Category Archives: personal relationships

The dangers of political humor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Buxbaum December 23, 2019.

A mathematical approach to finding Mr (or Ms) Right.

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A lot of folks want to marry their special soulmate, and there are many books to help get you there, but I thought I might discuss a mathematical approach that optimizes your chance of marrying the very best under some quite-odd assumptions. The set of assumptions is sometimes called “the fussy suitor problem” or the secretary problem. It’s sometimes presented as a practical dating guide, e.g. in a recent Washington Post article. My take, is that it’s not a great strategy for dealing with the real world, but neither is it total nonsense.

The basic problem was presented by Martin Gardner in Scientific American in 1960 or so. Assume you’re certain you can get whoever you like (who’s single); assume further that you have a good idea of the number of potential mates you will meet, and that you can quickly identify who is better than whom; you have a desire to marry none but the very best, but you don’t know who’s out there until you date, and you’ve an the inability to go back to someone you’ve rejected. This might be he case if you are a female engineering student studying in a program with 50 male engineers, all of whom have easily bruised egos. Assuming the above, it is possible to show, using Riemann Integrals (see solution here), that you maximize your chance of finding Mr/Ms Right by dating without intent to marry 36.8 % of the fellows (1/e), and then marrying the first fellow who’s better than any of the previous you’ve dated. I have a simpler, more flexible approach to getting the right answer, that involves infinite serieses; I’ll hope to show off some version of this at a later date.

Bluto, Popeye, or wait for someone better? In the cartoon as I recall, she rejects the first few people she meets, then meets Bluto and Popeye. What to do?

With this strategy, one can show that there is a 63.2% chance you will marry someone, and a 36.8% you’ll wed the best of the bunch. There is a decent chance you’ll end up with number 2. You end up with no-one if the best guy appears among the early rejects. That’s a 36.8% chance. If you are fussy enough, this is an OK outcome: it’s either the best or no-one. I don’t consider this a totally likely assumption, but it’s not that bad, and I find you can recalculate fairly easily for someone OK with number 2 or 3. The optimal strategy then, I think, is to date without intent at the start, as before, but to take a 2nd or 3rd choice if you find you’re unmarried after some secondary cut off. It’s solvable by series methods, or dynamic computing.

It’s unlikely that you have a fixed passel of passive suitors, of course, or that you know nothing of guys at the start. It also seems unlikely that you’re able to get anyone to say yes or that you are so fast evaluating fellows that there is no errors involved and no time-cost to the dating process. The Washington Post does not seem bothered by any of this, perhaps because the result is “mathematical” and reasonable looking. I’m bothered, though, in part because I don’t like the idea of dating under false pretense, it’s cruel. I also think it’s not a winning strategy in the real world, as I’ll explain below.

One true/useful lesson from the mathematical solution is that it’s important to learn from each date. Even a bad date, one with an unsuitable fellow, is not a waste of time so long as you leave with a better sense of what’s out there, and of what you like. A corollary of this, not in the mathematical analysis but from life, is that it’s important to choose your circle of daters. If your circle of friends are all geeky engineers, don’t expect to find Prince Charming among them. If you want Prince Charming, you’ll have to go to balls at the palace, and you’ll have to pass on the departmental wine and cheese.

If you want Prince Charming, you may have to associate with a different crowd from the one you grew up with. Whether that’s a good idea for a happy marriage is another matter.

The assumptions here that you know how many fellows there are is not a bad one, to my mind. Thus, if you start dating at 16 and hope to be married by 32, that’s 16 years of dating. You can use this time-frame as a stand in for total numbers. Thus if you decide to date-for-real after 37%, that’s about age 22, not an unreasonable age. It’s younger than most people marry, but you’re not likely to marry the fort person you meet after age 22. Besides, it’s not great dating into your thirties — trust me, I’ve done it.

The biggest problem with the original version of this model, to my mind, comes from the cost of non-marriage just because the mate isn’t the very best, or might not be. This cost gets worse when you realize that, even if you meet prince charming, he might say no; perhaps he’s gay, or would like someone royal, or richer. Then again, perhaps the Kennedy boy is just a cad who will drop you at some time (preferably not while crossing a bridge). I would therefor suggest, though I can’t show it’s optimal that you start out by collecting information on guys (or girls) by observing the people around you who you know: watch your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Listen to their conversation and you can get a pretty good idea of what’s available even before your first date. If you don’t like any of them, and find you’d like a completely different circle, it’s good to know early. Try to get a service job within ‘the better circle’. Working with people you think you might like to be with, long term, is a good idea even if you don’t decide to marry into the group in the end.

Once you’ve observed and interacted with the folks you think you might like, you can start dating for real from the start. If you’re super-organized, you can create a chart of the characteristics and ‘tells’ of characteristics you really want. Also, what is nice but not a deal-breaker. For these first dates, you can figure out the average and standard deviation, and aim for someone in the top 5%. A 5% target is someone whose two standard deviations above the average. This is simple Analysis of variation math (ANOVA), math that I discussed elsewhere. In general you’ll get to someone in the top 5% by dating ten people chosen with help from friends. Starting this way, you’ll avoid being unreasonably cruel to date #1, nor will you loose out on a great mate early on.

Some effort should be taken to look at the fellow’s family and his/her relationship with them. If their relationship is poor, or their behavior is, your kids may turn out similar.

After a while, you can say, I’ll marry the best I see, or the best that seems like he/she will say yes (a smaller sub-set). You should learn from each date, though, and don’t assume you can instantly size someone up. It’s also a good idea to meet the family since many things you would not expect seem to be inheritable. Meeting some friends too is a good idea. Even professionals can be fooled by a phony, and a phony will try to hide his/her family and friends. In the real world, dating should take time, and even if you discover that he/ she is not for you, you’ll learn something about what is out there: what the true average and standard deviation is. It’s not even clear that people fall on a normal distribution, by the way.

Don’t be too upset if you reject someone, and find you wish you had not. In the real world you can go back to one of the earlier fellows, to one of the rejects, if one does not wait too long. If you date with honesty from the start you can call up and say, ‘when I dated you I didn’t realize what a catch you were’ or words to that effect. That’s a lot better than saying ‘I rejected you based on a mathematical strategy that involved lying to all the first 36.8%.’

Robert Buxbaum, December 9, 2019. This started out as an essay on the mathematics of the fussy suitor problem. I see it morphed into a father’s dating advice to his marriage-age daughters. Here’s the advice I’d given to one of them at 16. I hope to do more with the math in a later post.

Samuel Johnson and British elitism during the revolution.

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A common opinion of Samuel Johnson was that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”. It’s recorded by Boswell on April 5, 1776 well into the revolution, and applied equally to the American revolutionaries and all other unpaid enthusiasts. Johnson wrote for money. He wrote sermons for priests, he wrote political speeches for Troys, he wrote serialized travel logs, and at one point a tearful apology for a priest about to be hanged for forgery. That he was paid was proof that he was good at writing, though not 100% convincing. The priest was forgiven and acquitted in the public eye, but he was hanged for the forgery none-the-less. 

Some Samuel Johnson Quotes about America

Johnson was unequivocal in his opinion of American independence. His pamphlet ,”Taxation no Tyranny” 1775 (read it here) makes a semi-convincing Tory argument that taxation without representation is in no way tyranny, and is appropriate for America. America, it’s argued, exists for the good of the many, and that’s mainly for the good of England. He notes that, for the most part, Americans came to the land willingly, and thus gave up their rights: “By his own choice he has left a country, where he had a vote and little property, for another, where he has great property, but no vote.” Others left other lands or were sent as criminals. They “deserved no more rights than The Cornish people,” according to Johnson. Non-landed people, in general had no vote, and he considered that appropriate. Apparently, if they had any mental value, they’d be able to afford an estate. His views of Irish Catholics were somewhat similar , “we conquered them.” By we, Johnson meant Cromwell over a century earlier, followed by William of Orange. Having beat the Irish Catholics at the battle of the Boyne meant that that the Protestants deserved to rule despite the Catholics retaining a substantial right to land. I am grateful that Johnson does not hide his claim to rulership in the will of God, or in some claim to benefit the Irish or Americans, by the way. It is rule of superior over inferior, pure and simple. Basically, ‘I’m better than you, so I get to rule.’

One must assume that Johnson realized that the US founders wrote well, as he admitted that some Whigs (Burke) wrote well. Though he was paid for writing “Taxation no Tyranny”, Johnson justifies the rejection of US founding fathers’ claims by noting they are motivated by private gain. He calls American leaders rascals, robbers, and pirates, but is certain that they can be beat into submission. The British army , he says, is strong enough that they can easily “burn and destroy them,” and advises they should so before America gets any stronger. He tells Boswell, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” Even after a treaty was signed, he confides, “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.”

I’ve come to love Johnson’s elitism, his justification for rule and exploitation based purely on his own superiority and that of his fellow British. It allows him to present his prejudices uncommonly clearly, mixing in enough flattery to be convincing to those who accept his elitist perspective. That makes his words eminently quotable. It doesn’t make them right, nor does it mean that his was a useful way to deal with people or problems. Adam Smith was willing to admit that the Americans had a gripe, and suggests the simple remedy of giving Americans a voice in Parliament. His solution might have kept the empire whole. Edward Gibbon, an expert on Rome who opposed rights for Americans, at least admitted that we might win the war. Realistic views like this are more productive, but far less marketable. If you are to sell your words, it helps to be a pig-headed bigot and a flatterer of those who agree with you. This advantage of offending your opponents was not lost on Johnson as the quote below shows.

Johnson writing about notoriety, a very American attitude.

I’m left to wonder about the source of Johnson’s hatred for Americans though — and for the Irish, Cornish, and Scots. In large part, I think it stems from a view of the world as a zero-sum game. Any gain for the English servant is a loss to the English gentleman. The Americans, like the Irish and Cornish, were subject peoples looking for private benefit. Anything like low taxes was a hurt to the income of him and his fellows. The zero sum is also the view of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol; it is a destructive view.

As for those acted in any way without expectation of pay, those who would write for posterity, or would fight the Quixotic fight, such people were blockheads in his view. He was willing to accept that there were things wrong in England, but could not see how an intelligent person would favor change that did not help him. This extended to his beliefs concerning education of children: “I would not have set their future friendship to hazard for the sake of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for which they might not perhaps have either taste or necessity. You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you have done that they do not delight in your company. No science can be communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no attention can be obtained from children without the affliction of pain, and pain is never remembered without resentment.” This is more of Johnson’s self-interest: don’t teach anything that will bring resentment and no return benefit. Teach the sons of the greats that they are great and that they are to lead. Anything more is a waste or an active harm to the elite.

But what happens when America succeeds? Johnson was still alive and writing in 1783. If the Americans could build an army and maintain prosperous independence, they would have to be respected as an equal or near-equal. Then what of the rest of the empire? How do you admit that this one servant is your equal and not admit that your other servants may be too? This is the main source of his hatred, I think, and also of the hatred the Scrooge has for mankind. It’s the hatred of the small soul for the large, of the sell-out for the enthusiast. If the other fellow’s sacrifice produces a great outcome, that suggests a new order in the stars — it suggests that everything you’ve done was wrong, or soon will be. The phrase “novus ordo seclorum” on our dollars alludes to just that idea, ‘there is a new order in the heavens.’. He must have realized the possibility, and trembled. Could there be something to the rabble, something beyond cash, safety and rule by the elite? I suspect the very thought of it insulted and angered poor Samuel. At his death, he could be comforted that, at least the Irish, Indians, and Canadians remained subservient.

Robert Buxbaum, December 2, 2019. This essay started out as a discussion of paid writing. But I’ve spent many years of my life dealing with elitists who believed that being paid proved they were right. I too hope that my writing will convince people, and maybe I’ll be paid as an expert (Water commissioner?) To hope for personal success, while trying to keep humble is the essential glorious folly of man.

The psychology of Archie comics and Riverdale; then, now, and in the socialist future

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I learned a lot about social interactions from a comic of my youth called “Archie“. A very popular comic for 65 years, from 1941 through the 2010s, the social structure of Archie remained remarkably constant from when I first read it, in the early 60’s to when I read it to my children in the late 90’s. The comic mostly follows the title character, a love struck teenager with two (or more) gorgeous girlfriends, shown below, and his various relationships. I find the original stories to have been hyper-true, that is more true than truth. There are also several spin-offs, including a TV series, “Riverdale“, and an underground comic “Anarchie“. Both have a degree of charm, but the original stands out for it’s wide readership and long run; clearly, it resonated. Riverdale is a far grittier take, further from hyper-reality. 

Archie enjoys a malt with Veronica left and Betty right. Archie prefers Veronica. Betty is a doormat. Though Veronica is rich, she never pays.

In Archie comics, the poorer folks worked, as in real life, at relatively dull jobs. Their parents do too, and the poorer kids are visible poorer. Archie always wore the same clothes and drives (or drove) a junker car. The few rich folks do not work in the same way, as one might expect. In the TV series, and in most TV series’s, everyone has food, friends and a car, without any serious jobs, and little social hierarchy. It’s an ideal world of sorts, but somehow everyone’s messed up.

In the old time comic, one rich character in particular, Reggie Mantle, like to flaunt his wealth and make fun of Archie and his proletarian friend, Jughead. The comic book Veronica was also something of a bitch. Her dad, while occasionally charming, could be a bully as well. He certainly displayed, and benefitted from his exceptional wealth. Meanwhile, in the comic at least, while all the poorer folks worked (except Jughead), not all of them did a good job, most of those who worked did not enjoy it. There was humor in this engaging, realistic take on life.

The school lunch lady, Miss Beasley, was relatable in her extreme dislike for her job. What pleasure she gets, seems to come from making and serving bad food. Though the details of her employment are scarce, my guess was that she was unionized. Otherwise, she would have been fired years ago. There is no similar character in TV’s Riverdale.

Weatherbee and Flootsnoot

The principal, Mr. Weatherbee, also seemed to have trouble with his job, though his relationships were more nuanced. He takes his job seriously and runs an effective school, but he’s overweight, and over-stressed — a walking heart attack. Unlike most of the people at the school, “the bee” does not take out his anger on the kids, or on his fellow faculty. He keeps it in, while tormented by the students, by the parents, by the janitor, Svenson, and in particular by Mr. Flootsnoot, the science teacher. Flootsnoot seems to delight in causing trouble, giving Archie explosives, acid, and animals. My guess is that Flootsnoot is angling for Weatherby’s job, and is not patient enough to wait for Weatherbee’s heart to give out on its own. He’s a character right out of Hitchcock, IMHO.

Ms Grundy, Archie’s teacher was also drawn a victim of playing by the rules in a crooked game. In the original comic, as i read it in the mid 60s, she’s a puritan spinster in a black dress with a tall, laced collar. She seems to dislike Archie and Jughead, but not the other kids, nor her job as such. It makes sense that she’d dislike Archie and Jughead, since Jughead is lazy, and Archie is a skirt chasing cad. By the 90’s when I read Archie with my daughters, Miss Grundy had become a Ms, and was more at peace with her position, and a lot of the humor is gone. In the TV version, Riverdale, Ms Grundy, is in a sexual relationship with Archie. It’s a lot less healthy, and not very humorous.

The main focus, of course is Archie, a workin-class teen, and straight D student. How does he have two (or more) gorgeous girlfriends? After a few years of reading, the explanation becomes obvious, and fairly depressing. Each of his many girlfriends are motivated by jealousy for the others. His first girl is Betty. She’s pretty, poor, hard-working, and a doormat. She’s always there to help out. She is treated like dirt by her richer, “best friend,” Veronica. As best I can tell, Veronica and the others mostly like Archie because Betty does. To some extent Veronica also likes to annoy her rich dad, who is portrayed as confident and proud, except when dealing with his spoiled daughter. This is old-time humor that you’ll also see in Spongebob, or (going further back) Balzac’s “Pere Goriot“.

Veronica bosses her dad around but also makes his life worthwhile, it seems. I assume he once had a wife that he loved. Now he’s got a white-haired companion, a butler, and some rich friends. The love-of-his-life is his daughter, it seems, and she is dating a free-loading cad. Veronica’s rival Betty comes from the same stable, modest backroad as Archie, but. Archie prefers life at Veronica’s house. The food is better, and there is a pool. Mr Lodge barely tolerates Archie and friends. The butler, Smithers, is less excitable, but not as tolerant.

The school also has two psychopaths, Midge and Moose, a dangerous pair. Moose Mason is a football player, dumb or brain damaged, and violently jealous of Midge. Midge, of course, flirts with everyone, and does it in front of Moose. The result is that Moose beats up any boys who respond, much to Midge’s delight. They are a sick and dangerous pair, but very realistic. Jughead, the only normal person in the comic, dislikes the pair, and dislikes both Veronica and Reggie. Jughead has a dog, and a little sister “Jellybean,” who he adores. he also has, to his chagrin, a female stalker, “Big” Ethel. She’s ugly and chases Jughead; Jughead avoids her. Jughead seems to like Archie, though, and is always loyal to him; it’s another of Jughead’s good traits. He’s always pointing Archie to Betty, as a good friend would. Meanwhile, Moose-the-homicidal is protected by “Coach Kleats,” a highly flawed character who’s obsessed with winning, and seems to have been hit in the head one time too many.

A bit more about Jughead (he got his own spinoff comic for a while). Jughead is a classic humor character from antiquity. He’s the Harlequin, the semi-loyal servant: poor, clever, resourceful, and always hungry. He’s the bird man of The Magic Flute. He’s Figaro, and the servant in Don Giovani. He’s Harlie Quinn in Batman. A harlequin makes his own clothes from patchwork, and true to type, Jughead is seen, virtually always wearing a sort-of crown, a “whoopee cap” of his own construction. Because Jughead is poor and lazy, everyone thinks him stupid, but he’s the only one clever enough to size up Midge and Veronica. Jughead’s crown is appropriate since he’s his own master. Archie comics were banned in Saudi Arabia because the Saudis took offense at the concept of a self-crowned king. It’s an unusual concept. In Riverdale, Jughead is a tortured poet who still wears a handmade crown for no obvious reason.

All these relationships had a surreal character. The relationships are funny because they are more real than reality. They also presented a simpler form of humor in that the lowly usually win, while the high and talented usually lose. Reggie commonly loses, as does Weatherbee. Then things began to change in the 2000’s when two token black characters were added: a top scholar/athlete, Chuck Clayton, and his dad, Floyd (or Harry) a wise, athletic, co-coach. These are characters without major flaws, and as such they are not funny. If a writer feels he must include a character like this, a writer should use him as a straight-man, Zeppo Marx for example. And even Zeppo Marx is presented as having a horrible flaw. In Marx Bros. movies, Zeppo is presented as being Groucho’s son. Comedy is built on flawed characters like this, who succeed, and on arrogant ones who fail. With the Claytons, you’re left wondering what comedy do they bring to the situation. Also, why do these individuals tolerate crazy Moose on the team?

In 2010, the writers added an openly gay character, Kevin Keller. A nice fellow, with no flaws who everyone likes. Really? Is there a teenager so comfortable with himself? Are there no homophobes anywhere in this school? By 2012, Kevin has grown up and is an anti-gun senator. Archie dies taking an assassin’s bullet for him. That’s heroic, and it solves some other ugly problems, but it killed the series. You don’t want an unhappy ending for a comedy. For a hint of what to do, consult Shakespeare.

Anarchy Andrews deals with his cool, pot-smoking father, Fred.

Turning now to my favorite spin-off, the underground comic, Anarchie. It’s the same batch of teenagers, more or less, navigating the same issues, but theirs is an ideal, socialist world where the revolution has won. In this world, everyone has plenty, drugs are legal, and there is no sexism, agism, racism, or shape-ism. This is a color-blind world where black and white live together, and where the gay fellow would fit right in, if anyone thought to draw them in. There is no work, but even without that pressure, and the old problems, everything isn’t great for the kids. There is still school, and Weatherby still hates Archie. The kids still have to deal with parents, even when the parents have turned-on to drugs and act cool. It’s good comedy, an up-ending of the social expectations. Most teens of my day seemed to think that socialism would solve all their problems.

noexit2
Jughead in the socialist future is a broken druggie, but still something of his own man.

For those who have not seen it, how would you expect the Archie to relate to a perfect socialist world. The answer is not well. His father smokes dope, but that doesn’t help. He’s also into recycling and yoga (yuck). Archie remains the same love stuck, philanderer disinterested in most everything else but girls. His friend, Jughead fares far worse, he’s a pock-marked, druggie, a far more likely outcome than Riverdale’s where Jughead is a tortured poet. Without societal pressures and a normal family, Jughead becomes an anarchis’s anarchist. A ruined misfit surrounded in the workers’ paradise. Jughead (now called “Ludehead” still has his crown, and is still his own person, after a fashion, but there is little room for that in a socialist utopia where all are equal.

Robert Buxbaum, August 6, 2019. In previous essays I talked about the humor of superman, and about the practical wisdom of Gomez Adams.

Kindness and Cholera in California

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

A homeless encampment in LosAngeles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reproduction number and generation time for some diseases.

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

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

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

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

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

The free press isn’t

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Buxbaum, July 15, 2019.

How tall could you make a skyscraper?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dA/dΗ = 1/σ dW/dH.

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

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

dA/A = 5.55 x 10-6 dH,

∫dA/A = ∫5.55 x 10-6 dH,

ln (Abase/Atop) = 5.55 x 10-6 ∆H,

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

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

dA/dH = 4√Abase.  But since

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

5.55 x 10-6 √Abase = 4.

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

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

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

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

Nimrod examining the tower, Peter Breugel

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

Robert Buxbaum, June 3, 2019.

Seize the day

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

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

by Horace (23 BC Roman poet) Odes, 1.11

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

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

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

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

A probability paradox

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Buxbaum, February 27, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

simplified wave movement

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

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

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

Robert Buxbaum, February 10, 2019