Category Archives: politics

Who watches the watchmen; who protects from the protectors?

One of the founding ideas of a limited government, as I think our founders intended, is that the power of the state to protect carries with it several dangers. The first of these is cost, all good services and all good protections come at a cost. Generally that is achieved by taxation or by inflation, or by imposing regulations that do more harm than good. Once a tax for a service is accepted the service is really removed, and there is a tendency to over tax or over inflate to maintain it and to mis-distribute the service as well. The people do not become wealthier, or better served, but the people distributing the services win out. There are those who would say we are living through this today.

Another problem with a big, protective government is that the protectors can turn on the people they are supposed to protect. This can be small issues, like firing people who refuse to vaccinate, or large matters like imprisoning enemies. The history of the world is littered with examples of governments taken over by their own police or army. Generally the excuse is that the police is protecting the people from some bigger danger: rioters, disease, subversives. But once the police take over, they are hard to remove. They tend to see anyone who wants to limit their power as another subversive, and they tend to treat treat such people ruthlessly.

In the French Revolution, the group who ran the guillotine was the “committee for public safety”. First they killed to protect the folk from dangerous monarchists, then the clergy, and capitalists, and eventually anyone they considered a threat: That is anyone who considered them a threat. A similar outcome occurred in Russia, the removal of the Tzar lead to a rein of terror by Stalin. Harry Truman wrote saying that the CIA was another Stalinist police force, and wrote that congress was afraid of them. (see his Op-ed here). It seems that FBI director James Comey used made-up evidence of Russian collaboration to try to remove Trump (see NY Post story here).

A final problem with a powerful group of protectors is that it can be bought by outside agents. Rudolf Hess was Truman’s agent for dealing with the UN to promote world peace. It also turns out that he was also a Soviet agent. In Britain in the 50s to 70s, the assistant head of spying, the second in command of MI6, was Kim Philby a Soviet agent. The Soviets helped Philby’s rise by destroying the reputation of anyone who might do the job well. To this day, we regularly find Chinese and Russian agents in our FBI, NSA, and CIA. There is no better place to gather information and spread lies than with the organization that is supposed to protect us.

The title of my essay comes from a satrical poem/ essay written by Juvinal, in first century Rome (read it here). The more famous line is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Juvenal points out that not only is group of watchmen/protectors a danger in itself so that, if you hire a watchman to keep your wife chaste, she is likely to stray with the watchman, but he also points out that the watchmen are expensive, and that they are easily bought. Juvenal also points out that cruelty and vanities are common outcomes of a large retinue; if the wife or one of her high eunuchs feels disregarded, everyone lower will be beaten mercilessly. It’s a problem that is best solved, in the home and in politics in general by having a small staff — just what’s really needed. This, I think, was the intent of the founders of our country who limited the number of services provided.

Robert E. Buxbaum, November 27, 2021. As a more-fun way to present watchmen getting excessive, here is a parity song, “Party in the CIA,” by Weird Al. …Better put your hands up and get in the van, Or else you’ll get blown away, Stagin’ a coup like yeah… Party in the CIA.

COVID is 1/50 as deadly in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea…

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I may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean I’m crazy. COVID-19 shows a remarkably low death rate in Asia, particularly Eastern Asia, compared to the US or Europe or South America. As of this month, there have been 734,600 US deaths from COVID-19, representing 0.22% of all Americans. Another way of stating this is 2.2 deaths per thousand population. In one year, COVID has lowered the life expectancy of US men by 2.1 years; with the decline worst among hispanic men. The COVID death rate is very similar in Europe, and higher in South America (in Peru 0.62%), but hardly any deaths in East Asia. In China only 4,636 people, 0.003% of the population. That’s 1/700th the rate in the US, and almost all of these deaths are in western China. They no longer bother with social distancing.

The low death rate in East Asia. was noted by the BBC over a year ago. Based on today’s data from Worldometer, here, the low death rates continue throughout East Asia, as graphed at right. In Hong-Kong the death rate is 0.03 per thousand, or 1/70th the US rate. In Taiwan, 0.04 per thousand; in Singapore, 0.01 per thousand; in S. Korea 0.04 per thousand; Cambodia and Japan, 0.1 per thousand. The highest of these countries shows 1/20 the death rate of the US. This disease kills far fewer East Asians than Westerners. This difference shows up, for example in a drop in the lifespan of male Americans by 2.16 years. The lifespan of male Hispanics dropped more, by 4.58 years. In China, Japan, and Korea the lifespans have continued to increase.

Life expectancy for US males has dropped by 2.16 years. It’s dropped more for Hispanic and Black Americans. Data for women is similar but not as dramatic.

My suspicion is that this was a racially targeted bio-weapon. But perhaps the targeting of westerners reflects a cultural lifestyle difference. Mask use has been suggested, but I don’t think so. In many high mask countries the death rate is high, while in low mask Taiwan and Korea it’s low, only 0.04 COVID deaths per thousand. Even Sweden, with no masks reports only 1.4 per thousand deaths; that’s 2/3 the death rate of the US. Masks do not seem to explain the difference.

Another lifestyle difference is obesity; Americans are fat. Then again, Peru was hit far worse than we were, and Peruvians are thin. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, folks are fat, but the death rate is small. Another cultural difference is medicine, but I don’t believe Sweden, Germany, and France have worse healthcare than Taiwan or Cambodia. Cambodia saw 1/20 the US COVID death rate.

My suspicion is that this disease targets by race because it was designed that way. If it isn’t a bio weapon, it certainly behaves like one. I may be paranoid here, but that’s the way it seems.

As a side issue, perhaps related, I note that China keeps pushing for the to close its manufacturing in the interest of CO2 abatement, while they keep building coal burning power plants to fill the manufacturing need that we abandon. I also notice that they hit us with tariffs while protesting our tariffs, that they steal our intellectual property, and that they are building islands in the sea between China and Japan. There is war-tension between our countries, and Western-targetting virus appears right outside of China’s top-security virus lab — their only level 4 lab — I’m guessing it’s not a total coincidence.

Robert Buxbaum, October 12, 2021

Of cigars and marriage, Kipling and Freud.

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My last post included a rather gruesome bit of poetry by Rudyard Kipling where he describes the Afghani women coming to kill the wounded British soldiers in the first Afghan war. It’s sexist, or anti-sexist, if you like. Since it reverses a stereotype of the non-violent, female home-body. Then again the Afghanis had wiped out an entire British army, killing virtually everyone including civilians.

What follows is The Betrothed, one of Kipling’s first published poems, appearing in “the civil and military gazette”, Lahor, India (near Afghanistan), November, 1888. Kipling was an assistant editor). It has a more traditional view of women, or of British women who do not go out murdering, but who do wish to control/ stop a British man’s cigar smoking. In a sense, such stoppage is murder. The inspiration was a breach of ‘Promise of Marriage’ case in Glasgow, August 1888, where a young woman, Maggie Watson, sued her fiancee because he continued to smoke cigars after she insisted he stop. Kipling explores the psychology of the choice between smoking and marriage. I think Freud would approve.

The Betrothed.

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. 

We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face. 

Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. 

There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away— 

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town! 

Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold! 

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar— 

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket! 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile. 

Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string? 

Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride? 

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close, 

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return, With only a Suttee’s passion—to do their duty and burn. 

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead. 

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again. 

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall. 

I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides. 

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between. The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen. 

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year; 

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight. 

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love. 

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire? 

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? 

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. 

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse! 

Sigmund Freud with his cigar. The whole attraction of cigars, is a strange one, as Freud knew better than most. Cigars are deadly, but casual, often with a good flavor, and a sucking comfort. The death-risk of one is small and distant. Cigars thus represent risky fun they are thus life, in a temporary, risky way. Marriage is permanence and safe, and binding. The binding permanence is a sort of death, but children are good, and that’s life. Freud’s choice was to smoke himself to death. Kipling got married and eventually gave up smoking.

Robert E. Buxbaum, September 17, 2021. Kipling has a great sense of words, and an attractive sense of the subjects, great and small. For years he was the voice of his generation in Britain, but by the end of his life, his views were unacceptable. sexist. On the other hand, he remained staunchly anti-Nazi, anti eugenics, and anti Soviet. By comparison, George Bernard Shaw was a vocal fan of Stalin, of Hitler, and of the eugenic removal of Jews and other undesirables. Shaw’s words remain fashionable, while Kipling’s do not. Such is the nature of fame.

The British Exit from Afghanistan, and ours

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As bad as our exit from Afghanistan has been, the slow British exit in the 1840s to 1920 was worse. While we lost a lot of stuff and left hundreds of Americans and contractors behind, the British, in their first try at leaving, lost a whole army including thousands of civilians. Then they returned and left repeatedly for 80 years, having to fight against their own weapons and people that they had trained. We did many of the same things the Brits did, like trusting our security to folks we’d been trying to kill, but we have not lost anywhere near as many people (yet) and we have not returned (yet). What follows is a look at the British exit, based mostly on Wikipedia articles: “The First Afghan War“, and the retreat from Kabul, 1842, and the biographies of Shah Shujah and Akbar Khan, pictures below.

Akbar Khan. The British tried to kill him, then negotiated with him. Sketch by Vincent Eyre
Britain’s Puppet King, Shah Shujah, Sketch by Vincent Eyre.

The British went into Afghanistan, as we did, to create a more stable and western-friendly government. Their first act was to remove the king, Mohammed Khan, and install a more pliant leader, Sultan Shujah. Mohammed was part of the Khanate, that is the Moguls (Mongols), a deadly violent group who the British were fighting in India. We did the same when we entered Afghanistan. We removed the elected president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, a “radical Moslem” associated with the Taliban leader, Mohammed Omar, an even more radical moslem. Omar was associated Osama bin Laden who’d attacked the US on 9-11. We replaced these, long-bearded Moslems with Hamid Karzai, a moderate Moslem: short beard, reasonably popular, US-friendly, elected in Bonn, Germany. The problem with Shah Shujah and Hamid Karzai is neither one had legitimacy in the eyes of the people, nor respect from the army, either. In part that’s because we put them in power and kept them there, in part that’s because we never let them lead in war or diplomacy. Our follow-on leader, Ashraf Ghani, had no beard, and even less legitimacy and respect. The Afghan army left Ghani as soon as we started leaving; they’d done the same to Shah Shujah when the British left in 1842.

William Macnaughten, the British Envoy, prison sketch by Vincent Eyre, the same fellow who sketched Akbar and Shujah above.

Shah Shujah had a habit of mutilating those who worked for him whenever he got upset. All of Shujah’s servants were missing ears or noses or testicles. Strangely, this seems to have given him more legitimacy than Ghani had. Perhaps if we allowed our leaders to lead, or at least mutilate, the army would have stayed loyal. Then again, maybe nothing would have prevented the puppet from collapsing when the puppet-master left. Both we and the Brits relied on our own troops to keep the peace, along with payoffs and occasional assassinations (we call those airstrikes). It worked for a time, but did not build loyalty or love.

Among those the British paid off and occasionally tried to kill was Akbar Khan, the son of imprisoned Mohammed Khan. Eventually, the British felt they needed Akbar’s help to protect their exit, as he controlled the hills around Kabul including the old Silk Road that the British hoped to travel. Similarly, in the end, we found we needed Taliban help to clear the road to the airport. We didn’t quite get the help, nor did the Brits.

On December 23, 1841, the British envoy, William Macnaughten, visited Akbar Khan and proposed that he would hand over Shah Shujah and make him king in return for safe passage for 16,500 people under General Keith Elphinstone on a journey from Kabul to fort Jalalabad: 93 miles due east. Akbar agreed, but had Macnoughton arrested and later killed. His body was hung in the bazaar. Akbar seems to have figured that anyone willing to betray his old friend would be likely to betray him as well.

Kipling was stationed in India, near the Afghan border. His view of the locals is rather gruesome.

General Elphinstone left Kabulon January 5, 1842 with 4,500 armed soldiers, several cannon, and 12,000+ unarmed civilians. The going was slow and supplies didn’t arrive. Five days later, January 10, allies of Akbar attacked in the hills and killed or captured most of the group. Akbar invited Elphinstone to tea the next day and announced that the group was now his prisoner. He offered safe passage for the women and children, but demanded payment. The alternative was that they freeze in the hills. Elphinstone, at first refused, then ransomed himself and others, in all nine people. The rest of the group were shot, stabbed, taken by the Afghanis to be wives, or stripped of clothing and left to freeze. Younger children were raised as Afghanis, only identified as British sixty or more years later– the British liked to pretend they had not left them. Of the rest, only two survived. One soldier, William Brydon made it to Jalalabad, January 13, 1842. Elphinstone died in captivity in Kabul, April, 1842. According to Kipling’s poem, the Afghanis mutilated British bodies. More likely it was animals.

Hamid Karzai, American supported President, now under house arrest.

The British re-invaded Kabul several times after that, each time hoping to free captives and show who’s boss. There followed a second Anglo Afghan war (1878-80) and third (1919-20), and arguably a fourth (2001-21). Our exit isn’t as bad, at least not yet. We’ve left behind 200-300 Americans plus hundreds of helicopters, trucks, and high-tech weapons. The Taliban are now in charge, folks we’d tried to kill, all of them were associated with Omar, and several with Osama bin Laden, too. Our security forces have been shot, the embassy translator is scheduled to be beheaded, the new government includes several senior members who had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, released to Qatar in a prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl in 2014. Hamid Karzai is in captivity, and we’ve taken 100,000 Afghanis who may not integrate well into US society. But at lest there is no sign we’re going back, not for Karzai, or the Americans, or for anyone else. It’s very bad, but it could be worse. Biden calls it a success. Compared to the British exit, it is so far.

Robert Buxbaum, Sept. 5, 2021. IMHO beards are associated with commitment.

What I learned by running for office.

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I’m an enemy of unity and a harborer of prejudice. During the election, I was told that all Republicans are, and I’ve come to accept it as true. I’d run for county water commissioner (drain commissioner) as a Republican, see web-site, and the charge is fair. I wasn’t happy to that George Will write to not for any Republicans because, in his opinion, we’re all prejudiced, and thus a Democrat is better for all jobs. When George, or anyone else, talks about getting rid of the prejudiced, it sounds to me like he wants to get rid of me and those who think like me. We’re to be replaced by those who think like him, or (since he has few solid ideas) whose ideas are gleaned as an average of those running the respectable media (It turns out there are only a fairly few people running the respectable media).

Biden seems to have fallen into the presidency. He didn’t campaign, but the press and a lot of people didn’t like Trump, and could not settle on anyone with opinions.

I didn’t like how the Water department was run, or how the costs were distributed, and some of this has to do with prejudice — engineering aesthetics, I call it. After living with these prejudices or aesthetics, I’ve come to think of them as part of me. I worked to form my opinions — opinions of what was fair, and who was likely to do good work, and what was good engineering. My prejudices and opinions were developed over many years. They’re not perfect, but I like them. I don’t want to have to exchange my opinions and prejudices for the government’s. If I felt otherwise, I would not have run for office. I also resent sensitivity training — the person running them rarely shows any sensitivity, IMHO.

One of the things that anti-racists hate, and I support is zionism. It’s a founding principle of Black Lives Matter that black people in the US can’t be free so long as the zionist state (Israel) exists. Why is this? There is an assumption that all black peoples are one, and that zionists are oppressors. Not that you could tell a Palestinian from a zionist by skin color, but it’s a truth that the faculty of Princeton endorses.

Not long ago the faculty of Princeton University voted unanimously for BDS including a ban on any zionist speaker from speaking on campus. The faculty also picked George Will as the graduation speaker in 2020. Most of the professors chose to not vote, but of those who did (1/7 of the total including many Jews) the pro-BDS vote was unanimous. As a result, if Einstein were to rise from the grave, with the unified field equations finally worked out, he’d have to speak off-campus because he was a zionist, and the university is committed to BLM and anti prejudice. (Tell me again, how does anti-zionism help black lives to matter?; how does BLM help you get clean water or good sewage treatment?)

In terms of sewage treatment or bringing clean water, I’ve found that the sort of person willing to do the work is usually someone with an opinion, and that usually it’s a rough opinion. My sense is to let people have their opinions and to say, if you treat the sewage right, I treat you right. Good work isn’t cheap, and people who do it can’t be culled from those with the right views and political opinions.

While campaigning I told leaders of the pipe-fitters union that I could tell that the Pontiac sewage plant was badly run just by smelling the air around the plant — you shouldn’t be able to smell a sewage plant from miles away. They said that was a racist statement. I then told them that the boilers were rusty, and that at the roof of the digester cad caved in, at least a year ago. They said they’d already endorsed the Democrat, and only spoke to me as a courtesy.

Robert Buxbaum June 25, 2021

Alice’s Restaurant and Nuclear Waste

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It’s not uncommon for scientists to get inspiration from popular music. I’d already written about how the song ‘City of New Orleans’ inspires my view of the economics of trains, I’d now like to talk about dealing with nuclear waste, and how the song Alice’s Restaurant affects my outlook.

As I see it, nuclear power is the elephant in the room in terms of clean energy. A piece of uranium the size of a pencil eraser produces as much usable energy as three rail cars of coal. There is no air pollution and the land use is far less than for solar or wind power. The one major problem was what to do with the left over eraser-worth of waste. Here’s the song, it’s 18 1/2 minutes long. The key insight appeared in the sixth stanza: “…at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile Is better than two little piles…”

The best way to get rid of nuclear waste would be (as I’ve blogged) to use a fast nuclear reactor to turn the worst components into more energy and less-dangerous elements. Unfortunately doing this requires reprocessing, and reprocessing was banned by Jimmy Carter, one of my least favorite presidents. The alternative is to store the nuclear waste indefinitely, waiting for someone to come up with a solution, like allowing it to be buried in Yucca Mountain, the US burial site that was approved, but that Obama decided should not be used. What then? We have nuclear waste scattered around the country, waiting. I was brought in as part of a think-tank, to decide what to do with it, and came to agree with several others, and with Arlo Guthrie, that one big pile [of waste] Is better than two little piles. Even if we can’t bury it, it would be better to put the waste in fewer places (other countries bury their waste, BTW).

That was many years ago, but even the shipping of waste has been held up as being political. Part of the problem is that nuclear waste gives off hydrogen — the radiation knocks hydrogen atoms off of water, paper, etc. and you need to keep the hydrogen levels low to be able to transport the waste safely. As it turns out we are one a few companies that makes hydrogen removal pellets and catalysts. Our products have found customers running tourist submarines (lead batteries also give off hydrogen) and customers making sealed electronics, and we are waiting for the nuclear shipping industry to open up. In recent months, I’ve been working on improving our products so they work better at low temperature. Perhaps I’ll write about that later, but here’s where you’d go to buy our current products.

Robert Buxbaum, July 4, 2021. I’ve done a few hydrogen-related posts in a row now. In part that’s because I’d noticed that I went a year or two talking history and politics, and barely talking about H2. I know a lot about hydrogen — that’s my business– as for history or politics, who knows.

Billionaire Democrats and union Republicans

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In the last presidential election, the largest billionaires in the US were vocal Democrats, and two billionaires, Yang and Bloomberg were candidates. Bloomberg had been an anticrime Republican when he ran for mayor but in 2020 he spent $!B of his own money on anti Republican ads, and paid the debts of thousands of Florida felons who he thought would vote his way. It’s a strange new world.

Other vocal Democrats include: Jeff Bezios, majority owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Bill Gates, founder and largest owner of Microsoft (just today blasting the Republicans over global warming — Is that logical — is cold better?), and Warren Buffett who likes to note that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary does (IMHO that’s because he games the tax system and pays no social security tax). Meanwhile union workers and white middle class folks were mostly Republicans in 2020.

Union leadership are still Democrats, but the last few elections saw union workers voting R. These were called “The basket of deplorables, unredeemables” by candidate Clinton. R support among black people is less than 50%, but growing too. it’s quite a lot higher than two decades ago. Many showed up at MAGA rallies, you’ll see plenty in videos at “the insurrection”. The only person shot and killed at the insurrection was a white woman, unarmed, shot in the face by Capital police — no charges filed, but the liberal press, who usually hate such things, was silent. Almost to the man, they sided with the police over the mob.

I notice that the Black Lives Matter rallies are populated with the well off and the well educated. A Princeton lawyer was photographed driving around with a box of Molotov cocktails, and his co-worker, another lawyer tossed a lit fire bomb into a police car. It used to be that Princeton lawyers didn’t do that, at least not in person.

Portrait of a Democrat. From the New Yorker.

It’s not like the platforms have reversed. The Democratic party was always for high taxes, high regulation, and for soft money that they could give away. They still are. In 1900 the call was for “free silver“, now it’s “stimulus money.” It used to be that rich people didn’t like this. They would point of that printing money didn’t add to wealth, but just redistributed it from those who had savings to those who did not. Now they uniformly blast anyone who doubted the wisdom of printing 1.9 trillion in new money ($6000 per person, of which $1400 is given to you), and going on to blast anyone who doesn’t like additional oversight to prevent the systemic racism they see in the less-well-off.

One reason these richest billionaires are no longer Republicans is that they are no longer involved industrial manufacturing in the US. Thus the regulations they favor don’t apply to them. In the olden days, rich people made steel or cars. Regulations were annoying. Rich industrialists had money in US banks. For them inflation was theft. Now rich people own intangible industries that largely operate outside of the country. What money they earn is earned off-shore, tax free. As individuals, they live on US debt, and possess little or no hard cash. Inflation helps them pay off their debt, and high taxes don’t hurt them. Buffett can be down-home and pro environment. He flies private jet to meetings on global warming while investing in overseas petroleum.

Elon Musk seemed like a Republican during the Trump administration, but not so much now. He still makes stuff in America, but has moved to manufacture abroad. In January, he said he was fired up for Biden. He has put a significant chunk of his wealth into bitcoins. Its a protection from the inflation caused by printing money, and it’s a bet that’s paid off handsomely. I expect that we’ll have billionaire Democrats and union Republicans for the foreseeable future.

Robert Buxbaum, March 14, 2021. It’s pie day. Eat a pie at 1:59:27. (Edited Apr. 28, 2021)

IFL Science grows up.

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I used to follow an Australian science blog, called “I Fucking Love Science.” Elise Andrew and her crew scanned the literature with a keen eye for the interesting. They regularly posted to Facebook and alerted science nerds like me to all sorts of new science bits with minimal commentary, minimal advertisements, and no politics. On average they found 6 or 8 really interesting posts, per week, generally one or two on fundamental physics, one or two on materials, one or two on biology or medicine, one or two astronomy, perhaps a chemistry post. My post about the color of the sky on Mars was ignited by a picture of the Mars sky that I saw on IFL Science — the sky was yellow, and I had just written about why the sky on earth was blue, and not green.

But, as with all quirky things, this one matured. The name changed to “IFL Science” — a change that I suspect was designed to promote sharing. There were more advertisements, and click bait — “this starlet lost a ton of weight,” “you won’t believe what this famous person’s partner looks like now,” etc. And there was politics, vaguely presented as science. Ms Andrew wrote more and more of herself, making herself into a personality whose travels and speaking tours would interest us. And there were non-science, guest bloggers too: People telling you who to vote for and more importantly who to vote against. All for the good of the world, she said, but it was her opinion, and not what I’d gone to IFL for.

The science got less technical, too and more popular. More pretty pictures and misleading headlines. Currently there is no math, no equations, no chemical diagrams. A top story of this week told of a semi-interesting approach for women with constipation — something that “would change everything.” When you click on the story, you find that women put their finger in their vagina and work out the poop that way, something called “splinting.” It’s sort of science, but not the sort that made me love science. Another top story — the top one from today is as follows:

Top story from IFL science today, Feb 28, 2021. Is there really no fuel use? No. The fuel is a battery, and the speed in 4m/s (9mph), and the plane looks nothing like this.

If you follow the links to here, it turns out that the plane (unmanned) looks nothing like this. It uses electric energy from a battery to move ionized air rearward at an efficiency far lower than with a propeller. The forward speed is 4 m/s (9 mph) and the maximum distance covered was 55m, half a Canadian football field. As presented in IFL science, it’s a misleading, non-math clickbait for something that’s interesting engineering — sort of. As for being Star Trek like, no. To move this plane, you need air.

I’m sorry, you can not make quantum mechanics for dummies. No dummy will understand it. You can make a book that’s not quantum mechanics for dummies, or a quantum book not for dummies. Just saying.

In the treatment of the work of the recent Noble laureates, IFL Science didn’t talk about the work so much as the biographies of the people, and their struggles, and that two of the people who won Nobels for their work in biology were women — for an advance related to CRISPERS– but that wasn’t science. I’d prefer to know what the advance was, and how it works. I’d prefer to figure out that these were women from their names or from the pronouns like, “she” or “her”. There was also no information about other two researchers (males, I assume, or perhaps females who had less-interesting biographies?). It was the same with the Physics Nobel except that I already knew there was a black hole at the center of the galaxy, and that those who found it are long dead. Instead the Note Prize was being awarded for a photograph of the black hole. Interesting (sure doesn’t look like a black hole to me). Is there something they learn from the photo. I’ve noted that we are likely within a black hole, and I show why this is using some, not too difficult math.

Having griped along this way, I have to say that that IFL isn’t that bad, it’s just non-mathy, popular, and a little grown up. That’s sad, but it’s not toxic. Grownups make money, and please customers, and that’s how it goes. To quote a wonderful book, The outsiders, “Nothing gold can stay.” In my own blog, I try to be more math-y, and more science-y. My model is Isaac Asimov, a writer who excited me to love science from when I was 8 to when I entered college, nine years later (1972). He would die of AIDS from a transfusion, 20 years after that.

Robert Buxbaum, February 28, 2021

is a colder world better.

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For the last several years it has been claimed that some 98% of legitimate scientists believe it is a major need to reduce CO2 output so as to stop the world from getting warmer. When Trump visited the pope 4 yers ago, the pope would not speak to him expect to hand him his anti-global warming letter he’d written, “Laudato Si” and to tell Trump to get on board to stop global warming. Trump said he would read the letter.

Trump visits the pope, and the pope does not look happy

I’m not a fan of science established by Papal dictate based on an informal poll of experts, especially here where the minority includes some of the greatest minds of the 20th century, and the poll is taken by Al Gore’s science expert, but that’s where we are when it comes to science and politics. I also find it that the pope blames the US for global warming but not China when the the majority of CO2 came from China, a country committed to increasing its use of coal. But be this as it may be — the pope doesn’t blame China for imprisoning Catholics either, most recently the editor of Hong Kong’s most widely read newspaper.

So I thought I take a step back to look at the desirability of making the world colder. Is a colder world a better world? Sad pictures of polar bears are presented in favor of the colder world, but for all I know, polar bears prefer it warm. Their numbers are increasing.

Paul McCarthy lyrics; Hey Jude.

If we had a global climate adjustment knob somewhere, a magic knob allowing you to make the world warmer or colder by turning it right, or left, I doubt the consensus would be to turn the knob left. There is no real logic to cold being good, but there is a line in “Hey Jude”: “…It’s a fool who plays it cool, by making his world a little colder.” And Svente Arrhenius, one of the great scientists of 100 years ago, said he preferred a warm earth to a cold one to avoid disease and starvation. When the climate turns colder, the result is disease and famine as crops fail and animals freeze. It’s not an option that I’d think most people would prefer. given my choice, I would prefer things a little warmer.

I should also note that our ability to fine tune the climate is not what we’d think. The world climate is chaotic, and there is no reliable knob. Historically, the most common setting is ice-age, and that’s a setting that most people really don’t like.

Robert Buxbaum, February 20, 2021.

Chinese billionaires keep disappearing with facebook twitter’s help. Alibaba’s Jack Ma is the latest.

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Jack Ma, disappeared billionaire owner of Alibaba.

Every 25 years or so, for the past 1500 years China gets a new dictator who rounds up the rich and famous for loyalty trials, imprisonment. and worse. This was true of Li Ping following Tianamin Square, and Mao Zedong who killed some 75 million as part of his 10,000 flowers, great leap purges. The current dictator, Jenping Xi. Like, has been rounding up anyone he worries about, and that’s basically anyone he might worry about. The latest is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, China’s version of e-bay and Amazon. Until his disappearance, he was the richest person in China.

Ma had not been seen in public since October 2020, when he and two top lieutenants of Alibaba were called to meet with regulators. He reappeared months later in a 40 second video (some say a hostage video) to say he is more rested now, and that he is positive that China’s regulators do not stifle innovation. As typical for China, there is no information about his whereabouts. What’s novel is that US media companies are involved helping Xi to trace potential opposition and keep questions out of the press. This includes Google, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as US media outlets.

71st Cannes Film Festival - Screening of the film "Ash Is Purest White" (Jiang hu er nv) in competition - Red Carpet Arrivals - Cannes, France, May 11, 2018. Fan Bingbing poses.
China’s biggest starlet, Fan Bingbing, vanished from sight and the internet for months. She may have said something critical, but has reappeared and recanted it.

In the past the news and social media would have been full of negative comments about China, and Ma’s detention , both from within and without. Now there is hardly anything and what little there is, is mildly positive about Xi. For three months there have been no e-mail or published tweets or Facebook posts from Ma or his lieutenants. Similarly, there is no room for negative speculation within China, and little within the US. The company’s planned IPO was cancelled, one that could have been the richest in history, but this fact got virtually no press, not in China, not in the US. Regulators cancelled it just two days before the start of trading. You’d expect screams from inside and outside China; instead, the story has been covered only briefly by CNN and the Financial Times, generally putting a pro-China spin on it. They stress the importance of regulations and avoiding monopolies, and don’t mention that Alibaba competes with Amazon, e-bay and Walmart. The expectation is that Ma and his higher-ups will be found guilty of monopoly trading and abuse of power. Under Xi, these crimes that have sent corporate leaders to prison for 12 to 20 years.

Ren Zhiqiang, missing billionaire, sentenced to 18 years.

Consider the fate of Ren Zhiqiang, the 69 year old chairman of Huayuan property conglomerate. It was one of the largest property groups in China, but Ren vanished in March 2020 after being heard to have complained about how the government was handling COVID-19. He was expelled from the communist party, and in September 2020 sentenced to 18 years in jail for “taking bribes and abuses of power.” There was hardly a trial, and as with Jack Ma, Facebook and Twitter helped the party silence Ren and his supporters. The result is that he had no recourse to the court of public opinion. About a month later, Facebook and Twitter did the same to Donald Trump, banning him for life from Facebook, Twitter. All other platforms joined, these included Snap and Reddit. As in China they also banned his main lieutenants and his main supporters, including the my-pillow man. The internet services also closed (deplatformed) Parler, the only competing web-service that allowed Trump and his supporters to post.

It can help to have public outcry, as Xi found after he disappeared China’s most popular movie starlet, Fan Bingbing in July 2018. Fan is a star of Chinese TV and movies and appears in Iron Man II and X-Men. As with Ma and Ren, Facebook and Twitter removed all posts, comments, questions, and complaints about Fan, releasing only the official statement that she was under investigation and taking a break. Unlike Ren, Fan reappeared a year later, April 2019 with no official charges filed. Nor has there been any official report. She has apologized for misdoings. and is supposed to have paid some $150 million, but she’s free. My guess is that the pressure of 100 million Chinese fans is what helped Ms Fan to un-vanish.

Chairman of Anbang Insurance Group Wu Xiaohui attends the China Development Forum in Beijing, China
Had Wu Xiaohui, former chairman of Anbang Insurance Group, and owner to the Waldorf Astoria.

A less positive outcome is when there is no outcry. When Wu Xiaohui, chairman of the Anbang Insurance Group, and the owner of New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel vanished for two years. When he reappeared, he faced a quiet trial that sentenced him to 18 years in prison. The usual charges: fraud and abuse of power. Wu’s mother claimed she had no access to her son for those two years. Anbang, once one of the largest insurers in China, was taken over by its insurance regulator who has applied to liquidate the company. Why liquidate? Probably because it’s the easiest way to remove potential Wu loyalists.

In the US, there are some claims that Facebook, Twitter, Reditt and a few other companies have too much control of public discourse. Others claim that these companies exercise too little control. These companies claim the right to silence opinion they consider untrue, or inflammatory, and they have been allowed to deplatform their competition. Congress is moving to be in charge of who they silence. I’ve found they don’t like pro-Israel sentiments. While they don’t put words in my mouth, I don’t like it that they take words out of my mouth. As a result, I’ve cut back on my use of these platforms.

Jack Ma reappeared after 3 months in this 40 second video, shot from an unknown location. To me, it looks like a hostage video, “I’m well and being well treated …” Biden has argued that now is the time to move closer to China.

As I write this, Trump is impeached for the second time. The charge is inflammatory speech. Like with abuse of power, there is no way to prove you didn’t do it, especially after the internet giants silence you and anyone stupid enough to support you. Among Biden’s first acts is to undo Trump dictates that kept China from providing the technology underlying the US power and water system. Clearly Biden feels it is important that China should have a hand in this. I surely am not going to suggest that the bribes Biden is supposed to have received from China played any role. I will say that, when I ran for water commission, one of my goals was to help make the water system more resistant to cyber attack.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum. February 8, 2021. As an update, I see that Jimmy Li was arrested. He’s the founder of Hong-Kong’s most popular newspaper, Apple daily. No comment in the US, or from the Vatican. Li is Catholic, and the Vatican used to chime in when prominent Catholics were arrested.