Category Archives: personal relationships

Pneumonia vaccine in the age of COVID

3 Replies

A few days ago, I asked for and received the PCV-13 pneumonia vaccine, and a few days earlier, the flu shot. These vaccines are free if you are over 65, but you have to ask for them. PCV-13 is the milder of the pneumonia vaccines, providing moderate resistance to 12 common pneumonia strains, plus a strain of diphtheria. There is a stronger shot, with more side-effects. The main reason I got these vaccines was to cut my risk from COVID-19.

Some 230,00 people have died from COVID-19. Almost all none of them were under 20, and hardly any died from the virus itself. As with the common flu, they died from side infections and pneumonia. Though the vaccine I took is not 100% effective against event these 13 pneumonias, it is fairly effective, especially in the absence of co-morbidities, and has few side effects beyond stiffness in my arm. I felt it was a worthwhile protection, and further reading suggests it was more worthwhile than I’d thought at first.

It is far from clear there will be a working vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COV-19. We’ve been trying for 40 years to make a vaccine against AIDS, without success. We have also failed to create a working vaccine for SARS, MERS, or the common cold. Why should SARS-CoV-2 be different? We do have a flu vaccine, and I took it, but it isn’t very effective, viruses mutate. Despite claims that we would have a vaccine for COVID-19 by early next year, I came to imagine it would not be a particularly good vaccine, and it might have side effects. On the other hand, there is a fair amount of evidence that the pneumonia vaccine works and does a lot more good than one might expected against COVID-19.

A colleague of mine from Michigan State, Robert Root Bernstein, analyzed the effectiveness of several vaccines in the fight against COVID-19 by comparing the impact of COVID-19 on two dozen countries as a function of all the major inoculations. He found a strong correlation only with pneumonia vaccine: “Nations such as Spain, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, Peru and Chile that have the highest COVID-19 rates per million have the poorest pneumococcal vaccination rates among both infants and adults. Nations with the lowest rates of COVID-19 – Japan, Korea, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand – have the highest rates of pneumococcal vaccination among both infants and adults.” Root-Bernstein also looked at the effectiveness of adult inoculation and child inoculation. Both were effective, at about the same rate. This suggests that the the plots below are not statistical flukes. Here is a link to the scientific article, and here is a link to the more popular version.

An analysis of countries in terms of COVID rates and deaths versus pneumonia vaccination rates in children and adults. The US has a high child vaccination rate, but a low adult vaccination rate. Japan, Korea, etc. are much better. Italy, Belgium, Spain, Brazil, and Peru are worse. Similar correlations were found with child and adult inoculation, suggesting that these correlations are not flukes of statistics.

I decided to check up on Root-Bernstein’s finding by checking the state-by state differences in pneumonia vaccination rates — information available here — and found that the two US states that were hardest hit by COVID, NY and NJ, have among the lowest rates of inoculation. Of course there are other reasons at play. These states are uncommonly densely populated, and the governments of both made the unfortunate choice of sending infected patients to live in old age homes. At least half of the deaths were in these homes.

Pneumonia vaccination may also explain why the virus barely affected those under 20. Pneumonia vaccines was available only in 2000 or so. Many states then began to vaccinate about then and required it to attend school. The time of immunization could explain why those younger than 20 in the US do so well compared to older individuals, and compared to some other countries where inoculation was later. I note that China has near universal inoculation for pneumonia, and was very mildly hit.

I also took the flu shot, and had taken the MMR (measles) vaccine last year. The side effects, though bad, are less bad than the benefits, I thought, but there was another reason, and that’s mimicry. It is not uncommon that exposure to one virus or vaccine will excite the immune system to similar viruses, so-called B cells and T-cell immunity. A recent study from the Mayo Clinic, read it here, shows that other inoculations help you fight COVID-19. By simple logic, I had expected that the flu vaccine would help me this way. The following study (from Root-Bernstein again) shows little COVID benefit from flu vaccine, but evidence that MMR helps (R-squared of 0.118). Let men suggest it’s worth a shot, as it were. Similar to this, I saw just today, published September 24, 2020 in the journal, Vaccines, that the disease most molecularly similar to SARS-CoV-2 is pneumonia. If so, mimicry provides yet another reason for pneumonia vaccination, and yet another explanation for the high correlations shown above.

As a final comparison, I note that Sweden has a very high pneumonia inoculation rate, but seems to have a low mask use rate. Despite this, Sweden has done somewhat better than the US against COVID-19. Chile has a low inoculation rates, and though they strongly enforced masks and social distance, it was harder hit than we were. The correlation isn’t 100%, and masks clearly do some good, but it seems inoculation may be more effective than masks.

Robert Buxbaum, November 7, 2020.

Great mistakes: Sultan Mohammed II steals from a Mongol

2 Replies

There are small errors and great mistakes. I’d previously written about the mistakes that caused Britain to lose America — e.g. General Tarleton burning churches because he thought the sermons were anti monarchist. They were, but if he thought they were anti monarchist before burning the church, they were far more so after… He’d misjudged the American character, something that I think the Democrats are doing today with BLM. Another example was the British attack on Bunker Hill. They spent the lives of 600 soldiers, won a hill they didn’t need, and lost the colony. It’s a mistake we would make reputedly in Vietnam.

Another one of the larger of mistakes of history – and one that changed hsotry massively was made by Mohammad II, ruler of Persia and eastern Islam, from Turkey to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. He had an army of 100,000 and ruled from the walled city of Samarkand. Mohammed’s uncle, Inalchuq, served as a governor in Kazakhstan. With an army of 40-50,000, he ruled from the walled city of Otrar. A Mongol leader named Temujin contacted them asking to trade. Mohammed II ignored the request, but his uncle accepted it. Temujin ruled a poor, distant community of perhaps 100,000, and boasted a motley horse army of perhaps 10,000. But, what Mohammad II didn’t appreciate, was that these Mongol horsemen were uncommonly warlike, and that Temujin, also known as Genghis Kahn, was an uncommonly talented leader.

Gate of the mighty, walled city of Otrar. It’s now a ghost town.

Temujin was not someone to insult. He had laid waste to northern China, and defeated an army of over 1 million, because of an insult. The Chinese emperor had demanded Temujin come to Peking with a grift, then bow low and pledge allegiance. That is he wanted Temujin ,to Kowtow, a request that emperors had made to every tribal leader for centuries, but Temujin took it as an insult. He defeated the Chinese army and killed a good fraction of China’s population. Using methods that are discussed in Mongol literature, but are almost unknown in the west, or highly perverted, as in Mulan. I’ve written in speculation of one aspect of Mongol success here. Another aspect was psychological: Genghis Kahn was able to co-opt the Chinese army, and get them to fight for him. It’s a useful skill.

Now Temujin, Genghis Kahn, was writing to the leaders of eastern Islam asking to trade along the silk road. Inalchuq offered safe passage, and in 1218, the first trade caravan arrived with 100 laden camels and 450 men including an ambassador. Inalchuq did what sultans before him had done: He executed most of the men, sold the rest as slaves, and took the goods, selling them in markets of Bukhara. Mohammed II and his uncle were sure that Temujin would do nothing, he was 2000 miles away, but Temujin sent another peace delegation. This time 3 men direct to Mohmmed II asking for his goods back and for the punishment of those responsible. Mohammad II killed the lead ambassador, blinded one of the others, and had the face of the third disfigured. A year later, 1219, Genghis Kahn showed up in Otrar with siege engines.

Otrar held out for 5 months, falling when a traitor opened the gates and defected with part of the army. The Mongols took the city and let most people live, though he killed Inalchq and his army, as well as the defectors.. Genghis Kahn figured he could not trust a soldier who defects this way. Inalchq was killed by having molten silver poured into his eyes and ears.

Death of Sultan Mohammed II, Picture from the History of Rashad Al-Din.

Genghis then went after Mohammed II, but first defeated the Assassin sect. Mohammed had the sense to run. It didn’t save him, but it did buy him some years of life. When caught, Genghis locked him in a prison fed him gold coins. He is supposed to have explained that, had Mohammad II not hoarded gold, but shared it with his soldiers, they would have fought for him as Genghis’s soldiers had. It’s not a message we like to hear today because it’s practical, but not very charitable. Then again, Genghis Kahn was nothing if not practical.

The Mongols brought many innovations: paper, stirrups, the blast furnace, the number zero, “islamic numerals” (they’re really Mongol /Tibetan numerals), the compass, the printing press, the triangular plow, gun powder, and a new way in war (The Germans called it ‘Blitz Kreig’). I find that schools don’t teach much about Genghis Kahn or our debt to the Mongols, nor do they properly contextualize these innovations as means for a small nation to dominate many larger ones. Perhaps that’s because we find the whole idea of management disturbing, or it’s embarrassing. Western scholars used to write like we invented these things. There are several histories of the Mongols, one was written by Rashid Al-Din (Aladin), vizier over all Persia, the person responsible for renaming it Iran. He wrote an illustrated history of the world, particularly of the Mongols, called Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (“Compendium of Chronicles”). I suspect it would be worthwhile reading but like much of Mongol literature, it is not available in any local library, nor is it referred to by most histories. Another Mongol history, also not available in libraries, is called the Secret History of the Mongols. This was likely written for and by Genghis’s third son, Ogedei, to describe for his children and grandchildren the true story of the early years, the conquests, his father’s and his management methods (some fairly brutal) and as a review of what Ogedei thought worked and what did not. It sounds like an honest book, worthwhile book — the sort modern readers would rather forget exists.

Rashid Al-Din (Aladin), Vizier of Persia. He renamed Persia Iran, and wrote a history of the world from the Mongol perspective. Known as a fictional character, or not at all today.

In general, I find our scholars would like to ignore the more unpleasant lessons of history, including that family matters, and that people like honor over kowtowing, and that they get surly if they’re not rewarded,. Much of our society is built by warriors for the purpose of destruction, as in this engineering joke. We are now in the process of destroying statues of warriors because we find they were often non-nice people who often did not-nice things, or held not-nice views. That’s the way it is with warriors, especially the successful ones. While I’m not a fan of having statues to bums, I think that ignoring successful warriors is worse than honoring them. I discuss the dilemma of military statues here. Without statues to important wars and warriors, modern leaders might repeat the mistake of Mohammed II, or Bunker hill , or of Mohammed IV, or of the Chinese emperor.

Robert Buxbaum, September 20, 2020. I’ve come to wonder if Mohammed II would have fared better if he didn’t steal from the Mongols. He would likely have put off the attack as he learned more about them, and they learned more about him. When the war came, as likely it would, he might have had gun powder, paper, the compass, and the stirrup. Then again, war might have come immediately. The proud Polish officers who collaborated/ surrendered to the Soviet Russians, were quickly murdered in the Katyn forest.

Pre-Columbus America, slavery and cannibalism.

2 Replies

We’re still in the midst of a frenzy of statue removals, and among the most popular to remove is Columbus. The City of Columbus Ohio just removed theirs, and Detroit soon followed. What Columbus is accused of is colonialism, bringing evil western values and western religion to the peaceful Indians. At least that’s the legend being told these days.

The war god, Huitzilopochti, son of the sun, seated at right, required thousands of human sacrifices to keep the sun from going out. Columbus claims that many Indians preferred Christianity to his worship.

According to Columbus and his followers, the Indians of 1492 included some who were peaceful, and others who were murderous cannibals. According to Columbus, the less-violent of the Indians willingly accepted Christianity, or a sort, considering it better than the human sacrifice they were used to.

Mask for Tezcatlipoca, god of the night and sorcery, secondary son of the sun, brother of Huitzilopochtli.

Columbus described people being roasted and eaten with pineapple. Some of Columbus’s crew who were captured, claim they, were fattened for eating, and that others were eaten. That also is the story of Captain Cook, who appears to have been cooked and eaten in 1791, and of Michael Rockefeller, eaten by cannibals in New Guinea in 1961. Some customs die hard.

The natives of Mexico of the time are known to have practiced slavery and human sacrifice, killing thousands of young men and women each year to a wide variety of gods. For Huitzilopochtli, the war-god, son of the sun, Mexican priests cut out the still -beating hearts of adult male slaves, and ate them. This was done to prevent the sun from going out. On flat rocks they same Mexican Indians sacrificed to his brother, Tezcatlipoca, the god of the night and of sorcery. Though Texcatlipoca was slightly less powerful, he was more personally useful. The sacrifice to Tezcatlipoca is reminiscent of the attempted sacrifice of John Smith of the Virginia colony. According to testimony, in 1607, Smith was captured while hunting, kept in captivity for a few days, and was going to be sacrificed on a flat rock until saved by Pocahontas, the chief’s daughter. Later Pocahontas converted to Christianity, travelled to England, and was presented to King James I.

Pocahontas, renamed Rebecca, in 1616.

Related to the story of John Smith of the Virginia colony, is the landing of John Smith of the Massachussetts colony. The reason they settled on that spot in Plymouth bay, was that, when they landed there in 1620, the land was already cleared, but empty. Apparently, there had been a farming Indian tribe who had cleared the land, but had been recently killed off or enslaved by the local Iroquois. The Iroquois practiced slavery against their fellow Indians well before the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619. According to Frederic Douglas in 1870, the Indians treated their slaves better than the white settlers did, but he was writing 150 years later. The peaceful Indian, Squanto who helped the Massachusetts colony had been captured and brought to England in 1609 and brought back to the Americas by the John Smith of the Virginia colony. Squanto lived as a free man among the pilgrims. Squanto helped negotiate a peace treaty for the colony with the Wampanoags against the Narragansett. This treaty was settled at the first Thanksgiving, and lasted for the life of the Wampanoags Chief.

Returning to the Gods of the Mexicans, Tlaloc, the rain god, was responsible for fertility and agriculture. He required the sacrifice of children. There was also a corn god, Centeotl, I think Steven King has a story about his worship, it involved a corn sacrifice, plus spilling your own blood and killing a young woman and using her skin as a mask. There was also the feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl, god of love, knowledge, and intoxicating drink. She required the sacrifice of a mix of men, women, and children, plus ingestion of intoxicating substances. Columbus claimed that many Indians willingly changed religion to Christianity and away from the worship of these deities, a claim that modern liberals find ludicrous, but that I find believable. I think modern liberals imagine themselves as the priests of these religions, or perhaps nobles, but they do not see it, as I do, from the perspective of the unwilling sacrifices.

The folks behind the removal of Columbus statues and behind defunding the police would like to use the money for education about the noble pre-Columbian peoples. They would like to focus on the pyramids and on the large, flat sacrificial stones, without spending too much time on what the pyramids and stones were used for.

Chief Tammany signed a peace treaty with William Pitt in 1683. His grandson converted to Moravian (Protestant?) Christianity. He is considered a model of good will and good government.

The fate of the Indians varied. Some converted to Christianity, some did not. Some tribes integrated well into the new society, many did not. Among the most famous who converted and integrated well, we find Chief Tammany of the Turtle clan of the Delaware Indians. He signed a peace treaty with William Penn, 1683, and his tribe seems to have lived in peace with the settlers for 70 years at least and married into the most prominent families of the area. The Turkey of the same tribe did not fare so well, They sided with the French and warred against the English settlers, and suffered with the French defeat. Western involvement was not always good or fair to the Indians, but that is not inherently Columbus’s fault. Columbus did a service, I think, opening up the new world, and providing an alternative religion to natives who were rescued from human sacrifice. I believe western civilization is a boon to the world by the very balance of order and freedom that some find troubling. The Jewish Bible is strongly against tightly ordered religions with human sacrifice. Christianity is a big improvement, IMHO.

Robert Buxbaum. July 27, 2020

Hamilton and his slave-trading father in law.

1 Reply
Philip Schuyler as a Major General in the Revolution. His statue was removed.

What most folks know about Alexander Hamilton’s father in law, Philip Schuyler, is that he was “loaded”, that he had three daughters, and that he quickly took to young Alexander. But an important fact varnished over is that Schuyler made his money in the slave trade, a trade that Hamilton was likely in when he met the young Schuyler daughters. Schuyler was also a slave owner, owning 13 slaves, by his record, and perhaps another 17 indentured servants working at two mansions. So far, only the Philip Schyler statue has been taken down. It seems possible that many monuments to Hamilton may follow.

Statue of Alexander Hamilton, proudly stands in front of Columbia University. The ten dollar founding father.

The play “Hamilton” proclaims Hamilton’s genius and exceptional work ethic, mentioning that, at the young age of 14 (more likely 16) he was left in charge of a trading company. This was for 5 months in 1771, while the owner was over seas doing business. Hamilton knew the business well; he’d been hired as a clerk at 11 at Beekman and Cruger, a similar import-export trading firm. What items did these firms trade — cotton, sugar, rum, and most profitable slaves. This likely was the business that kept the owner overseas for 5 months while Alexander ran the shop. There are at least two notifications of slave ships entering the harbor with human good for sale. Among Hamilton’s likely jobs would have been fattening and oiling the goods for sale. Hamilton himself seems to have owned a slave-boy named Ajax who he inherited (briefly) from his mother, Rachel. His mother is listed on the tax records as white. She owned five saves at one time, suggesting she was not entirely impoverished. Hamilton’s father, though a failed businessman, was a Scottish Laird (a Lord). As for the court-mandated transfer of Ajax from Alexander, it was to his half-brother James because James was “Legitimate.”

I base Hamilton’s age on the Nevis-St Kitts record of his birth, January 11, 1755.”[1] The play takes as a fact Hamilton’s claim to have been born two years later, January 11, 1757. I trust the written records here, and imagine Hamilton wanted to present himself as a young genius, rather than as a bright, but older fellow. In 1772, at at age 17, Hamilton wrote a “fire and brimstone” description of a deadly hurricane, describing it as “divine rebuke to human vanity and pomposity.”[2] Between this, and his skill at trading, the community leaders collected money to send him to New York, but unlike the play’s description, it was not only for further education. The deal was that he continue trading for the firm,[3] and this is likely how he met his future father in law. “[4] 

Hercules Mulligan, a revolutionary tailor: He was a spy. According to the CIA, much of the work was through his black slave, Cato.

In New York, Hamilton met Schuyler and his daughters. It seems likely that he met the father first, likely as possible customer for the slave trade from the Caribbean, or perhaps as a customer for rum and sugar. A 1772 letter in Hamilton’s handwriting [4] asks for the purchase of “two or three poor boys” for plantation work, “bound in the most reasonable manner you can.” As in the play, Hamilton was friends with John Laurens, an abolitionist, and among his first lodgings was with Hercules Mulligan, a tailor’s apprentice. Hercules is presented as black in the play, but he was quite white (see picture) with a black slave, Cato. Cato ran most of the messages. According to the play, “I’m joining the rebellion cuz I know it’s my chance
To socially advance, Instead of sewin’ some pants, I’m taking my shot. No, Hercules was socially advanced ,married into the British Admiralty, even. He was a true believer in freedom and a slave-holder. His older brother, Hugh Mulligan, was one of the traders that Hamilton was supposed to work with.[5] As for Laurens and his anti-slavery organization, most of those in the organization owned slaves, and though they opposed slavery, they could never decide on when or how to end it. There is no evidence that Cato was ever set free.

The appointment to Washingtons staff was not likely a coincidence. The elder Schuyler was one of the four top generals appointed in 1775 to serve directly under Washington. Phillip oversaw, at a distance, the disastrous attack on Quebec and the victory at Saratoga– both, Burr served admirably. Phillip’s main role was as a quartermaster/supplier, and this is not a small role. Phillip Schuyler had been a quarter-master in the French and Indian war. It’s likely that it was Schuyler who got Hamilton his appointment to Washington’s staff.

Once on Washington’s staff, Hamilton served admirably. Originally serving as a secretary, Hamilton wrote many of Washington’s dispatches. Then, according to tradition, as a cannon commander, he took particular pleasure in the attack on Princeton University. He then served well as secretary of the Treasury, and as head of the Bank of The United States, the only major US bank until Burr opened the Bank of the Manhattan company. Despite his aversion to slavery, Hamilton also continued to deal in slaves. A 1796 cash book entry records Hamilton’s payment of $250 to his father-in-law for “2 Negro servants purchased by him for me.” This is only 3 years before 1799, when New York began to end slavery in the state with the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Children of slaves born after July 4, 1799, were to be legally free, but required indentured servitude: to age 28 for males and 25 for females. Those born before July 4, 1799 became free in 1817. There is no evidence that Hamilton was a leader in any of this, but Burr, another slave-owning abolitionist, was a leader in the NY legislature at the time.

I’m with Burr.He was flawed, a slave-owning abolitionist, but vehimently against the Alien and Sedition Acts, a Hamiltonian horror.

It seems that Robert Morris introduced Hamilton to the importance of tariffs, and to the idea of using debt service as a backing to currency. It’s brilliant idea, but Hamilton understood it and took to it. Hamilton also understood the need for a coast guard to enforce the tariffs. As for Hamilton’s character, or Burr’s. Both, in my understanding, were imperfect people who did great deeds. I’ve already written that Hamilton was likely setting up Burr for murder, perhaps because of Burr’s vehement opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts — That’s why Hamilton wore his glasses and fiddled with the gun so much. Burr was also gaining power through his Manhattan corporation and Tammany organization. both of which got his support among the immigrants.

My intent here is not to knock the image of Hamilton, Schuyler, Laurens and Mulligan, nor to raise that of Burr, but to correct some current fictions in the play “Hamilton”, and to fight a disease of our age, the cancel culture. The cancel culture elevates their heroes (Hamilton, Mulligan) to god-status. They will lie to cover the flaws of their heroes, and will lie also to claim a drop of black blood in them; neither Hamilton nor Mulligan were black and both owned slaves, as did Burr. The other side of the cancel culture is to cancel — to eliminate the validity — of the reactionaries, the non-revolutionary. In the play, these include Samuel Seebury and Aaron Burr. Great building is almost always the work of contradictory people. They need some talent, and a willingness to act, and because building requires a group, they have to work in a group, tolerating flaws of the others in the group. It is just these flawed, contradictory builders that are being cancelled, and I don’t think that’s right or healthy.

Robert Buxbaum, August 4, 2020.

On-line education sucks.

2 Replies

…And [the leper] shall cover his face to the lip, and call out unclean, unclean… (Lev. 13: 45)

Video and TV-learning has been with us for a long time. It’s called PBS. It’s entertaining, but as education, it sucks. You can see the great courses on DVD too. The great professors teaching great material. It’s entertaining, but as education, they suck.

Consider PBS, the public broadcast system, it was funded 50 years ago and given a portion of the spectrum to be a font for at-distance education. At first they tried showing classroom lectures from the best of professors. Few people watched, and hardly anyone learned. Hardly anyone was willing to do catch every lecture, or do any of the reading or any of the assigned homework. Some did some problems, but only if they already knew the subject, sort of as a refresher . No viewer of record learned enough to perform a trade based on PBS-learnign, nor achieved any academic proficiency that would allow them to publish is a reviewed journal, unless they already had that proficiency. A good question is why, but first lets consider the great DVD lectures in science or engineering . They too have been around for years, but I’ve yet to meet anyone of proficiency who learned that way. Not one doctor, lawyer, or engineer whose technical training came this way. Even Sesame street. My sense is that no one ever learned to read from this, or from the follow-on program reading rainbow, except that they had parental help — the real teachers being the parent. My sense is that all formal education over video is deficient or worthless unless it’s complimented by an in-person, interaction. The cause perhaps we are not evolutionarily developed to connect with a TV image the way we connect with a human.

Education is always hard because you’re trying to remold the mind, and it only works if the student wants his or her mind molded. To get that enthusiasm requires social interaction, peer pressure and the like, and it requires real experience, not phony video. Play is a real experience, and all animals enjoy play. it convinces them they can do things, This stag on a now-empty soccer field is busy developing soccer skills and is rewarded here with a reaching his goal. Without the physical goal there would be no practice, and without the physical practice there would be no learning.

For people, the goals of the goals of the teacher must be made to match those of the student. The teachers goals are that they student should love learning, that he or she should acquire knowledge, and that he or she should be prepared to use that knowledge in a socially acceptable way. For the student, the goals include being praised by peers, and getting girls/ boys, and drinking. Colleges work, to the extent they do, but putting together the two sets of goals. Colleges work best in certain enclaves — places where the student’s statues increases if he or she does well on exams or in class, where he or she can drink and party, but will get thrown out if they do it so much that their grades suffer. Also colleges make sure to have clubs and sports where he or she can develop a socially acceptable way to deal with others. Remove the goals an rewards, and the lessons become pointless, or “academic.”

A cave painting from France. It’s diagrammatic, not artistic. It shows where you stand, how you hold the spear, and where the spear is supposed to go, but the encouragement to do it had to be given in person..

It might be argues that visual media can make up for real experience, and to some extent this is true. Visual media has been used since the beginning, as with this cave painting, but it only helps. You still need personal interaction and real-life experience. An experienced hunter could use the cave picture to show the student where to stand and how to hold the spear. But much of the training had to be social, with friends before the hunt, in the field, watching friends and the teacher as they succeed or fail. And — very important — after the hunt, eating the catch, or sitting hungry rubbing one’s bruises. This is where fine-points are gained, and where the student became infected with the desire to actually do the thing right. Leave this out, and you have the experience of the typical visitor to the museum. “Oh, cool” and then the visitor moves on.

In a world of Zoom learning, there is no feast at the end, no thrill of victory, and no agony of defeat. The students do not generally see each other, or talk to one another. They do not egg each other on, or condemn bad behavior. They do not share stories, and there is no real reward. There is no way to impress your fellow, and no embarrassment if you fail, or fail to work. The lesson does not take hold because we don’t work this way. A result is that US education as we know it is in for a dramatic change, but the details are sill a little fuzzy.

As best I can tell, our universities managers do not realize the failure of this education mode, or the choose to ignore it. If they were to admit defeat, they would lose their job. They can also point to a sort of artificial success, as when an accomplished programmer learns a bit more programming, or when an accomplished writer learns a new trick, but that’s not real education, and it certainly isn’t something most folks would pay $50,000 per year for.

Harvard University claims it will be entirely on-line next year, and that it will charge the same. We will have to see how that works for them. You still get the prestige of Harvard, though you can no longer join the crew team, or piss on the statue of John Harvard. My guess is that some people will put up with it, but not at that price. Why pay $50,000 — the equivalent of over $100/hour when you can get a complete set of DVDs on the material for $100, and a certificate. Without the physical pain or rowing, or the pleasure of pissing, there is no real connection to your fellow student, and a lot of the plus of Harvard is that social connection.

On line education isn’t strange; it just isn’t education.

I expect the big mid tier colleges to suffer even more than the great schools. I don’t expect 50,000 students to pay $40,000 each to go to virtual Indiana State. Why should they? Trade-schools may last, and mini-colleges, those with a few hundred students, that might be able to continue in a version of the old paradigm, and one-on-one or self-learning. This worked for Lincoln, and Washington; for Heraclitus and for Diogenes. Self study and small schools are good for self-reflection and refinement. The format is different from on-line, more question and answer. Some folks will thrive, others will flounder — Not everyone learns the same– but the on-line university will die. $40k of student debt for on-line lectures followed by an on-line, virtual graduation? No, thank you.

The reason that trade schools will work, even in a real of COVID, is they never focussed as much on personal interaction, but more on the interaction between your hands and your work. This provides a sort of reality check that doesn’t exist in typical on-line eduction. If your weld breaks, or your pipe leaks, you see it. Non-trade school, on-line eduction suffers by comparison, since there is no reality in the material. Anything can be shown on screen. My undergrad college, a small one, Cooper Union, used something of a trade school approach. For example, you learned control theory while sitting underneath a tank of water. You were expected to control the water height with a flow controller. When you got the program wrong, the tank ran dry, or overflowed, or did both in an oscillatory way. I can imagine that sort of stuff continuing during COVID lockdowns, but not as an on-line experience.

It seems to me that the protest and riots for Black Lives serve as a sort of alternative college, for the same type of person. It relieves the isolation, and provides a goal. My mother-in-law spent her teenage years in Ravensbruk concentration camp, during the holocaust, and my father-in-law survived Auschwitz. They came out scarred, but functional. They survived, I think, because of a goal. A recognition that the they were alive for a reason. My mother-in-law helped her sister survive. For many these days, ending racism by, tearing down statues is the goal. The speeches are better than in on-line colleges., you get the needed physical and social interaction, and you don’t spend $50,00 per year for it.

Robert Buxbaum July 24, 2020. These are my ramblings based in part on my daughter’s experience finishing college with 4 months of on-line eduction. The next year should see a shake-out of colleges that are not financially sound, I expect.

The power of men’s hats

6 Replies

Here’s a joke from 3rd grade: why do Indians wear feather headdresses? …… To keep their wig warm. One of the main reasons to wear a hat is to keep your head warm. Men generally wear hats outside only, and mainly to keep warm, or to keep the sun off your eyes. We thus show below a delivery boy in a knitted cap (called at torque in Canada), and a boss is a stylish fedora. The two hats keep the head warm, but the fedora protects the eyes too, and the different styles establish who you are in the social chain. It is a good thing when fashion works this way, and uncool, in my mind, when messages are reversed or unclear. It’s equally uncool to see a delivery boy in a fedora as an executive in a wool cap. Either one looks pretentious to me. One is dressing up, the other dressing down or confused. Women’s hats generally look confused to me, in part because there is no such thing as a real business-woman’s hat.

Photo by Andy Barnham.(previously spelled wrong)

Nowadays, many business men don’t wear hats, even outdoors in the sun and cold. This seems like a bad idea, but what would I know? Perhaps the problem is what to do with the hat when you come indoors. You can take it off, but then what. Emily post claims that leaving the hat on indoors is usually considered rude, though not always, and traces this back to medieval knights and to the flag code. Indoors, the delivery boy can stuff his knit hat into his pocket, or roll it into a smaller version on his head, a beanie. The fedora wearer must look for a hat rack, or accept looking rude.

Of course the lack of a hat presents problems too. Without one, you leave your hair to signal your social status and political cultural associations. For a man without a hat there are only three styles of hair: short, medium, or long. Short hair says you are a conventionalist drone, long hair, that you’re a hippy or artist, and with middle-length hair you’re …. uncertain? trans? androgynous? No matter how you slice it, it’s not a good look. Adding a mustache or beard makes it even more awkward, in my opinion, see below. I have previously written about the power of mustaches — that they send a message that you are warrior, and beards — that you are a man of fervor, — or of religious or aristocratic sympathies. But combine a mustache with middle-length hair and you begin to look like another Hitler or Stalin.

Wearing a hat allows for a great variety of social messaging, whether worn with or without facial hair. Some hats are expensive, others cheap; some signal religious affiliation, others are strongly secular, or hip. Some folks wear hats that are suitable only for work or sports, like a hard-hat, bicycle helmet, or a straw boater. They tell folks you’re busy with an activity right now. But most people who wear hats, choose one that’s multidimensional, suitable for sport and work. There is the classic Kangol cap that suggests a certain artsy vibe, or the peak cap or newsboy — that suggests (I imagine) a higher level of worker.

working man in cap

Perhaps the most popular flex-hats in the US are the baseball hat, and its relative the trucker’s hat (you adjust the size on a truckers hat using a band int he back). In the US, you can wear these on the job, or off. I think they work indoors too, but what do I know. The baseball and peaked cap suggests you are higher on the social ladder than the truckers cap, but all of them suggest you draw a paycheck. And they often say a lot more. If your trucker’s hat says, NRA, or John Deere, or Oakland As, there enough information given to start a conversation. Depending on what your cap says, you will be welcome in some societies, not welcome in others. Don’t wear your MAGA hat to a Biden rally.

There is power in hats too. A man in a policeman’s cap is a cop, even if he’s without the rest of his police gear. With no hat, the same man in uniform is a mall security guard. The postal person or UPS delivery person is on the job if wearing his USPS baseball cap or knit. An expensive visor cap, like the kangol suggest artistic status, and an expensive newsboy, or peaked cap. suggests a sort of work-life balance. It was worn by Prince Charles in the 1980s, and by me in 2020.

Although a fedora is a boss-man’s hat, I never wear one since I associate them with mobsters, hipsters, lounge singers, and Jimmy Hoffa. For more formal occasions, when not wearing a peaked cap, I wear a Homburg. Churchill wore a Homburg. In England, there is a level above this, the top-hat, and one slightly between the Homberg and fedora, the derby. In the US, none of these really caught on. The derby is sort of comic, sort of social climber. Chaplin wore one, as did Laurel and Hardy. Derby hats tend to get punched through in old-time comedies. It’s the same with most middle of the road approaches — they appeal to no one.

Robert Buxbaum, March 5, 2020.

A series solution to the fussy suitor/ secretary problem

2 Replies

One way to look at dating and other life choices is to consider them as decision-time problems. Imagine, for example that have a number of candidates for a job, and all can be expected to say yes. You want a recipe that maximizes your chance to pick the best. This might apply to a fabulously wealthy individual picking a secretary or a husband (Mr Right) in a situation where there are 50 male choices. We’ll assume that you have the ability to recognize who is better than whom, but that your pool has enough ego that you can’t go back to anyone once you’ve rejected the person.

Under the above restrictions, I mentioned in this previous post that you maximize your chance of finding Mr Right by dating without intent to marry 36.8% of the fellows. After that, you marry the first fellow who is better than any of the previous. My previous post had a link to a solution using Riemann integrals, but I will now show how to do it with more prosaic math — a series. One reason for doing this by series is that it allows you to modify your strategy for a situation where you can not be guaranteed a yes, or where you’re OK with number 2, but you don’t like the high odds of the other method, 36.8%, that you’ll marry no one.

I present this, not only for the math interest, but because the above recipe is sometimes presented as good advice for real-life dating, e.g. in a recent Washington Post article. With the series solution, you’re in a position to modify the method for more realistic dating, and for another related situation, options cashing. Let’s assume you have stock options in a volatile stock company, if the options are good for 10 years, how do you pick when to cash in. This problem is similar to the fussy suitor, but the penalty for second best is small.

The solution to all of these problems is to pick a stopping point between the research phase and the decision phase. We will assume you can’t un-cash in an option, or continue dating after marriage. We will optimize for this fractional stopping point between phases, a point we will call x. This is the fraction of guys dated without intent of marriage, or the fraction of years you develop your formula before you look to cash in.

Let’s consider various ways you might find Mr Right given some fractional value X. One way this might work, perhaps the most likely way you’ll find Mr. Right, is if the #2 person is in the first, rejected group, and Mr. Right is in the group after the cut off, x. We’ll call chance of of finding Mr Right through this arrangement C1, where

C1 = x (1-x) = x – x2.

We could used derivatives to solve for the optimum value of x, but there are other ways of finding Mr Right. What if Guy #3 is in the first group and both Guys 1 and 2 are in the second group, and Guy #1 is earlier in the second line-up. You’d still marry Mr Right. We’ll call the chance of finding Mr Right this way C2. The odds of this are

C2 = x (1-x)2/2

= x/2 – x2 + x3/2

There is also a C3 and a C4 etc. Your C3 chance of Mr Right occurs when guy number 4 is in the first group, while #1, 2, and 3 are in the latter group, but guy number one is the first.

C3 = x (1-x)3/4 = x/4 – 3x2/4 + 3x3/4 – x4/4.

I could try to sum the series, but lets say I decide to truncate here. I’ll ignore C4, C5 etc, and I’ll further throw out any term bigger than x^2. Adding all smaller terms together, I get ∑C = C, where

C ~ 1.75 x – 2.75 x2.

To find the optimal x, take the derivative and set it to zero:

dC/dx = 0 ~ 1.75 -5.5 x

x ~ 1.75/5.5 = 31.8%.

That’s not an optimal answer, but it’s close. Based on this, C1 = 21.4%, C2 = 14.8%, C3 =10.2%, and C4= 7.0% C5= 4.8%Your chance of finding Mr Right using this stopping point is at least 33.4%. This may not be ideal, but you’re clearly going to very close to it.

The nice thing about this solution is that it makes it easy to modify your model. Let’s say you decide to add a negative value to not ever getting married. That’s easily done using the series method. Let’s say you choose to optimize your chance for either Mr 1 or 2 on the chance that both will be pretty similar and one of them may say no. You can modify your model for that too. You can also use series methods for the possibility that the house you seek is not at the last exit in Brooklyn. For the dating cases, you will find that it makes sense to stop your test-dating earlier, for the parking problem, you’l find that it’s Ok to wait til you’re less than 1 mile away before you settle on a spot. I’ll talk more about this latter, but wanted to note that the popular press seems overly impressed by math that they don’t understand, and that they have a willingness to accept assumptions that bear only the flimsiest relationship to relaity.

Robert Buxbaum, January 20, 2020

Samuel Johnson: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

1 Reply

Some days, I spend hours at a time on facebook, and when I’m done, I often feel it was a complete waste of time. I do not make friends this way, and I have little evidence that I’ve convinced anyone. Still, for some reason, I can’t seem to stay off for long, so I figure I might as well look for the attraction.

One positive thing I do (did) with FB was to run for office. I lost, but I was able to speak to more people using FB in a day than I could have otherwise. Another thing I do is to spread articles — those I find interesting, and my own writing, blog posts, mostly. I write these posts for free, and while I imagine my blog posts do some good. I sometimes get nice comments suggesting people read the blogs and think about what I say. Still, it does not make money, and takes a fair amount of effort.

I can imagine I help mankind in some subtle, long range way, or perhaps gain some long-range fame. But who cares about long-range fame? And, as for helping people, it is also possible I will hurt them too. Computers sit analyzing my words, and everyone’s, tracking their views and using the data for what. I’m just feeding the computer, and that makes me think my writing may harm more than help. What I write on FB is owned by FB. It’s free content for the owners of FB to re-use to sell: my personality, capsulated, my friends likes and dislikes, for sale at a price. My posts turn me and my friends into commodities — and there isn’t even remuneration.

It is claimed that, in the 2016 election, Trump was able to win, at low cost, through a Russian-managed facebook campaign. The educated elites of politics were not able to come with the wiley Russians, for all their brain-power, and despite help from the FBI, or so the theory goes. If so, it’s a warning that all the information I provide to facebook is available to Trump and the Russians to use against me. The management of facebook was committed to Ms Clinton in 2016, and is completely committed to Trump’s removal as best I can tell. If they are not able to beat the Russians, maybe I should not try. Then again, maybe they’re not as elite as they think.

Sometimes I imagine that the alternative of not-posting is worse; it is to have no voice at all, and to have no information of the common discussion. The newspapers seem no less biassed than those on my FB. I write then in a bizarre chasm between hope for posterity, and a better world, and out of desperation that to be an unheard, quiet one, is to be dead. I suspect I’m not unique here.

Robert E. Buxbaum, January 27, 2020.

The dangers of political humor

1 Reply

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.

1 Reply

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.