Plans to Raise-the-Dead-Sea

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The Dead Sea in Israel is a popular tourist attraction and health resort-area. It is also the lowest point on the planet, with a surface about 430m below sea level. Its water is saturated with an alkaline salt, and quite devoid of life, and it’s shrinking fast, loosing about 1 m in height every year. The Jordan river water that feeds the sea is increasingly drawn off for agriculture, and is now about 10% of what it was in the 1800s. The Dead Sea is disappearing fast, a story that is repeated with other inland seas: the Aral Sea, the Great Salt Lake, etc. In theory, one could reverse the loss using sea water. In theory, you could generate power dong this too: 430m is seven times the drop-height of Niagara Falls. The problem is the route and the price.

Five (or six) semi-attractive routes have been mapped out to bring water to the Dead Sea, as shown on the map at right. The shortest, and least expensive is route “A”. Here, water from the Mediterranean enters a 12 km channel near Haifa; it is pumped up 50m and travels in a pipe for about 52 km over the Galilean foothills, exiting to a power station as shown on the elevation map below. In the original plan the sea water feeds into the Jordan river, a drop of about 300m. The project had been estimated to cost $3 B. Unfortunately, it would make much of the Jordan river salty. It was thus deemed unacceptable. A variation of this would run the seawater along the Jordan in a pipe or an open channel. This would add to the cost, and would likely diminish the power that could be extracted, but you would not contaminate the Jordan.

A more expensive route, “B”, is shorter but it requires extensive tunneling under Jerusalem. Assuming 20 mies of tunnel at $500 MM/mile, this would cost $10B. It also requires the sea water to flow through the Palestinian West Bank on its way to the sea. This is politically sensitive and is unlikely to be acceptable to the West Bank Palestinians.

Vertical demand of the northern route

Two other routes, labeled “C” and “D” are likely even more expensive than route B. They require the water to be pumped over the Judaean hills near Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem. That’s perhaps 600m up. The seawater would flow from Ashkalon or Gaza and would enter the Dead Sea at Sodom, near Masada. Version C is the most politically acceptable, since it’s short and does not go through Palestinian land. Also, water enters the dead sea at its saltiest point so there is no disruption of the environment. Route D is similar to C, somewhat cheaper, but a lot more political. It goes through Gaza.

The longest route, “E” would go through Jordan taking water from the Red Sea. Its price tag is said to be $10 B. It’s a relatively flat route, but still arduous, rising 210m. As a result it’s not clear that any power would be generated. A version of this route could send the water entirely through Israel. It’s not clear that this would be better than Route C. Looking things over, it was decided that only routes that made sense are those that avoided Palestinian land. An agreement was struck with Jordan to go ahead with route D, with construction to begin in 2021. The project has been on hold though because of cost, COVID, and governmental inertia.

In order to make a $5-10B project worthwhile, you’ll have to generate $500MM to $1B/year. Some of this will come from tourism, but the rest must come from electrical power generation. As an estimate of power generation, let’s assume that that the flow is 65 m3/s, just enough to balance the evaporation rate. Assuming a 400 m power drop and an 80% efficient turbine, we should generate 80% of 255 MWe = about 204 MWe on average. Assuming a value of electricity of 10¢/kWh, that translates to $20,000/ hour, or $179 million per year. This is something, but not enough to justify the cost. We might increase the value of the power by including an inland pond for water storage. This would allow power production to be regulated to times of peak load, or it could be used for recreation, fish-farming, or cooling a thermal power station up to 1000 MWe. These options almost make sense, but with the tunnel prices quoted, the project is still too expensive to make sense. It is “on hold” for now.

It’s not like the sea will disappear if nothing is done. With 10% of the original in-flow of water to the Dead Sea, it will shrink to 10% its original size, and then stop shrinking. At that point evaporation will match in-flow. One could add more fresh water by increasing the flow from the sea of Galilee, but that water is needed. When more water is available, more is taken out for farming. This is what’s happened to the Arial Sea — it’s now about 10% the original size, and quite salty.

Elon Musk besides the prototype 12 foot diameter tunnel.

There’s a now a new tunnel option though and perhaps these routes deserve a second look: Elon Musk claims his “Boring company” can bore long tunnels of 12 foot diameter, for $10-20 MM/mile. This should be an OK size for this project. Assuming he’s right about the price, or close to right, the Dead Sea could be raised for $1B or so. At that price-point, it makes financial sense. It would even make sense if one built multiple seapools, perhaps one for swimming and one for energy storage, to be located before the energy-generating drop, and another for fish after. There might even be a pool that would serve as coolant for a thermal power plant. Water in the desert is welcome, even if it’s salt water.

Robert Buxbaum, February 14, 2023.

Social science is irreproducible, drug tests nonreplicable, and stoves studies ignore confounders.

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Efforts to replicate the results of the most prominent studies in health and social science have found them largely irreproducible with the worst replicability appearing in cancer drug research. The figure below, from “The Reproducibility Project in Cancer Biology, Errington et al. 2021, compares the reported effects in 50 cancer drug experiments from 23 papers with the results from repeated versions of the same experiments, looking at a total of 158 effects.

Graph comparing the original, published effect of a cancer drug with the replication effect. The units are whatever units were used in the original study, percent, or risk ratio, etc. From “Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology,”
Timothy M Errington et al. Center for Open Science, United States; Stanford University, Dec 7, 2021, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71601.

It’s seen that virtually none of the drugs are found to work the same as originally reported. Those below the dotted, horizontal line behaved the opposite in the replication studies. About half, those shown in pink, showed no significant effect. Of those that showed positive behavior as originally published, mostly they show about half the activity with two drugs that now appear to be far more active. A favorite web-site of mine, retraction watch, is filled with retractions of articles on these drugs.

The general lack of replicability has been called a crisis. It was first seen in the social sciences, e.g. the figure below from this article in Science, 2015. Psychology research is bad enough such that Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, came to disown most of the conclusions in his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow“. The experiments that underly his major sections don’t replicate. Take, for example, social printing. Classic studies had claimed that, if you take a group of students and have them fill out surveys with words about the aged or the flag, they will then walk slower from the survey room or stand longer near a flag. All efforts to reproduce these studies have failed. We now think they are not true. The problem here is that much of education and social engineering is based on such studies. Public policy too. The lack of replicability throws doubt on much of what modern society thinks and does. We like to have experts we can trust; we now have experts we can’t.

From “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” Science, 2015. Social science replication is better than dance drug replication, about 35% of the classic social science studies replicate to some, reasonable extent.

Are gas stoves dangerous? This 2022 environmental study said they are, claiming with 95% confidence that they are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma. I doubt the study will be reproducible for reasons I’ll detail below, but for now it’s science, and it may soon be law.

Part of the replication problem is that researchers have been found to lie. They fudge data or eliminate undesirable results, some more some less, and a few are honest, but the journals don’t bother checking. Some researchers convince themselves that they are doing the world a favor, but many seem money-motivated. A foundational study on Alzheimers was faked outright. The authors doctored photos using photoshop, and used the fake results to justify approval of non-working, expensive drugs. The researchers got $1B in NIH funding too. I’d want to see the researchers jailed, long term: it’s grand larceny and a serious violation of trust.

Another cause of this replication crisis — one that particularly hurt Daniel Kahneman’s book — is that many social science researchers do statistically illegitimate studies on populations that are vastly too small to give reliable results. Then, they only publish the results they like. The graph of z-values shown below suggest this is common, at least in some journals, including “Personality and social psychology Bulletin”. The vast fraction of results at ≥95% confidence suggest that researchers don’t publish the 90-95% of their work that doesn’t fit the desired hypothesis. While there has been no detailed analysis of all the social science research, it’s clear that this method was used to show that GMO grains caused cancer. The researcher did many small studies, and only published the one study where GMOs appeared to cause cancer. I review the GMO study here.

From Ulrich Schimmack, ReplicationIndex.com, January, 2023, https://replicationindex.com/2023/01/08/which-social-psychologists-can-you-trust/. If you really want to get into this he is a great resource.

The chart at left shows Z-scores, were Z = ∆X √n/σ. A Z score above 1.93 generally indicates significance, p < .05. Notice that almost all the studies have Z scores just over 1.93 that is almost all the studies proved their hypothesis at 95% confidence. That makes it seem that the researchers were very lucky, near prescient. But it’s clear from the distribution that there were a lot of studies that done but never shown to the public. That is a lot of data that was thrown out, either by the researchers or by the publishers. If all data was published, you’d expect to see a bell curve. Instead the Z values are of a tiny bit of a bell curve, just the tail end. The implication is that these studies with Z= >1.93 suggest far less than 95% confidence. This then shows up in the results being only 25% reproducible. It’s been suggested that you should not throw out all the results in the journal, just look for Z-scores of 3.6 or more. That leaves you with the top 23%, and these should have a good chance of being reproducible. The top graph somewhat supports this, but it’s not that simple.

Another classic way to cook the books, as it were, and make irreproducible studies provide the results you seek is to ignore “confounders.” This leads to association – causation errors. As an example, it’s observed that people taking aspirin have more heart attacks than those who do not, but the confounder is that aspirin is prescribed to those with heart problems; the aspirin actually helps, but appears to hurt. In the case of stoves, it seems likely that poorer, sicker people own gas, and that they live in older, moldy homes, and cook more at home, frying onions, etc. These are confounders that the study to my reading ignores. They could easily be the reason that gas stove owners get more asthma toxins than the rich folks who own electric, induction stoves. If you confuse association, you seem to find that owning the wrong stove causes you to be poor and sick with a moldy home. I suspect that the stove study will not replicate if they correct for the confounders.

I’d like to recommend a book, hardly mathematical, “How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff ($8.99 on Amazon). I read it in high school. It gives you a sense of what to look out for. I should also mention Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has been going around to campuses saying we should have zero tolerance for those who deny science, particularly health science. Given that so much of health science research is nonreplicable, I’d recommend questioning all of it. Here is a classic clip from the 1973 movie, ‘Sleeper’, where a health food expert wakes up in 2173 to discover that health science has changed.

Robert Buxbaum , February 7, 2023.

Use iodine against Bad breath, Bad beer, Flu, RSV, COVID, monkeypox….

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We’re surrounded by undesired bacteria, molds, and viruses. Some are annoying, making our feet smell, our teeth rot, and our wine sour. Others are killers, particularly for the middle aged and older. Despite little evidence, the US government keeps pushing masks and inoculations with semi-active vaccine that does nothing to stop the spread. Among the few things one can do to stop the spread of disease, and protect yourself, is to kill the bacteria, molds and viruses with iodine. Iodine is cheap, effective even at very low doses, 0.1% to 10 parts per million, and it lasts a lot longer than alcohol. Dilute iodine will not dye your skin, and it does not sting. A gargle of iodine will kill COVID and other germs (e.g. thrush) and it has even been shown to be a protective, stopping COVID 19 and flu even if used before exposure. On a more practical level. I also use it to cleanse my barrels before making beer — It’s cheaper than the Camden they sell in stores.

Iodine is effective when used on surfaces, and most viruses spread by surfaces. A sick person coughs. Droplets end up on door knobs, counters, or in your throat, leaving virus particles that do not die in air. You touch the surface, and transfer the virus to your eyes and nose. Here’s a video I made. A mask doesn’t help because you rub your eyes around the mask. But iodine kills the virus on the surface, and on your hands, and lasts there far longer than alcohol does. Vaccines always come with side-effects, but there are no negative side effects to sanitization with dilute iodine. Here is a video I did some years ago on the chemistry of iodine.

Robert Buxbaum, February 1, 2023. I don’t mean to say that all bacteria and fungi are bad, it’s just that most of them are smelly. Even the good ones that give us yogurt, beer, blue cheese, and sour kraut tend to be smelly. They have the annoying tendency to causing your wine to taste and smell like sour kraut or cheese, and they cause your breath and feet to smell the same. If you’re local, I’ll give you some free iodine solution. Otherwise, you’ll have to buy it through REB Research.

Birth dearth in China => collapse? war?

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China passed us in life-expectancy in 2022, and also in fertility, going the other way. In China lifespan at birth increased to 77.3 years. In the US it dropped an additional 0.9 years, to 76.8. US lifespans suffered from continuing COVID and an increase in accidents, heart disease, suicide, drugs, and alcohol abuse. Black men were hit particularly hard, so that today, a black man in the US has the same life expectancy as he would in Rwanda. China seems to have avoided this, but should expect problems due to declining fertility and birth rates.

China passed us in life expectancy in 2022.

Fertility rates will eventually burden the US too, as US fertility is only slightly greater than in China, 1.78 children per woman, lifetime, compared to 1.702 in China. But China has far fewer people of childbearing ages, relatively, and only 47% are women. Three decades of one child policy resulted in few young adults and a tendency to abort girls. Currently, the birthrate in China is barely more than half ours: 6.77 per 1000, compared to 12.01 per 1000. And the proportion of the aged keeps rising. China will soon face a severe shortage of care-givers, and an excess of housing.

Years of low birthrate preceded the “Lost decades” of financial crisis in Japan and the USSR. Between 1990 and 2011, business stagnated and house prices dropped. China faces the same; few workers and more need for care: it’s not a good recipe.

Beginning about 1991, Japan saw a major financial collapse with banks failing, and home values falling. China seems over-due.

Few children also signals a psychic lack of confidence in the country, and suggests that, going forward, there will be a lack of something to work for. Already Chinese citizens don’t trust the state to allow them to raise healthy children. They have stopped getting married, especially in the cities, and look more to have fun.

Affluent women claim they can’t find a good man to marry: one who’s manly, who will love them, and who will reliably raise their standard of life. Women seem less picky in China’s rural areas, or perhaps they find better men there. However it goes, urban women get married late and have few children, both in China and here. China produces great, sappy, soap operas though: a country girl or secretary in a high-power job meets a manly, urban manager who lovers her intensely. A fine example is “The Eternal Love” (watch it here). It involves time travel, and a noble romance from the past. Japan produced similar fiction before the crisis. And a crisis seems to be coming.

While Japan and Korea responded quietly to crisis and “the lost decades,” allowing banks to fail and home values to fall, Russia’s response was more violent. It went to war with Chechnya, then with Belarus and Ukraine, and now with NATO. I fear that China will go to war too — with Taiwan, Japan, and the US. It’s a scary thought; China is a much tougher enemy than Russia. There is already trouble brewing over new islands that they are building.

Robert Buxbaum January 25, 2023. If you want to see a Korean soap opera on the Secretary – manager theme, watch: “What’s wrong with Secretary Kim”. (I credit my wife with the research here.) I suspect that Americans too would like sappy shows like this.

Hydrogen transport in metallic membranes

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The main products of my company, REB Research, involve metallic membranes, often palladium-based, that provide 100% selective hydrogen filtering or long term hydrogen storage. One way to understand why these metallic membrane provide 100% selectivity has to do with the fact that metallic atoms are much bigger than hydrogen ions, with absolutely regular, small spaces between them that fit hydrogen and nothing else.

Palladium atoms are essentially spheres. In the metallic form, the atoms pack in an FCC structure (face-centered cubic) with a radius of, 1.375 Å. There is a cloud of free electrons that provide conductivity and heat transfer, but as far as the structure of the metal, there is only a tiny space of 0.426 Å between the atoms, see below. This hole is too small of any molecule, or any inert gas. In the gas phase hydrogen molecules are about 1.06 Å in diameter, and other molecules are bigger. Hydrogen atoms shrink when inside a metal, though, to 0.3 to 0.4 Å, just small enough to fit through the holes.

The reason that hydrogen shrinks has to do with its electron leaving to join palladium’s condition cloud. Hydrogen is usually put on the upper left of the periodic table because, in most cases, it behaves as a metal. Like a metal, it reacts with oxygen, and chlorine, forming stoichiometric compounds like H2O and HCl. It also behaves like a metal in that it alloys, non-stoichiometrically, with other metals. Not with all metals, but with many, Pd and the transition metals in particular. Metal atoms are a lot bigger than hydrogen so there is little metallic expansion on alloying. The hydrogen fits in the tiny spaces between atoms. I’ve previously written about hydrogen transport through transition metals (we provide membranes for this too).

No other atom or molecule fits in the tiny space between palladium atoms. Other atoms and molecules are bigger, 1.5Å or more in size. This is far too big to fit in a hole 0.426Å in diameter. The result is that palladium is basically 100% selective to hydrogen. Other metals are too, but palladium is particularly good in that it does not readily oxidize. We sometime sell transition metal membranes and sorbers, but typically coat the underlying metal with palladium.

We don’t typically sell products of pure palladium, by the way. Instead most of our products use, Pd-25%Ag or Pd-Cu. These alloys are slightly cheaper than pure Pd and more stable. Pd-25% silver is also slightly more permeable to hydrogen than pure Pd is — a win-win-win for the alloy.

Robert Buxbaum, January 22, 2023

Fusion advance: LLNL’s small H-bomb, 1.5 lb TNT didn’t destroy the lab.

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There was a major advance in nuclear fusion this month at the The National Ignition Facility of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), but the press could not figure out what it was, quite. They claimed ignition, and it was not. They claimed that it opened the door to limitless power. It did not. Some heat-energy was produced, but not much, 2.5 MJ was reported. Translated to the English system, that’s 600 kCal, about as much heat in a “Big Mac”. That’s far less energy went into lasers that set the reaction off. The importance wasn’t the amount in the energy produced, in my opinion, it’s that the folks at LLNL fired off a small hydrogen bomb, in house, and survived the explosion. 600 kCal is about the explosive power of 1.5 lb of TNT.

Many laser beams converge on a droplet of deuterium-tritium setting off the explosion of a small fraction of the fuel. The explosion had about the power of 1.2 kg of TNT. Drawing from IEEE Spectrum

The process, as reported in the Financial Times, involved “a BB-sized” droplet of holmium -enclosed deuterium and tritium. The folks at LLNL fast-cooked this droplet using 100 lasers, see figure of 2.1MJ total output, converging on one spot simultaneously. As I understand it 4.6 MJ came out, 2.5 MJ more than went in. The impressive part is that the delicate lasers survived the event. By comparison, the blast that bought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie took only 2-3 ounces of explosive, about 70g. The folks at LLNL say they can do this once per day, something I find impressive.

The New York Times seemed to think this was ignition. It was not. Given the size of a BB, and the density of liquid deuterium-tritium, it would seem the weight of the drop was about 0.022g. This is not much but if it were all fused, it would release 12 GJ, the equivalent of about 3 tons of TNT. That the energy released was only 2.5MJ, suggests that only 0.02% of the droplet was fused. It is possible, though unlikely, that the folks at LLNL could have ignited the entire droplet. If they did, the damage from 5 tons of TNT equivalent would have certainly wrecked the facility. And that’s part of the problem; to make practical energy, you need to ignite the whole droplet and do it every second or so. That’s to say, you have to burn the equivalent of 5000 Big Macs per second.

You also need the droplets to be a lot cheaper than they are. Today, these holmium capsules cost about $100,000 each. We will need to make them, one per second for a cost around $! for this to make any sort of sense. Not to say that the experiments are useless. This is a great way to test H-bomb designs without destroying the environment. But it’s not a practical energy production method. Even ignoring the energy input to the laser, it is impossible to deal with energy when it comes in the form of huge explosions. In a sense we got unlimited power. Unfortunately it’s in the form of H-Bombs.

Robert Buxbaum, January 5, 2023

Almost no one over 50 has normal blood pressure now.

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Four years ago, when the average lifespan of American men was 3.1 years longer than today, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology dropped the standard for normal- acceptable blood pressure for 50+ years olds from 140/90 to 120/80. The new standard of normal was for everyone regardless or age or gender despite the fact that virtually no one over 50 now reached it. Normal is now quite un-common.

By the new definition, virtually everyone over 50 now is diagnosed with high blood pressure or hypertension. Almost all require one or two medications — no more baby aspirin. Though the evidence for aspirin’s benefit is strong, it doesn’t lower blood pressure. AHA guidance is to lower a patients blood pressure to <140/90 mmHg or at least treat him/her with 2–3 antihypertensive medications.4 

Average systolic blood pressures for long-lived populations of men and women without drugs.

The graphs shows the average blood pressures, without drugs in a 2008 study of the longest-lived, Scandinavian populations. These were the source of the previous targets: the natural pressures for the healthiest populations at the time, based on the study of 1304 men (50-79 years old) and 1246 women (38-79 years old) observed for up to 12 years. In this healthy population, the average untreated systolic pressure is seen till age 70, reaching 154 for men, and over 160 for women. By the new standards, these individuals would be considered highly unhealthy, though they live a lot longer than we do. The most common blood-pressure drug prescribed in the US today is atenolol, a beta blocker. See my essay on Atenolol. It’s good at lowering blood pressure, but does not decrease mortality.

The plot at left shows the relationship between systolic blood pressure and death. There is a relationship, but it is not clear that the one is the cause of the other, especially for individuals with systolic pressure below 160. Those with pressures of 170 and above have significantly higher mortality, and perhaps should take atenolol, but even here it might be that high cholesterol, or something else, is causing both the high blood pressure and the elevated death risk.

The death-risk difference between 160 and 100 mmHg is small and likely insignificant. The minimum at 110 is rather suspect too. I suspect it’s an artifact of a plot that ignores age. Only young people have this low number, and young people have fewer heart attacks. Artificially lowering a person’s blood pressure, even to this level does not make him young, [2][3] and brings some problems. Among the older-old, 85 and above, a systolic blood pressure of 180 mmHg is associated with resilience to physical and cognitive decline, though it is also associated with higher death rate.

The AHA used a smoothed version of the life risk graph above to justify their new standards, see below. In this version, any blood pressure looks like it’s bad. The ideal systolic pressure seems to be 100 or below. This is vastly too low a target, especially for a 60 year old. Based on the original graph, I would think that anything below 155 is OK.

smoothed chart of deaths per 1000 vs blood pressure. According to this chart, any blood pressure is bad. There is no optimum.

Light exercise seems to do some good especially for the overweight. Walking helps, as does biking, and aerobics. Weight loss without exercise seems to hurt health. Aspirin is known to do some good, with minimal cost and side effects. Ablation seems to help for those with atrial fibrillation. Elequis (a common blood thinner) seems to have value too, for those with atrial fibrillation — not necessarily for those without. Low sodium helps some, and coffee, reducing gout, dementia and Parkinson’s, and alcohol. Some 2-3 drinks per day (red wine?) is found to improve heart health.

I suspect that the Scandinavians live longer because they drink mildly, exercise mildly, have good healthcare (but not too good), and have a low crime rate. They seem to have dodged the COVID problem too, even Sweden that did next to nothing. it’s postulated that the problem is over medication, including heart medication.

Robert Buxbaum, January 4, 2023. The low US lifespan is startling. Despite spending more than any other developed countries on heath treatments, we have horribly lower lifespans, and it’s falling fast. A black man in the US has the same expected lifespan as in Rwanda. Causes include heart attacks and strokes, accidents, suicide, drugs, and disease. Opioids too, especially since the COVID lockdowns.

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.

Comparing Artemis SLS to Saturn V and Falcon heavy

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This week, the Artemis I, Orion capsule splashed down to general applause after circling the moon with mannequins. The launch cost $4.1 Billion, and the project, $50 Billion so far, of $93 Billion expected. Artemis II will carry people around the moon, and Artemis III is expected to land the first woman and person of color. The goal isn’t one I find inspiring, and I feel even less inspired by the technology. I see few advances in Artemis compared to the Saturn V of 50 years ago. And in several ways, it looks like a step backwards.

The graphic below compares the Artemis I SLS (Space Launch System) to the Saturn V. The SLS is 10% lighter, but the payload is lighter, too. It can carry 27 tons to the moon, while the Saturn V sent 50 tons to the moon. I’d expect more weight by now. We have carbon fiber and aramids, and they did not. Add to this that the cost per flight is higher, $4.1 B, versus $1.49 B in 2022 dollars for a Saturn V ($185 million in 1969 dollars). What’s more there was no new engine development or production, so the flight numbers are limited: Each SLS launch throws away five, space shuttle engines. When they are all gone, the project ends. We have no plans or ability to make more engines.

Comparison of Apollo Saturn V and Artemis SLS. The SLS has less lift weight and costs more per launch.

As it happens, there was a better alternative available, the Falcon heavy from SpaceX. The Falcon heavy has been flying for 5 years now, and costs only $141 million per launch, about 1/30 as much as an Artemus launch. The rocket is largely reusable, with 3D printed engines, and boosters that land on their tails. Each SLS is expensive because it’s essentially a new airplane built specially for each flight. Every part but the capsule is thrown away. Adding to the cost of SLS launches is the fuel; hydrogen, the same fuel as the space shuttle. Per energy it’s very expensive. The energy cost for the SLS boosters is high too, and the efficiency is low; each SLS booster costs $290M, more than the cost of two Falcon heavy launches. Falcon launches are cheap, in part because the engines burn kerosine, as did the Saturn V at low altitude. Beyond cost hydrogen has low thrust per flow (low momentum), and is hard to handle; hydrogen leaks caused two Artemis scrubs, and numerous Shuttle delays. I discussed the physics of rocket engines in a post seven years ago.

This graph of $/kg to low earth orbit is mostly from futureblind.com. I added the data for Artemis SLS. Saturn V and Falcon use cheaper fuel and a leaner management team.

It might be argued that Artemis SLS is an inspirational advance because it can lift an entire moon project in one shot, but the Saturn V lifted that and more, all of Skylab. Besides, there is no need to lift everything on one launch. Elon Musk has proposed lifting in two stages, sending the moon rocket and moon lander to low earth orbit with one launch, then lifting fuel and the astronauts on a second launch. Given the low cost of a Falcon heavy launch, Musk’s approach is sure to save money. It also helps develop space refueling, an important technology.

Musk’s Falcon may still reach the moon because NASA still needs a moon lander. NASA has awarded the lander contract to three companies for now, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Dynetics-Aerodyne makers of the Saturn V, and Musk’s SpaceX. If the SpaceX version wins, a modified Falcon will be sent to the moon on a Falcon heavy along with a space station. Artemis III will rendezvous with them, astronauts will descend to the moon on the lander, and will use the lander to ascend. They’ll then transfer to an Orion capsule for the return journey. NASA has also contracted with Bezos’s Blue origin for planetary, Earth observation, and exploration plans. I suspect that Musk’s lander will win, if only because of reliability. There have been 59 Falcon launches this year, all of them with safe landings. By contrast, no Blue Origin or Dynetics rocket has landed, and Blue Origin does not expect to achieve orbital velocity till 2025.

As best I can tell, the reason we’re using the Artemis SLS with its old engines is inspiration. The Artemis program director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is female, and an expert in space shuttle engines. Previous directors were male. Previous astronauts too were mostly male. Musk is not only male, but his products suffer from him being considered a horrible person, a toxic male, in the Tony Stark (Iron Man) mold. Even Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are considered better, though their technology is worse. See my comparison of SpaceX, Virgin Blue, and Blue Origin.

To me, the biggest blocks to NASA’s inspirational aims, in my opinion, are the program directors who gave us the moon landing. These were two Nazi SS commanders (SS Sturmbannführers), Arthur Rudolph and Wernher Von Braun. Not only were they male and white, they were barely Americanized Nazis, elevated to their role at NASA after killing off virtually all of their 20,000, mostly Jewish, slave workers making rockets for Hitler. Here’s a song about Von Braun, by Tom Lehrer. Among those killed was Von Braun’s professor. In his autobiography, Von Braun showed no sign of regret for any of this, nor does he take blame. The slave labor camp they ran, Dora-Mittelbau, had the highest death rate of all slave labor camps, and when some workers suggested that they could work better if they were fed, the directors, Rudolph and Von Braun had 80 machine gunned to death. Still, Von Braun got us to the moon, and his inspirational comments line the walls at NASA, Kennedy. Blackwell-Thompson and Bezos are surely more inspirational, but their designs seem like dead ends. We may still have to use Musk’s SpaceX if we want a lander or a moon program after the space shuttle’s engines are used up. As Von Braun liked to point out, “Sacrifices have to be made.”

Robert Buxbaum, December 21, 2022. Here’s a bit more about Rudolph, von Braun, the Peenemünda rocket facility, and the Dora-Mittelbau slave labor camp. I may post photos of Von Braun with Hitler and Himmler in SS regalia, but feel uncomfortable doing so at the moment. I feel similarly about posting links to Von Braun’s inspirational interviews.

Coffee decreases your chance of Parkinson’s, a lot.

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Some years ago, I thought to help my daughter understand statistics by reanalyzing the data from a 2004 study on coffee and Parkinson’s disease mortality, “Coffee consumption, gender, and Parkinson’s disease mortality in the cancer prevention study II cohort: the modifying effects of estrogen” , Am J Epidemiol. 2004 Nov 15;160(10):977-84, see it here

For the study, a cohort of over 1 million people was enrolled in 1982 and assessed for diet, smoking, alcohol, etc. Causes of deaths were ascertained through death certificates from January 1, 1989, through 1998. Death certificate data suggested that coffee decreased Parkinson’s mortality in men but not in women after adjustment for age, smoking, and alcohol intake. They used a technique I didn’t like though, ANOVA, analysis of variance. That is they compare the outcome of those who drank a lot of coffee (4 cups or more) to those who drank nothing. Though women in the coffee cohort had about 49% the death rate, it was not statistically significant by the ANOVA measure (p = 0.6). The authors of the study understood estrogen to be the reason for the difference.

Based on R2, coffee appears to significantly decrease the risk of Parkinson’s mortality in both men and women.

I thought we could do a better by graphical analysis, see plot at right, especially using R2 to analyze the trend. According to this plot it appears that coffee significantly reduces the likelihood of death in both men and women, confidence better than 90%. Women don’t tend to drink as much coffee as men, but the relative effect per cup is stronger than in men, it appears, and the trend line is clearer too. In the ANOVA, it appears that the effect in women is small because women are less prone Parkinson’s.

The benefit of coffee has been seen as well, in this study, looking at extreme drinkers. Benefits appear for other brain problems too, like Alzheimer’s. It seems that 2-4 cups of coffee per day also reduces the tendency for suicide, and decreases the rate of gout. It seems to be a preventative against kidney stones, too.

There is a confounding behavior that I should note, it’s possible that people who begin to feel signs of Parkinson’s, etc. stop drinking coffee. I doubt it, give the study’s design, but it’s worth a mention. The same confounding is also present in a previous analysis I did that suggested that being overweight protected from dementia, and from Alzheimer’s. Maybe pre-dementia people start loosing weight long before other symptoms appear.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, and C.M. Buxbaum, December 15, 2022