy; just cool. And today I found the most wonderful Dada piece: “Attention”, by Gabriel -Belladonna, shown below from “deviant art” (sorry about the water-mark).

At first glance it’s an advertisement against smoking, drinking, and eating sweets. The smoker has blackened lungs, the drinker has an enlarged liver, and the eater of sweets a diseased stomach. But something here isn’t right; the sinners are happy and young. These things are clearly bad for you but they’re enjoyable too and “cool” — Smoking is a lot cooler than sucking on a carrot.

Dada at it's best: Attention by Mio Belladonna. The sinners are happy.

Dada at it’s best: “Attention” by Dadaist Gabriel (Mio) Belladonna, 2012; image from deviant art. If I were to choose the title it would be “But it’s hard to look cool sucking on a carrot.”

At its best, Dada turns advertising and art on its head; it uses the imagery of advertising to show the shallowness of that, clearly slanted medium, or uses art-museum settings to show the narrow definition of what we’ve come to call “art”. In the above you see the balance of life- reality and the mind control of advertising.

Marcel Duchamp's fountain and "Manikken Pis" Similar idea, Manikken is better executed, IMHO.

Marcel Duchamp’s fountain and “Manikken Pis.”

Any mention of dada should also, I suppose, mention Duchamp’s fountain (at right, signed fancifully by R. Mutt). In 2004, fountain was voted “the most influential artwork of the 20th century” by a panel of artists and art historians. The basic idea was to show the slight difference between art and not-art (to be something, there has to be a non-something, as in this joke). Beyond this, the idea would be that same as for the Manikken Pis sculpture in Brussels. Duchamp’s was done with a lot less work — just by signing a “found object.” He submitted the work for exhibition in 1917, but it was rejected as not being art — proving, I guess, the point. Fountain is related to man: his life, needs, and vain ambitions; it’s sort-of beautiful, so why ain’t it art? (It has something to do with skill, I’d say.)

Duchamp designed two major surrealist exhibitions — a similar approach, but surrealism typically employs more skill and humor than Dada, with less shock. Below is another famous work of dada, Oppenheim’s fur-lined tea-cup (Breakfast in fur — see it at the Modern Museum in NYC) compared to a wonderful (and in my mind similar) surreal work, “Ruby lips” by Dali. Oppenheim made the tea-cup and spoon disgusting by making it out of a richer material, fur. That’s really cool, and sort-of shocking, even today.

Duchap's tea cup (left), and Dali's ruby lips (right). Similar ideas treated as Dada or Surreal.

Meret Oppenheim’s fur tea-cup (Breakfast in fur) and Dali’s ruby lips; the same idea (I think); dada vs surreal.

Dali’s “ruby libs” brooch took more skill than gluing fur to a cup and spoon; that adds to the humor, I’d say, but took from the shock. It’s made from real rubies and pearls: hard materials for something that should be soft; it’s sort of disgusting this way, and the message is more or less the same as Oppenheim’s, I’d say, but the message gets a little lost in the literal joke (pearly teeth, ruby lips…). I could imagine someone wearing Dali’s brooch, but no one would use the fur-lined cup. 

There is a lot of bad dada, too unfortunately, and it tends to be awful: incomprehensible, trite, or advertising. An unfortunate tendency is to collect some found pieces of garbage, and set it out in an attempt to scandalize the art world, or put down “the man” for his closed mindset. But that’s fountain, and it’s been done. A key way to tell if it’s good dada — is it cool; is it something that makes you say “Wow.” Christo’s surrounded islands certainly have the wow-cool factor, IMHO. 

Christo's wrapped Islands. Islands near Miami Beach wrapped in pink (fuscha) plastic.

Christo’s surrounded Islands: Islands near Miami Beach wrapped in pink (fuchsia) plastic.

A nice thing about Christo is that he takes it down 2 weeks or so after he makes the sculptures. Thus, the wow factor of his work never has a chance to go stale. Sorry to say, most dada stays around. Duchamp’s “fountain” sits in a museum and has grown stale, at least to me and Duchamp. What was scandalous and shocking in 1917 is passé and boring in 2014. The decline in shock is somewhat less for “breakfast in fur,” I think because the work is better crafted, a benefit I see in “Attention” too; skill matters.

Paris Street art. I don't know the artist, but it's cool.

Paris Street art; it’s just cool.

At the height of his success, Duchamp left art for 30 years and played chess. He became a chess grand master (life is as strange as art) and played for France in international tournaments. He later came back to art and did one, last, final piece, a very fine one, seen only through a peephole. Here’s some further thoughts on good vs bad modern art, and on surrealism, and on the aesthetic of strength in engineering: what materials to use; how strong should it be, and on architecture humor. 

Robert E. Buxbaum. April 4-7, 2014. Here is a link to my attempt at good Dada: Kilroy with eyes that follow you, and at right some Paris street art that I consider good dada too. As far as what the word “dada” means, I translate it as “cool,” “wow,” “gnarly,” or “go go.” It’s dada, man, y’ dig?

In praise of tariffs

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In a previous post I noted that we could reduce global air pollution if we used import taxes (tariffs) to move manufacture to the US from China and other highly polluting countries. It strikes me that import tariffs can have other benefits too, they can keep US jobs in the US, provide needed taxes, and they’re a tool of foreign policy. We buy far more from China and Russia than they buy from us, and we get a fair amount of grief — especially from Russia. An appropriate-sized tariff should reduce US unemployment, help balance the US, and help clean the air while pushing Russia in an alternative to war-talk.

There is certainly such a thing as too high a tariff, but it seems to me we’re nowhere near that. Too high a tariff is only when it severely limits the value of our purchasing dollar. We can’t eat dollars, and want to be able to buy foreign products with them. Currently foreign stuff is so cheap thought, that what we import is most stuff we used to make at home — often stuff we still make to a small extent, like shoes, ties, and steel. An import tax can be bad when it causes other countries to stop buying from us, but that’s already happened. Except for a very few industries, Americans buy far more abroad than we sell. As a result, we have roughly 50% of Americans out of well-paying work, and on some form government assistance. Our government spends far more to care for us, and to police and feed the world than it could possibly take in, in taxes. It’s a financial imbalance that could be largely corrected if we bought more from US manufacturers who employ US workers who’d pay taxes and not draw unemployment. Work also benefits folks by developing, in them, skills and self-confidence.

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle. Now why is Russia a most favorable trade partner?

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle. Trade as foreign policy. Why is Russia a most favorable trade partner?

In a world without taxes or unemployment, and free of self-confidence issues, free trade might be ideal, but taxes and unemployment are a big part of US life. US taxes pay for US roads and provide for education and police. Taxes pay for the US army, and for the (free?) US healthcare. With all these tax burdens, it seems reasonable to me that foreign companies should pay at least 5-10% — the amount an American company would if the products were made here. Tariff rates could be adjusted for political reasons (cartoon), or environmental — to reduce air pollution. Regarding Russia, I find it bizarre that our president just repealed the Jackson Vanik tariff, thus giving Russia most favored trade status. We should (I’d think) reinstate the tax and ramp it up or down if Russia invades again or if they help us with Syria or Iran.

A history of US tariff rates. There is room to put higher tariffs on some products or some countries.

A history of US tariff rates. Higher rates on some products and some countries did not harm the US for most of our history.

For most of US history, the US had much higher tariffs than now, see chart. In 1900 it averaged 27.4% and rose to 50% on dutiable items. Our economy did OK in 1900. By 1960, tariffs had decreased to 7.3% on average (12% on duty-able) and the economy was still doing well. Now our average tariff is 1.3%, and essentially zero for most-favored nations, like Russia. Compare this to the 10% that New York applies to in-state sales, or the 6% Michigan applies, or the 5.5% that Russia applies to goods imported from the US. Why shouldn’t we collect at least as high a tax on products bought from the non-free, polluting world as we collect from US manufacturers.

Some say tariffs caused the Great Depression. Countries with lower tariffs saw the same depression. Besides the Smoot-Hawley was 60%, and I’s suggesting 5-10% like in 1960. Many countries today do fine today with higher tariffs than that.

Robert E. Buxbaum, March 25, 2014. Previous historical posts discussed the poor reviews of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, and analyzed world war two in terms of mustaches. I’ve also compared military intervention to intervening in a divorce dispute. My previous economic post suggested that Detroit’s very high, living wage hurt the city by fostering unemployment.

Ivanpah’s solar electric worse than trees

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Recently the DoE committed 1.6 billion dollars to the completion of the last two of three solar-natural gas-electric plants on a 10 mi2 site at Lake Ivanpah in California. The site is rated to produce 370 MW of power, in a facility that uses far more land than nuclear power, at a cost significantly higher than nuclear. The 3900 MW Drax plant (UK) cost 1.1 Billion dollars, and produces 10 times more power on a much smaller site. Ivanpah needs a lot of land because its generators require 173,500 billboard-size, sun-tracking mirrors to heat boilers atop three 750 foot towers (2 1/2 times the statue of liberty). The boilers feed steam to low pressure, low efficiency (28% efficiency) Siemens turbines. At night, natural gas provides heat to make the steam, but only at the same, low efficiency. Siemens makes higher efficiency turbine plants (59% efficiency) but these can not be used here because the solar oven temperature is only 900°F (500°C), while normal Siemens plants operate at 3650°F (2000°C).

The Ivanpau thermal solar-natural gas project will look like The Crescent Dunes Thermal-solar project shown here, but will be bigger.

The first construction of the Ivanpah thermal solar-natural-gas project; Each circle mirrors extend out to cover about 2 square miles of the 10mi2 site.

So far, the first of the three towers is operational, but it has been producing at only 30% of rated low-efficiency output. These are described as “growing pains.” There are also problems with cooked birds, blinded pilots, and the occasional fire from the misaligned death ray — more pains, I guess. There is also the problem of lightning. When hit by lightning the mirrors shatter into millions of shards of glass over a 30 foot radius, according to Argus, the mirror cleaning company. This presents a less-than attractive environmental impact.

As an exercise, I thought I’d compare this site’s electric output to the amount one could generate using a wood-burning boiler fed by trees growing on a similar sized (10 sq. miles) site. Trees are cheap, but only about 10% efficient at converting solar power to chemical energy, thus you might imagine that trees could not match the power of the Ivanpah plant, but dry wood burns hot, at 1100 -1500°C, so the efficiency of a wood-powered steam turbine will be higher, about 45%. 

About 820 MW of sunlight falls on every 1 mi2 plot, or 8200 MW for the Ivanpah site. If trees convert 10% of this to chemical energy, and we convert 45% of that to electricity, we find the site will generate 369 MW of electric power, or exactly the output that Ivanpah is rated for. The cost of trees is far cheaper than mirrors, and electricity from wood burning is typically cost 4¢/kWh, and the environmental impact of tree farming is likely to be less than that of the solar mirrors mentioned above. 

There is another advantage to the high temperature of the wood fire. The use of high temperature turbines means that any power made at night with natural gas will be produced at higher efficiency. The Ivanpah turbines output at low temperature and low efficiency when burning natural gas (at night) and thus output half the half the power of a normal Siemens plant for every BTU of gas. Because of this, it seems that the Ivanpah plant may use as much natural gas to make its 370 MW during a 12 hour night as would a higher efficiency system operating 24 hours, day and night. The additional generation by solar thus, might be zero. 

If you think the problems here are with the particular design, I should also note that the Ivanpah solar project is just one of several our Obama-government is funding, and none are doing particularly well. As another example, the $1.45 B solar project on farmland near Gila Bend Arizona is rated to produce 35 MW, about 1/10 of the Ivanpah project at 2/3 the cost. It was built in 2010 and so far has not produced any power.

Robert E. Buxbaum, March 12, 2014. I’ve tried using wood to make green gasoline. No luck so far. And I’ve come to doubt the likelihood that we can stop global warming.

Where does industrial CO2 come from? China mostly.

The US is in the process of imposing strict regulations on carbon dioxide as a way to stop global warming and climate change. We have also closed nearly new power plants, replacing them with cleaner options like a 2.2 billion dollar solar-electric generator in lake Ivanpah, and this January our president imposed a ban on lightbulbs of 60 W and higher. But it might help to know that China produced twice as much of the main climate change gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) as the US in 2012, and the ratio seems to be growing. One reason China produces so much CO2 is that China generates electricity from dirty coal using inefficient turbines.

Where the CO2 is coming from: a fair amount from the US and Europe, but mostly from China and India too.

From EDGAR 4.2; As of 2012 twice as much carbon dioxide, CO2 is coming from China as from the US and Europe.

It strikes me that a good approach to reducing the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions is to stop manufacturing so much in China. Our US electric plants use more efficient generating technology and burn lower carbon fuels than China does. We then add scrubbers and pollution reduction equipment that are hardly used in China. US manufacture thus produces not only less carbon dioxide than China, it also avoids other forms of air pollution, like NOx and SOx. Add to this the advantage of having fewer ships carrying products to and from China, and it’s clear that we could significantly reduce the world’s air problems by moving manufacture back to the USA.

I should also note that manufacture in the US helps the economy by keeping jobs and taxes here. A simple way to reduce purchases from China and collect some tax revenue would be to impose an import tariff on Chinese goods based, perhaps on the difference in carbon emissions or other pollution involved in Chinese manufacture and transport. While I have noted a lack of global warming, sixteen years now, that doesn’t mean I like pollution. It’s worthwhile to clean the air, and if we collect tariffs from the Chinese and help the US economy too, all the better.

Robert E. Buxbaum, February 24, 2014. Nuclear power produces no air pollution and uses a lot less land area compared to solar and wind projects.

Hydrogen cars and buses are better than Tesla

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Hydrogen fueled cars and buses are as clean to drive as battery vehicles and have better range and faster fueling times. Cost-wise, a hydrogen fuel tank is far cheaper and lighter than an equivalent battery and lasts far longer. Hydrogen is likely safer because the tanks do not carry their oxidant in them. And the price of hydrogen is relatively low, about that of gasoline on a per-mile basis: far lower than batteries when the cost of battery wear-out is included. Both Presidents Clinton and Bush preferred hydrogen over batteries, but the current administration favors batteries. Perhaps history will show them correct, but I think otherwise. Currently, there is not a hydrogen bus, car, or boat making runs at Disney’s Experimental Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), nor is there an electric bus car or boat. I suspect it’s a mistake, at least convening the lack of a hydrogen vehicle. 

The best hydrogen vehicles on the road have more range than the best electric vehicle, and fuel faster. The hydrogen powered, Honda Clarity debuted in 2008. It has a 270 mile range and takes 3-5 minutes to fuel with hydrogen at 350 atm, 5150 psi. By contrast, the Tesla S-sedan that debuted in 2012 claims only a 208 mile range for its standard, 60kWh configuration (the EPA claims: 190 miles) and requires three hours to charge using their fastest charger, 20 kW.

What limits the range of battery vehicles is that the stacks are very heavy and expensive. Despite using modern lithium-ion technology, Tesla’s 60 kWh battery weighs 1050 lbs including internal cooling, and adds another 250 lbs to the car for extra structural support. The Clarity fuel system weighs a lot less. The hydrogen cylinders weigh 150 lb and require a fuel cell stack (30 lb) and a smaller lithium-ion battery for start-up (90 lb). The net effect is that the Clarity weighs 3582 lbs vs 4647 lbs for the Tesla S. This extra weight of the Tesla seems to hurt its mileage by about 10%. The Tesla gets about 3.3 mi/kWh or 0.19 mile/lb of battery versus 60 miles/kg of hydrogen for the Clarity suggesting  3.6 mi/kWh at typical efficiencies. 

High pressure hydrogen tanks are smaller than batteries and cheaper per unit range. The higher the pressure the smaller the tank. The current Clarity fuels with 350 atm, 5,150 psi hydrogen, and the next generation (shown below) will use higher pressure to save space. But even with 335 atm hydrogen (5000 psi) a Clarity could fuel a 270 mile range with four, 8″ diameter tanks (ID), 4′ long. I don’t know how Honda makes its hydrogen tanks, but suitable tanks might be made from 0.065″ Maranging (aged) stainless steel (UTS = 350,000 psi, density 8 g/cc), surrounded by 0.1″ of aramid fiber (UTS = 250,000 psi, density = 1.6 g/cc). With this construction, each tank would weigh 14.0 kg (30.5 lbs) empty, and hold 11,400 standard liters, 1.14 kg (2.5 lb) of hydrogen at pressure. These tanks could cost $1500 total; the 270 mile range is 40% more Than the Tesla S at about 1/10 the cost of current Tesla S batteries The current price of a replacement Tesla battery pack is $12,000, subsidized by DoE; without the subsidy, the likely price would be $40,000.

Next generation Honda fuel cell vehicle prototype at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show.

Next generation Honda fuel cell vehicle prototype at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show.

Currently hydrogen is more expensive than electricity per energy value, but my company has technology to make it cheaply and more cleanly than electricity. My company, REB Research makes hydrogen generators that produce ultra pure hydrogen by steam reforming wow alcohol in a membrane reactor. A standard generator, suitable to a small fueling station outputs 9.5 kg of hydrogen per day, consuming 69 gal of methanol-water. At 80¢/gal for methanol-water, and 12¢/kWh for electricity, the output hydrogen costs $2.50/kg. A car owner who drove 120,000 miles would spend $5,000 on hydrogen fuel. For that distance, a Tesla owner would spend only $4400 on electricity, but would have to spend another $12,000 to replace the battery. Tesla batteries have a 120,000 mile life, and the range decreases with age. 

For a bus or truck at EPCOT, the advantages of hydrogen grow fast. A typical bus is expected to travel much further than 120,000 miles, and is expected to operate for 18 hour shifts in stop-go operation getting perhaps 1/4 the miles/kWh of a sedan. The charge time and range advantages of hydrogen build up fast. it’s common to build a hydrogen bus with five 20 foot x 8″ tanks. Fueled at 5000 psi., such buses will have a range of 420 miles between fill-ups, and a total tank weight and cost of about 600 lbs and $4000 respectively. By comparison, the range for an electric bus is unlikely to exceed 300 miles, and even this will require a 6000 lb., 360 kWh lithium-ion battery that takes 4.5 hours to charge assuming an 80 kW charger (200 Amps at 400 V for example). That’s excessive compared to 10-20 minutes for fueling with hydrogen.

While my hydrogen generators are not cheap: for the one above, about $500,000 including the cost of a compressor, the cost of an 80 kW DC is similar if you include the cost to run a 200 Amp, 400 V power line. Tesla has shown there are a lot of people who value clean, futuristic transport if that comes with comfort and style. A hydrogen car can meet that handily, and can provide the extra comforts of longer range and faster refueling.

Robert E. Buxbaum, February 12, 2014 (Lincoln’s birthday). Here’s an essay on Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, on the safety of batteries, and on battery cost vs hydrogen. My company, REB Research makes hydrogen generators and purifiers; we also consult.

Stoner’s prison and the crack mayor

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With the release of a video of Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, smoking crack while in office, and the admission that at least two US presidents smoked pot, as did the Beatles, Stones, and most of Hollywood, it seems worthwhile to consider the costs and benefits of our war on drugs, especially pot. Drugs are typically bad for productivity and usually bad for health. Thus, it seems worthwhile to regulate it, but most countries do not punish drug sale or use nearly as harshly as we do in the US.

The Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton. Clearly these boys were not improved by drugs, but perhaps we could do better than incarcerating them, and their fans, for years, or life.

The Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton. Clearly these boys were not improved by drugs, but perhaps we could do better than incarcerating them, and their fans, for years, or life.

While US penalties vary state by state, most states have high minimum penalties that a judge can not go below. In Michigan, where I live, medical marijuana is legalized, but all supply is still illegal. Marijuana cultivation, even for personal medical use, is a felony carrying a minimum punishment of 4 years in state prison and a $20,000 fine. For cultivation of more than 20 plants the minimum sentence is 7 years in prison and $500,000; and cultivating 200 or more plants results in 15 years plus a $10,000,000 fine. These are first-time, minimum sentences where the judge can not consider mitigating circumstances, like a prescription, for a drug that was accepted for use in the US in the 70s, is legal in Holland, legalized in Colorado, and is near-legal in Belgium. While many pot smokers were not served by the herb, many went on to be productive, e.g. our current president and the Beatles.

In Michigan, the mandatory minimums get worse if you are a repeat offender, especially a 3 time offender. Possession of hard drugs; and sales or cultivation of marijuana makes you a felon; a gun found on a felon adds 2 years and another felony. With three felonies you go to prison for life, effectively, so there is little difference between the sentence of a repeat violent mugger and a kid selling $10 rocks of crack in Detroit. America has more people in prison than Russia, China, or almost every industrialized nation, per capita, and the main cause is long minimum sentences.

In 2011, Michigan spent an average of $2,343 per month per prisoner, or $28,116/year: somewhat over 1.3 billion dollars per year in total. To this add the destruction of the criminal’s family, and the loss of whatever value he/she might have added to society. Reducing sentences by 10 or 20% would go a long way towards paying off Detroit’s bankruptcy, and would put a lot of useful people back into the work-force where they might do some good for themselves and the state. 60.8% of drug arrestees were employed before they were arrested for drugs, with an average income of $1050/month. That’s a lot of roofers, electricians, carpenters, and musicians — useful people. As best we can tell, the long sentences don’t help, but lead to higher rates of recidivism and increased violent behavior. If you spend years in jail, you are likely to become more violent, rather than less. Some 75% of drug convicts have no prior record of violent crime, so why does a first-time offense have to be a felony. If we need minimums, couldn’t it be 6 months and a $1000 fine, or only apply if there is violence.

Couldn’t we allow judges more leeway in sentencing, especially for drugs? Recall that Michiganders thought they’d legalized marijuana for medical use, and that even hard-drugs were legal not that long ago. There was a time when Coca-Cola contained cocaine and when Pope Leo was a regular drinker of cocaine laced wine. If the two presidents smoked pot, and the Mayor of Toronto could do a decent job after cocaine, why should we incarcerate them for life? Let’s balance strict justice with mercy; so the fabric of society is not strained to breaking.

Robert Buxbaum, Jan 16, 2014. Here are some other thoughts on Detroit and crime.

Ocean levels down from 3000 years ago; up from 20,000 BC

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In 2006 Al Gore claimed that industry was causing 2-5°C of global warming per century, and that this, in turn, would cause the oceans to rise by 8 m by 2100. Despite a record cold snap this week, and record ice levels in the antarctic, the US this week banned all incandescent light bulbs of 40W and over in an effort to stop the tragedy. This was a bad move, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons, not least because it seems the preferred replacement, compact fluorescents, produce more pollution than incandescents when you include disposal of the mercury and heavy metals they contain. And then there is the weak connection between US industry and global warming.

From the geologic record, we know that 2-5° higher temperatures have been seen without major industrial outputs of pollution. These temperatures do produce the sea level rises that Al Gore warns about. Temperatures and sea levels were higher 3200 years ago (the Trojan war period), without any significant technology. Temperatures and sea levels were also higher 1900 years ago during the Roman warming. In those days Pevensey Castle (England), shown below, was surrounded by water.

During Roman times Pevensey Castle (at right) was surrounded by water at high tide.If Al Gore is right, it will be surrounded by water again soon.

During Roman times the world was warmer, and Pevensey Castle (right) was surrounded by water;. If Al Gore is right about global warming, it will be surrounded by water again by 2100.

From a plot of sea level and global temperature, below, we see that during cooler periods the sea was much shallower than today: 140 m shallower 20,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, for example. In those days, people could walk from Asia to Alaska. Climate, like weather appears to be cyclically chaotic. I don’t think the last ice age ended because of industry, but it is possible that industry might help the earth to warm by 2-5°C by 2100, as Gore predicts. That would raise the sea levels, assuming there is no new ice age.

Global temperatures and ocean levels rise and sink together

Global temperatures and ocean levels change by a lot; thousands of years ago.

While I doubt there is much we could stop the next ice age — it is very hard to change a chaotic cycle — trying to stop global cooling seems more worthwhile than trying to stop warming. We could survive a 2 m rise in the seas, e.g. by building dykes, but a 2° of cooling would be disastrous. It would come with a drastic reduction in crops, as during the famine year of 1814. And if the drop continued to a new ice age, that would be much worse. The last ice age included mile high glaciers that extended over all of Canada and reached to New York. Only the polar bear and saber-toothed tiger did well (here’s a Canada joke, and my saber toothed tiger sculpture).

The good news is that the current global temperature models appear to be wrong, or highly over-estimated. Average global temperatures have not changed in the last 16 years, though the Chinese keep polluting the air (for some reason, Gore doesn’t mind Chinese pollution). It is true that arctic ice extent is low, but then antarctic ice is at record high levels. Perhaps it’s time to do nothing. While I don’t want more air pollution, I’d certainly re-allow US incandescent light bulbs. In cases where you don’t know otherwise, perhaps the wisest course is to do nothing.

Robert Buxbaum, January 8, 2014

Near-Poisson statistics: how many police – firemen for a small city?

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In a previous post, I dealt with the nearly-normal statistics of common things, like river crests, and explained why 100 year floods come more often than once every hundred years. As is not uncommon, the data was sort-of like a normal distribution, but deviated at the tail (the fantastic tail of the abnormal distribution). But now I’d like to present my take on a sort of statistics that (I think) should be used for the common problem of uncommon events: car crashes, fires, epidemics, wars…

Normally the mathematics used for these processes is Poisson statistics, and occasionally exponential statistics. I think these approaches lead to incorrect conclusions when applied to real-world cases of interest, e.g. choosing the size of a police force or fire department of a small town that rarely sees any crime or fire. This is relevant to Oak Park Michigan (where I live). I’ll show you how it’s treated by Poisson, and will then suggest a simpler way that’s more relevant.

First, consider an idealized version of Oak Park, Michigan (a semi-true version until the 1980s): the town had a small police department and a small fire department that saw only occasional crimes or fires, all of which required only 2 or 4 people respectively. Lets imagine that the likelihood of having one small fire at a given time is x = 5%, and that of having a violent crime is y =5% (it was 6% in 2011). A police department will need to have to have 2 policemen on call at all times, but will want 4 on the 0.25% chance that there are two simultaneous crimes (.05 x .05 = .0025); the fire department will want 8 souls on call at all times for the same reason. Either department will use the other 95% of their officers dealing with training, paperwork, investigations of less-immediate cases, care of equipment, and visiting schools, but this number on call is needed for immediate response. As there are 8760 hours per year and the police and fire workers only work 2000 hours, you’ll need at least 4.4 times this many officers. We’ll add some more for administration and sick-day relief, and predict a total staff of 20 police and 40 firemen. This is, more or less, what it was in the 1980s.

If each fire or violent crime took 3 hours (1/8 of a day), you’ll find that the entire on-call staff was busy 7.3 times per year (8x365x.0025 = 7.3), or a bit more since there is likely a seasonal effect, and since fires and violent crimes don’t fall into neat time slots. Having 3 fires or violent crimes simultaneously was very rare — and for those rare times, you could call on nearby communities, or do triage.

In response to austerity (towns always overspend in the good times, and come up short later), Oak Park realized it could use fewer employees if they combined the police and fire departments into an entity renamed “Public safety.” With 45-55 employees assigned to combined police / fire duty they’d still be able to handle the few violent crimes and fires. The sum of these events occurs 10% of the time, and we can apply the sort of statistics above to suggest that about 91% of the time there will be neither a fire nor violent crime; about 9% of the time there will be one or more fires or violent crimes (there is a 5% chance for each, but also a chance that 2 happen simultaneously). At least two events will occur 0.9% of the time (2 fires, 2 crimes or one of each), and they will have 3 or more events .09% of the time, or twice per year. The combined force allowed fewer responders since it was only rarely that 4 events happened simultaneously, and some of those were 4 crimes or 3 crimes and a fire — events that needed fewer responders. Your only real worry was when you have 3 fires, something that should happen every 3 years, or so, an acceptable risk at the time.

Before going to what caused this model of police and fire service to break down as Oak Park got bigger, I should explain Poisson statistics, exponential Statistics, and Power Law/ Fractal Statistics. The only type of statistics taught for dealing with crime like this is Poisson statistics, a type that works well when the events happen so suddenly and pass so briefly that we can claim to be interested in only how often we will see multiples of them in a period of time. The Poisson distribution formula is, P = rke-λ/r! where P is the Probability of having some number of events, r is the total number of events divided by the total number of periods, and k is the number of events we are interested in.

Using the data above for a period-time of 3 hours, we can say that r= .1, and the likelihood of zero, one, or two events begin in the 3 hour period is 90.4%, 9.04% and 0.45%. These numbers are reasonable in terms of when events happen, but they are irrelevant to the problem anyone is really interested in: what resources are needed to come to the aid of the victims. That’s the problem with Poisson statistics: it treats something that no one cares about (when the thing start), and under-predicts the important things, like how often you’ll have multiple events in-progress. For 4 events, Poisson statistics predicts it happens only .00037% of the time — true enough, but irrelevant in terms of how often multiple teams are needed out on the job. We need four teams no matter if the 4 events began in a single 3 hour period or in close succession in two adjoining periods. The events take time to deal with, and the time overlaps.

The way I’d dealt with these events, above, suggests a power law approach. In this case, each likelihood was 1/10 the previous, and the probability P = .9 x10-k . This is called power law statistics. I’ve never seen it taught, though it appears very briefly in Wikipedia. Those who like math can re-write the above relation as log10P = log10 .9 -k.

One can generalize the above so that, for example, the decay rate can be 1/8 and not 1/10 (that is the chance of having k+1 events is 1/8 that of having k events). In this case, we could say that P = 7/8 x 8-k , or more generally that log10P = log10 A –kβ. Here k is the number of teams required at any time, β is a free variable, and Α = 1-10-β because the sum of all probabilities has to equal 100%.

In college math, when behaviors like this appear, they are incorrectly translated into differential form to create “exponential statistics.” One begins by saying ∂P/∂k = -βP, where β = .9 as before, or remains some free-floating term. Everything looks fine until we integrate and set the total to 100%. We find that P = 1/λ e-kλ for k ≥ 0. This looks the same as before except that the pre-exponential always comes out wrong. In the above, the chance of having 0 events turns out to be 111%. Exponential statistics has the advantage (or disadvantage) that we find a non-zero possibility of having 1/100 of a fire, or 3.14159 crimes at a given time. We assign excessive likelihoods for fractional events and end up predicting artificially low likelihoods for the discrete events we are interested in except going away from a calculus that assumes continuity in a world where there is none. Discrete math is better than calculus here.

I now wish to generalize the power law statistics, to something similar but more robust. I’ll call my development fractal statistics (there’s already a section called fractal statistics on Wikipedia, but it’s really power-law statistics; mine will be different). Fractals were championed by Benoit B. Mandelbrot (who’s middle initial, according to the old joke, stood for Benoit B. Mandelbrot). Many random processes look fractal, e.g. the stock market. Before going here, I’d like to recall that the motivation for all this is figuring out how many people to hire for a police /fire force; we are not interested in any other irrelevant factoid, like how many calls of a certain type come in during a period of time.

To choose the size of the force, lets estimate how many times per year some number of people are needed simultaneously now that the city has bigger buildings and is seeing a few larger fires, and crimes. Lets assume that the larger fires and crimes occur only .05% of the time but might require 15 officers or more. Being prepared for even one event of this size will require expanding the force to about 80 men; 50% more than we have today, but we find that this expansion isn’t enough to cover the 0.0025% of the time when we will have two such major events simultaneously. That would require a 160 man fire-squad, and we still could not deal with two major fires and a simultaneous assault, or with a strike, or a lot of people who take sick at the same time. 

To treat this situation mathematically, we’ll say that the number times per year where a certain number of people are need, relates to the number of people based on a simple modification of the power law statistics. Thus:  log10N = A – βθ  where A and β are constants, N is the number of times per year that some number of officers are needed, and θ is the number of officers needed. To solve for the constants, plot the experimental values on a semi-log scale, and find the best straight line: -β is the slope and A  is the intercept. If the line is really straight, you are now done, and I would say that the fractal order is 1. But from the above discussion, I don’t expect this line to be straight. Rather I expect it to curve upward at high θ: there will be a tail where you require a higher number of officers. One might be tempted to modify the above by adding a term like Cθ2 but this will cause problems at very high θ. Thus, I’d suggest a fractal fix.

My fractal modification of the equation above is the following: log10N = A-βθ-w where A and β are similar to the power law coefficients and w is the fractal order of the decay, a coefficient that I expect to be slightly less than 1. To solve for the coefficients, pick a value of w, and find the best fits for A and β as before. The right value of w is the one that results in the straightest line fit. The equation above does not look like anything I’ve seen quite, or anything like the one shown in Wikipedia under the heading of fractal statistics, but I believe it to be correct — or at least useful.

To treat this politically is more difficult than treating it mathematically. I suspect we will have to combine our police and fire department with those of surrounding towns, and this will likely require our city to revert to a pure police department and a pure fire department. We can’t expect other cities specialists to work with our generalists particularly well. It may also mean payments to other cities, plus (perhaps) standardizing salaries and staffing. This should save money for Oak Park and should provide better service as specialists tend to do their jobs better than generalists (they also tend to be safer). But the change goes against the desire (need) of our local politicians to hand out favors of money and jobs to their friends. Keeping a non-specialized force costs lives as well as money but that doesn’t mean we’re likely to change soon.

Robert E. Buxbaum  December 6, 2013. My two previous posts are on how to climb a ladder safely, and on the relationship between mustaches in WWII: mustache men do things, and those with similar mustache styles get along best.

A Masculinist History of the Modern World, pt. 1: Beards

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Most people who’ve been in university are familiar with feminist historical analysis: the history of the world as a long process of women’s empowerment. I thought there was a need for a masculinist history of the world, too, and as this was no-shave November, I thought it should focus on the importance of face hair in the modern world. I’d like to focus this post on the importance of beards, particularly in the rise of communism and of the Republican party. I note that all the early communists and Republicans were bearded. More-so, the only bearded US presidents have been Republicans, and that their main enemies from Boss Tweed, to Castro to Ho Chi Minh, have all been bearded too. I note too, that communism and the Republican party have flourished and stagnated along with the size of their beards, with a mustache interlude of the early to mid 20th century. I’ll shave that for my next post.

Marxism and the Republican Party started at about the same time, bearded. They then grew in parallel, with each presenting a face of bold, rugged, machismo, fighting the smooth tongues and chins of the Democrats and of Victorian society,and both favoring extending the franchise to women and the oppressed through the 1800s against opposition from weak-wristed, feminine liberalism.

Marx and Engles (middle) wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the same year that Lincoln joined the new Republican Party, and the same year that saw Louis Napoleon (right) elected in France. The communists both wear full bards, but there is something not-quite sincere in the face hair at right and left.

Marx and Engels (middle) wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the same year that Lincoln joined the new Republican Party, and the same year that saw Louis Napoleon (right) elected in France. The communists both wear full bards, but there is something not-quite sincere in the face hair at right and left.

Karl Marx (above, center left, not Groucho, left) founded the Communist League with Friedrich Engels, center right, in 1847 and wrote the communist manifesto a year later, in 1848. In 1848, too, Louis Napoleon would be elected, and the same year 1848 the anti-slavery free-soil party formed, made up of Whigs and Democrats who opposed extending slavery to the free soil of the western US. By 1856 the Free soils party had collapsed, along with the communist league. The core of the free soils formed the anti-slavery Republican party and chose as their candidate, bearded explorer John C. Fremont under the motto, “Free soil, free silver, free men.” For the next century, virtually all Republican presidential candidates would have face hair.

Lincoln the Whig had no beard -- he was the western representative of the party of Eastern elites. Lincoln the Republican grew whiskers. He was a log-cabin frontiersman, rail -splitter.

Lincoln, the Whig, had no beard — he was the western representative of the party of eastern elites. Lincoln, the Republican, grew whiskers. He was now a log-cabin frontiersman, rail-splitter.

In Europe, revolution was in the air: the battle of the barricades against clean-chined, Louis Napoleon. Marx (Karl) writes his first political economic work, the Critique of Political Economy, in 1857 presenting a theory of freedom by work value. The political economic solution of slavery: abolish property. Lincoln debates Douglas and begins a run for president while still clean-shaven. While Mr. Lincoln did not know about Karl Marx, Marx knew about Lincoln. In the 1850s and 60s he was employed as a correspondent  for the International Herald Tribune, writing about American politics, in particular about the American struggle with slavery and inflation/ deflation cycles.

William Jennings Bryan, 3 time Democrat presidential candidate, opponent of alcohol, evolution, and face hair.

William Jennings Bryan was three-times the Democratic presidential candidate; more often than anyone else. He opposed alcohol, gambling, big banks, intervention abroad, monopoly business, teaching evolution, and gold — but he supported the KKK, and unlike most Democrats, women’s suffrage.

As time passed, bearded frontier Republicans would fight against the corruption of Tammany Hall, and the offense to freedom presented by prohibition, anti industry sentiment, and anti gambling laws. Against them, clean-shaven Democrat elites could claim they were only trying to take care of a weak-willed population that needed their help. The Communists would gain power in Russia, China, and Vietnam fighting against elites too, not only in their own countries but American and British elites who (they felt) were keeping them down by a sort of mommy imperialism.

In the US, moderate Republicans (with mustaches) would try to show a gentler side to this imperialism, while fighting against Democrat isolationism. Mustached Communists would also present a gentler imperialism by helping communist candidates in Europe, Cuba, and the far east. But each was heading toward a synthesis of ideas. The republicans embraced (eventually) the minimum wage and social security. Communists embraced (eventually) some limited amount of capitalism as a way to fight starvation. In my life-time, the Republicans could win elections by claiming to fight communism, and communists could brand Republicans as “crazy war-mongers”, but the bureaucrats running things were more alike than different. When the bureaucrats sat down together, it was as in Animal Farm, you could look from one to the other and hardly see any difference.

The history of Communism seen as a decline in face hair. The long march from the beard to the bare.

The history of Communism seen as a decline in face hair. The long march from the beard to the bare. From rugged individualism to mommy state socialism. Where do we go from here?

Today both movements provide just the barest opposition to the Democratic Party in the US, and to bureaucratic socialism in China and the former Soviet Union. All politicians oppose alcohol, drugs, and gambling, at least officially; all oppose laser faire, monopoly business and the gold standard in favor of government created competition and (semi-controlled) inflation. All oppose wide-open immigration, and interventionism (the Republicans and Communists a little less). Whoever is in power, it seems the beardless, mommy conservatism of William Jennings Bryan has won. Most people are happy with the state providing our needs, and protecting our morals. is this to be the permanent state of the world? There is no obvious opposition to the mommy state. But without opposition won’t these socialist elites become more and more oppressive? I propose a bold answer, not one cut from the old cloth; the old paradigms are dead. The new opposition must sprout from the bare chin that is the new normal. Behold the new breed of beard.

The future opposition must grow from the barren ground of the new normal.

The future opposition must grow from the barren ground of the new normal. Another random thought on the political implications of no-shave November.

by Robert E. Buxbaum, No Shave, November 15, 2013. Keep watch for part 2 in this horrible (tongue in) cheek series: World War 2: Big mustache vs little mustache. See also: Roosevelt: a man, a moose, a mustache, and The surrealism of Salvador: man on a mustache.