When the UK left the EU, they gained some economic freedom, but lost easy access to their largest trade partner. They avoided having to follow the weird green policies of the EU, and no longer had to take low cost workers from Poland, Bulgaria, Tec, but having lost easy access to European trade, the assumption was that they would want a trade deal soon, with someone, and the likely someone was the USA.
At first things went pretty well. there was the predicted crash didn’t come, showing that the top economists were talking out their hats, or trying to scare people to stay in the EU. And then Trump proposed the first of four attempts at a trade deal, and things got ugly. All four attempts were rejected in a most-forceful and insulting way.
When Trumps first forays at a trade deal were rejected, he attempt a visit in the summer of 2017. The British Parliament forbidding the visit, accepting it only by a slim majority with the PM, May making no strong case. The mayor of London protested with a blimp of Trump as a big baby, and the Queen was not sure she had time for tea (she had time for Obama). Trump cancelled the visit, and May made deals with Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Palestine, and Iceland. Why these but not the US?
Over the next two years Trump made trade deals with Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Korea, trying The UK again in July, 2019. This time, Theresa May was more welcoming — she was facing an election — but the blimp was brought out again, and allowed to follow Trump around England, along with a statue of Trump on the toilet, tweeting, and making fart sounds while saying “witch hunt,” “no collusion*”, and other comic comments. All rather insulting, and deal with the UK was signed.
I suspect Trump’s offers to the UK were similar to those with Japan, and Japan seemed very happy with the deal (Biden offered them an exit from Trump’s, and Abe stayed — and proposed Trump for the Nobel Prize. So why the British antagonism? Even if they had to say no, why didn’t they arrange a location or treatment to say no politely. India said no to Trump’s trade deal, politely, in 2020, and to the UK too.
My theory is that Theresa May was taken by the anti-Trump propaganda of Europe and particularly of the German press (see magazine covers of the time). Germany was the leader of Europe (this status has diminished), and its press presented Trump as a racist murderer. May kept trying to get back into the EU, and may have thought that ill-treating Trump would help. Boris Johnson followed May, and was pro-Trump, but his cabinet was not. They acted as if they could recreate the British empire of Queen Victoria — a silly thought. They tried for free trade deals with India, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, members of the old empire, but they never quite managed anything. COVID made things worse. The UK economy stalled, Johnson was removed, and the current PM, Rishi Sunak, seems to have got nowhere with Biden. Trump re-offered his trade deal during the visit, but he was out of office; Both Biden and Sunak ignored it.
The UK needs free trade with some substantial countries. They are a hub for manufacturing, information, and banking, currently without any spokes. India likely turned them down because the UK no longer has the power to protect them from enemies, China, Iran, Russia.., nor to protect their trade. Aside from rejoining the EU (good luck there), US is the obvious partner. If personality were the problem, there would have been a deal between Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden.
Since leaving the EU, the UK is doing slightly better than Germany, but that’s not saying much. British exports were helped by the cut off of trade with Russia, but that might not last, and London is having trouble trying to remain a financial center, fighting difficult travel and work rules, and the decline of the pound. Maybe it’s Biden’s fault that there is no deal. It’s hard to tell. Last week, the British Foreign secretary, David Cameron, came to visit Trump at Mar a Lago for a good feelings chat and to start on a trade deal should Trump become president. It’s not clear that Trump will become president, but there are at least hopes for a deal, ideally signed at a distance from the baby balloon.
Robert Buxbaum, April 18, 2024 *”Russian collusion” was a big deal at the time. A dossier was supposed show that Trump was a Russian agent. It turned out the dossier was created by Democrats working with the FBI.
Per pound mile of material, the transport cost by ship is 1/4 as much as by train, and about 1/8 as much as by truck. Ships are slower, it is true, but they can go where trucks and trains can not. They cross rivers and lakes at ease and can haul weighty freight with ease. I think America could use many more ferries, particularly drive-on, fast ferries. I don’t think we need new fast rail lines, because air travel will always be faster and cheaper. The Biden administration thinks otherwise, and spends accordingly.
Amtrak gets $30 Billion for train infrastructure this year, basically nothing for ferries.
The Biden administration’s infrastructure bill, $1.2 Trillion dollars total, provides $30 Billion this year for new train lines, but includes less than 1% as much for ferries, $220 million, plus $1B for air travel. I think it’s a scandal. The new, fast train lines are shown on the map, above. Among them is a speed upgrade to the “Empire Builder” train running between Chicago and Seattle by way of Milwaukee. I don’t think this will pay off — the few people who take this train, takes it for the scenery, I think, and for the experience, not to get somewhere fast.
There is money for a new line between Cleveland and Detroit, and for completion of the long-delayed, and cost-over-run prone line between LA and San Francisco. Assuming these are built, I expect even lower ridership since the scenery isn’t that great. Even assuming no delays (and there are always delays), 110 mph is vastly slower than flying, and typically more expensive and inconvenient. Driving is yet slower, but when you drive, you arrive with your car. With a train or plane, you need car rental, typically.
New Acela train, 150 mph max. 1/4 as fast as flying at the same price.
Drive-on ferries provide a unique advantage in that you get there with your car, often much faster than you would with by driving or by train. Consider Muskegon to Milwaukee (across the lake), or Muskegon to Chicago to Milwaukee, (along the lake). Cleveland to Canada, or Detroit to Cleveland. No land would have to be purchased and no new track would have to be laid and maintained. You’d arrive, rested and fed (they typically sell food on a ferry), with your car.
There’s a wonderful song, “City of New Orleans”, sung here by Arlo Guthrie describing a ride on the historic train of that name on a trip from Chicago to New Orleans, 934 miles in about one day. Including stops but not including delays, the average speed is 48 mph, and there are always delays. On board are, according to the song, “15 restless riders, 3 conductors, and 25 sacks of mail.” The ticket price currently is $200, one way, or about as much as a plane ticket. The line loses money. I’ve argued, here, for more mail use to hep make this profitable, but the trip isn’t that attractive as a way to get somewhere, it’s more of a land-cruise. The line is scheduled for an upgrade this year, but even if upgraded to 100 mph (14 hours to New Orleans including stops?) it’s still going to be far slower than air travel, and likely more expensive, and you still have to park your car before you get on, and then rent another when you get off. And will riders like it more? I doubt it, and doubt the speed upgrade will be to 100 mph.
Lake Express, 30 mph across Lake Michigan
Ferry travel tends to cost less than train or plane travel because water traffic is high volume per trip with few conductors per passenger. At present, there are only two ferryboats traveling across Lake Michigan, between Michigan and Wisconsin, Milwaulkee to Muskegon. They are privately owned, and presumably make money. The faster is the Lake Express, 30 mph. It crosses the lake in 2.5 hours. Passenger tickets cost $52 one way, or $118 for passenger and car. That’s less than the price of an Amtrak ticket or a flight. I think a third boat would make sense and that more lines would be welcome too. Perhaps Grand Haven to Racine or Chicago.
Route of the Lake Express. I’d like to see more like this; St. Joseph to Milwaukee say, and along Lake Erie.
Currently, there are no ferries across Lake Erie. Nor are there any along Lake Erie, or even across Lake St. Clair, or along the Detroit River, Detroit to Toledo or Toledo to Cleveland. These lines would need dock facilities, but they would have ridership, I think. New York’s Staten Island ferry has good ridership, 35,000 riders on a typical day, plus cars and trucks. In charge are roughly 120 engineers, captains and mates, one employee for every 300 passengers or so. By comparison, Amtrak runs 300 trains that carry a total of87,000 passengers on an average day, mostly on the east coast. These 300 trains are run by 17,100 employees as of fiscal year 2021, one employee for every 4 passengers. Even at the slow speeds of our trains the cost is far higher per passenger and per passenger mile.
The Staten Island ferry is slow, 18.5 mph, but folks don’t seem to mind. The trip takes 20 minutes, about half as long as most people’s trips on Amtrak. There are also private ferry lines in NY, many of these on longer trips. People would take ferries for day-long trips along our rivers, I think. Fast ferries would be nice, 40 mph or more, but I think even slow ferries would have ridership and would make money. A sea cruise is better than a land cruise, especially if you can have a cabin. On the coal-steam powered, Badger, you can rent a state-room to spend the night in comfort. Truckers seem to like that they cover ground during their mandatory rest hours. The advantage is maximized, I think, for ferry trips that take 12 hours or so, 250 to 350 miles. That’s Pittsburgh to Cincinnatti or Chicago to Memphis.
New York’s Staten Island ferry leaves every 15 minutes during rush hour. Three different sizes of boat are used. The largest carry over 5000 passengers and 100 cars and trucks at a crossing.
A low risk way to promote ferry traffic between the US and Canada would be to negotiate bilateral exemption to The Jones Act and its Canadian equivalent. Currently, we allow only US ships with US crews for US travel within the US.* Cabotage it’s called, and it applies to planes as well, with exemptions. Canada has similar laws and exemptions. A sensible agreement would allow in-country and cross-country travel on both Canadian and US ships, with Canadian and/or US crew. In one stoke, ridership would double, and many lines would be profitable.
Politicians of a certain stripe support trains because they look futuristic and allow money to go to friends. Europeans brag of their fast trains, but they all lose money, and Europe had to ban many short hop flights to help their trains compete. Without this, Europeans would fly. There is room to help a friend with a new ferry, but not as much as when you buy land and lay track. We could try to lead in fancy ferries going 40 mph or faster, providing good docks, and some insurance. Investors would take little risk since a ferry route can be moved**. Don’t try that with a train.
In Detroit we have a close up of train mismanagement involving the “People Mover.” It has no ridership to speak of. Our politicians then added “The Q line” to connect to it. People avoid both lines. I think people would use a ferry along the Detroit river, though, St. Claire to Wyandotte, Detroit, Toledo — and to Cleveland or Buffalo. Our lakes and rivers are near-empty superhighways. Let’s use them.
Robert Buxbaum, January 2, 2024. *The US air cabotage act (49 U.S.C. 41703) prohibits the transportation of persons, property, or mail for compensation or hire between points of the U.S. in a foreign civil aircraft. We’ve managed exemptions, though, e.g. for US air traffic with Airbus and Embraer planes. We can do the same with ferries.
** I notice that it was New York’s ferries, and their captains, that rescued the people on Sullenberger’s plane when it went down in the Hudson River — added Jan. 6.
Franklin’s walking stick, willed to General Washington. Now in the Smithsonian.
Many famous people carried walking sticks Washington, Churchill, Moses, Dali. Until quite recently, it was “a thing”. Benjamin Franklin willed one, now in the Smithsonian, to George Washington, to act as a sort of scepter: “My fine crab-tree walking stick, with a gold head curiously wrought in the form of the cap of liberty, I give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington. If it were a Scepter, he has merited it, and would become it. It was a present to me from that excellent woman, Madame de Forbach, the dowager Duchess of Deux-Ponts”. A peculiarity of this particular stick is that the stick is uncommonly tall, 46 1/2″. This is too tall for casual, walking use, and it’s too fancy to use as a hiking stick. Franklin himself, used a more-normal size walking stick, 36 3/8″ tall, currently in the collection of the NY Historical Society. Washington too seems to have favored a stick of more normal length.
Washington with walking stick
Walking sticks project a sort of elegance, as well as providing personal protection. Shown below is President Andrew Jackson defending himself against an assassin using his walking stick to beat off an assassin. He went on to give souvenir walking sticks to friends and political supporters. Sticks remained a common political gift for 100 years, at least through the election of Calvin Coolidge.
Andrew Jackson defends himself.
I started making walking sticks a few years back, originally for my own use, and then for others when I noticed that many folks who needed canes didn’t carry them. It was vanity, as best I could tell: the normal, “old age” cane is relatively short, about 32″. Walking with it makes you bend over; you look old and decrepit. Some of the folks who needed canes, carried hiking sticks, I noticed, about 48″. These are too tall to provide any significant support, as the only way to grasp one was from the side. Some of my canes are shown below. They are about 36″ tall, typically with a 2″ wooden ball as a head. They look good, you stand straight, and they provides support and balance when going down stairs.
Some of my walking sticks.
I typically make my sticks of American Beech, a wood of light weight, with good strength, and a high elastic modulus of elasticity, about 1.85 x106 psi. Oak, hickory, and ash are good options, but they are denser, and thus more suited to self-defense. Wood is better than metal for many applications, IMHO, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. The mathematician Euler showed the the effective strength of a walking stick does not depend on the compressive strength but rather on elastic constant via “the Euler buckling equation”, one of many tremendously useful equations developed by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783).
For a cylindrical stick, the maximum force supported by a stick is: F = π3Er4/4L2, where F is the force, r is the radius, L is the length, and E is the elastic modulus. I typically pick a diameter of 3/4″ or 7/8″, and fit the length to the customer. For a 36″ beech stick, the buckling strength is calculated to be 221 or 409 pounds respectively. I add a rubber bottom to make it non–scuff and less slip-prone. I sometimes add a rope thong, too. Here is a video of Fred Astaire dancing with this style of stick. It’s called “a pin stick”, in case you are interested because it looks like a giant pin.
Country Irishmen are sometimes depicted with a heavy walking stick called a Shillelagh. It’s used for heavier self-defense than available with a pin-stick, and is generally seen being used as a cudgel. There are Japanese versions of self defense using a lighter, 36″ stick, called a Han-bo, as shown here. There is also the wand, as seen for example in Harry Potter. It focuses magical power. Similar to this is Moses’s staff that he used in front of Pharaoh, a combination wand and hiking stick as it’s typically pictured. It might have been repurposed for the snake-on-a-stick that protects against dark forces. Dancing with a stick, Astaire style, can drive away emotional forces, while the more normal use is elegance, and avoiding slips.
The first 15 months of the pandemic were grim periods of lockdown, except in Sweden where the health minister declared that lockdowns would not do anything except delay the inevitable. They chose to protect only the most vulnerable, and kept everything else open. By May, 2021, it looked like that was a mistake. Sweden had a seen a sickness and death rate that was fairly average for the world, but high compared to more locked down nordic countries, like Norway, Finland, and Germany. And now vaccines were here that were supposed to be 100% effective, both at stopping the sickness and the spread. We were at the end, opening up, and Sweden had blundered. They had ‘ignored the science,’ as Fauci put it.
Excess mortality January 26 2020 to March 1, 2023, from Our World in Data. I focus on excess deaths here, rather than COVID specifically, because death is a metric that is hard to fudge.
Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the vaccines were far less than 100% effective. The current estimate is that 2 shots are 24% effective at preventing the disease and 0% effective at preventing the spread. This is a problem in much of medical science these days: successful results tend to be irreproducible, I discuss the reason here. The disease had evolved, and somehow the experiments had not noticed. What’s more they had side-effects (all drugs do). People were dying at a faster rate than before in the US, and in many European countries (see graph below). There was no flattening of the curve suggesting that the vaccine didn’t work. By last year, I had noticed that US COVID deaths did not decrease with the advent of vaccines. Strangely, deaths did not increase as fast in Sweden. By 2022, Sweden was doing better than its lock-down peers. As of today, it’s doing much better. So, what have we learned?
The results of the 6 month Pfizer trial already suggested there might be a problem -that perhaps the vaccine did more harm than good. The above were the results in the Biologics Licence Application (BLA) report (page 23), submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to apply for vaccine approval, November, 2021. The vaccine decreased COVID but increased other cause death even more. Suspicious.
The fact that the death rate did generally not go down when a majority were vaccinated and the most vulnerable were already dead suggests that vaccination does not help much. That excess death increased in some countries (Norway, Finland, Germany) suggests that either the side-effects of the vaccine are worse than the disease itself or that some other aspect of the treatment (lockdowns?) were worse than the disease. The vaccine still may be shown to have helped, but it doesn’t look like it helped much. The fact that lock-down countries are doing worse than Sweden suggests that lockdowns actually hurt. This is significant. One thing to learn is that you have a right to not trust medical science: you have a right to be wrong. Mr Spock never trusted Bones’s medicine. You have a particularly strong right to doubt when you have evidence as strong as the map below (excess deaths in Europe as it stood in December 2021). Already Sweden was doing well and the experts were looking very wrong.
A map of excess deaths in Europe as of December 2021. Already many countries had passed Sweden. Eastern and Southern Europe were particularly hard hit.
I can now speculate on the mechanism; why might lockdowns hurt or kill? I suggested it’s loneliness. Perhaps it’s inaction, or mental distress. People would rather get an electric shock than sit a think without doing anything. It might be that lockdowns prevented other medical treatment. Whatever the mechanism, you’d think that our government would have acknowledged, by early 2022, that lockdowns were not working. Instead virtually every state continued lockdowns through a good chunk of 2022 with school closures, limited seating, etc.
I suspect that “long COVID” may be a form of lock-down depression plus associated noxious behaviors: increased drug and alcohol use, lack of exercise, and avoiding treatment for health problems. I suggested iodine hand wash (and gargle) to stop the disease spread (I imagine it’s on surfaces), and still think it’s a good idea. Iodine is cheap and it definitely kills all germs. Other anti-isolation nostrums include exercise, lithium, aspirin, letters, and hydroxycholoroquine. There was reasonable statistical evidence for several of these things helping, though Fauci denied it. Perhaps they only helped via ‘the placebo effect’. But placebo cures are real, especially for mental problems.
Robert Buxbaum, March 30, 2023. As an add-on (April 2, 2013), I’d like to show the decline in life-expectancy in the US compared to other countries. Isolation is a killer. A lot of the blame goes to Fauci for continuing to push socially isolating solutions as “the science”, while blasting any who say otherwise. We’ve lost 3 years of life-span in 3 years — preventably avoided — when other countries have lost zero or one. There could be no greater inditement of the health management.
This is from the Financial Times. The US is doing worst of all in terms of lives lost to the pandemic and it continues. Isolating people is torture. We then blame them for feeling distrust. I blame Biden and Fauci.
There are a lot of abortions in China, and not many births. Last year, there were about 9.7 million abortions in the major clinics and almost 12 million live births. That’s about 8.5 live births per 1000 Chinese population and 79.7 abortions per 100 live births. If you include the minor clinics and the abortion pill, it’s likely that there are more abortions than live births in China. It’s the preferred method of birth control. In the US, the ratio of abortions to births has grown but we have only about 1/4 as many abortions as births.
Births and abortions per year in China to 2020, from The Economist, 2023. The biggest change is decreased births, not increased abortions.
The birthrate in China is low and decreasing. China had pushed for one-child families as a cure for overpopulation and a route to a richer China with abortion promoted as a safe, painless way to end an unwanted pregnancy. Billboard ads continue to show happy women who are leading their best life now that they’ve had an abortion. Of course, during the one-child years, if you had that extra baby, the state might take your baby him or her. Condom ads were forbidden, and remain so to this day.
China seems to have succeeded too well. The population has leveled out, and has began to decline this year — likely too fast. Meanwhile the economy has grown by an average of 10% per year for 40 years, so that China is now, likely the second largest economy on the planet, but has such an old population that this is unlikely to continue. One down-side of the heavy reliance on abortion is that it’s produced a severe sex imbalance. The Chinese chose to abort mostly girls. It’s also resulted in an active sex trade. I’ve claimed it will lead to war, famine, or an economic collapse in the next ten years.
Add for a Chinese abortion clinic. See how happy the lady is. Chinese ads have English because it’s cool — it suggests that this clinic serves Americans and British too.
In the US, there were 3,664,000 births in 2022, 12.012 births per 1000 people. That’s 1.5 times the birth rate of China, and a 1% increase from 2020, but significantly below the birthrate of the boomer generation. In the last year, there were 928,000 abortions, see graph below, or 25.3 abortions per 100 live births. Our population is as old as China’s, but the additional children suggests that our society will continue longer.
In America, the case for abortion is that it’s a woman’s right, see ad below. Anti-abortion is presented as slavery and a Republican plot for male domination. Politically, this has been a winning argument for Democrats; helping them win big in elections. They made good on the argument and amended the Michigan constitution to allow abortion till birth with the father having no say. The legal and religious establishment has gone along. They may want some limitations, but there is no consensus on what the limitation should be.
Abortions per year, US, Guttmacher Inst. report, 2022.
It’s been suggested that a good way to lower the abortion rate would be higher taxes to provide more healthcare and child benefits. That may be, though I’m not sure it’s the direct, sure route. China has free healthcare and benefits. I suspect that the preachers should do more personally to deal with the vulnerable. Another thought is to promote is rural living. In the US and China, rural areas have higher birth rates, while the cities have low birth rates and high abortion rates. The highest abortion rate in the US is in Washington DC.
In the US, abortion is presented as a right, and as a Republican anti-woman plot.
My overall sense is that Children are good: Admittedly, they are expensive hobbies, but they are worth it, for the parents, for the nation, and in particular for the child. Children are a beautiful part of life and a beautiful part of any environment, IMHO. They like to grow amid sunshine and fresh air.
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.
It’s good to have hero, someone whose approach to life, family and business you admire that you might reasonably be able to follow. As an engineer, inventor, I came to regard Peter Cooper of New York as a hero. He made his own business and was a success, in business and with his family without being crooked. This is something that is not as common as you might think. When I was in 4th grade, we got weekly assignments to read a biography and write about it. I tended to read about scientists and inventors then and after. I quickly discovered that successful inventors tended to die broke, estranged from their family and friends. Edison, Tesla, Salk, Goodyear, and Ford are examples. Tesla didn’t marry. Henry Ford’s children were messed up. Salk had a miserable marriage. Almost everyone working on the Atom Bomb had issues with the government. Most didn’t benefit financially. They died hated by the press as mass-murderers, and pursued by the FBI as potential spies. It was a sad pattern for someone who hoped to be an inventor -engineer.
The one major exception I found was Peter Cooper, an inventor, industrialist, and New York politician who was honest, and who died wealthy and liked with a good family. One result of reading about him was to conclude that some engineering areas are better than others; generally making weapons is not a path to personal success.
Tom Thumb, the blower at right is the secret to its light weight per power.
Peter Cooper was different, both in operation and outcome. Though he made some weapons (gun barrels) and inverted a remote control torpedo, these were not weapons of mass killing. Besides he but thee for “the good side” of the Civil War. And, when Cooper made an invention or a product, he made sure to have the capital available to make a profit on it too. He worked hard to make sure his products were monopolies, using a combination of patents and publicity to secure their position.
Brand management helps.
Cooper was a strong family man who made sure to own his own business, and made sure to control the sources of key materials too. He liked to invest in other businesses, but only as the controlling share-holder, or as a bond holder, believing that minor share-holders tend to be cheated. He was pro monopoly, pro trusts, and a big proponet of detailed contracts, so everyone knew where they stood. A famous invention of Cooper’s was Jello, a flavored, light version of his hide-glue, see the patent here. Besides patenting it, he sold the product with his brand, thus helping to maintain the monopoly.
Cooper was generous with donations to the poor, but not to everyone, and not with loans. And he would not sign anyone’s note as a guarantor. Borrowers tended to renege, he found, and they resent you besides. You lose your money, and lost them as a friend. He founded two free colleges, Cooper Union, and the Cooper-Limestone Institute, plus an inventor’s institute. (I got my education, free from Cooper Union.) Cooper ran these institutions in his lifetime, not waiting till he was dead to part with his money. Many do this in the vain hope that others will run the institution as they would.
Peter Cooper always sought a monopoly, or a near monopoly, patenting his own inventions, or buying the rights to others’ patents to help make it so. He believed that monopolies were good, saying they were the only sort of business that made money while allowing him to treat his workers well. If an invention would not result in a monopoly, Peter Cooper gave the rights away.
The list of inventions he didn’t patent include the instruments to test the quality of glue and steel (quality control is important), and a tide-powered ferry in New York. Perhaps his most famous unpainted invention was a lightweight, high power steam locomotive, “The Tom Thumb”, made in 1840. Innovations included beveled wheels to center the carriage on its rails, and a blower on the boiler fire, see photo above. The blower meant he could generate high-power in a small space at light weight. These are significant innovations, but Cooper did not foresee having a monopoly, so he didn’t pursue these ideas. Instead, he focussed on making rails and wire rope; he patented the process to roll steel, and the process for making coke from coal. Also on his glue/jello business. Since he made these items from dead cows and horses, he found he could also sell “foot oil” and steam-pounded leather, “Chamois”. He also pursued a telephone/ telegraph business across the Atlantic, more on that below, but only after getting monopoly rights for 50 years.
Cooper managed to stay friends with those he competed with by paying license fees for any patents he used (he tried to negotiate low rates), or buying or selling the patent rights as seemed appropriate. He also licensed his patents, and rented out buildings he didn’t need. He rented at a rate of 7% of the sale price, a metric I’ve used myself, considering rental to be like buying on loan. There is a theory of stock-buying that matches this.
The story the telegraph cable across the Atlantic is instructive to seeing how the pieces fit together. The first significant underwater cable was not laid by Cooper, by a Canadian inventor, Frederick Gisborne. It was laid in 1852 between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Through personal connections, Gisborne’s company got exclusive rights for 30 years, for this and for a cable that would go to Newfoundland, but he didn’t have the money or baking to make it happen. The first cable failed, and Gisborne ran out of money and support. Only his exclusive rights remained. This is the typical story of an inventor/ engineer/businessman who has to rely on other peoples’ money and patience.
A few months after the failure, a friend of Cooper’s, Cyrus Field, convinced Cooper that good money could be made, and public good could be done, if Cooper could lay such a cable all the way to London. One thing that attracted Cooper to the project was that the cable could be made as an insulated iron-copper rope in Cooper’s own factory. Cooper, Field, and some partners (see painting below) bought Gisborne’s company, along with their exclusive rights, and formed a new company, The New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, see charter here. The founders are imagined* with a globe and a section of cable sitting on their table. Gisborne, though not shown in the painting, was a charter member, and made chief engineer. Cooper was president. He also traveled on the boat with Gisborne to lay the cable across the St. Lawrence – just to be sure he knew what was going on. This cable provided a trial for The Trans Atlantic cable.
The founding individuals to lay a transatlantic cable. Peter Cooper at left is the chairman, Cyrus Field is standing, Samuel Morse is at the back. Frederic Gisborne, a founder, does not appear in the paining. Typical.
Samuel Morse was hired as an electrician; he is pictured in the painting, but was not a charter member. Part of the problem with Morse was that he owned the patent on Morse-telegraphy, and Cooper didn’t want to pay his “exorbitant” fees. So Cooper and Field bought an alternative telegraph patent from David Hughes, a Kentucky school teacher. This telegraph system used tones instead of clicks and printed whole letters at a time. By hiring Morse, but not his patents, Cooper saved money, while retaining Morse’s friendship and expertise. The alternative could have been a nasty spat. Their telegraph company sub-licensed Hughes’s tone-method a group of western telegraph owners, “The Western Union,” who used it for many years, producing the distinctive Western Union Telegrams. With enough money in hand and credibility from the Canadian trial, the group secured 50 years monopoly rights for a telegraph line across the Atlantic. Laying the cable took many years, with semi-failed attempts in 1857, 1858, and 1865. When the eventual success came in 1866, the 50 years’ monopoly rights they’d secured meant that they made money from the start. They could treat workers fairly. Marconi would discover that Cooper wrote a good contract; his wireless telegraph required a widely different route.
I should also note that Peter Cooper was politically active: he started as a Democrat, helped form the Republican Party, bringing Lincoln to speak in NY for the first time, and ended up founding the Greenback-Labor Party, running for president as a Greenback. He was strongly for tariffs, and strongly against inflation. He said that the dollar should have the same value for all time for the same reason that the foot should have the same length and the pound the same weight. I have written in favor of tariffs off and on. They help keep manufacturing in America, and help insure that those who require French wine or German cars pay the majority of US taxes. They are also a non-violent vehicle for foreign policy.
Operating under these principles, through patents and taxed monopolies, Peter Cooper died wealthy, and liked. Liked by his workers, liked by much of the press, and by his family too, with children who turned out well. The children of rich people often turn out poorly. Carnegie’s children fought each other in court, Ford’s were miserable. Cooper’s children continued in business and politics, successfully and honorably, and in science/ engineering (Peter Coper Hewitt invented the power rectifier, sold to Westinghouse). The success of Peter Cooper’s free college, Cooper Union, influenced many of his friends to open similar institutions. Among his friends who did this were Carnegie, Pratt, Stevens, Rensselaer, and Vanderbilt. He stayed friends with them and with other inventors of the day, despite competing in business and politics. Most rich folks can not do this; they tend to develop big egos, and few principles.
Robert Buxbaum, November 30, 2022. I find the painting interesting. Why was it painted? Why is Gisborne not in it and Morse in the painting — sometimes described as vice President? The charter lists Morse as “electrician”, an employee. Chandler White, holding papers next to Cooper, was Vice President. My guess is that the painting was made to help promote the company and sell stock. They made special cigars with this image too. This essay started as a 5th grade project with my son. See a much earlier version here.
It is a particular skill of management to hog the glory and cast the blame; if a project succeeds, executives will make it understood that the groups’ success was based on their leadership (and their ability to get everyone to work hard for low pay). If the project fails, a executive will cast blame typically on those who spotted the problem some months early. These are the people most likely to blame the executive, so the executive discredits them first.
This being the dynamic of executive oversight, it becomes difficult to look over the work of a group and tell who is doing good and who is coasting. If someone’s got to be fired in the middle of a project, or after, who do you fire? My first thought is that, following a failure, you fire the manager and the guy at the top who drew the top salary. That’s what winning sports teams do. It seems to promote “rebuilding” it’s a warning to those who follow. After the top people are gone, you might get an honest appraisal of what went wrong and what to do next.
A related problem, if you’re looking to hire is who to pick or promote from within. In the revolutionary army, they allowed the conscripts to pick some of their commanders, and promoted others based on success. This may not be entirely fair, as there are many causes to success and failure, but it seemed to work better than the British system, where you picked by birth or education. Here’s a lovely song about the value of university education in a modern major general.
A form of this feedback about who knows what he’d doing and who does not, is to look at who is listened to by colleagues. When someone speaks, do people who know listen. It’s a method I’ve used to try to guess who knew things in a field outside my own. Bull-shitters tend to be ignored when they speak. The major general above is never listened to.
In basketball or hockey, the equivalent method is to see who the other players pass to the most, and who steals the most from the other side. It does not take much watching to get a general sense, but statistics help. With statistics, one can set up a hierarchical system based on who listens to whom, or who passes to whom with a logistic equation as used for chess and dating sites. A lower-paid person at the center-top is a gem who you might consider promoting.
In terms of overall group management, it was the opinion of W Edwards Deming, the name-sake of the Deming prize for quality, that overall group success was typically caused by luck or by some non-human cause. Thus that any manager would be as good as any other. Deming had a lovely experiment to show why this is likely the case– see it here. If one company or team did better year after year, it was common that they were in the right territory, or at the right time. As an example, the person who succeeded selling big computers in New York in the 1960s was not necessarily a good salesman or manager. Anyone could have managed that success. To the extent that this is true, you should not fire people readily, but neither worry that your highest paid manager or salesman is irreplaceable.
I’d written previously about Marcel Duchamp’s early work as a founder of the Dada school of modern art, a school that aims to say nothing about anything except about itself. Duchamp hung a urinal as art and called it “fountain.” It was comic, insulting, and engaging — an inspiration for many modern arts to follow , and much bad modern art, too — the collections of string and found objects and paintings of squares or squiggles. But the story of Duchamp is interesting. In 1925, M. Duchamp gave up on art, at least this type of art and became a chess player. As with art, he was very good at it, and became the French chess champion. Now that’s an unexpected turn.
What sort of chess did Marcel Duchamp play? Modern. Very modern. While tradition chess had focussed on the center. He developed at the sides, a strategy that was called an “Indian attack”, named (I assume) after American Indians attacking a stage-coach. Instead of attacking directly, the popular image of an Indian attack is attack from the sides, or behind trees. In chess, it involves typically a “fianchettoed bishop.” Other modern chess players of the time attacked from the side too (Réti, Alekhine) but they generally worked form one side or the other with some central presence. Duchamp worked from both, often with no center.
Position after white’s 13th move
Here is a dramatic example, a position from a game with an American great, GM George Koltanowski. It’s 13 moves in, with Duchamp, is black, generally considered the weaker side. He has fianchettoed both of his bishops, and given up the center to Koltanowski. It’s Duchamp’s turn to move/ He will win in three moves.
Notice that Koltanowsi’s bishops point outward, as a cowboys guns might point, or as from a British fighting square. Meanwhile, Duchamp’s bishops point inward, with his queen -bishop almost directly at the white king. The game proceeded as follows. 13…, Nxd5 14.Nxd7, Nxf4 15.Nxf8, Bd4, 0-1..
The full game, seen here,. It might prove instructive if you want to explore in Duchamp’s footsteps. While I play traditionally, I sometimes fianchetto, and do not find it racist that such side-attacks are called “Indian attacks.” Perhaps that’s because I’m old and used to such things, or because they very often work.
Please Touch. M. Duchamp 1947
Self-portrait, M. Duchamp, 1957 (torn paper on black velvet).
As M. Duchamp’s chess skills waned, he returned to the art world, going in the opposite direction of Dali. Duchamp’s last works are small, and simple. They are still arresting but more dream-like. Dali’s works grew bigger and busier as he got older.
Every now and again a book or movie includes a chess game. Generally, it’s in a story where death is on the line. It’s a literary device used to indicate high mental acumen of the people involved, particularly the one who wins. As an example, in “Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows”, 2011, Holmes plays Moriarty, each calling out moves far advanced for the 1800s. It emphasizes these individuals’ super-smarts. Holmes wins at the end, of course. The Ingrid Berman film, “The Seventh Seal” is similar, with the chess game played against death himself. The knight shows himself a more-than-worth opponent. And that brings us to Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, book 1 of the series, and movie, Ron Weasley is presented as a sort-of fool throughout the series. He’s mostly as source of background information about wizarding, but in one episode standout, he plays brilliantly with giant-size chess men against a magical intelligence, and wins. After the game, one that is described as one of the best ever, Ron goes back to being the goof-ball he was throughout. His chess skills don’t come up again, or do they. It’s a well written series, so what’s the point of including the game?
Position of pieces in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone (movie).
To see how brilliant Ron’s play is, recall that Ron is eleven years old in book 1. He, Harry, and Hermione enter a mysterious room filled with menacing statues. Ron immediately realizes it’s a chess board, and infers that they must win as black to pass through. He further infers that the piece representing Harry must make the checkmate. Two or three pieces are missing, and Ron infers that Harry’s character must replace one of these and become the mating piece. If you’ve ever played a decent computer, you know it’s very hard to win as white (in the 90s you could still win). This ghost intelligence plays quite well, and it’s almost impossible to win if you need to have a particular minor piece make the mate. In the movie, Ron plays as black and reaches the position shown with Harry as the king’s bishop and Hermione as a rook. He is down in material, but has laid a very good trap. The white queen captures the “free pawn” on d3, violently threatening the Harry-bishop. Ron interposes the rook to c3 forcing the white queen to take the rook. At this point, Ron could win by B-c5+, QxB, N-h3 mate, but that would sacrifice Harry and leave Ron as the winning piece. Both Ron and Hermione realize this, and Ron causes Harry to make the checkmate by N-h3+, QxN, B-c5+, Q-f3, BxQ mate. Ron is injured when QxN — a sacrifice in both senses of the word.
Death plays chess, painting by Albertus Pictor, 1480
It’s an impressive display of chess skill, and Dumbledore is right in saying it’s one of the best games. No normal player could manage a game like that, certainly no eleven year old. Normally such a display would be used to present Ron as the group brain, or at least as a very deep thinker. If so, why does the author have Ron revert to his care-free, stupid persona with chess never showing up.
We see that Voldemort, the arch villain, won his game too, and only lost a few pieces doing it. That Voldemort is good at chess is no surprise; it goes with his deep-thinking persona. We don’t see Voldemort’s game, but I can infer that he won via the Trailer gambit. It’s a fairly tricky win, but the only way that I know where you win as black losing only a kings bishop, a rook, and a knight, the pieces that Ron and his friends replaced. The Queen is the winning piece, though, and that’s a lot simpler than winning with a bishop. Ron’s win is far more sophisticated, a surprise given Ron’s behavior and how he is treated.
Perhaps it’s just bad writing, or an effort to show Ron is good at something, but I thought to do a quick re-read of Ron’s early appearance in book 2. Here I find that Ron is bright and motivated, but overshadowed. Early in the book, we find 12 year old Ron picking a lock using a hat pin, and driving a flying car reasonably well. We don’t think this is exceptional because his brothers do all this first, but it is exceptional: imagine tryin to drive a regular car with no instruction at 12. Later we find that Ron learns the fine points of Quidditch without native skill or a coach, just using a book, and we find that Dumbledore picks him to prefect, instead of Harry, a job he does well. Finally, we find that Hermione prefers Ron to Harry. It’s a somewhat surprising turn because she’s supposed to be the brains of the trio. How could she stand to be with Ron? Perhaps she is one of the few people who sees that Ron is bright. Dumbledore is too.
Viewed this way, the chess game becomes the first of the examples of Ron’s brainpower, and becomes an important foreshadowing to a surprise at the end of the last book/movie, to the final battle against Voldemort. In that battle, while everyone else is throwing hexes, Ron is the one who realizes that, to win the war, he must go to the basement chamber and collect basilisk teeth. It’s chess thinking: he’s focused on the king, on Voldemort, while everyone else is dealing with side threats. In a sense, it’s Ron who defeats Voldemort. The chess game is a foreshadowing, and fits with Hermione’s choice of Ron over Harry.
Robert Buxbaum, August 26, 2022. If you like chess puzzles, find some here. And in “Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey,” 1991, the brilliance idea is sort-of reversed. Bill and Ted play against death in battleship, twister, and clue, and win. It’s used to show that death is sort of random, and sort of stupid.
