Category Archives: friendship

China’s space station and the ISS, a comparison

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It gets so little notice from the news agencies that many will be surprised to find that China has a space station. It’s known alternately as the Tiangong Space Station or the CSS, Chinese Space Station; it’s smaller than the International Space Station, ISS, but it’s not small. Here is a visual and data comparison, both from Wikipedia.

China’s space station is smaller than the ISS, but just about as capable. Cooperation leads to messiness (and peace?)

The ISS has far more solar panels, but the power input is similar because the CSS panels are of higher efficiency. As shown in the table below, the mass of the ISS is about 4.5 times that of CSS but the habitable volume is only 3 times greater than of CSS, and the claimed crew size is similar, of 3 to 6 compared to 7. The CSS is less messy, less noisy, with less mass, and more energy efficiency. Part of the efficiency comes from that the CSS uses ion propulsion thrusters to keep the station in orbit, while the ISS uses chemical rockets. The CSS thus seems better, on paper. To some extent that’s because it’s more modern.

Another reason that the ISS is more messy is that it’s a collaboration. A major part of its mission is to develop peaceful cooperation between the US, Europe and Russia. It’s been fairly successful at this, especially in the first two decades, and part of making sure parts from The US, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada all work together is that many different standards must be tolerated and connected. The ISS tolerates different space suits, different capsules, different connections, and different voltages. The result is researchers communicate, and work together on science, sending joint messages of peace to the folks on earth. Peace is an intended product.

By contrast, the Chinese space station is solely Chinese. There are no interconnection issues, but also no peace dividend. It has a partially military purpose too, including operation of killer satellites, and some degree of data mining. This was banned for ISS. So far the CSS has hosted Chinese astronauts. No Chinese astronauts have visited the ISS, either.

Long march 6A rocket set to supply the CSS. It is very similar to the Delta IV.

India was asked to join the ISS, but has declined, wishing to follow China’s path of space independence. The Indian Space Research Organization plans to launch a small space station on its own, Gaganyaan, in 2025, and after that, a larger version. That’s a shame, though it’s not clear how long cooperation will continue on the ISS, either. See the movie I.S.S. (2023) for how this might play out. Currently, there is a tradition of cooperation about ISS, and it’s held despite the War in Ukraine. The various nations manage to work together in space and on the ground, launching people and materials to the ISS, and working together reliability.

Although it isn’t a direct part of the space stations, I should mention the troubles of the Boeing Star-liner capsule that took two astronauts to the ISS compared to the apparently flawless record of the CSS. The fact is, I’m not bothered by failures, so long as we learn from them. I suspect Boeing will learn, and suspect that this and other flailing projects would be in worse shape without the ISS. Besides, the ISS has been a major catalyst in the development of SpaceX, a US success story that China seems intent on trying to copy. SpaceX was originally funded, at low level, to serve as a backup to Boeing, but managed to bypass them. They now provide cheaper, more reliable travel through use of reusable boosters. The program supplying CSS uses traditional, disposable rockets, the Long March 5 and 6 and 7. These resemble the Atlas V, Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy. They appear to be reliable, but I suspect they are costly too. China is currently developing a series of reusable rocket systems. The Long March 9, for example will have the same lift capacity as SapceX’s Starship, we’re told. Will the Indian program choose this rocket to lift their space station, or will they choose SpaceX, or something else? The advantages of a reusable product mostly show up when you get to reuse it, IMHO.

Robert Buxbaum, September 10, 2024.

We’re depressed, allergic, overweight, alone, and demented. What causes what?

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Among the wonders of the western world is how many people are allergic to nuts compared to a few decades ago, and to gluten, and to a host of other things that hardly anyone was allergic to 50 years ago. Perhaps it’s a change in perception, but it doesn’t seem that way.

When I was in public school in NY, back in the 1960s, there was a subsidized lunch program serving, every day, peanut butter sandwiches. Peanut butter is nearly totally fat. It was ladled each day, from a giant tub, provided by the USDA, and slathered on USDA bread along with jelly from some other vat. The smell filled the lunch area, and the fats and sugars filled our stomaches. No one seemed bothered by the nuts, and no one showed obvious signs of passing out. And despite the ill diet, we were less obeease than today. Even today, in poor countries, thy still serve massive peanut butter dishes, or bread covered in lard, and these countries show fewer allergy problems, and less obesity in general.

Perhaps it is the lack of exposure to peanuts in the US that caused the allergy (sounds almost plausible), and maybe it’s the dietetic food that causes obesity, and the glut of non-gluten that causes gluten allergies. These connections may be false, but If true, it would suggest we’re in for many more problems.

Moving to depression and dementia. We’re seeing more and more of both, and at earlier ages. In our era, virtually everyone over 80 shows signs of clinical dementia, often Alzheimer’s dementia, but the rates are rising, especially in those 55-70, and it seems most every adult is depressed. I don’t know why, though lots of people on the internet have speculative explanations. There are also cures, and perhaps some work. The research behind at least one of the best hopes for an Alzheimers cure was shown to be falsified, just made up. Not that funding was stopped quite, highlighting another problem that is becoming more common: people in trust positions no longer behave in a trustworthy way. Nor are they punished for lying. Strange to add that an anti-obesity drug, Metformin, seems to actually work at weight loss, and helps against Alzheimers dementia. Then again, from other research, it seems that obesity protects from dementia.

Some of the problem seems to be societal, a lack of friendship and companionship. I could imagine that isolation leads to dementia, depression, and weight gain. Another thought, pushed by RFK Jr., is that new drugs and vaccines are responsible for allergies and ADHD, along with changes in diet. It’s possible. At least some comes from early diagnosis, and a change in the definition of dementia. Perhaps that’s the reason for the significant difference state to state. Yesterday’s curmudgeon is redefined as depressed, and drugged (more in some states than others), and becomes isolated (again more in some communities). The disoriented, lonely patient is then given anti anxiety drugs and classified as a dementia patient. It happens in some cases, but there seems to be a rise in real dementia too: the sort of stumbling and blankness that reflects general brain deterioration. As for ADHD, I’m still not convinced this is a new real disease; it could be that’s how boys always behaved.

Would we be less depressed or demented or less autistic with different vaccinations, or different foods, or with more human interaction? Would people be less isolated if they were less depressed or autistic? RFK’s family now claims that RFK Jr is demented himself for even asking these questions. My guess, totally unsupported is that the rise in allergies, dementia, obesity, and depression are related somehow, but I’m not convinced that RFK Jr. has picked out the right connection. What causes what? Perhaps someone can use statistics, or biology experiments to help untangle this stuff. It seems horribly important to the majority of Americans.

Robert Buxbaum, Sept 10, 2024. There was a. bit of a joke in the last comments: my daughter got a degree in epidemiology, and is employed in part to answer just the sort of questions I’ve posed.

Fewer serial killers, more mass shootings, blame unfriendliness not lax gun laws

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It’s hard to notice the lack of something, but there’s been a sharp drop-off in the the number of serial killers. Nearly gone are folks like John Wayne Gacy (the clown killer), Jeffrey Dahmer (severed heads, cannibalism, necrophilia), Gary Ridgway, “The Green River Killer” (71 prostitutes killed). Mostly, they were sexual sadists, men who’d have sex with strangers (able or female) and then kill them. In 1987, there were 198 active in the US and many more inactive; by 2018 it was down to 12. And these few are less-prolific, and less-colorful, like Anthony Robinson, “the shopping cart killer”, who killed 4-6 in DC, transporting the bodies in shopping carts.

It’s not clear why there are so few these days. Perhaps it’s the prevalence of surveillance cameras, or improvements in DNA and other pic technology. But these explanations don’t explain why there were so few before 1960. There were some mass murderers, “Jack the Ripper,” “the Boston Strangler” but few before 1960.

Police like to credit the drop off to their detective skills, but there are still plenty of violent crimes that go unsolved, about half the murders in Detroit for example, or most of the rapes in Europe. I suspect that serial killing spiked up in the 60s because of a spike in friendliness, and spiked down in the 2000s because it ended. Before the hippy era, people were cautious of gangsters, rapists, homosexuals, and spies under the bed. But that changed in the 60s. Folks thought it was cool to hitchhike, or pick up random guys. Now, we’re back to being cautious.

A personal story: I was visiting Toronto in the late 1980s and someone I didn’t know overheard that I was planning to drive back to Detroit that afternoon. He asked if I would not mind driving his teenaged daughters to Detroit to see their grandmother, and I said “yes.” At the border, the guards asked who these girls were, and I said I didn’t know. I hadn’t asked. The border guards let us through without passports after a call to the grandmother. I would not be as ready to offer a ride today, and the parents would not be as trusting, nor would the guards.

Serial killings are down since 1990, but mass shootings are up.

Despite much the stricter gun laws, there’s been a rise in crime and a steady growth in the number of murderers in our major cities. There’s also been a rise in synagogue attacks, and a rise in mass murders. These folks kill many in one day or as part of gang-drug activity. Stricter gun laws seem to have made things worse, not better. They do not stop the killers and they hamper the defenders. I took a look at synagogue attacks, and find a pistol would have helped.

On a societal level, I think it would help to have fewer illegal aliens, or aliens who enter with no positive record or skills. It would help to have psychological treatment and lockup for crazy folks and prisoners. Currently, we send violent crazy folks out on the streets until they do something true horrific. More consistent prison sentences are needed for criminals too. We’ now’ve come to use the courts for political theater: Biden’s son should not go to jail for years because he lied on a gun purchase, nor should Trump get for putting down a prostitute as “legal fees”. Nor is his half-billion dollar fine appropriate. Minor crime deserves minor punishment. As a result of our crazy courts, violent criminals are let go as with the MSU killings near me. He was a crazy violent black man, and there was no way, in the law to give him a short sentence, or counseling, or job training. When our incarcerated leave prison, they have anger, plus no jobs or skills. Don’t be surprised when these folks turn to violent crime.

Robert Buxbaum, June 23, 2024

Vaccines barely worked, lockdowns seem to have made it worse.

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The first 15 months of the pandemic were grim periods of lockdown, except in Sweden where the health minister declared that lockdowns would not do anything except delay the inevitable. They chose to protect only the most vulnerable, and kept everything else open. By May, 2021, it looked like that was a mistake. Sweden had a seen a sickness and death rate that was fairly average for the world, but high compared to more locked down nordic countries, like Norway, Finland, and Germany. And now vaccines were here that were supposed to be 100% effective, both at stopping the sickness and the spread. We were at the end, opening up, and Sweden had blundered. They had ‘ignored the science,’ as Fauci put it.

Excess mortality January 26 2020 to March 1, 2023, from Our World in Data. I focus on excess deaths here, rather than COVID specifically, because death is a metric that is hard to fudge.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the vaccines were far less than 100% effective. The current estimate is that 2 shots are 24% effective at preventing the disease and 0% effective at preventing the spread. This is a problem in much of medical science these days: successful results tend to be irreproducible, I discuss the reason here. The disease had evolved, and somehow the experiments had not noticed. What’s more they had side-effects (all drugs do). People were dying at a faster rate than before in the US, and in many European countries (see graph below). There was no flattening of the curve suggesting that the vaccine didn’t work. By last year, I had noticed that US COVID deaths did not decrease with the advent of vaccines. Strangely, deaths did not increase as fast in Sweden. By 2022, Sweden was doing better than its lock-down peers. As of today, it’s doing much better. So, what have we learned?

The results of the 6 month Pfizer trial already suggested there might be a problem -that perhaps the vaccine did more harm than good. The above were the results in the Biologics Licence Application (BLA) report (page 23), submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to apply for vaccine approval, November, 2021. The vaccine decreased COVID but increased other cause death even more. Suspicious.

The fact that the death rate did generally not go down when a majority were vaccinated and the most vulnerable were already dead suggests that vaccination does not help much. That excess death increased in some countries (Norway, Finland, Germany) suggests that either the side-effects of the vaccine are worse than the disease itself or that some other aspect of the treatment (lockdowns?) were worse than the disease. The vaccine still may be shown to have helped, but it doesn’t look like it helped much. The fact that lock-down countries are doing worse than Sweden suggests that lockdowns actually hurt. This is significant. One thing to learn is that you have a right to not trust medical science: you have a right to be wrong. Mr Spock never trusted Bones’s medicine. You have a particularly strong right to doubt when you have evidence as strong as the map below (excess deaths in Europe as it stood in December 2021). Already Sweden was doing well and the experts were looking very wrong.

A map of excess deaths in Europe as of December 2021. Already many countries had passed Sweden. Eastern and Southern Europe were particularly hard hit.

I can now speculate on the mechanism; why might lockdowns hurt or kill? I suggested it’s loneliness. Perhaps it’s inaction, or mental distress. People would rather get an electric shock than sit a think without doing anything. It might be that lockdowns prevented other medical treatment. Whatever the mechanism, you’d think that our government would have acknowledged, by early 2022, that lockdowns were not working. Instead virtually every state continued lockdowns through a good chunk of 2022 with school closures, limited seating, etc.

I suspect that “long COVID” may be a form of lock-down depression plus associated noxious behaviors: increased drug and alcohol use, lack of exercise, and avoiding treatment for health problems. I suggested iodine hand wash (and gargle) to stop the disease spread (I imagine it’s on surfaces), and still think it’s a good idea. Iodine is cheap and it definitely kills all germs. Other anti-isolation nostrums include exercise, lithium, aspirin, letters, and hydroxycholoroquine. There was reasonable statistical evidence for several of these things helping, though Fauci denied it. Perhaps they only helped via ‘the placebo effect’. But placebo cures are real, especially for mental problems.

Robert Buxbaum, March 30, 2023. As an add-on (April 2, 2013), I’d like to show the decline in life-expectancy in the US compared to other countries. Isolation is a killer. A lot of the blame goes to Fauci for continuing to push socially isolating solutions as “the science”, while blasting any who say otherwise. We’ve lost 3 years of life-span in 3 years — preventably avoided — when other countries have lost zero or one. There could be no greater inditement of the health management.

This is from the Financial Times. The US is doing worst of all in terms of lives lost to the pandemic and it continues. Isolating people is torture. We then blame them for feeling distrust. I blame Biden and Fauci.

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.

Of cigars and marriage, Kipling and Freud.

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My last post included a rather gruesome bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling where he describes the Afghani women coming to kill the wounded British soldiers in the first Afghan war. It’s sexist, or anti-sexist, if you like. Since it reverses a stereotype of the non-violent, female home-body. Then again the Afghanis had wiped out an entire British army, killing virtually everyone including civilians.

What follows is The Betrothed, one of Kipling’s first published poems, appearing in “the civil and military gazette”, Lahor, India (near Afghanistan), November, 1888. Kipling was an assistant editor). It has a more traditional view of women, or of British women who do not go out murdering, but who do wish to control/ stop a British man’s cigar smoking. In a sense, such stoppage is murder. The inspiration was a breach of ‘Promise of Marriage’ case in Glasgow, August 1888, where a young woman, Maggie Watson, sued her fiancee because he continued to smoke cigars after she insisted he stop. Kipling explores the psychology of the choice between smoking and marriage. I think Freud would approve.

The Betrothed.

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. 

We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face. 

Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. 

There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away— 

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town! 

Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold! 

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar— 

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket! 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile. 

Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string? 

Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride? 

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close, 

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn. 

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead. 

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again. 

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall. 

I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides. 

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between. The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen. 

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year; 

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight. 

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love. 

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire? 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? 

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. 

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse! 

Sigmund Freud with his cigar. The whole attraction of cigars, is a strange one, as Freud knew better than most. Cigars are deadly, but casual, often with a good flavor, and a sucking comfort. The death-risk of one is small and distant. Cigars thus represent risky fun they are thus life, in a temporary, risky way. Marriage is permanence and safe, and binding. The binding permanence is a sort of death, but children are good, and that’s life. Freud’s choice was to smoke himself to death. Kipling got married and eventually gave up smoking.

Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17, 2021. Kipling has a great sense of words, and an attractive sense of the subjects, great and small. For years he was the voice of his generation in Britain, but by the end of his life, his views were unacceptable. sexist. On the other hand, he remained staunchly anti-Nazi, anti eugenics, and anti Soviet. By comparison, George Bernard Shaw was a vocal fan of Stalin, of Hitler, and of the eugenic removal of Jews and other undesirables. Shaw’s words remain fashionable, while Kipling’s do not. Such is the nature of fame.

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.

Thanksgiving thoughts for Christmas dinner.

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Enjoy those loaves and fishes. Even the ones from the store are miracles.

Enjoy dinner with your family and friends, even if it’s awkward. It’s the awkwardness of your friends that makes you love them. No one really loves perfection. And enjoy your dinner. No one really likes a prig, not even God.

My cousin and his wife are coming to dinner. They’re both Bugs Bunny fans. He proposed via a WhatsApp.doc

In terms of the holiday ham; Jesus was Jewish. No ham. When doing with the disciples, he probably ordered falafel and 13 glasses of water.

Relatives are easier if you don’t have to look at them.

Robert Buxbaum, November 2, 2020

The dangers of political humor

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One big danger of political humor is that some folks just don’t get the joke. You say something outrageous and they don’t get that you were exaggerating, but think you were lying, or ignorant, or worse yet they take you at your word, and think you were telling the truth.

Daniel Boone liked to claim things that were not true; he claimed he jumped the Mississippi and that he lassoed a tornado and that he killed a bear (with his bear hands) when he was three. The joke was on anyone who took him seriously, and I’m sure there were those who did: “Why that’s not true!” “You’re a liar!” or worse yet “Wow, how did you do that!” It’s a sort of brag-joke that, today is called “trolling.”

H.L. Menken on the fake news of the early – mid 20th century.

But there is a bigger danger with political jokes, and that happens when you’re not quite making a joke and folks realize you are telling the truth, or at least that there is a dagger of threat thats being passed off within a joke, or as part of an exaggeration. Basically, they realize that this joke was no joke at all.

A recent case in point, two weeks ago Trump was speaking to Jewish businessmen, and told them about his troubles building the US embassy in Jerusalem (read the whole speech here), but within the funny story is a hook:

Bob Hope told the truth but hid it in a funny delivery.

“And I called David Friedman.  I said, “David, I need some help.  I just approved an embassy, and they want to spend $2 billion to build the embassy.  And I know what that means: You’re never going to get it built.  It’ll take years and years.”  I said, “You know what’s going on here? …. So we’re going to spend 2 billion, and one of them was going to buy a lousy location.  A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well.  You’re brutal killers.  (Laughter.)  Not nice people at all.  But you have to vote for me; you have no choice.  You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that.  (Laughter and applause.)  You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.  “Yeah, let’s take 100 percent of your wealth away.”  No, no.  Even if you don’t like me; some of you don’t.  Some of you I don’t like at all, actually.  (Laughter.)  And you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes, if they get it.  So I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that. But David calls me back and he goes, “Sir” — he always used to call me “Donald.”

The press claimed the above was vile and anti-semitic. It almost sounds otherwise when quoted in context, but they are not totally off. There is truth inside that jest. Such truths lose the humor, but they do get the message across. A lot has to do with the delivery. Ideally the folks that you want to get the point will, and the rest will think you mean nothing by it. It’s a hard act.

Robert Buxbaum December 23, 2019.

Google+ vs Facebook and Twitter; of virtue and sin

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Google has just announced the end of support for Google+; I’m sorry to see it go. It was supposed to be the better version of Facebook killer. It was, and I suspect that’s why it died. Unlike Facebook, Google+ allowed me to decide which group of friends I would get to see which group of my posts. I thought that was a good thing. I only shared political posts with some folks — those who I thought would not mind; and only shared jokes with other folks; family photos with yet others; religion thoughts with others, and technical thoughts with other folks still.

Google+ called the different groups in your life, “rings of friendship,” and it seemed to me that such rings were an important part of being able to live in a polite society. Any normal person shares different things with different people. There will be some overlap, of course, but rings of friendship allowed you to shield your friends from your religious and political views, and allowed you to shield technical colleagues from family photos that would bore them. Behaving this way is common sense and simple politeness.

Google+ died, in part I think, because maintaining rings of friendship requires forethought. It also requires that your friends honor your privacy, and accept that they will not be a complete part of your life and confidence. But such activity requires work, both on the part of the poster, and on the part of the recipient. Besides, posting this way tends to make your posts dull. It reduced the number of eye-ball-grabbing rants that get seen by people who are highly offended by seeing the rant. Facebook, by contrast, uses and algorithm to decide who sees what. It requires no work from us, and I suspect the algorithm makes posts more interesting as it seems to favor the sensational, salacious, and inappropriate.

Facebook spreads the most salacious posts, I think, to increase the amount of time people spend on FB. That would be entirely self-serving, but it also gives the user a thrill as you see how many likes and followers, Facebook suggests “friends” that you never knew, who your other friends know, or who have similar interests. People friend these folks they hardly know, and post the most controversial of things in hope of getting followers and “likes.” It’s destructive to privacy, but it’s a dopamine rush in having people think you are a more interesting and exciting person than you are. The graphic below associates FB with the deadly sin of Envy — the desire to have what you don’t have.

An interesting take on social media

An interesting take on social media — the main platforms are the seven deadly sins.

There are six other deadly sins, and six of the other major social platforms seem designed to target one each. LinkedIn seems to target greed; Tinder targets Lust and Yelp targets gluttony. Instagram targets pride, the greatest of the deadly sins. It was natural that Facebook would acquire Instagram as Facebook had the most money, and pride is the strongest draw among the sins. In the graphic above Netflix is associated with sloth; I’m not sure that’s entirely fair: Netflix is passive, but no more passive than YouTube (owned by Google).

Twitter deserves a special mention. It was designed to be more immediate than FB, and I find it’s even more tipped to the salacious. When you post to Twitter, you have no control over who sees it; your only control is over what you see, and most people like to see salacious. President Donald Trump’s presidency is largely built on his Twitter posts. He claims he’s the Hemingway of 140 characters, and he certainly is good at grabbing eyeballs with outrageous comments and short simplifications of difficult matters. Last week his Twitter insult of Congressman Adam Schiff caught the news services all about. Similarly several congressmen calling Trump a mother***ker made news, Trump’s insult was more amusing, IMHO, if you read the name Adam a variant pronunciation. Facebook can tolerate the salacious like this, but it still limits the number of eyeballs to friends and acquaintances. Twitter is the home of wrath, and so far it seems a lot more successful than Google+.

Google+ was a reminder that world of social media is not all darkness and deadly sins. To my mind, Google+ was supposed to contract the evils of envy and intemperance with the virtue of temperance. That is Google+ was one of the cardinal virtues: Temperance in this case amounted to giving the appropriate amount of information to each of your friends, and not being excessive with any. It’s possible that the failure of Google+ was that it did not directly go after the audience for LinkedIn, but instead tried to mimic Facebook. Linked In (Greed) is almost exactly the opposite of Temperance.

The seven godly virtues are listed below, as set out by Pope Gregory, based on Paul. The first three are considered Godly, the other four Cardinal.

  1. Faith: belief in the right things (including the virtues!).
  2. Hope: taking a positive future view, that good will prevail.
  3. Charity: concern for, and active helping of, others.
  4. Fortitude: never giving up.
  5. Justice: being fair and equitable with others.
  6. Prudence: care of and moderation with money.
  7. Temperance: moderation of needed things and abstinence from things which are not needed.

Looking at this list it strikes me that the first three virtues are already present in social media. I associate Wikipedia with Faith, I associate it with a belief in knowledge itself, and in the ability of people to self govern. I associate Google, before it decided to be political, with Hope. It was based on a positive view of nature and people: that given free access to organized information they will come to the right conclusions. I liked that originally, ranking was decided based on people’s common choice. It was anti-FB, and humbling: there was no way that you could proclaim yourself greater than your neighbor if others didn’t see you that way. Currently Google allows paid customers to promote themselves, and conforms search for political patrons, eg China. In this way, it has become more like FB.

I associate “Go fund me,” with the virtue of Charity, and would like to propose that perhaps Prudence is Consumer Reports, or maybe e-bay. This leaves room for Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance (now that Google+ is dead). I leave it to you to fill in the gap.

Robert Buxbaum, January 8, 2019. There is a great manga fiction involving the seven deadly sins; Full Metal Alchemist. Also I should note that there are many versions of the seven virtues including the seven virtues of Buddhism: Right decisions, Valor, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, and Loyalty.