The economic case for Alberta separatism

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Canada is poor relative to the US as I discussed in a previous post. Though they have lots of available land, home prices are very high, much higher than in the US because of regulations and fees. Similarly, it is hard to start a business in Canada, and salaries are lower. Again the major problems appear to be regulations and taxes. The Western Provences, Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan complain regularly that their interests are being ignored. So, earlier this year, Alberta’s legislature approved a referendum for separation from Canada. Independence! In part the reason is that Albertans find they are financing the rest of Canada. Independence is something that Quebec attempted Canada some 30 years ago. There the “exit” vote lost by a mere 0.6%, and the argument to stay was mostly economic: Quebec needed Canada’s money. Alberta does not. It funds Quebec and every other Provence of Canada.

Trump praised Alberta’s decision to Canada’s dismay. Some Albertans want to want to join the US, a fulfillment of James Knox Polk’s vision. It may not be legal, though. Alberta judge, Shaina Leonard declared Alberta separation unconstitutional as “secession from Canada will have an impact” on native groups. Why this is different from Quebec, I don’t know. The Alberta legislature is now preparing for a referendum on whether Alberta should “commence the legal process … to hold a binding provincial referendum”. This is a referendum on whether to have a referendum.

Currently Alberta is the only Provence that puts in more to the federal government than it takes out, and the disparity is huge. The Provence of Alberta has more oil than most oil countries, more that Iraq, Kuwait, or Norway, for example. It currently produces ~4.1 million barrels of oil per day. Valued at the current world rate of $100/bbl, that’s about $150 billion per year. If you divide by 5 million Albertans, the oil revenue alone is ~$30,000 per man woman or child, or $100,000 per voter. To this you can add bountiful natural gas, other minerals, and a strong industry, and you see a lot of info e that federal Canada “redistributes” east. Because of Canada’s parliamentary system Alberta has virtually no rights. Each vote is counted equally, and almost every one in Canada believes Albertans should not keep their bonanza. The central Canadian government provides programs, it’s true, healthcare with long waits and medical-assisted suicide. They also policed face masks for truckers, taking away the truckers savings and trucks if Canada found the mandates were being ignored.

Canada’s liberal politicians blast Albertans for being racist and stingy. They spend widely and run a deficit, about 15% of tax income despite the money taken from stingy Alberta. And despite this spending, managed to put Canada into recession, the only G7 country in recession, currently. Canadians are poorer than US citizens, with lower wages, and higher home prices, and Canada looking to China as an ally. I would suggest, instead, fewer regulations and less spending as Albertans want. If Alberta leaves, the rest of Canada will be bankrupt.

Current odds are against Albertans’ separation from Canada, but Quebec almost left, and the economic argument for leaving was non existent. Quebec was taking money from the rest of Canada when the Quebec separation vote came 30 years ago, and even so non-secession won by a mere 0.6%. Economically Alberta is more than self sufficient, and culturally Alberta is so like the US that it could join us easily, or relatively so. A vote for separation, if it were allowed to take place, could easily result in separation.

Robert Buxbaum, July 23, 2026

Cruise the Great Lakes or the St Lawrence

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Pearl of the Seas, one of several Great Lakes cruise companies.

The Great Lakes system presents a growing summer cruise opportunity, relatively untraveled, but so far relatively expensive. There’s great scenery, including Niagara Falls, Mackinac, Painted Rocks, Chicago, and the Soo Locks: interesting sites, and the options are growing. As a cheaper alternative, as interesting, IMHO, is the lower Saint Lawrence seaway, including Quebec City, Montreal, Portland and Prince Edward Island, leaving from Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia.

The 2026 Great Lakes season includes seven cruise lanes and 10 largish ships and 7 cruise lines, up from six lines and eight ships in 2025. Major lines include Viking, Pearl Seas, Ponant, and American Cruise Lines who provide over 800 port visits in 2026, up from 700 in 2025. The largest of the Great Lakes ships are smaller than those for Alaska and the Caribbean cruises, but more luxurious. On the St Lawrence, the ships are bigger, the prices lower, and you get more or less what you’d expect on an Alaska cruise, with an open bar, typically.

Viking Oceanis

The cost differences are more than I would expect, but coming down, I expect. Currently, a nine-day Great Lakes cruise from a Viking Oceanis cruise from Cleveland costs a minimum of $8,675 per person. The 14-day version in the map above costs $14,270+. Details: https://l.cleveland.com/g2f86w. By comparison, a Boston to Quebec City cruise costs about $1200 per person, similar to a one week European or Alaska tour, on average.

I put the blame for the high cost of Great Lakes cruising on the size limits of the locks on the St Lawrence canal and on the Niagara Falls, Welland Canal: 740 feet (225.5 m) in length, 78 feet (23.8 m) in width (beam), and 26.5 feet (8.08 m) of depth (draft). The largest cruise ship now operating on the Great Lakes, the Viking Oceanis, show above measures 665 feet (205 meters) length, by 77 feet (23.5 meters) width, by 19 feet, 8″ draft, barely smaller than the canal. It boasts a capacity for 378 guests and 256 crew members. By contrast, the Norwegian Jewel, a popular ship for the New York and Boston to Quebec City route holds 2,870 passenger and a crew of about 1,069. This explains some of the price difference but not all. The rest, perhaps is competition. A standard European cruise ship can be rerouted to the St. Lawrence, but not to the Great Lakes.

Aerial Norwegian Jewel Norwegian Jewel – Norwegian Cruise Line

If one wanted to run a large cruise ship on the Great Lakes, it would have to be built there. It could be done, but isn’t currently. We make very large ore carriers that operate entirely on the Great Lakes, so the capacity exists. The other alternative would be to expand one of the canals. IF this were done, there would be a lot more competition and ships, and we could be served by much larger container ships as well. An unfortunate aspect of the small lock size of the Welland and upper St. Lawrence is that currently, only very small container ships can enter or leave the Great Lakes. The result is that cargo prices are much higher than for any of the US coastal ports or the Mississippi. Both the US and Canada would benefit from a larger connection to the sea.

Robert Buxbaum, July 7, 2026

Our new helium leak detector at REB Research

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Our helium leak detector being calibrated with a standardized He leak

We just got a new helium leak detector, a Varian 938, about 15 years old, shown at right. Our old detector, a Veeco, had not worked well for years, and then we could no longer get it fixed. For a while we outsourced our leak checking, and on rush jobs it didn’t always get done. Now we can check everything in-house at much better sensitivity than before.

It used to be that helium leak checking services were common locally, in Detroit, but we lost a lot of manufacturing and our quality checkers left too, for Ohio, then abroad. Companies that used to do He leak checking switched to fluorescent die checking, which isn’t as good, and then stopped checking altogether. But small cracks at welds are not uncommon, particularly with laser welding of stainless steel. They form as the metal cools, and are too small to see. They show up in helium leakage through the micro-cracks, and if not detected and corrected, these cracks will grow and destroy a pipe or system over time. For my products, hydrogen purifiers, the micro cracks affect hydrogen purity. Any crack that helium can get through will allow impurities to diffuse into our output hydrogen. Because of the problems of micro-leaks and durability, it used to be obligatory in the nuclear navy to helium leak check every part.

The picture above was taken while calibrating our new helium leak detector. I’d bought some calibrated sources, in this case, one certified to bleed at 3.6×10-8 cc/sec, which is equivalent to 2.1 x 10-9 slpm. If a leak of that rate would appear in one of my 1 slpm purifiers, that would imply a delivered hydrogen purity of 99.999998%, and that’s generally the purity limit I certify. This is also a common leak standard in the industry, but my new detector is better than that standard. We can test down to 0.5×10-9cc/s . A 1 slpm purifier with that leak rate will deliver hydrogen at 99.9999999+ purity, more than nine-nines, as they say. On the calibration day, above, I tested three new purifiers, and found they were all perfect to the higher standard, ≤ 0.5×10-9cc/s. I’m so happy with this, I thinking of going into free-lance, helium leak checking. There’s no one local who does it.

In case you want to know, I bought this detector on eBay but found it didn’t work. I tried cleaning key parts, replaced the pump oil, nothing helped. Then bought another leak detector, with a spare filament, but without a pump or a mass-spec unit. It included the standard leaks that I now use to calibrate. That one didn’t work in the same way that the original one didn’t; we never reached pressure, and the filament never came on. Eventually, I came to believe that the vacuum pump was a fault. I sent it to a great pump repair shop in Greentown, PA, and discovered they also repair helium leak detectors. I hope to visit them. They replaced the pump and spiffed up my detector at a decent prices ($1500 as I recall). Now, it works like a charm.

Robert Buxbaum, July 1, 2026

The great NO KINGS rally speaker, Marcus Cicero

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A proven way to remove a leader is to accuse him of trying to become a king. The Democrats keep trying this, but they lack a great orator to make the case in a way that gets the guy out. The classic speaker for this, someone most everyone in college read, was Marcus Tullius Cicero. Take, for example, his speech against Catiline, his fellow senator, that got Catiline removed, and then murdered. I’ve copied a bit below, in translation from Latin.

WHEN, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now? Do not the nightly guards placed on the Palatine Hill—do not the watches posted throughout the city—does not the alarm of the people, and the union of all good men—does not the precaution taken of assembling the senate in this most defensible place—do not the looks and countenances of this venerable body here present, have any effect upon you?
Do you not feel that your plans are detected? Do you not see that your conspiracy is already arrested and rendered powerless by the knowledge which every one here possesses of it? What is there that you did last night, what the night before—where is it that you were—who was there that you summoned to meet you—what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?
Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations; he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.
You ought, O Catiline, long ago to have been led to execution by command of the consul. That destruction which you have been long plotting against us ought to have already fallen on your own head……
……. speech, source.

It’s strong stuff, far better than the democrats have yet presented, with lines of innuendo and attack that have been reused many times since. Cicero claims to understand the thoughts of Catiline as he sits in the senate. He accuses Catiline, not only of wanting to be king, but of wanting their deaths: “He is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us.” Catiline was exiled, and then, with Cicero’s encouragement executed without trial. Julius Caesar argued for Catiline, claiming he should be imprisoned, but no more. So Caesar was exiled to fight the Britains and Gauls.

In time, Cicero and his friends came to believe that Caesar too dreams of kingship too, He had become too successful and uncontrollable. He needed to be re-educated, according to Cicero (below).

“Men who become uncontrollable and overconfident as a result of success need to be put through a round of training in reason until they recognize the fragility of human affairs and the uncertainty of fortune.”

Marcus Cato’s assessment was even stronger, in the senate he, argued that Caesar’s fight with the Gauls was illegal and immoral, and that he should be stripped of power. Democrats argue this today regarding the war in Venezuela and Iran. I think they are wrong, but the argument is the same, that we/I are the rightful power, and I/we know the evil plans in Caesar’s mind. The senate agreed to strip Caesar of power, but use deception getting it. Caesar, knowing how this would likely turn out, returned to Rome, fought Cicero’s and Cato’s friends, and pardoned Cicero 45 BCE. Cato committed suicide. About 1 year later, though, on the 15th of March, a group of Caesars so-called friends stabbed him to death in the senate, as recounted here. Cicero was killed in the bloody civil war that followed. What goes around comes around. And a dictatorship ensued.

I’m not convinced that Cicero’s attacks were legitimate, nor the Democrats’ attacks. In both cases, the speakers claim to know the evil thoughts in the mind of the leader. In both cases, the proposed solution was leadership by group consensus — leadership by a group who could not agree on anything beyond their own unhappiness.

Legitimate or not, attacks by a good orator worked. They caused the death of Catiline and Caesar, and many others over the years. Generally, they don’t benefit the great speaker, long term, nor result in freedom. I’m reminded of Trotsky, here. The lesson for those pushing to depose Trump is you need a really good speaker, and you could get a leader who’s worse. Your speaker needs to convince the audiences that he knows what his enemy is thinking. So far, no Democrat has managed to convince an audience of this, or even vaguely that he knows what Trump will do next.

Robert Buxbaum, June 24, 2026

Finding whole number Pythagorean triangles, etc.

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One of the coolest old bits of math is the Pythagorean theorem. For any right triangle, the sum of the squares of the length of the legs equals the square of the length of the hypotenuse. That is a2 + b2 = c2.

The formula wasn’t invented by Pythagorus, but was known as early as 1800 BCE, in Babylon. What Pythagorus adds is the focus on whole number solutions, like 3, 4, 5. These are called Pythagorean triples, something important to Pythagorus because he believed that the essence of the world was whole numbers. It’s an approach that also is found with Democritus and Epicurus. Democracy, for example being, the idea that the whole of the national sprit is based on the will of unit individuals rather than the will of a single mystic who alone sees the political soul.

There is a formula for finding Pythagorean triples that was discovered, or first presented, by Euclid. Pick any two positive whole numbers, m and n where m>n. For any value of m and n he showed that there is a pythagorean triple where the hypotenuse equals m2+n2 and where one side equals m2-n2 and the other side is 2mn. For example, if you pick m=3 and n=2, you’ll find there is a triple with hypotenuse 13, and with legs 5 and 12. It’s a very cool formula, I think. Like pythagorus, I find a certain magic in Pythagorean triples.

The proof of this method is to note that (m2-n2)2 = m4 + n4 – 2m22n2. Now note that this is very similar to the formula for (m2+n2)2 = m4 + n4 + 2m2n2. We see that (m2+n2)2 = (m2-n2)2 + 4m2n2. These are all whole numbers since m and n are whole numbers, and they have the form for a pythagorus triple. This formula gives you all the “fundamental “primitive” triples, plus some others. Once you have these, you can find the remaining ripples by multiplying these by 2, 3, 4, etc.

There is another nice formula for whole-number triangles in 3 space, useful for boat building and the like — if you go to the shop and ask for someone to cut wood, they generally want to cut to whole numbers, usually whole inches, 5″ by 12″. With pythagorean triples, there is a better chance that your pieces will fit together. (I was designing and building boats a few posts back) Maybe I’ll go into it in another post.

There are 16 primitive Pythagorean triples of numbers up to 100.

(3, 4, 5)(5, 12, 13)(8, 15, 17)(7, 24, 25)
(20, 21, 29)(12, 35, 37)(9, 40, 41)(28, 45, 53)
(11, 60, 61)(16, 63, 65)(33, 56, 65)(48, 55, 73)
(13, 84, 85)(36, 77, 85)(39, 80, 89)(65, 72, 97)

Robert Buxbaum, June 1, 2026

Blue Origin isn’t a SpaceX killer but a Boeing SLS killer

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CNN comparison of heavy lift, US rockets. Boeing’s SLS is not shown.

Blue Origin had its third New Glenn flight last week, and though it wasn’t quite successful, in that the satellite failed to reach proper orbit, it was successful in that it launched, reached space, and returned to a barge. It had a larger faring than even Falcon Heavy, and in terms of payload and price per ton, it beat SpaceX’s main vehicle, the Falcon 9. A SpaceX Falcon 9 flight will cost you $72 million with a weight limit to LEO of 17,400 kg. By contrast, New Glenn flights are priced at $80 million with more than double the weight limit to LEO, 45,000 kg. The price per Kg is less than half, and the faring is bigger. What’s not to like?

For now SpaceX products still retain an edge. The Falcon Heavy will lift more weight to LEO than the New Glenn (one launched today), at an even lower price per kg. Besides, SpaceX’s products are reliable, they’ve launched 240 commercial flights in the last 16 months alone, and all were successful. Blue Origin is still viable in that they’re relatively cheap and fill an important gap in SpaceX’s size portfolio, but they’re not a SpaceX killer. On the other hand they seem like a killer of Boeing’s two space projects, the CST Starliner, and the Boeing SLS that launched Artemis earlier this month.

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket pairs two Blue Origin engines in the lower stage with as many as six solid booster engines from Teledyne.

CST Starliner is Boeing’s space capsule. It was vastly over budget and behind schedule. And when the first semi-successful version reached the Space Station with Astronauts in 2024, it showed multiple malfunctions and was condemned to return to earth unmanned. The astronauts were rescued in a SpaceX Dragon. NASA will want an alternative to Dragon, but now Blue Origin provides one. It’s the same story with Boeing’s SLS. Like the capsule, it was vastly delayed and over budget. While it provided the lift for Artemis II, that was after a near four year delay since Artemis I, November, 2022. The price per kg to launch on SLA is $37,000/kg, about twenty times that of a launch on Falcon Heavy or New Glenn. The only justification for SLS, as I see it, is that it was the main alternative to SpaceX. Now it isn’t. For more on the comparison, see here.

Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have newer versions for reusable heavy lifting due to debut within the year. SpaceX hopes to launch their Starship V3 next month. If it works as predicted, the throw weight will be triple that of New Glenn at a fraction of the cost per kg. Blue Origin has a larger version of New Glenn in the works, the 9×4 also reusable. Blue Origin has also started supplying high efficiency methane-burning engines for the Vulcan Centaur rockets made by ULA (United Launch Alliance). ULA continues to make the Atlas V rocket, but these are powered by Russian RD180 engines aided by Teledyne solid boosters. The Russian contract ended after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and ULA’s supply is almost exhausted. Since 2025 ULA has flown two missions successfully using Blue Origin’s, BE-4 engines instead, aided as before, by Teledyne boosters. The price per kg on these Vulcan Centaur rockets is well below that of the old Atlas V, because with BE-4 they can reuse the lift stage. For all of these, the price is far below a flight on Boeing SLS.

The French too have improved their Ariene line. They’re now reusable, and while they’re somewhat expensive, and can’t lift as much as the New Glenn, Falcon Heavy, or Vulcan, they’re cheaper than Atlas V, and are an alternative for deep space projects. With these alternatives I see little value in continuing with Boeing’s SLS. When I look for a path to the moon and beyond, I look to Starship and perhaps New Glenn.

Robert Buxbaum, April 27, 2026

It seems our universe has multiple black holes; is it stable?

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Fifty years ago, when I was in college, black holes were treated as science fiction entities. According to Einstein and Summerfeld, time stopped at the event horizon, and information vanished, but they were not though to exist, except for a tantalizing theory that our universe could be one giant big black hole! A major problem back then, and today, is that the universe clearly contains a lot of “dark matter” (see here), but no one know what it was. The two theories, such were either Massive Astrophysical Objects (MACHOs) or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). In a blog some years back, I put forth a version of the WIMP theory here, with lighter particles. I now have a better thought, based black holes.

In the last 30 years we started seeing evidence that black holes were real. At first these were gravitational lenses, large mass concentrations that made distant galaxies seem close. Then, more recent evidence was gravitational waves, a jiggling of space-time, postulated by Einstein, but measured only ten years ago, in September, 2015. The apparent source of the jiggle, the combination of two black holes.

As our telescopes got better, we’ve found more and more black holes visually, including a particularly large black hole near our galactic center, in the constellation Sagittarius. It’s called Sgr A*, with a mass of roughly 4 million suns, and its discovery got the Nobel Prize, 2020. One of the stars that move around this spot travels at speeds up to 3% the speed of light, and it’s paired with a gas blob that moves much faster. See video here, with relativity shifts. You might think that our galaxy revolves around this black hole, but it doesn’t; it it did, we would not have galactic arms.

A recent explanation for dark matter has been proposed, saying that it is black holes, or neutron stars. To make this theory work, there would have to be many black holes in our galaxy and in others, and between them, and the laws of physics would have to change too, so it’s quite speculative. Still, we keep finding more black holes, including a large one near us, relatively, Gaia-BH3, with about 33 million suns mass. It emits no light, and is orbited every 11.6 years by a gas giant. What makes this model scary, and perhaps not true, is that a model like this would seem to suggest a chaotic dance of death that should tear the galaxy apart. Something like this happens in a recent, Chinese Science Fiction book, “Three Body Problem” (also a TV series).

If our galaxy had many many black holes could it be stable? Could it have lasted as long as it has. One thought is we’re doomed. The galaxy NGC6240 contains three large black holes rotating among themselves, see picture. Their dance seems to be destroying the galaxy as we watch. A possible way out of this appears in a recent video blog by Sabine Hossenfelder based on a paper saying the black holes may not be black holes at all, but clouds. I’m not sure that makes things any more stable, but I enjoyed the video content, so I linked to it.

One thing I like about this whole idea is that the existence of many black holes like this would solve a conundrum I presented in one of my earliest posts, that the universe could not be infinitely big and uniform. If it were, I argued, we’d be cooked by all the solar radiation. But if there were lots of black holes (they have to be real black holes) they would be a place for all that light to sink into, and the universe could be infinitely big and uniform. As for how that sort of universe starts or remains stable, or expands, it’s not clear. Maybe if you dark energy, something else that no one understands, but that lots of folks believe iin.

Robert Buxbaum, April 15, 2026. Three Body problem is decent Sci Fi, despite its strong political message and weak characters. We’re attacked by advanced aliens from a dying, 3 sun system, and earthlings help them. The message, emphasized by the author at the end of the book, is that you should not trust outsiders from a more high tech society (like the USA).

A year-long war in Iran is a cheap peace.

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Our war with Iran is now a month old and the press is already calling it lost. They see Americans dead, and allies angry, but no value in the removal of a supreme leader who’d been trying to killing Americans for years, and who’d enriched enough uranium, at 60% to make 11 atom bombs. With our European and Chinese “allies” they see no pressing problem inIran’s space program where the missiles are emblazoned, “Death to USA”, or so they claim. Instead they claim our war is illegal, immoral and damaging. They call for a quick (immediate) end to the war (that is, we stop fighting) and refuse to cooperate in opening the straight of Hormuz, saying it’s not their war, though their ships, some 3200 of them are trapped in the Persian Gulf. Some “allies” have even closed their airspace in protest.

In fact, I suspect that the leadership in China and in Europe are glad to see Iran’s A-bomb project impeded, but who knows. They like to bee seen meeting with Iranian leaders, as Chairman Xi below in January 2026, then attacking the US as reactionary. Iran’s gulf neighbors are less happy with Iran because of the attacks. Even Shia Qatar has complained. Though they have not said so, I suspect most are against Iran’s proxy attacks in the Red Sea (straight of Mandab). China benefits from a non-nuclear war, and keeps sending Iran missile fuel and components in support of Iran’s proletarian government that enforces religion and kills Americans and Iranians, and that traps ships in the Persian Gulf. China benefitted from Iran’s sanctions, as they got cheaper oil, and I can see they’d like this to continue. European leaders just want cheap oil, and to be considered as tolerant, peace makers.

Chairman Xi visits Iran in January 2026, photo from the Independent.

My take, I feel bad for the sailors on these ships, some American, but to my mind, the current state of war is better than the state of peace before it, with continuous proxy attacks, and is far better than the atomic war that could follow. I like peace, but don’t see that happening quicker if we stop bombing Iran, nor quicker than a year from now, even with booming Iran. Iran’s mullahs have distributed power, allowing them to hang on indefinitely, if we let them, and our European friends seem intent to promote Iran’s mullah-leadership, such as it is, at least for now. In a year or so, I suspect that will change, but who knows?

So far, no one is suffering greatly. Gasoline is about 30% more expensive, about $3.95 per gallon today in Michigan, but that’s 50¢/gal cheaper than under Biden. European prices are up a similar percent, not welcome, but not high historically. They would go down if Europe would drill or reopen its nuclear and coal plants, or if European leaders would sign Trump’s trade deal that the UK rejected in the most embarrassing, demonstrative way. I don’t expect any signatures in the next few months — there even an anti conference. In a year they’ll sign, or decide to reopen nuclear plants, or maybe the war will be over. Supposedly this war will take 0.5% off of the GDP of the US, Europe, and China, a cheap price for peace IMHO, far less than the Ukraine war.

Trump has asked for European help opening the straight, in part because help is needed, but in part because it would be a sign to Europe’s citizens, that their leaders stand with us and NATO. Trump teases European leaders over their unwillingness to protect their own ships, and seems willing to let oil prices stay high to pressure Europe, China, and the Mid-east. For now, China does not seem ready for direct war, and seems wi, too seems willing to draw-down its oil reserves, as a way to blunt inflation at home, and promote cheap products abroad. All this is good, it’s a version of peace that should lead to a longer peace after the straight is open. Even poor Canada benefits, for now.

Robert E. Buxbaum, April 7, 2026. I don’t expect anything of an oil deal or a defense deal during King Charles’s visit in 3 weeks, nor during Trump’s visit to China, but who knows.

How I cured a moaning toilet

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This is a short post, but useful. We had a moaning toilet. This was “our two-mode commode” described previously, but the same thing happens with one-mode commodes too. I cured it. At issue, the toilet moaned or wailed after it was flushed. Either the toilet was possessed by a tormented soul, as sometimes happens, or the moan was caused by a vibration in the fill diaphragm. That was the case here.

It’s usually toilets in social science university buildings that get inhabited by tormented souls, as these are typically social scientists who are forced to come back this way as punishment for passing themselves off as real scientists. Sometimes they show up making the heating pipes rattle and clang. You can cure this by bringing in a plumber or heating professional to encourage the soul to repent. The heating professional then adjusts some things and the soul moves on. In our case, a toilet in a private home, it required no exorcism, just an adjustment of the flow.

In our case, it became clear that the fill valve had become partially blocked resulting in a high flow against the diaphragm. This diaphragm, shown below, is in the valve that gets closed when the float in the toilet tank rises. At high flows the diaphragm begins to vibrate and moan, sounding just like a possessed toilet.

toilet diaphragm

For most toilets, replacing this diaphragm is an easy repair: buy a new diaphragm for about $4, (and typically, also a new flapper — it’s a good idea to change the flapper every 4-6 years), remove the old diaphragm. It’s behind a thumb-nut, typically, and do the necessary exchange. Remember, thumbnuts are better than others. Sorry to say, our toilet has a new-fangled float mechanism where the diaphragm is hidden inside, not easily replaced. A normal thing to do is to replace the float mechanism, but those cost $30 or more, and take a fair amount of work. Instead, I choose to reduce the flow speed of the water by partially closing the inlet valve sending fill water to the commode. It now fills slightly slower than before, but since there is less flow, there is no longer any audible vibration. A quick fix at zero cost.

If that hadn’t worked, I’d have called in the exorcist, an expensive proposition. You have to pay your the exorcist. If you don’t, you get repossessed.

Robert Buxbaum, March 25, 2026. I’d run for water commissioner, sewer commissioner. Here are some sewer jokes and a song from my campaign. There are also some links to serious matters of sewage treatment, water purity, and the problems of combined sewers.

Poor Canada and its China lifeline

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Canada has long-standing economic problems relative to the US, and they have been growing since 2015 as the figure shows (figure from a conservative, Canadian politician, Ryan Williams). These problems infect most of Europe, and will soon extend to the US. They are largely due to a declining birthrate, bad management, and an aging population. The result is a declining Canadian dollar (CAD), rising housing prices, rising national health costs and rising government debt. In both countries, life feels less affordable than in previous years, but the effects hit harder in Canada. Consider, for example, that the average salary in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, is $62,050 CAD. that’s pretty low by US standards, the equivalent of $45,000 US, well below the average salary in Chicago or Houston, two comparable US cities. In those cities the average is ~$63,000 US. Meanwhile rent prices in Toronto are about the same as in Chicago in US dollars, and far above rent prices in Houston. If you wish to buy a home, the price in Chicago is about half that in Toronto. Even with healthcare, life is generally more affordable in the US, and home ownership, though difficult, is not out of reach, especially in Houston.

Image generated by (for) Ryan Williams, a Conservative Canadian politician. It overstates the problems caused by Trudeau. Canada first began falling behind in the 1980s, though problems increased in 2015.

A main reason that Canadian housing is so expensive is permitting is difficult. Canada has plenty of space for housing, but it’s hard to get a permit to build, and it’s hard to sell the home, too. To be a real-estate agent in Canada, for example, you have to take a year-long course, and pass several stages of permitting tests costing $6000 -$10,000 CAD. In the US, it’s cheaper, about $1000 US and generally it requires only a month-long course. These same regulations also cause salaries to be low, by decreasing productivity. It is hard to start a company in Canada, and hard to retain good workers, since low-productivity workers have rights to equal pay for equal work, with no regard to productivity.

Canadian salaries also suffer from high immigration, particularly of low skill labor. Canada accepts about 500,000 immigrants per year, offering free healthcare and social services. During the Biden years, we accepted 6x more, about 3 million per year, mostly illegally, but Canada has 1/8 the population of the US and more generous benefits. As a result the decrease in affordability has been far greater. In the US and Canada, immigrants have been low skill or unemployed, presenting tough competition for native-born, low-skill workers, and burdening the government welfare system. There has been a push-back in Canada, as in the US, and Canada has begun removing illegal immigrants, as have we in the US. It’s less unpopular in Canada because Canadians see themselves as good no matter what they do. The Canadian population shrank by 0.15% last year, while ours continued to grow. In both countries, lower immigration of unemployed individuals, should lower housing prices, and should protect the welfare system. Of course some businesses benefit from low wage immigrant, and from the unemployed, the social services industry for one, Janitorial services for another. Rich folks are alway s complaining for more immigration because they find it’s hard to get cleaning help, and because they rarely pay taxes at any meaningful rate.

As a band-aide to these economic problems, both in Canada and the US, we have caught to raise government income through a new tax, tariffs. We’ve each put 25% tariffs on automobiles produced in the neighboring country. But Canada has a twist, it can benefit bringing bringing in high-tariff and prohibited imports from China and Cuba hoping the imports cross the border to the US. For example, they import Cuban cigars, and sell them near the border at inflated prices to Americans (largely) who smuggle them to the US. It worked too during prohibition for whiskey. In the last month, Canadian PM Carney reduced the tariff on 50,000 China-made EVs to 6.1%. If large numbers find their way to the US as new or used vehicles, the hope is that Chinese companies will buy manufactured goods from Canada, or evenest up manufacturing. It might work, though Cuba never set up cigar manufacturing in Canada. Typically Chinese companies send abroad nearly finished items, allowing the host country to add finishing touches that involve no technology but that can be claimed to raise the value significantly to avoid taxes. As the chart above, China imports from Canada are virtual all raw goods: food, petroleum, iron ore, gold… Technological expertise stays at home. Canada will need a home grown engine to get out of its funk.

At this point, the most likely home-grown engine is likely to be oil. Canada has oil, and the world needs it, especially China. Currently the Straight of Hormuz is effectively closed because of the war. Many countries are being hurt by this, but particularly China because of troubles in three of its major, sanctioned suppliers, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. China will need a new source of oil, and will likely pay Canadian prices if the Canadian government can see through to provide infrastructure for export. Selling to China could also avoid a war.

Another thought, both to benefit Canada and the US, I’m pro-immigration, but suggest we target hard working, honest immigrants with usable skills: plumbers, cooks, programmers, cement workers … people who are unlikely to start out on welfare, and likely to provide a decent middle class lifestyle. The children from these immigrants integrate well in the US, and likely will into Canada. They integrate far better than the children of unskilled violent refugees. I also favor tariffs, especially on manufactured and luxury goods, like cars and wine. It provides government income, and promotes technical skill at home.

Robert Buxbaum, March 10, 2026.