Category Archives: personal relationships

Kindness and Cholera in California

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California likely leads the nation in socially activist government kindness. It also leads the nation in homelessness, chronic homelessness, and homeless veterans. The US Council on Homelessnesses estimates that, on any given day, 129,972 Californians are homeless, including 6,702 family households, and 10,836 veterans; 34,332 people are listed among “the chronic homeless”. That is, Californians with a disability who have been continuously homeless for one year or cumulatively homeless for 12 months in the past three years. No other state comes close to these numbers. The vast majority of these homeless are in the richer areas of two rich California cities: Los Angeles and San Francisco (mostly Los Angeles). Along with the homeless in these cities, there’s been a rise in 3rd world diseases: cholera, typhoid, typhus, etc. I’d like to explore the relationship between the policies of these cities and the rise of homelessness and disease. And I’d like to suggest a few cures, mostly involving sanitation. 

A homeless encampment in LosAngeles

Most of the US homeless do not live in camps or on the streets. The better off US homelessness find it is a temporary situation. They survive living in hotels or homeless shelters, or they “couch-serf,” with family or friends. They tend to take part time jobs, or collect unemployment, and they eventually find a permanent residence. For the chronic homeless things are a lot grimmer, especially in California. The chronic unemployed do not get unemployment insurance, and California’s work rules tend to mean there are no part time jobs, and there is not even a viable can and bottle return system in California, so the homeless are denied even this source of income*. There is welfare and SSI, but you have to be somewhat stable to sign up and collect. The result is that California’s chronic homeless tend to live in squalor strewn tent cities, supported by food handouts.

Californians provide generous food handouts, but there is inadequate sewage, or trash collection, and limited access to clean water. Many of the chronic homeless are drug-dependent or mentally ill, and though they might  benefit from religion-based missions, Los Angeles has pushed the missions to the edges of the cities, away from the homeless. The excess food and lack of trash collection tends to breed rats and disease, and as in the middle ages, the rats help spread the diseases. 

Total homelessness by state, 2018; California leads the nation. The better off among these individuals do not live on the streets, but in hotels or homeless shelters. For most, this is a short term situation. The rest, about 20%, are chronically homeless. About half of these live on the streets without adequate sewage and water. Many are drug-dependent.

The first major outbreaks of the homeless camps appeared in Los Angeles in August and September of 2017. They reappeared in 2018, and by late summer, rates were roughly double 2017’s. This year, 2019, looks like it could be a real disaster. The first case of a typhoid infected police officer showed up in May. By June there were six police officers with typhoid, and that suggests record numbers are brewing among the homeless.

To see why sanitation is an important part of the cure, it’s worth noting that typhoid is a disease of unclean hands, and a relative of botulism. It is spread by people who go to the bathroom and then handle food without washing their hands first. The homeless camps do not, by and large, have hand washing stations. and forced hygiene is prohibited. Los Angeles has set up porta-potties, with no easy hand washing. The result is typhoid epidemic that’s even affecting the police (six policemen in June!).

rate od disease spread.
R-naught, reproduction number for some diseases, CDC.

Historically, the worst outbreaks of typhoid were spread by food workers. This was the case with “typhoid Mary of the early 20th century.” My guess is that some of the police who got typhoid, got it while trying to feed the needy. If so, this fellow could become another Typhoid Mary. Ideally, you’d want shelters and washing stations where the homeless are. You’d also want to pickup the dirtier among the homeless for forced washing and an occasional night in a homeless shelter. This is considered inhumane in Los Angeles, but they do things like this in New York, or they did.

Typhus is another major disease of the California homeless camps. It is related to typhoid but spread by rodents and their fleas. Infected rodents are attracted to the homeless camps by the excess food. When the rodents die, their infected fleas jump to the nearest warm body. Sometimes that’s a person, sometimes another animal. In a nastier city, like New York, the police come by and take away old food, dead animals, and dirty clothing; in Los Angeles they don’t. They believe the homeless have significant squatters rights. California’s kindness here results in typhus.

Reproduction number and generation time for some diseases.

The last of the major diseases of the homeless camps is cholera. It’s different from the others in that it is not dependent on squalor, just poor health. Cholera is an airborne disease, spread by coughing and sneezing. In California’s camps, the crazy and sick dwell close to each other and close to healthy tourists. Cholera outbreaks are a predictable result. And they can easily spread beyond the camps to your home town, and if that happens a national plague could spread really fast.

I’d discussed R-naught as a measure of contagiousness some months ago, comparing it to the reproductive number of an atom bomb design, but there is more to understanding a disease outbreak. R-naught refers merely to the number of people that each infected person will infect before getting cured or dying. An R-naught greater than one means the disease will spread, but to understand the rate of spread you also need the generation time. That’s the average time between when the host becomes infected, and when he or she infects others. The chart above shows that, for cholera, r-naught is about 10, and the latency period is short, about 9 days. Without a serious change in California’s treatment of the homeless, each cholera case in June will result in over 100 cases in July, and well over 10,000 in August. Cholera is somewhat contained in the camps, but once an outbreak leaves the camps, we could have a pandemic. Cholera is currently 80% curable by antibiotics, so a pandemic would be deadly.

Hygiene is the normal way to prevent all these outbreaks. To stop typhoid, make bathrooms available, with washing stations, and temporary shelters, ideally these should be run by the religious groups: the Salvation Army, the Catholic Church, “Loaveser and Fishes”, etc. To prevent typhus, clean the encampments on a regular basis, removing food, clothing, feces and moving squatters. For cholera, provide healthcare and temporary shelters where people will get clean water, clean food, and a bed. Allow the homeless to work at menial jobs by relaxing worker hiring and pay requirements. A high minimum wage is a killer that nearly destroyed Detroit. Allow a business to hire the homeless to sweep the street for $2/hour or for a sandwich, but make a condition that they wash their hands, and throw out the leftovers. I suspect that a lot of the problems of Puerto Rico are caused by a too-high minimum wage by the way. There will always be poor among you, says the Bible, but there doesn’t have to be typhoid among the poor, says Dr. Robert Buxbaum.

*California has a very strict can and bottle return law where — everything is supposed to be recycled– but there are very few recycling centers, and most stores refuse to take returns. This is a problem in big government states: it’s so much easier to mandate things than to achieve them.

July 30, 2019. I ran for water commissioner in Oakland county, Michigan, 2016. If there is interest, I’ll run again. One of my big issues is clean water. Oakland could use some help in this regard.

The free press isn’t

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Newspapers remain the primary source for verified news. Facts presumed to be sifted to avoid bias, while opinions and context is presumed to be that of the reporter whose name appears as the byline. We may look to other media sources for confirmation and fact-checking: news magazines, Snopes, and Facebook. Since 2016 these sources have been unanimous in their agreement about the dangers of biassed news. Republicans, including the president have claimed that the left-media spreads “fake news”, against him, while Democrats claim that Trump and the Russians have been spreading pro-Trump, fake news, While Trump and the Republicans claim that the left-media spreads fake news. In an environment like this, it’s worthwhile to point out that the left-wing and right-wing press is owned by a very few rich people, and none of it is free of their influence. An example of this is the following compilation of many stations praising their news independence: CBS, ABC, NBC, and FOX, praising their independence in exactly the same words.

It costs quite a lot to buy a newspaper or television station, and a lot more to keep it running. Often these are money-losing ventures, and as a result, the major newspapers tend to be owned by a few mega-rich individuals who have social or political axes to grind. As the video above shows, one main axe they have is convincing you of their own independence and reliability. The Sinclair news service, owned by the Smith news family came up with the text, and all the independent journalists read it in as convincing a voice as they could muster. This is not to say. that all the news is this bad or that the mega rich don’t provide a service by providing us the news, but it’s worth noting that they extract a fee by controlling what is said, and making sure that the news you see fits their agendas – agendas that are often obvious and open to the general view.

Perhaps the most prominent voice on the right is Rupert Murdoch who owns The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He used to own Fox too, and is still the majority controller and guiding voice, but Fox is now owned by Disney who also owns ABC. Murdoch uses his many media outlets to make money and promote conservative and Republican causes. You might expect him to support Trump, but he has a person feud with him that boils up in the Post’s cover pages. Disney’s ABC tends to present news on the left, but as in the compilation above, left and right journalists have no problem parroting the same words. Here is another, older compilation, more journalistl saying the same thing in the same words, e.g. playing up the Conan O’Brian show.

Another media master is Ted Turner. He tends to own media outlets on the left including CNN. Turner manages to make CNN, and his other properties profitable, in part by courting controversy. His wife for a time was Jane Fonda, otherwise known as Hanoi Jane.

Another left-leaning media empire (whatever that means) is MSNBC. It is owned by Time-Warner, also owner of The Huffington Post. Both are anti-israel, and both promote zero-tariff, Pacific-rim trade, but as seen above, MSNBC anchors will read whatever trash they are told to read, and often it’s the same stuff you’d find on Fox.

Rounding out the list of those with a complete US media empires, I include the Emir of Qatar, perhaps the richest man in the world. He operates Al Jazeera, “the most respected news site for Middle east reporting” as an influence-buying vehicle. Al Jazeera is strongly anti-fracking, anti nuclear, and anti oil (Qatar is Asia’s latest supplier of natural gas). It is strongly anti-Israel, and anti Saudi. Qatar propagandist, Jamal Khashoggi worked for AlJazeera, and was likely killed for it. They’re also reliably pro-Shia, with positive stories about Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran, but negative stories about Sunni Egypt and Turkey. They present news, but not unbiassed.

But you don’t have to buy a complete media empire to present your politics as unbiassed news. Jeff Bezos, founder Amazon, bought The Washington Post for $250 million (chump change to hm). For most of the past two years, the paper mostly promoted anti-tariff views, and liberal causes, like high tax rates on the rich. Amazon thrives on cheep Chinese imports, and high tax rates don’t hurt because Amazon manages to not pay any taxes on $11 billion/year profits (by clever accounting they actually get a rebate). Recently Joe Biden made the mistake of calling out Amazon for not paying on $11 billion in profits, and The Washington Post has returned the favor by bashing Biden. As for why Bezos bought the money-losing Post, he said: “It is the newspaper in the Capital City of the most important country in the world… [As such] … “it has an incredibly important role to play in this democracy.”

Moving on to The New Your Times, its editorial slant is controlled by another contestant for world’s richest man: telecom mogul, Carlos “Slim” Helú. Carlos’s views are very similar to Bezos’s, with more of an emphasis on free trade with Mexico. Steve Jobs’s widow runs “The Atlantic” for the same reasons. It’s free on line, well written and money losing. Like with the above, it seems to be a vanity project to promote her views. It’s a hobby, but sh can afford it.

Like her, Chris Hughes, Facebook’s Co-founder and Zuckerberg room-mate, bought and runs the money losing “The New Republic“. He was Facebook’s director of marketing and communications before joining the Obama campaign as it internet marketing head. The New Republic’s had a stellar reputation, back in the day. Zuckerberg himself runs a media empire, but it’s different from the above: it’s social media where people pay for placement, and where those whose views he doesn’t like get censored: put in Facebook jail. He’s gotten into trouble over it, but as a media giant, there seem to have been no consequences.

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

And it’s not only rich individuals who turn trusted news sources into propaganda outlets. The US CIA did this for years, and likely still do. Then there are the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the British (BBC) and our very own NPRt. These sources present news that benefits them in the most positive light and scream about dangers to democracy and the world if their position is touched or their veracity is questioned. As these sources are all government funded, there is a they are unanimous supporters big governments as a cure to all ills. Closer to home, I’d like to mention that Detroit has two major papers, but only one owner. The left leaning Detroit Free Press, and the right-leaning Detroit News are owned by the same people, share a considerable staff, and generally agree on important issues. There are a dozen smaller papers in Metro Detroit; all but one is owned by one media group.

I’d like to end with a positive note. Not every reporter is in this sad grab-bag. In Detroit, Setve Neveling, “the motor-city muckraker” manages to present is independent, active news. Then there is Los Angeles’s Biotech billionaire, Patrick Soon-Shiong. He bought the LA Times in June 2018, claiming he will use it to fight fake news, “the cancer of our time.” I wish him luck. So far, I’d say, he’s made the LA Times is the best Newspaper in the US with The NY Post a close second ( love the snarky headlines).

Robert Buxbaum, July 15, 2019.

How tall could you make a skyscraper?

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Built in 1931, the highest usable floor space of the Empire State building is 1250 feet (381m) above the ground. In 1973, that record was beaten by the World Trade Center building 1, 1,368 feet (417 m, building 2 was eight feet shorter). The Willis Tower followed 1974, and by 2004, the tallest building was the Taipei Tower, 1471 feet. Building heights had grown by 221 feet since 1931, and then the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, 2,426 ft ( 739.44m):. This is over 1000 feet taller than the new freedom tower, and nearly as much taller than the previous record holder. With the Saudi’s beginning work on a building even taller, it’s worthwhile asking how tall you could go, if your only  limitations were ego and materials’ strength.

Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, Concrete + glass structure. Dubai tourism image.

Having written about how long you could make a (steel) suspension bridge, the maximum height of a skyscraper seems like a logical next step. At first glance this would seem like a ridiculously easy calculation based on the math used to calculate the maximum length of a suspension bridge. As with the bridge, we’d make the structure from the strongest normal material: T1, low carbon, vanadium steel, and we’d determine the height by balancing this material’s  yield strength, 100,000 psi (pounds per square inch), against its density, .2833 pounds per cubic inch.

If you balance these numbers, you calculate a height: 353,000 inches, 5.57 miles, but this is the maximum only for a certain structure, a wide flag-pole of T1 steel in the absent of wind. A more realistic height assumes a building where half the volume is empty space, used for living and otherwise, where 40% of the interior space contains vertical columns of T1 steel, and where there’s a significant amount of dead-weight from floors, windows, people, furniture, etc. Assume the dead weight is the equivalent of filling 10% of the volume with T1 steel that provides no structural support. The resulting building has an average density = (1/2 x 0.2833 pound/in3), and the average strength= (0.4 x 100,000 pound/in2). Dividing these numbers we get a maximum height, but only for a cylindrical building with no safety margin, and no allowance for wind.

H’max-cylinder = 0.4 x 100,000 pound/in2/ (.5 x 0.2833 pound/in3) = 282,400 inches = 23,532 ft = 4.46 miles.

This is more than ten times the Burj Khalifa, but it likely underestimates the maximum for a steel building, or even a concrete building because a cylinder is not the optimum shape for maximum height. If the towers were constructed conical or pyramidal, the height could be much greater: three times greater because the volume of a cone and thus its weight is 1/3 that of a cylinder for the same base and height. Using the same materials and assumptions,

The tallest building of Europe is the Shard; it’s a cone. The Eiffel tower, built in the 1800s, is taller.

H’max-cone = 3 H’max-cylinder =  13.37 miles.

A cone is a better shape for a very tall tower, and it is the shape chosen for “the shard”, the second tallest building in Europe, but it’s not the ideal shape. The ideal, as we’ll see, is something like the Eiffel tower.

Before speaking about this shape, I’d like to speak about building materials. At the heights we’re discussing, it becomes fairly ridiculous to talk about a steel and glass building. Tall steel buildings have serious vibration problems. Even at heights far before they are destroyed by wind and vibration , the people at the top will begin to feel quite sea-sick. Because of this, the tallest buildings have been constructed out of concrete and glass. Concrete is not practical for bridges since concrete is poor in tension, but concrete can be quite strong in compression, as I discussed here.  And concrete is fire resistant, sound-deadening, and vibration dampening. It is also far cheaper than steel when you consider the ease of construction. The Trump Tower in New York and Chicago was the first major building here to be made this way. It, and it’s brother building in Chicago were considered aesthetic marvels until Trump became president. Since then, everything he’s done is ridiculed. Like the Trump tower, the Burj Khalifa is concrete and glass, and I’ll assume this construction from here on.

let’s choose to build out of high-silica, low aggregate, UHPC-3, the strongest concrete in normal construction use. It has a compressive strength of 135 MPa (about 19,500 psi). and a density of 2400 kg/m3 or about 0.0866 lb/in3. Its cost is around $600/m3 today (2019); this is about 4 times the cost of normal highway concrete, but it provides about 8 times the compressive strength. As with the steel building above, I will assume that, at every floor, half of the volume is living space; that 40% is support structure, UHPC-3, and that the other 10% is other dead weight, plumbing, glass, stairs, furniture, and people. Calculating in SI units,

H’max-cylinder-concrete = .4 x 135,000,000 Pa/(.5 x 2400 kg/m3 x 9.8 m/s2) = 4591 m = 2.85 miles.

The factor 9.8 m/s2 is necessary when using SI units to account for the acceleration of gravity; it converts convert kg-weights to Newtons. Pascals, by the way, are Newtons divided by square meters, as in this joke. We get the same answer with less difficulty using inches.

H’max-cylinder-concrete = .4 x 19,500 psi/(.5 x.0866  lb/in3) = 180,138″ = 15,012 ft = 2.84 miles

These maximum heights are not as great as for a steel construction, but there are a few advantages; the price per square foot is generally less. Also, you have fewer problems with noise, sway, and fire: all very important for a large building. The maximum height for a conical concrete building is three times that of a cylindrical building of the same design:

H’max–cone-concrete = 3 x H’max-cylinder-concrete = 3 x 2.84 miles = 8.53 miles.

Mount Everest, picture from the Encyclopedia Britannica, a stone cone, 5.5 miles high.

That this is a reasonable number can be seen from the height of Mount Everest. Everest is rough cone , 5.498 miles high. This is not much less than what we calculate above. To reach this height with a building that withstands winds, you have to make the base quite wide, as with Everest. In the absence of wind the base of the cone could be much narrower, but the maximum height would be the same, 8.53 miles, but a cone is not the optimal shape for a very tall building.

I will now calculate the optimal shape for a tall building in the absence of wind. I will start at the top, but I will aim for high rent space. I thus choose to make the top section 31 feet on a side, 1,000 ft2, or 100 m2. As before, I’ll make 50% of this area living space. Thus, each apartment provides 500 ft2 of living space. My reason for choosing this size is the sense that this is the smallest apartment you could sell for a high premium price. Assuming no wind, I can make this part of the building a rectangular cylinder, 2.84 miles tall, but this is just the upper tower. Below this, the building must widen at every floor to withstand the weight of the tower and the floors above. The necessary area increases for every increase in height as follows:

dA/dΗ = 1/σ dW/dH.

Here, A is the cross-sectional area of the building (square inches), H is height (inches), σ is the strength of the building material per area of building (0.4 x 19,500 as above), and dW/dH is the weight of building per inch of height. dW/dH equals  A x (.5 x.0866  lb/in3), and

dA/dΗ = 1/ ( .4 x 19,500 psi) x A x (.5 x.0866  lb/in3).

dA/A = 5.55 x 10-6 dH,

∫dA/A = ∫5.55 x 10-6 dH,

ln (Abase/Atop) = 5.55 x 10-6 ∆H,

Here, (Abase/Atop) = Abase sq feet /1000, and ∆H is the height of the curvy part of the tower, the part between the ground and the 2.84 mile-tall, rectangular tower at the top.

Since there is no real limit to how big the base can be, there is hardly a limit to how tall the tower can be. Still, aesthetics place a limit, even in the absence of wind. It can be shown from the last equation above that stability requires that the area of the curved part of the tower has to double for every 1.98 miles of height: 1.98 miles = ln(2) /5.55 x 10-6 inches, but the rate of area expansion also keeps getting bigger as the tower gets heavier.  I’m going to speculate that, because of artistic ego, no builder will want a tower that slants more than 45° at the ground level (the Eiffel tower slants at 51°). For the building above, it can be shown that this occurs when:

dA/dH = 4√Abase.  But since

dA/dH = A 5.55 x 10-6 , we find that, at the base,

5.55 x 10-6 √Abase = 4.

At the base, the length of a building side is Lbase = √Abase=  4 /5.55 x 10-6 inches = 60060 ft = 11.4  miles. Artistic ego thus limits the area of the building to slightly over 11 miles wide of 129.4 square miles. This is about the area of Detroit. From the above, we calculate the additional height of the tower as

∆H = ln (Abase/Atop)/ 5.55 x 10-6 inches =  15.1/ 5.55 x 10-6 inches = 2,720,400 inches = 226,700 feet = 42.94 miles.

Hmax-concrete =  2.84 miles + ∆H = 45.78 miles. This is eight times the height of Everest, and while air pressure is pretty low at this altitude, it’s not so low that wind could be ignored. One of these days, I plan to show how you redo this calculation without the need for calculus, but with the inclusion of wind. I did the former here, for a bridge, and treated wind here. Anyone wishing to do this calculation for a basic maximum wind speed (100 mph?) will get a mention here.

From the above, it’s clear that our present buildings are nowhere near the maximum achievable, even for construction with normal materials. We should be able to make buildings several times the height of Everest. Such Buildings are worthy of Nimrod (Gen 10:10, etc.) for several reasons. Not only because of the lack of a safety factor, but because the height far exceeds that of the highest mountain. Also, as with Nimrod’s construction, there is a likely social problem. Let’s assume that floors are 16.5 feet apart (1 rod). The first 1.98 miles of tower will have 634 floors with each being about the size of Detroit. Lets then assume the population per floor will be about 1 million; the population of Detroit was about 2 million in 1950 (it’s 0.65 million today, a result of bad government). At this density, the first 1.98 miles will have a population of 634 million, about double that of the United States, and the rest of the tower will have the same population because the tower area contracts by half every 1.98 miles, and 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 … = 1.

Nimrod examining the tower, Peter Breugel

We thus expect the tower to hold 1.28 Billion people. With a population this size, the tower will develop different cultures, and will begin to speak different languages. They may well go to war too — a real problem in a confined space. I assume there is a moral in there somewhere, like that too much unity is not good. For what it’s worth, I even doubt the sanity of having a single government for 1.28 billion, even when spread out (e.g. China).

Robert Buxbaum, June 3, 2019.

Seize the day

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

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

by Horace (23 BC Roman poet) Odes, 1.11

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

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

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

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

A probability paradox

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Here is a classic math paradox for your amusement, and perhaps your edification: (edification is a fancy word for: beware, I’m trying to learn you something).

You are on a TV game show where you will be asked to choose between two, identical-looking envelopes. All you know about the envelopes is that one of them has twice as much money as the other. The envelopes are shuffled, and you pick one. You peak in and see that your envelope contains $400, and you feel pretty good. But then you are given a choice: you can switch your envelope with the other one; the one you didn’t take. You reason that the other envelope either has $800 or $200 with equal probability. That is, a switch will either net you a $400 gain, or loose you $200. Since $400 is bigger than $200, you switch. Did that decision make sense. It seems that, at this game, every contestant should switch envelopes. Hmm.

The solution follows: The problem with this analysis is an error common in children and politicians — the confusion between your lack of knowledge of a thing, and actual variability in the system. In this case, the contestant is confusing his (or her) lack of knowledge of whether he/she has the big envelope or the smaller, with the fixed fact that the total between the two envelopes has already been set. It is some known total, in this case it is either $600 or $1200. Lets call this unknown sum y. There is a 50% chance that you now are holding 2/3 y and a 50% chance you are holding only 1/3y. therefore, the value of your current envelope is 1/3 y + 1/6y = 1/2 y. Similarly, the other envelope has a value 1/2y; there is no advantage is switching once it is accepted that the total, y had already been set before you got to choose an envelope.

And here, unfortunately is the lesson:The same issue applies in reverse when it comes to government taxation. If you assume that the total amount of goods produced by the economy is always fixed to some amount, then there is no fundamental problem with high taxes. You can print money, or redistribute it to anyone you think is worthy — more worthy than the person who has it now – and you won’t affect the usable wealth of the society. Some will gain others will lose, and likely you’ll find you have more friends than before. On the other hand, if you assume that government redistribution will affect the total: that there is some relationship between reward and the amount produced, then to the extent that you diminish the relation between work and income, or savings and wealth, you diminish the total output and wealth of your society. While some balance is needed, a redistribution that aims at identical outcomes will result in total poverty.

This is a variant of the “two-envelopes problem,” originally posed in 1912 by German, Jewish mathematician, Edmund Landau. It is described, with related problems, by Prakash Gorroochurn, Classic Problems of Probability. Wiley, 314pp. ISBN: 978-1-118-06325-5. Wikipedia article: Two Envelopes Problem.

Robert Buxbaum, February 27, 2019

Great waves, small circles, and the spread of ideas.

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Simplified wave motion, GIf by Dan Russel (maybe? I think?).

The scientific method involves looking closely at things. Sometimes we look closely for a purpose — to make a better mouse-trap, say. But sometimes it’s just to understand what’s happening: to satisfy curiosity, to understand the way the world works, or to answer a child. Both motivations bring positive results, but there is a difference in how people honor the product of these motivations. Scientific knowledge developed for curiosity is considered better; it tends to become the model for social understanding, and for art and literature. Meanwhile, science developed for a purpose is considered suspect, and often that suspicion is valid. A surprising amount of our knowledge was developed for war: for the purpose of killing people, destroying things, and occupying lands.

Waves provide a wonderful example of science exploration that was developed mostly for curiosity, and so they have become models of social understanding and culture — far more so than the atom bomb and plague work discussed previously.

Waves appear magical: You poke a pond surface with a stick, and the influence of that poke travels, as if by magic, to all corners of the pond. Apparently the initial poke set off something, and that sets off something else, and we’ve come to use this as a model for cultural ideas. Any major change in music, art, or cultural thought is described as a wave (and not as a disease). The sense of wave is  that a small push occurs, and the impact travels across a continent and across an ocean. The Gifs above and below shows how this happens for the ordinary wave — the one with a peaked top. As shown, the bits of water do not move with the wave. Instead they just circulate in a small circle. The powerful waves that crosses an ocean are composed of many small circles of water rolling in the general direction of the wave. With ideas too, I think, one person can push a second, and that second a third, each acting in his or her own circle, and a powerful transmission of ideas results. Of course, for a big wave, you need a big circle, but maybe not in cases of reflection (reflected waves can add, sometimes very destructively).

simplified wave movement

In the figures I’ve shown, you will notice that the top of the circle always moves in the same direction as the top of the wave. If the wave moves to the right, the circle is clockwise. There are also Rayleigh waves. In these, the top of the wave is not peaked, but broad, with little indents between ripples. For Rayleigh wave the motion is not circular, but elliptical, and the top of the ellipse moves in the opposite direction to that of the wave. These waves go slower than the normal waves, but they are more destructive. Most of the damage of earthquakes is by the late-arriving Rayleigh waves.

If regular waves are related to fast-moving ideas, like rock n roll, Rayleigh waves might be related to slower-traveling, counter-intuitive ideas, paradigm shifts: Religions, chaos, entropy, feminism, or communism. Rayleigh waves are mostly seen in solids, and the destructive power of counter-intuitive ideas is mostly seen in rigid societies.

Then there are also pressure waves, like sound, and wiggle waves (transverse waves). Pressure waves travel the fastest, and work in both solids and liquids. Wiggle waves travel slower (and don’t travel in liquids). Both of these involve no circles at all, but just one bit of material pushing on its neighbor. I think the economy works this way: bouncing springs, for the most part. Life is made up of all of these, and life is good. The alternative to vibration, I should mention, is status. Status is a form of death. There is a certain sort of person who longs for nothing more than an unchanging, no-conflict world: one government and one leadership. Avoid such people.

Robert Buxbaum, February 10, 2019

Harvard Eunuchs

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Success is measured in different ways in different cultures. Among US academics, the first mark of success is going to a great college. If you graduate from Eureka college, as Ronald Reagan did, you are pretty-well assumed to be an idiot; if you went to Harvard and Princeton, as John Kennedy did, you’re off on a good start to popular acclaim, even if your entry essay was poor, and you got thrown out of one because of cheating. Graduation from a top college does not guarantee being seen as a success forever, though. You have to continue in the Harvard way: use big words — something that puts-off the less-educated; you have to win awards, write books or articles; have the right politics; work at a high power job and money, meet the right people, exercise regularly, etc. It’s hard work being successful; disposable income is tight, and one rarely has time for kids.

Fertility rates, 1950 and now

Fertility rates compared, world-wide, 1970 vs 2014.

By contrast, in ancient societies, success included food, leisure, land, and general respect. A successful person is seated at the front of the church, and consulted as few academics are. And there is another great measure: children. In traditional societies, children are valued, They are seen as a joy in your youth, and a comfort in your old age. They are you and your wife reborn, with reborn wonder. They are your future, and the defenders of your legacy; ready to take on the world with an outlook of their own, but one that you had a unique chance to mold. In the Bible, children are a sign of blessing, and the opposite is explicitly stated as a punishment for violating God’s commands.

I have come to wonder why rich countries have so few children, and why successful people in rich countries have yet fewer than the average. These people and countries are no worse than others, yet they are common. Harvard produces a surprising number of “Legal Eunuchs” — people with a refined place in society, but no time or children; people who work tirelessly for the pleasure and success of others. Harvard couples marry late, or not at all. If they marry, they usually produce childless households, DINKs — Double Income No Kids.

The same pattern is seen in Europe, UK, Japan, Canada, Russia, and China, as the map above shows. Particularly among the élite, the great works are being created for the deplorables and their children. Could anything be more depressing?

The seven things include that Eunuchs can be trusted, that they love to serve, that they are compassionate, that they are passionate (for excellence) and that they have fewer distractions.

There’s and organization for everything these days. In this case, the seven things you didn’t know include that Eunuchs can be trusted, that they love to serve, that they are compassionate, that they are passionate for excellence, and that they have fewer distractions. This is the opposite of toxic masculinity, but it comes at a cost. 

I think one reason for the growing ranks of Harvard Eunuchs is a dislike of masculinity; masculinity is sort-of toxic,  associated with war, revolution, and selfishness. In the 1800s, only Republicans and Communists had beards; the more-refined gentleman did not. The eunuch qualities listed above, are considered noble, charitable, and selfless. Clearly it helps others if you are selfless, but why do it? I think the answer is self-doubt about ones worthiness to enjoy the fruits of your labor. To get to Harvard takes striving, and that relates to a degree of self-doubt and loathing about your worthiness today.

I graduated from Cooper Union, and went to Princeton for graduate school. It was a magical place, I became machines chairman, then chairman of the Graduate College House Committee. I dealt with a lot of very bright, accomplished people, and a pattern I saw often was self-doubt and loathing. And the most accomplished students were the ones with the most self-loathing. It made them strive to be better; it drove the innovative research and the grant writing. It motivated graduates to try to become professors (only a few would succeed) or judges, or financiers, or politicians. All that takes time, striving, and putting off your wants in the here-and-now, for a reward to the future you that is worthy. It’s a system that produces greatness, but at great personal cost.

So what’s to be done? How do you help yourself, or some other, the bright, educated fellow see that he or she is good enough. Unfortunately, for those in the system, good enough equals bad. I found it helped to say, in my own words, the words or Solomon:”Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” “It is not good to be over-wise… Why wear yourself out?” Not that these words changed them, but they did seem to give comfort. I’d suggest the write things that were honest; that people understand, and that they take time for themselves. “May your fountain be blessed, and enjoy the wife of your youth.” (Ps.127:3-4, Ecc.8:15, Pr.5:18…) It suffices to retell old truths and raise a new generation. Only make sure that what you have to say is honest and logical, and trust your own value. As for toxic masculinity, it can have its own charm.

Robert E. Buxbaum, January 29, 2019. I got the title for this article, and the idea, from the phrase, “Legal Eunuchs” in this wonderful book review (2005) by Alan Dershowitz.

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.

The hard scrabble dictionary

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The rules or Scrabble are unchanging and always changing. The general rule is that Scrabble allows the use of every common word in the English language. In practice, there are two or more dictionaries of words. One of these has virtually no abbreviations, only a few foreign-derived words, and only a select few offensive terms. It is this one, “The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,” that determines play. You’ll need the other dictionary to look up swear words or secondary meanings, or find common abbreviations.

Words get removed from the scrabble dictionary when someone -- anyone might find them offensive.

Words get removed from the scrabble dictionary when someone — anyone might find them offensive.

Both of these dictionaries change on a regular basis, by the way. And this is as it should be, and both exist in both English and American versions. The common dictionary adds words slowly, as they come into use and drops them slowly as they fall out. The Scrabble dictionary changes fast and for no obvious reason, adding and removing words for political and social aspect and for improved playability (whatever that is). Thus there is little rhyme or reason to the additions or deletions. Four years ago some ten 4000 words were added, mostly unusual words, and many insult words were removed. When the dictionary was changed again in September of this year, players are not told of some changes, but for the most part, there no obvious way to guess. Several words that were offensive in the last version, now are not. Other words that were OK then are now removed as offensive. You’ll play a word you’ve used for years and be told that it is no longer valid. Or someone will use a word you’ve never seen, and never will see otherwise, and you’ll find it is valid. Words added this year include: OK (previously an abbreviation), zen (previously a foreign word), and sheeple (previously a portmanteau, non-word). Also, I’m happy to say, fuck (a welcome addition). I looked up a bunch of previously removed insult words, and find that goy and spic are back, but i find that negro is not.  There is no list in print that tells you what’s been added, and that’s not right. Some articles have a few examples of new words, and some claim to have a list, but clearly it’s only a small fraction of the real list. There is nothing like a full addition list that I could find.

I’ve a bigger gripe though against removed words, especially when they are common words made to disappear for political effect. The previous dictionary, 2014, removed spic, goy, goyim, and negro; that was not right. The current dictionary added back all but negro (check for yourself, here). The word is still in use, both verbally and in literature, and not particularly offensive, less offensive than spic, IMHO. The American Negro College Fund doesn’t seem to mind the word negro. Malcolm X didn’t either. No one tells you these words are gone; they just disappear in the night.

My opinion, such as it is. I’m asking Mattel, Hasbro, Colliers, and/or Merriam-Webster: allow in all normal words, despite the fact that several have implied insults, or real ones. AND PUBLISH A COMPLETE CORRECTIONS PAGE, you [non recognized word]. Thank you.

Robert Buxbaum, December 27, 2018.

Of God and gauge blocks

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Most scientists are religious on some level. There’s clear evidence for a big bang, and thus for a God-of-Creation. But the creation event is so distant and huge that no personal God is implied. I’d like to suggest that the God of creation is close by and as a beginning to this, I’d like to discus Johansson gauge blocks, the standard tool used to measure machine parts accurately.

jo4

A pair of Johansson blocks supporting 100 kg in a 1917 demonstration. This is 33 times atmospheric pressure, about 470 psi.

Lets say you’re making a complicated piece of commercial machinery, a car engine for example. Generally you’ll need to make many parts in several different shops using several different machines. If you want to be sure the parts will fit together, a representative number of each part must be checked for dimensional accuracy in several places. An accuracy requirement of 0.01 mm is not uncommon. How would you do this? The way it’s been done, at least since the days of Henry Ford, is to mount the parts to a flat surface and use a feeler gauge to compare the heights of the parts to the height of stacks of precisely manufactured gauge blocks. Called Johansson gauge blocks after the inventor and original manufacturer, Henrik Johansson, the blocks are typically made of steel, 1.35″ wide by .35″ thick (0.47 in2 surface), and of various heights. Different height blocks can be stacked to produce any desired height in multiples of 0.01 mm. To give accuracy to the measurements, the blocks must be manufactured flat to within 1/10000 of a millimeter. This is 0.1µ, or about 1/5 the wavelength of visible light. At this degree of flatness an amazing thing is seen to happen: Jo blocks stick together when stacked with a force of 100 kg (220 pounds) or more, an effect called, “wringing.” See picture at right from a 1917 advertising demonstration.

This 220 lbs of force measured in the picture suggests an invisible pressure of 470 psi at least that holds the blocks together (220 lbs/0.47 in2 = 470 psi). This is 32 times the pressure of the atmosphere. It is independent of air, or temperature, or the metal used to make the blocks. Since pressure times volume equals energy, and this pressure can be thought of as a vacuum energy density arising “out of the nothingness.” We find that each cubic foot of space between the blocks contains, 470 foot-lbs of energy. This is the equivalent of 0.9 kWh per cubic meter, energy you can not see, but you can feel. That is a lot of energy in the nothingness, but the energy (and the pressure) get larger the flatter you make the surfaces, or the closer together you bring them together. This is an odd observation since, generally get more dense the smaller you divide them. Clean metal surfaces that are flat enough will weld together without the need for heat, a trick we have used in the manufacture of purifiers.

A standard way to think of quantum scattering is that the particle is scattered by invisible bits of light (virtual photons), the wavy lines. In this view, the force that pushes two flat surfaces together is from a slight deficiency in the amount of invisible light in the small space between them.

A standard way to think of quantum scattering of an atom (solid line) is that it is scattered by invisible bits of light, virtual photons (the wavy lines). In this view, the force that pushes two blocks together comes from a slight deficiency in the number of virtual photons in the small space between the blocks.

The empty space between two flat surfaces also has the power to scatter light or atoms that pass between them. This scattering is seen even in vacuum at zero degrees Kelvin, absolute zero. Somehow the light or atoms picks up energy, “out of the nothingness,” and shoots up or down. It’s a “quantum effect,” and after a while physics students forget how odd it is for energy to come out of nothing. Not only do students stop wondering about where the energy comes from, they stop wondering why it is that the scattering energy gets bigger the closer you bring the surfaces. With Johansson block sticking and with quantum scattering, the energy density gets higher the closer the surface, and this is accepted as normal, just Heisenberg’s uncertainly in two contexts. You can calculate the force from the zero-point energy of vacuum, but you must add a relativistic wrinkle: the distance between two surfaces shrinks the faster you move according to relativity, but measurable force should not. A calculation of the force that includes both quantum mechanics and relativity was derived by Hendrik Casimir:

Energy per volume = P = F/A = πhc/ 480 L4,

where P is pressure, F is force, A is area, h is plank’s quantum constant, 6.63×10−34 Js, c is the speed of light, 3×108 m/s, and L is the distance between the plates, m. Experiments have been found to match the above prediction to within 2%, experimental error, but the energy density this implies is huge, especially when L is small, the equation must apply down to plank lengths, 1.6×10-35 m. Even at the size of an atom, 1×10-10m, the amount of the energy you can see is 3.6 GWhr/m3, 3.6 Giga Watts. 3.6 GigaWatt hrs is one hour’s energy output of three to four large nuclear plants. We see only a tiny portion of the Plank-length vacuum energy when we stick Johansson gauge blocks together, but the rest is there, near invisible, in every bit of empty space. The implication of this enormous energy remains baffling in any analysis. I see it as an indication that God is everywhere, exceedingly powerful, filling the universe, and holding everything together. Take a look, and come to your own conclusions.

As a homiletic, it seems to me that God likes friendship, but does not desire shaman, folks to stand between man and Him. Why do I say that? The huge force-energy between plates brings them together, but scatters anything that goes between. And now you know something about nothing.

Robert Buxbaum, November 7, 2018. Physics references: H. B. G. Casimir and D. Polder. The Influence of Retardation on the London-van der Waals Forces. Phys. Rev. 73, 360 (1948).
S. Lamoreaux, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 5 (1996).