Category Archives: Robert Buxbaum

Sayings of Zen Judaism

Leave a reply

All of the following bits of Zen-like wisdom are derived from David M. Bader’s book, “Zen Judaism”. Some of these (in italics) have been modified by me. I’ve posted several other examples of zen-wisdom/ humor, e.g this. Most every piece of real wisdom appears as a joke, IMHO.

I bought a copy, then modified some as I saw fit. He’s holding a bagel.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, show him pictures of the grandchildren.

One may take a vow of fasting, or of celibacy, a vow of silence or to avoid sleep is out of the question.

Wherever you go, there you are.  Your luggage is another story.

Be here now, be someplace else later; is that so complicated?

Accept misfortune.  Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, Danish.

Self abnegation is not easy. It takes much effort, and then what have you got?

The words, “there is no self,” can be terrifying. Still they’re not as bad as, “may you grow like an onion with your head in the ground.”

Bring the Buddha to your table, and on Passover, the prophet Elijah. That’s about as many invisible guests as anyone needs.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.

The world does not speak. It does not blame or take sides. The world has no expectations, and it demands nothing of others. The world is not Jewish.

Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions.  Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

To find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals.
You might want to see a specialist.

Seek not the outer enticements. Dwell not in the inner strife. Try to find a nice place in the suburbs with good schools.

Practice a livelihood that does not harm yourself or others, choose an occupation furthering love and compassion. Ask about the health plan, too. No freelancing.

Let go of pride, ego, and opinions. Admit your error and forgive those of others. Relinquishment will lead to calm and healing in your relationships. If that doesn’t work, try small claims court.

For the wary Pilgrim, a Zen poem: thousands reach the gateless gate from many paths; once through, they dwell serenely between heaven and earth; enjoying golf, line dancing, Yiddish lessons, and aquacise. Come see our model units at Century Village.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Do this and achieve peace. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

Go then and wander for the good of the many, for the welfare of the many, out of compassion for the world. Teach what is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end. Don’t forget to write, and always wear clean underwear. You never know when you could end up in the emergency room.

Robert Buxbaum, March 24, 2025. Other books by David Bader include “Haikus for jews”, “The book of Murray”, and “How to be an extremely Reform Jew”. Bader claims to have achieved complete and perfect emptiness, although two hours later he often feels full again.

Bendy hockey sticks, and my, half-bendy version.

2 Replies

Hockey sticks have gotten bendier in recent years, with an extreme example shown below: Alex Ovechkin getting about 3″ of bend using a 100# stiffness stick. Bending the stick allows a player to get more power out of wrist shots by increasing the throw distance of the puck. There is also some speed advantage to the spring energy stored in the stick — quite a lot in Mr Ovechkin’s case.

Alexander Ovechkin takes a wrist shot using a bendy stick.

A 100# stiffness stick takes 100 pounds of force in the middle to get 1″ of bend. That Ovechkin gets 3″ of bend with his 100# stick suggests that he shoots with some 300 lbs of force, an insane amount IMHO. Most players use a lot less force, but even so a bendy stick should help them score goals.

There is something that bothers me about the design of Alex Ovechkin’s stick though, something that I think I could improve. You’ll notice that the upper half of his stick bends as much as the lower half. This upper-bend does not help the shot, and it takes work-energy. The energy in that half of the bend is wasted energy, and its release might even hurt the shooter by putting sudden spring-stress on his wrist. To correct for this, I designed my own stick, shown below, with an aim to have no (or minimal) upper bend. The modification involved starting with a very bendy stick, then covering most of the upper half with fiberglass cloth.

I got ahold of a junior stick, 56″ long with 60# flex, and added a 6″ extension to the top. Doing this made the stick longer, 62″ long (adult length) and even more bendy. One 1″ of flex requires less force on a longer stick. I estimate that, by lengthening the stick, I reduced it to about 44#. Flex is inversely proportional to length cubed. I then sanded the upper part of the stick, and wrapped 6 oz” fiberglass cloth (6 oz) 2-3 wraps around the upper part as shown, holding it tight with tape at top and bottom when I was done. I then applied epoxy squeezing it through the cloth so that the composite was nearly transparent, and so the epoxy filled the holes. This added about 15g, about 1/2 oz to the weight. Transparency suggested that the epoxy had penetrated the cloth and bonded to the stick below, though the lack of total transparency suggests that the bond could have been better with a less viscous epoxy. Once the epoxy had mostly set, I took the tape off, and stripped the excess fiberglass so that the result looked more professional. I left 23″ of fiberglass wrap as shown. The fiberglass looks like hockey tape.

Assuming I did the gluing right, this hockey stick should have almost all of the spring below the shooter’s lower hand. I have not measured the flex, but my target was about 80 lbs, with improved durability and the new lower center of bend. In theory, more energy should get into the puck. It’s a gift for my son, and we’ll see how it works in a month or so.

Robert Buxbaum, December 5, 2024.

Check the screws on your door locks.

Leave a reply
Original hardware brass screws from my door and locks, plus one of the stainless screw that I used as a replacement.

I just replaced the door knob assembly on my home and found that it was held in place by a faceplate that was attached by two, 5/8″, brass screws. These screws, shown at right with their replacement, would not have been able to withstand a criminal, I think. Our door is metal, foam filled, and reasonably strong. I figure it would have withstood a beating, but the brass screws would not, especially since only 1/4″ of the screw is designed to catch foam. Look closely at the screws, and you will see there are two sizes of pitch, each 1/4 long. Only the last 1/4″ looks like it was ever engaged. The top 1/4″ may have been designed to catch metal, but the holes in the door were not tapped to match. The bottom 1/4″ held everything. Even without a criminal attack, the screw at right was bent and beginning to go.

Instead of reusing these awful screws or buying similar ones, I replaced them with stainless screws, 1 3/4″ long, like the one shown in the picture above. But then I had a thought — what were the other locks on my door attached with? I checked and found my deadbolt lock was held in by two of the same type of sorry, 5/8″ brass screws. So I replaced these too, using two more, 1.75″ stainless steel. Then, in my disgust, I thought to write this post. Perhaps the screws holding your door hardware is as lousy as was holding mine. Take a look.

Robert Buxbaum, November 28, 2024

Einstein’s theory of diffusion in liquids, and my extension.

Leave a reply

In 1905 and 1908, Einstein developed two formulations for the diffusion of a small particle in a liquid. As a side-benefit of the first derivation, he demonstrated the visible existence of molecules, a remarkable piece of work. In the second formulation, he derived the same result using non-equilibrium thermodynamics, something he seems to have developed on the spot. I’ll give a brief version of the second derivation, and will then I’ll show off my own extension. It’s one of my proudest intellectual achievements.

But first a little background to the problem. In 1827, a plant biologist, Robert Brown examined pollen under a microscope and noticed that it moved in a jerky manner. He gave this “Brownian motion” the obvious explanation: that the pollen was alive and swimming. Later, it was observed that the pollen moved faster in acetone. The obvious explanation: pollen doesn’t like acetone, and thus swims faster. But the pollen never stopped, and it was noticed that cigar smoke also swam. Was cigar smoke alive too?

Einstein’s first version of an answer, 1905, was to consider that the liquid was composed of atoms whose energy was a Boltzmann distribution with an average of E= kT in every direction where k is the Boltzmann constant, and k = R/N. That is Boltsman’s constant equals the gas constant, R, divided by Avogadro’s number, N. He was able to show that the many interactions with the molecules should cause the pollen to take a random, jerky walk as seen, and that the velocity should be faster the less viscous the solvent, or the smaller the length-scale of observation. Einstein applied the Stokes drag equation to the solute, the drag force per particle was f = -6πrvη where r is the radius of the solute particle, v is the velocity, and η is the solution viscosity. Using some math, he was able to show that the diffusivity of the solute should be D = kT/6πrη. This is called the Stokes-Einstein equation.

In 1908 a French physicist, Jean Baptiste Perrin confirmed Einstein’s predictions, winning the Nobel prize for his work. I will now show the 1908 Einstein derivation and will hope to get to my extension by the end of this post.

Consider the molar Gibbs free energy of a solvent, water say. The molar concentration of water is x and that of a very dilute solute is y. y<<1. For this nearly pure water, you can show that µ = µ° +RT ln x= µ° +RT ln (1-y) = µ° -RTy.

Now, take a derivative with respect to some linear direction, z. Normally this is considered illegal, since thermodynamic is normally understood to apply to equilibrium systems only. Still Einstein took the derivative, and claimed it was legitimate at nearly equilibrium, pseudo-equilibrium. You can calculate the force on the solvent, the force on the water generated by a concentration gradient, Fw = dµ/dz = -RT dy/dz.

Now the force on each atom of water equals -RT/N dy/dz = -kT dy/dz.

Now, let’s call f the force on each atom of solute. For dilute solutions, this force is far higher than the above, f = -kT/y dy/dz. That is, for a given concentration gradient, dy/dz, the force on each solute atom is higher than on each solvent atom in inverse proportion to the molar concentration.

For small spheres, and low velocities, the flow is laminar and the drag force, f = 6πrvη.

Now calculate the speed of each solute atom. It is proportional to the force on the atom by the same relationship as appeared above: f = 6πrvη or v = f/6πrη. Inserting our equation for f= -kT/y dy/dz, we find that the velocity of the average solute molecule,

v = -kT/6πrηy dy/dz.

Let’s say that the molar concentration of solvent is C, so that, for water, C will equal about 1/18 mols/cc. The atomic concentration of dilute solvent will then equal Cy. We find that the molar flux of material, the diffusive flux equals Cyv, or that

Molar flux (mols/cm2/s) = Cy (-kT/6πrηy dy/dz) = -kTC/6πrη dy/dz -kT/6πrη dCy/dz.

where Cy is the molar concentration of solvent per volume.

Classical engineering comes to a similar equation with a property called diffusivity. Sp that

Molar flux of y (mols y/cm2/s) = -D dCy/dz, and D is an experimentally determined constant. We thus now have a prediction for D:

D = kT/6πrη.

This again is the Stokes Einstein Equation, the same as above but derived with far less math. I was fascinated, but felt sure there was something wrong here. Macroscopic viscosity was not the same as microscopic. I just could not think of a great case where there was much difference until I realized that, in polymer solutions there was a big difference.

Polymer solutions, I reasoned had large viscosities, but a diffusing solute probably didn’t feel the liquid as anywhere near as viscous. The viscometer measured at a larger distance, more similar to that of the polymer coil entanglement length, while a small solute might dart between the polymer chains like a rabbit among trees. I applied an equation for heat transfer in a dispersion that JK Maxwell had derived,

where κeff is the modified effective thermal conductivity (or diffusivity in my case), κl and κp are the thermal conductivity of the liquid and the particles respectively, and φ is the volume fraction of particles. 

To convert this to diffusion, I replaced κl by Dl, and κp by Dp where

Dl = kT/6πrηl

and Dp = kT/6πrη.

In the above ηl is the viscosity of the pure, liquid solvent.

The chair of the department, Don Anderson didn’t believe my equation, but agreed to help test it. A student named Kit Yam ran experiments on a variety of polymer solutions, and it turned out that the equation worked really well down to high polymer concentrations, and high viscosity.

As a simple, first approximation to the above, you can take Dp = 0, since it’s much smaller than Dl and you can take Dl to equal Dl = kT/6πrηl as above. The new, first order approximation is:

D = kT/6πrηl (1 – 3φ/2).

We published in Science. That is I published along with the two colleagues who tested the idea and proved the theory right, or at least useful. The reference is Yam, K., Anderson, D., Buxbaum, R. E., Science 240 (1988) p. 330 ff. “Diffusion of Small Solutes in Polymer-Containing Solutions”. This result is one of my proudest achievements.

R.E. Buxbaum, March 20, 2024

Of walking sticks, canes, scepters, and wands.

Leave a reply
Franklin’s walking stick, willed to General Washington. Now in the Smithsonian.

Many famous people carried walking sticks Washington, Churchill, Moses, Dali. Until quite recently, it was “a thing”. Benjamin Franklin willed one, now in the Smithsonian, to George Washington, to act as a sort of scepter: “My fine crab-tree walking stick, with a gold head curiously wrought in the form of the cap of liberty, I give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, General Washington. If it were a Scepter, he has merited it, and would become it. It was a present to me from that excellent woman, Madame de Forbach, the dowager Duchess of Deux-Ponts”. A peculiarity of this particular stick is that the stick is uncommonly tall, 46 1/2″. This is too tall for casual, walking use, and it’s too fancy to use as a hiking stick. Franklin himself, used a more-normal size walking stick, 36 3/8″ tall, currently in the collection of the NY Historical Society. Washington too seems to have favored a stick of more normal length.

Washington with walking stick

Walking sticks project a sort of elegance, as well as providing personal protection. Shown below is President Andrew Jackson defending himself against an assassin using his walking stick to beat off an assassin. He went on to give souvenir walking sticks to friends and political supporters. Sticks remained a common political gift for 100 years, at least through the election of Calvin Coolidge.

Andrew Jackson defends himself.

I started making walking sticks a few years back, originally for my own use, and then for others when I noticed that many folks who needed canes didn’t carry them. It was vanity, as best I could tell: the normal, “old age” cane is relatively short, about 32″. Walking with it makes you bend over; you look old and decrepit. Some of the folks who needed canes, carried hiking sticks, I noticed, about 48″. These are too tall to provide any significant support, as the only way to grasp one was from the side. Some of my canes are shown below. They are about 36″ tall, typically with a 2″ wooden ball as a head. They look good, you stand straight, and they provides support and balance when going down stairs.

Some of my walking sticks.

I typically make my sticks of American Beech, a wood of light weight, with good strength, and a high elastic modulus of elasticity, about 1.85 x106 psi. Oak, hickory, and ash are good options, but they are denser, and thus more suited to self-defense. Wood is better than metal for many applications, IMHO, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. The mathematician Euler showed the the effective strength of a walking stick does not depend on the compressive strength but rather on elastic constant via “the Euler buckling equation”, one of many tremendously useful equations developed by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783).

For a cylindrical stick, the maximum force supported by a stick is: F = π3Er4/4L2, where F is the force, r is the radius, L is the length, and E is the elastic modulus. I typically pick a diameter of 3/4″ or 7/8″, and fit the length to the customer. For a 36″ beech stick, the buckling strength is calculated to be 221 or 409 pounds respectively. I add a rubber bottom to make it non–scuff and less slip-prone. I sometimes add a rope thong, too. Here is a video of Fred Astaire dancing with this style of stick. It’s called “a pin stick”, in case you are interested because it looks like a giant pin.

Country Irishmen are sometimes depicted with a heavy walking stick called a Shillelagh. It’s used for heavier self-defense than available with a pin-stick, and is generally seen being used as a cudgel. There are Japanese versions of self defense using a lighter, 36″ stick, called a Han-bo, as shown here. There is also the wand, as seen for example in Harry Potter. It focuses magical power. Similar to this is Moses’s staff that he used in front of Pharaoh, a combination wand and hiking stick as it’s typically pictured. It might have been repurposed for the snake-on-a-stick that protects against dark forces. Dancing with a stick, Astaire style, can drive away emotional forces, while the more normal use is elegance, and avoiding slips.

Robert Buxbaum, April 20, 2023.

My home-made brandy and still.

Leave a reply
MY home-made still, and messy lab. Note the masking tape seal and the nylon hoses. Nylon is cheaper than copper. The yellow item behind the burner is the cooling water circulation pump. The wire at top and left is the thermocouple.

I have an apple tree, a peach tree, and some grape vines. They’re not big trees, but they give too much fruit to eat. The squirrels get some, and we give some away. As for the rest, I began making wine and apple jack a few years back, but there’s still more fruit than I can use. Being a chemical engineer, I decided to make brandy this year, so far only with pears and apples.

The first steps were the simplest: I collected fruit in a 5 gallon, Ace bucket, and mashed it using a 2×4. I then added some sugar and water and some yeast and let it sit with a cover for a week or two. Bread yeast worked fine for this, and gives a warm flavor, IMHO. A week or so later, I put the mush into a press I had fro grapes, shown below, and extracted the fermented juice. I used a cheesecloth bag with one squeezing, no bag with the other. The bag helped, making cleanup easier.

The fruit press, used to extract liquid. A cheese cloth bag helps.

I did a second fermentation with both batches of fermented mash. This was done in a pot over a hot-plate on warm. I added more sugar and some more yeast and let it ferment for a few more days at about 78°F. To avoid bad yeasts, I washed out the pot and the ace bucket with dilute iodine before using them– I have lots of dilute iodine around from the COVID years. The product went into the aluminum “corn-cooker” shown above, 5 or 6 gallon size, that serves as the still boiler. The aluminum cover of the pot was drilled with a 1″ hole; I then screwed in a 10″ length of 3/4″ galvanized pipe, added a reducing elbow, and screwed that into a flat-plate heat exchanger, shown below. The heat exchanger serves as the condenser, while the 3/4″ pipe is like the cap on a moonshiner still. Its purpose is to keep the foam and splatter from getting in the condenser.

I put the pot on the propane burner stand shown, sealed the lid with masking tape (it worked better than duct tape), hooked up the heat exchanger to a water flow, and started cooking. If you don’t feel like making a still this way, you can buy one at Home Depot for about $150. Whatever route you go, get a good heat exchanger/ condenser. The one on the Home-depot still looks awful. You need to be able to take heat out as fast as the fire puts heat in, and you’ll need minimal pressure drop or the lid won’t seal. The Home Depot still has too little area and too much back-pressure, IMHO. Also, get a good thermometer and put it in the head-space of the pot. I used a thermocouple. Temperature is the only reasonable way to keep track of the progress and avoid toxic distillate.

A flat-plate heat exchanger, used as a condenser.

The extra weight of the heat exchanger and pipe helps hold the lid down, by the way, but it would not be enough if there was a lot of back pressure in the heat exchanger-condenser. If your lid doesn’t seal, you’ll lose your product. If you have problems, get a better heat exchanger. I made sure that the distillate flows down as it condenses. Up-flow adds back pressure and reduces condenser efficiency. I cooled the condenser with water circulated to a bucket with the cooling water flowing up, counter current to the distillate flow. I could have used tap water via a hose with proper fittings for cooling, but was afraid of major leaks all over the floor.

With the system shown, and the propane on high, it took about 20 minutes to raise the temperature to near boiling. To avoid splatter, I turned down the heater as the temperature approached 150°F. The first distillate came out at 165°F, a temperature that indicated it was not alcohol or anything you’d want to drink. I threw away the first 2-3 oz of this product. You can sniff or sip a tiny amount to convince yourself that this this is really nasty, acetone, I suspect, plus ethyl acetate, and maybe some ether and methanol. Throw it away!

After the first 2-3 ounces, I collected everything to 211°F. Product started coming in earnest at about 172°F. I ended distillation at 211°F when I’d collected nearly 3 quarts. For my first run, my electronic thermometer was off and I stopped too early — you need a good thermometer. The material I collected and was OK in taste, especially when diluted a bit. To test the strength, I set some on fire, the classic “100% proof test”, and diluted till it to about 70% beyond. This is 70% proof, by the classic method. I also tried a refractometer, comparing the results to whiskey. I was aiming for 60-80 proof (30-40%).

My 1 gallon aging barrel.

I tried distilling a second time to improve the flavor. The result was stronger, but much worse tasting with a loss of fruit flavor. By contrast, a much better resulted from putting some distillate (one pass) in an oak barrel we had used for wine. Just one day in the barrel helped a lot. I’ve also seen success putting charred wood cubes set into a glass bottle of distillate. Note: my barrel, as purchased, had leaks. I sealed them with wood glue before use.

I only looked up distilling law after my runs. It varies state to state. In Michigan, making spirits for consumption, either 1 gal or 60,000 gal/year, requires a “Distilling, Rectifying, Blending and/or Bottling Spirits” Permit, from the ATF Tax and Trade Bureau (“TTB”) plus a Small Distiller license from Michigan. Based on the sale of stills at Home Depot and a call to the ATF, it appears there is little interest in pursuing home distillers who do not sell, despite the activity being illegal. This appears similar to state of affairs with personal use marijuana growers in the state. Your state’s laws may be different, and your revenuers may be more enthusiastic. If you decide to distill, here’s some music, the Dukes of Hazard theme song.

Robert Buxbaum, November 23, 2022.

Curing my heart fibrillation with ablation.

1 Reply

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with Atrial fibrillation, A-Fib in common parlance, a condition where my heart would sometimes speed up to double its normal speed. I was prescribed metopolol and then atenolol, common beta blockers, and a C-Pap for sleep apnea. None of this seemed to help, as best I could tell from occasional pulse measurements with watch and a finger pulse-oxometer. Besides, the C-Pap was giving me cough and the beta blockers made me dizzy. And the literature on C-Pap did not impress.

So, some moths ago, I bought an iWatch. The current versions allows you to take EKGs and provides a continuous record of your heart rate. This was very helpful, as I saw that my heart rate was transitioning to chaos. While it was normally predictable, it would zoom to 130 or so at some point virtually every day. Even more alarming, it would slow down to the mid 30s at some point during the night, bradycardia, and I could see it was getting worse. At that point, I agreed to go on eliquis, a blood thinner, and agreed to a catheter ablation. The doctor put a catheter into my heart by way of a leg vein, and zapped various nerve centers in the heart. The result is that my heart is back into normal behavior. See the heart-rate readout from my iWatch below; before and after are dramatically different.

My heart rate for the last month, very variable before the ablation treatment, 2 weeks ago; a far less variable range of heart rates in the two weeks following the treatment. Heart rate data is from my iPhone and iwatch — a good investment, IMHO.

The reason I chose ablation over drugs or no therapy was that I read health-studies on line. I’ve go a PhD, and that training helps me to understand the papers I’ve read, but you should read them too. They are not that hard to understand. Though ablation didn’t appear as a panacea, it was clearly better than the alternatives. Particularly relevant was the CABANA study on life expectancy. CABANA stands for “Catheter ABlation vs ANtiarrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation – CABANA”. https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/clinical-trials/2018/05/10/15/57/cabana.

2,204 individuals with persistent AF were followed for 5 years after treatment, 37% female, 63% male, average age 67.5. Prior hospitalization for AF: 39%. The results were as follows:

  • Death: 5.2% for ablation vs. 6.1% for drug therapy (p = 0.38)
  • Serious stroke: 0.3% for ablation vs. 0.6% for drug therapy (p = 0.19)
  • All-cause mortality: 4.4% for ablation vs. 7.5% for drug therapy (p = 0.005)
  • Death or CV hospitalization: 51.7% for ablation vs. 58.1% for drug therapy (p = 0.002)
  • Pericardial effusion with ablation: 3.0%; ablation-related events: 1.8%
  • First recurrent AF/atrial flutter/atrial tachycardia: 53.8% vs. 71.9% (p < 0.0001)

I found all of this significant, including the fact that 27.5% of those on the drug treatment crossed over to have ablation while only 9.2% on the ablation side crossed to have the drug treatment.

I must give a plug for doctor Ahmed at Beaumont Hospital who did the ablation. He does about 200 of these a year, and does them well. Do not go to an amateur. I was less-than impressed with him pushing the beta-blocker hard; I’ll write about that. Also, get an iWatch if you think you may have A-Fib or any other heart problem. You see a lot, just by watching, so to speak.

Robert Buxbaum, August 3, 2022.

What I learned by running for office.

Leave a reply

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

IFL Science grows up.

Leave a reply

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

Locked down so long, it’s looking up: the up-side of COVID-19.

Leave a reply

I’m not crazy about the COVID isolation, but there are up-sides that I’ve come to appreciate. You might too. Out of boredom, I was finally got into meditation. It was better than just sitting around and doing nothing.

It’s best not to look at isolation as a problem, but an opportunity. I’ve developed a serious drinking opportunity.

And it’s an opportunity to talk to myself. I told myself I’ should quit drinking. Then I figured, why should I listen to a drunk who talks to himself.

A friend of mine was on drugs, but then quit. Everyone in his house is happy, except for the lamp. The lamp won’t talk to him anymore.

The movies are closed, and the bars, and the gyms. It gives me another reason not to go to the gym.

Did you know that, before the crowbar was invented, crows used to drink at home.

The real reason dogs aren’t allowed in bars: lots of guys can’t handle their licker.

There’s time to spend with my children. And they look like me.

I like that I don’t commute. Family events are over zoom, funerals (lots of funerals), meetings, lectures. They come in via the computer, and I don’t have to dress or attend. No jacket, no pants… no travel …. no job.

My children are spending more time with us at home. We have virtual meals together. I discovered that I have a son named Tok. He seems to like my dad-jokes.

My wife is finding it particularly tough. Most every day I see her standing by the window, staring, wondering. One of these days, I’ll let her in.

I asked wife why she married me. Was it for my looks, or my income, or my smarts. She smiled and said it was my sense of humor. 🙂

My wife is an elementary school teacher. She teaches these days with a smart board. If the board were any smarter, it would go work for someone else. It’s necessary, I guess. If you can’t beat them, you might as well let the smart board teach. I think the smart board stole the election. It began by auto-correcting my spelling. Then it moved to auto correct my voting. The board is smarter and better than me (Hey, who wrote this?)

some mask humor
I’ve learned to love masks, though some of them are hot.

You’d think they’d reduce the number of administrators in the schools, given that it’s all remote. Or reduce the price of college. It would be nice if they’d up the number of folks who can attend. So far no. Today the Princeton alumni of Michigan is sponsoring video-talk by Princeton alumnus, George Will. I wanted to attend, but found there was limited seating, so I’m on the waiting list (true story). By keeping people out, they show they are exclusive. Tuition is $40,000 / year, and they keep telling us that the college is in service of humanity. If they were in the service of humanity, they’d charge less, and stream the talk to whoever wants to listen in. I have to hope this will change sooner or later.

Shopping for toilet paper was a big issue at the beginning of the pandemic, but I’ve now got a dog to do it for me. He goes to the store, brings it back. Brings back toothpaste too. He’s a lavatory retriever. (I got this joke from Steve Feldman; the crowbar joke too.)

I don’t mind that there are few new movies. There are plenty of old movies that I have not seen, and old TV shows too.

This fellow is the new head of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. He’s got a science-based plan for over-population and the disease.

I like that people are leaving New York and LA. It’s healthy, and saves on rent. Folks still travel there, mostly for the rioting, but lockdowns are nicer in Michigan.

More people are hunting, and hiking, and canoeing. These are active activities that you can do on lockdown. The old activities were passive, or going out to eat. Passive activities are almost a contradiction in terms.

We’re cooking more at home, which is healthier. And squirrel doesn’t taste half bad. If I live through this, I’ll be healthy.

I’m reading more, and have joined goodreads.com. I’ve developed a superpower: I find can melt ice cubes, just by looking at them. It takes a while but they melt.

A lot more folks have dogs. And folks have gotten into religion. Wouldn’t it be great, if after death we fond that dyslexic folks were right. There really is a dog.

Let’s love the virus. If we don’t, the next crisis will be worse.

There was an election last week. My uncles voted for Biden, which really surprised me. They were staunch Republicans when they were alive. My aunt got the ballot and convinced them. She was a Democrat when she was alive.

I got pneumonia vaccine shot, and a flu shot. That wasn’t a joke. I think it’s a good idea. Here’s why. People mostly die from pneumonia not the virus.

Before COVID, the other big crisis was global warming. Al Gore and Greta Thunberg claimed we had to shutter production and stop driving to save the planet. COVID-19 has done it. The next crisis is over-population. COVID is already curing that problem — not so much in China, but in the US, Europe, and South America.

Just As a final thought, let’s look at the bright side of the virus. If we don’t, the next crisis will be worse. Take Monty Python’s advice and Always look at the bright side of life.

Robert Buxbaum, November 20, 2020.