I’m a fan of iodine both as a hand sanitizer, and as a sanitizer for surfaces. II’ve made gallons of the stuff for my own use and to give away. Perhaps I’ll come to sell it too. Unlike soap washing or alcohol sanitizer, iodine stays on your hands for hours after you use it. Alcohol evaporates in a few seconds, and soap washes off. The result is that iodine retains killing power after you use it. The iodine that I make and use is 0.1%, a concentration that is non-toxic to humans but very toxic to viruses. Here is an article about the effectiveness of iodine against viruses and bacteria Iodine works both on external surfaces, and internally, e.g. when used as a mouthwash. Iodine kills germs in all environments, and has been used for this purpose for a century.
With normal soap or sanitizer it’s almost impossible to keep from reinfecting your hands almost as soon as you wash. I’ve embedded a video showing why that is. It should play below, but here’s the link to the video on youtube, just in case it does not.
The problem with washing your hands after you receive an item, like food, is that you’re likely to infect the sink faucet and the door knob, and the place where you set the food. Even after you wash, you’re likely to re-infect yourself almost immediately and then infect the towel. Because iodine lasts on your hands for hours, killing germs, you have a good chance of not infecting yourself. If you live locally, come by for a free bottle of sanitizer.
For those who’d like more clinical data to back up the effectiveness of iodine, here’s a link to a study, I also made a video on the chemistry of iodine relevant to why it kills germs. You might find it interesting. It appears below, but if it does not play right, Here’s a link.
The video shows two possible virus fighting interactions, including my own version of the clock reaction. The first of these is the iodine starch interaction, where iodine bonds forms an I<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup> complex, I then show that vitamin C unbinds the iodine, somewhat, by reducing the iodine to iodide, I<sup>-</sup>. I then add hydrogen peroxide to deoxidize the iodine, remove an electron. The interaction of vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide creates my version of the clock reaction. Fun stuff.
The actual virus fighting mechanism of iodine is not known, though the data we have suggests the mechanism is a binding with the fatty starches of the viral shell, the oleo-polysaccharides. Backing this mechanism is the observation that the shape of the virus does not change when attacked by iodine, and that the iodine is somewhat removable, as in the video. It is also possible that iodine works by direct oxidation, as does hydrogen peroxide or chlorine. Finally, I’ve seen a paper showing that internal iodine, more properly called iodide works too. My best guess about how that would work is that the iodide is oxidized to iodine once it is in the body.
There is one more item that is called iodine, that one might confuse with the “metallic” iodine solutions that I made, or that are sold as a tincture. These are the iodine compounds used for CAT-scan contrast. These are not iodine itself, but complex try-iodo-benzine compounds. Perhaps the simplest of these is diatrizoate. Many people are allergic to this, particularly those who are allergic to sea food. If you are allergic to this dye, that does not mean that you will be allergic to a simple iodine solution as made below.
The solution I made is essentially 0.1% iodine in water, a concentration that has been shown to be particularly effective. I add potassium iodide, plus isopropyl alcohol, 1%, 1% glycerine and 0.5% mild soap. The glycerine and soap are there to maintain the pH and to make the mix easier on your hands when it dries. I apply 5-10 ml to my hands and let the liquid dry in place.
There are two standard treatments for a disease. One is through a chemical, pill or shot, often using a patented antibiotic or antiviral molecule, sometimes a radioactive chemical or anti-inflammatory. There have been quite a lot of success with these molecules especially against bacterial disease. E.g. penicillin, a molecule found in cheese, was quite effective against infection, syphilis, and even the viral disease, rabies. Still, in surprisingly many cases, a molecule that you’d expect should cure a disease does not. For this reason, recent research has looked into the other approach to a cure — use your own immune system.
In the most basic version of this approach, that of Paracelcius, is to give the patient nothing beyond sunshine, a clean dressing, and good food. In surprisingly many cases, this is enough to allow the patient’s own immune system will fight the disease successfully. Currently, this seems like our best option to fight COVID-19, the new Wuhan coronavirus.; antivirals seem to have no particular effect on COVID-19, as with rabies, but patients do get better on their own with time, and there is some indication that sunlight helps too, at least in fighting the disease spread, and perhaps in effecting a cure.
Your immune system is remarkably flexible. When it is up to the task, as in the video below white blood cells multiply enormously around the invader and attack. The white cells do not harm your body cells nor those of friendly bacteria, but rally to kill nearly any invader, even one the cells have never seen before. There is a minimum of side effects (fever, tiredness) but these go away after the invader is gone. The immune system then keeps the memory of the invader alive via “Memory T cells” so that it can attack more quickly if the same invader is seen again. This is what we call immunity, and it’s a type of protection that you generally don’t get from pills.
Unfortunately, not every disease is fought well by the immune system alone. Measles, for example, or smallpox. For several of these diseases we’ve found we can activate the patient’s immune system with a vaccination, even after the patient contacts the disease. An injection of a weaker form of the disease seems to help kick-start the patients own immune system. Vaccination tends to have bad side-effects, but for many diseases, e.g. measles, the bad is outweighed by the good. Interestingly we’ve begun to use this approach on some cancers, too, and it seems to work. Immune therapy, it’s called.
Immune therapy is not generally the first line approach to cancer, but it might be the best for slow cancers, like prostate. Generally, in the fight against cancer, the preferred method is to removes as much of cancer cells as possible, and treat any missed cells using a mix of radiation and chemicals. This works but there are a lot of side-effects. Immune therapy is sort of similar, in a way. Instead of irradiating the bad cells inside the body, one takes the cancer cells outside of the body (or the virus molecules) and uses radiation and chemicals to knock off bits. These bits, a weakened form of the cancer or of the virus, are then cultured and re-injected into the body. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. For melanoma, skin cancer, immune therapy is found to works about 1/4 of the time. Why not more? It seems that sometimes the immune system gets “exhausted” fighting a foe that’s to much for it. And sometimes the activated immune system starts attacking the host body. This is an auto-immune response.
The corona virus, COVID-19 is already a lot worse than SARS, and it’s likely to get even worse. As of today, there are 78,993 known cases and 2,444 deaths. By comparison, from the first appearance of SARS about December 1 2002, there have been a total of 8439 cases and 813 deaths. It seems the first COVID-19 patient was also about December 1, but the COVID-19 infection moved much faster. Both are viral infections, but it seems the COVID virus is infectious for more days, including days when the patient is asymptomatic. Quarantine is being used to stop COVID-19; it was successful with SARS. As shown below, by July 2003 SARS had stopped, essentially. I don’t think COVID-19 will stop so easily.
The process of SARS, worldwide; a dramatic rise and it’s over by July 2003. Source: Int J Health Geogr. 2004; 3: 2. Published online 2004 Jan 28. doi: 10.1186/1476-072X-3-2.
We see that COVID-19 started in November, like SARS, but we already have 10 times more cases than the SARS total, and 150 times more than we had at this time during the SARS epidemic. If the disease stops in July, as with SARS, we should expect to see about a total of 150 times the current number of cases: about 12 million cases by July 2020. Assuming a death rate of 2.5%, that suggests 1/4 million dead. This is a best case scenario, and it’s not good. It’s about as bad as the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-69, a pandemic that killed 60,000 approximately in the US, and which remains with us, somewhat today. By the summer of 69, the spreading rate R° (R-naught) fell below 1 for and the disease began to die out, a process I discussed previously regarding measles and the atom bomb, but the disease re-emerged, less infectious the next winter and the next. A good quarantine is essential to make this best option happen, but I don’t believe the Chinese have a good-enough quarantine.
Several things suggest that the Chinese will not be able to stop this disease, and thus that the spread of COVID-19 will be worse than that of the HK flu and much worse than SARS. For one, both those disease centered in Hong Kong, a free, modern country, with resources to spend, and a willingness to trust its citizens. In fighting SARS, HK passed out germ masks — as many as anyone needed, and posted maps of infection showing places where you can go safely and where you should only go with caution. China is a closed, autocratic country, and it has not treated quarantine this way. Little information is available, and there are not enough masks. The few good masks in China go to the police. Health workers are dying. China has rounded up anyone who talks about the disease, or who they think may have the disease. These infected people are locked up with the uninfected in giant dorms, see below. In rooms like this, most of the uninfected will become infected. And, since the disease is deadly, many people try to hide their exposure to avoid being rounded up. In over 80% of COVID cases the symptoms are mild, and somewhat over 1% are asymptomatic, so a lot of people will be able to hide. The more people do this, the poorer the chance that the quarantine will work. Given this, I believe that over 10% of Hubei province is already infected, some 1.5 million people, not the 79,000 that China reports.
Wuhan quarantine “living room”. It’s guaranteed to spread the disease as much as it protects the neighbors.
Also making me think that quarantine will not work as well here as with SARS, there is a big difference in R°, the transmission rate. SARS infected some 2000 people over the first 120 days, Dec. 1 to April 1. Assuming a typical infection time of 15 days, that’s 8 cycles. We calculate R° for this stage as the 8th root of 2000, 8√2000 = 2.58. This is, more or less the number in the literature, and it is not that far above 1. To be successful, the SARS quarantine had to reduce the person’s contacts by a factor of 3. With COVID-19, it’s clear that the transmission rate is higher. Assuming the first case was December 1, we see that there were 73,437 cases in only 80. R° is calculated as the 5 1/3 root of 73,437. Based on this, R° = 8.17. It will take a far higher level of quarantine to decrease R° below 1. The only good news here is that COVID-19 appears to be less deadly than SARS. Based on Chinese numbers the death rate appears to be about 2000/73,437, or about 3%, varying with age (see table), but these numbers are overly high. I believe there are a lot more cases. Meanwhile the death rate for SARS was over 9%. For most people infected with COVID-19, the symptoms are mild, like a cold; for another 18% it’s like the flu. A better estimate for the death rate of COVID-19 is 0.5-1%, less deadly than the Spanish flu of 1918. The death rate on the Diamond Princess was 3/600 = 0.5%, with 24% infected.
The elderly are particularly vulnerable. It’s not clear why.
Backing up my value of R°, consider the case of the first Briton to contact the disease. As reported by CNN, he got it at conference in Singapore in late January. He left the conference, asymptomatic on January 24, and spent the next 4 days at a French ski resort where he infected one person, a child. On January 28, he flew to England where he infected 8 more before checking himself into a hospital with mild symptoms. That’s nine people infected over 3 weeks. We can expect that schools, factories, and prisons will be even more hospitable to transmission since everyone sits together and eats together. As a worst case extrapolation, assume that 20% of the world population gets this disease. That’s 1.5 billion people including 70 million Americans. A 1% death rate suggests we’ll see 700,000 US deaths, and 15 million world-wide this year. That’s almost as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918. I don’t think things will be that bad, but it might be. The again, it could be worse.
If COVID-19 follows the 1918 flu model, the disease will go into semi-remission in the summer, and will re-emerge in the fall to kill another few hundred thousand Americans in the next fall and winter, and the next after that. Woodrow Wilson got the Spanish Flu in the fall of 1918, after it had passed through much of the US, and it nearly killed him. COVID-19 could continue to rampage every year until a sufficient fraction of the population is immune or a vaccine is developed. In this scenario, quarantine will have no long-term effect. My sense is that quarantine and vaccine will work enough in the US to reduce the effect of COVID-19 to that of the Hong Kong flu (1968), so that the death rate will be only 0.1 – 0.2%. In this scenario, the one I think most likely, the US will experience some 100,000 deaths, that is 0.15% of 20% of the population, mostly among the elderly. Without good quarantine or vaccines, China will lose at least 1% of 20% = about 3 million people. In terms of economics, I expect a slowdown in the US and a major problem in China, North Korea, and related closed societies.
Robert Buxbaum, February 18, 2020. (Updated, Feb. 23, I raised the US death totals, and lowered the totals for China).
The rifle Oswald used was a Modello 91/38, Carcano (1938 model of a design originally used in 1891) with an extra-long, 20.9″ barrel, bought for only $19.95 including a 4x sight. That’s $12.50 for the gun, the equivalent of $100 in 2020). The gun may have been cheep, but it was a fine Italian weapon: it was small, fast, pretty, manual, and unreliable. The small size allowed Oswald to get the gun into the book depository without arousing suspicion. He claimed his package held curtain rods, and the small, narrow shape of the gun made the claim believable.
The first question, the fast shooting, is answered in part by the fact that loading the 91/38 Carcano rifle takes practice. Three American marksmen who tried to duplicate the shots for the Warren commission didn’t succeed, but they didn’t have the practice with this type of gun that Oswald had. The Carcano rifle used a bolt and clip loading system that had gone out of style in the US before WWI. To put in a new shell, you manually unlock and pull back the bolt. The old casing then flies out, and the spring–clip loads a new shell. You then have to slam the bolt forward and lock it before you can fire again. For someone practiced, loading this way is faster than with a semi-automatic. To someone without practice it is impossibly slow, like driving a stick shift car for the first time. Even with practice, Americans avoid stick shift cars, but Italians prefer them. Some time after the Warren report came out, Howard Donahue, an American with experience on this type of rifle, was able to hit three moving targets at the distance in 4.8 seconds. That’s less than the shortest estimate of the time it took Oswald to hit twice. Penn of Penn and Teller recreates this on TV, and shows here that Kennedy’s head would indeed have moved backward.
Oswald’s magic bullet, shot two.
That Oswald was so accurate is explained, to great extent by the way the sight was mounted and by the unusual bullets. The model 38 Carcano that Oswald bought fired light, hollow, 6.5×52mm cartridges. This is a 6.5 mm diameter bullet, with a 52 mm long casing. The cartridge was adopted by the Italians in 1940, and dropped by 1941. These bullets are uncommonly bullet is unusually long and narrow (6.5 mm = .26 caliber), round-nosed and hollow from the back to nearly the front. In theory a cartridge like this gives for greater alignment with the barrel., and provides a degree of rocket power acceleration after it leaves the muzzle. Bullets like this were developed in the US, then dropped by the late 1800s. The Italians dropped this bullet for a 7.5 mm diameter version in 1941. The 6.5 mm version can go through two or three people without too much damage, and they can behave erratically. The small diameter and fast speed likely explains how Oswald’s second shot went through Kennedy and Connolly twice without dong much. An American bullet would have done a lot more damage.
Because of the light weight and the extra powder, the 6.5 mm hollow bullet travels uncommonly fast, about 700 m/s at the muzzle with some acceleration afterwards, ideally. Extra powder packs into the hollow part by the force of firing, providing, in theory, low recoil, rocket power. Unfortunately these bullets are structurally weak. They can break apart or bend and going off-direction. By comparison the main US rifle of WWII, the M1, was semi-automatic, with bullets that are shorter, heavier, and slower, going about 585 m/s. Some of our bullets had steel cores too to provide a better combination of penetration and “stopping power”. Only Oswald second shot stayed pristine. It could be that his third shot — the one that made Kennedy’s head explode — flattened or bent in flight.
Oswald fragment of third bullet. It’s hollow and seems to have come apart in a way a US bullet would not.
The extra speed of Oswald’s bullets and the alignment of his gun would have given Oswald a great advantage in accuracy. At 100 yards (91 m), test shots with the rifle landed 2 1⁄2 to 5 inches high, within a 3-to-5-inch circle. Good accuracy with a sight that was set to high for close shot accuracy. The funky sight, in my opinion , explains how Oswald managed to miss Walker, but explains how he hit Kennedy accurately especially on the last, longest shot, 81 m to Kennedy’s head
Given the unusually speed of the bullets (I will assume 750 m/s) Oswald’s third shot would have taken 0.108 s to reach the target. If the sight were aligned string and if Kennedy were not moving, the bullet would have been expected to fall 2.24″ low at this range, but given the sight alignment we’d expect him to shoot 3-6″ high on a stationary target, and dead on, on the president in his moving vehicle. Kennedy was moving at 5 m/sand Oswald had a 17° downward shot. The result was a dead on hit to the moving president assuming Oswald didn’t “lead the shot”. The peculiarities of the gun and bullets made Oswald more accurate here than he’d been in the army, while causing him to miss Walker completely at close range.
comparison of the actual, second shot, “magic bullet,” left, with four test-shot bullets. Note that one of the test bullets collapsed, two bent, and one exploded. This is not a reliable bullet design.
We now get to the missed, first shot: How did he miss the car completely firing at the closest range. The answer, might have to do with deformation of the bullets. A hollow base bullet can explode, or got dented and fly off to the side. More prosaically, it could be that he hit a tree branch or a light pole. The Warren commission blamed a tree that was in the way, and there was also a light pole that was never examined. For all we know the bullet is in a branch today, or deflected. US bullets would have a greater chance to barrel on through to at least hit the car. This is an aspect of Italian engineering — when things are light, fast, and flexible, unusual things happen that do not expect to happen with slow, ugly, US products. It’s a price of excellence, Italian style.
Another question appears: Why wasn’t Oswald stopped when the FBI knew he’d threatened Kennedy, and was suspected of shooting at Walker. The simple answer, I think, is that the FBI was slow, and plodding. Beyond this, neither the FBI nor the CIA seem to have worried much about Kennedy’s safety. Even if Kennedy had used the bubble top, Oswald would likely have killed him. Kennedy didn’t care much for the FBI and didn’t trust Texas. Kennedy had a long-running spat with the FBI involving his involvement with organized crime, and perhaps running back to the days when Kennedy’s father was a bootlegger. His relation with the CIA was similar.
The Mateba, Italian semi-automatic revolver, $3000, available only in 357 Magnum and 44 magnum.
I should mention that the engineering styles and attitudes of a country far outlast the particular engineer. We still make big, fat, slow, ugly cars — that are durable and reasonably priced. Germans still overbuild, and Italian cars and guns are as they ever were: beautiful, fast, expensive, and unreliable. The fastest production car is Italian, a Bugatti with a top speed of 245 mph; the fastest rollercoaster is at Ferrari gardens, 149 mph, and in terms of guns, let me suggest you look at the Mateba, left, a $3000 beautiful super fast semi-automatic revolver (really), produced in Italy, and available in 357 magnum and .44 magnum only . It’s a magnificent piece of Italian engineering beautiful, accurate, powerful, and my guess is it’s unreliable as all get out. Our, US pistols typically cost 1/5 to 1/10 as much. A country’s cars, planes, and guns represent the country’s aesthetics. The aesthetics of a county changes only slowly, and I think the world is better off because of it
Robert Buxbaum, February 14, 2020. One of my favorite courses in engineering school, Cooper Union, was in Engineering Aesthetics and design.
The following is Elizabeth Warren’s law registration for the state of Texas, 1986 claiming she is an American Indian. There was very little evidence for it and an genetic test showed she was somewhere between 1/256 and 1/1000 Indian. My son was determined to have 1/1000 Indian blood in a similar test, and we have no Indian ancestors at all, as best as I can tell. Still, as an Indian Ms. Warren is entitled to affirmative action; she’s to get preferential hiring financial, and educational treatment over someone more qualified, but without Indian blood. Affirmative action was institute as a way to redress the suffering of Indians and other minorities, but it is not clear that is serves this purpose when someone with so little, or no blood can take the advantage. There is no requirement of proof that you are at all Indian by blood, and even if you are 1/1000 Indian, what about the other 999/1000? Why don’t they count to give yo lower standing than someone who is 1/10 Indian, say. How indian should you have to be to get benefits.
Related to the question of how much Indian blood you should have to have to get benefits is the question of making other folks suffer to provide this benefit. Many of the people who suffer because of affirmative action are dependents of immigrant minorities, Jews, Italians, and Chinese, and these folks have not had it that well. The Italians were discriminated against in hiring, as mandated by the city council, see announcement below, and Chinese immigrants had very limited migration and work rights, as specified under The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act was not repealed until 1943 as part of our war against Japan.
In the late 1800s anti Italian discrimination was common. In part this was the Tammany Hall Irish doing their best to keep out an upstart immigrant group. Should Italians have affirmative action preferences?
At maximum Ms. Warren is less than 1% indians and thus over 99% Texan. This is to suggest that the majority of her bloodline is descent is from those who displaced the Indians, but her preferential hiring was likely in preference to other minorities who suffered too, and who likely have a purer bloodline to that suffering and exclusion than Ms Warren has. Is this what we want from affirmative action? The form we’ve got benefits, for the most part, only the most crooked, connected members of society. People like Ms Warren. I think this has to change.
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.
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. By the way, perfect people are rarely perfect; it’s usually better to find one you relate to. I suspect that Cinderella here will be bored in the palace, like Princess Diana was.
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.
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.
While several towns have had problems with lead in their water, the main route for lead entering the bloodstream seems to be from the soil. The lead content in the water can be controlled by chemical means that I reviewed recently. Lead in the soil can not be controlled. The average concentration of lead in US water is less than 1 ppb, with 15 ppb as the legal limit. According to the US geological survey, of lead in the soil, 2014., the average concentration of lead in US soil is about 20 ppm. That’s more than 1000 times the legal limit for drinking water, and more than 20,000 times the typical water concentration. Lead is associated with a variety of health problems, including development problems in children, and 20 ppm is certainly a dangerous level. Here are the symtoms of lead poisoning.
Several areas have deadly concentrations of lead and other heavy metals. Central Colorado, Kansas, Washington, and Nevada is particularly indicated. These areas are associated with mining towns with names like Leadville, Telluride, Silverton, Radium, or Galena. If you live in an areas of high lead, you should probably not grow a vegetable garden, nor by produce at the local farmer’s market. Even outside of these towns, it’s a good idea to wash your vegetables to avoid eating the dirt attached. There are hardly any areas of the US where the dust contains less than 1000 times the lead level allowed for water.
Lead content of US soils, from the US geological survey of soils, 2014. Michigan doesn’t look half bad.
Breathing the dust near high-lead towns is a problem too. The soil near Telluride Colorado contains 1010 mg/kg lead, or 0.1%. On a dust-blown day in the area, you could breath several grams of the dust, each containing 1 mg of lead. That’s far more lead than you’d get from 1000 kg of water (1000 liters). Tests of blood lead levels, show they rise significantly in the summer, and drop in the winter. The likely cause is dust: There is more dust in the summer.
Recalled brand of curry powder associated with recent poisoning.
Produce is another route for lead entering the bloodstream. Michigan produce is relatively safe, as the soil contains only about 15 ppm, and levels in produce are generally far smaller than in the soil. Ohio soils contains about three times as much lead, and I’d expect the produce to similarly contain 3 times more lead. That should still be safe if you wash your food before eating. When buying from high-lead states, like Colorado and Washington, you might want to avoid produce that concentrates heavy metals. According Michigan State University’s outreach program, those are leafy and root vegetables including mustard, carrots, radishes, potatoes, lettuce, spices, and collard. Fruits do not concentrate metals, and you should be able to buy them anywhere. (I’d still avoid Leadville, Telluride, Radium, etc.). Spices tend to be particularly bad routes for heavy metal poisoning. Spices imported from India and Soviet Georgia have been observed to have as much as 1-2% lead and heavy metal content; saffron, curry and fenugreek among the worst. A recent outbreak of lead poisoning in Oakland county, MI in 2018 was associated with the brand of curry powder shown at left. It was imported from India.
Marijuana tends to be grown in metal polluted soil because it tolerates soil that is too polluted fro most other produce. The marijuana plant concentrates the lead into the leaves and buds, and smoking sends it to the lungs. While tobacco smoking is bad, tobacco leaves are washed and the tobacco products are regulated and tested for lead and other heavy metals. If you choose to smoke cigarettes, I’d suggest you chose brands that are low in lead. Here is an article comparing the lead levels of various brands. . Better yet, I’s suggest that you vape. There are several advantages of vaping relative to smoking the leaf directly. One of them is that the lead is removed in the process of making concentrate.
Some states test the lead content of marijuana; Michigans and Colorado do not, and even in products that are tested, there have been scandals that the labs under-report metal levels to help keep tainted products on the shelves. There is also a sense that the high cost encourages importers to add lead dust deliberately to increase the apparent density. I would encourage the customer to buy vape or tested products, only.
Before Brexit, I opined, against all respectable economists, that a vote for Bexit would not sink the British economy. Switzerland, I argued, was outside the EU, and their economy was doing fine. Similarly, Norway, Iceland, and Israel — all were outside the EU and showed no obvious signs of riots, food shortages, or any of the other disasters predicted for an exited Britain. Pollsters were sure that Britain would vote “No” but, as it happened, they voted yes. The experts despaired, but the London stock market surged. It’s up 250% since the Brexit vote.
Lodon stock market prices from January 2016 through the Brexit vote, August 2016, to the Boris Johnson election, August 2019. The price has risen by more than 250%.
A very similar thing happened with the election of Trump and of Boris Johnson. In 2016 virtually every news paper supported Ms Clinton, and every respectable economic expert predicted financial disaster if he should, somehow win. As with Brexit, the experts were calmed by polls showing that Trump would, almost certainly lose. He won, and as with Brexit, the stock market took off. Today, after a correction that I over-worried about, the S+P index remains up 35% from when Trump was elected. As of today, it’s 2872, not far from the historic high of 3049. Better yet, unemployment is down to record levels, especially for black and hispanic workers, and employment is way up, We’ve added about 1% of adult workers to the US workforce, since 2017, see Federal Reserve chart below.
Returning to Britain, the economic establishment have been predicting food shortages, job losses and a strong stock market correction unless Brexit was re-voted and rejected. Instead, the ruling Conservative party elected Boris Johnson to prime-minister, “no deal” Brexiter. The stock market responded with a tremendous single day leap. See above
Ratio of Civilian Employment to US Population. Since Trump’s election, we’ve added about 1% of the working age US population to the ranks of the employed.
You’d think the experts would show embarrassment for their string of errors. Perhaps they would save some face by saying they were blinded by prejudice, or that their models had a minor flaw that they’ve now corrected, but they have not said anything of the sort. Paul Krugman of the New York Times, for example, had predicted a recession that would last as long as Trump did, and has kept up his predictions. He’s claimed a bone rattling stock crash continuously for nearly three years now, predicting historic unemployment. He has been rewarded with being wrong every week, but he’s also increased the readership of the New York Times. So perhaps he’s doing his job.
I credit our low un-employment rate to Trump’s tariffs and to immigration control. When you make imports expensive, folks tend to make more at home. Similarly, with immigration, when you keep out illegal workers, folks hire more legal ones. I suspect the same forces are working in Britain. Immigration is a good thing, but I think you want to bring in hard-working, skilled, honest folks to the extent possible. I’m happy to have fruit pickers, but would like to avoid drug runners and revolutionaries, even if they have problems at home.
I still see no immediate stock collapse, by the way. One reason is P/E analysis, in particular Schiller’s P/E analysis (he won a Nobel prize for this). Normal P/E analysis compares the profitability of companies to their price and to the bond rate. The inverse of the P/E is called the earnings yield. As of today, it’s 4.7%. This is to say, every dollar worth of the average S+P 500 stock generates 4.7¢ in profits. Not great, but it’s a lot better than the 10-year bond return, today about 1.5%.
The Schiller P/E is an improved version of this classic analysis. It compares stock prices to each company’s historic profitability, inflation adjusted for 10 years. Schiller showed that this historic data is a better measure of profitability than this year’s profitability. As of today, the Schiller P/E is 29.5, suggesting an average corporate profitability of 3.5%. This is still higher than the ten-year bond rate. The difference between them is 2%, and that is about the historic norm. Meanwhile, in the EU, interest rates are negative. The ten year in Germany is -0.7%. This suggests to me that folks are desperate to avoid German bank vaults, and German stocks. From my perspective, Trump, Johnson, and the Fed seem to be doing much better jobs than the EU bankers and pendents.
