Month: March 2020

Medieval Scholar explains why elites fear a shrinking population

by philg

One staple of American elite media is the scary headline regarding a potential fall in population. Without open borders and a warm welcome for migrants, the story will read, U.S. population will actually drop. The same papers sing the praises of middle class wage growth from 1950-1970, when the population was about half what is it today, so it is unclear why a return to that level is an emergency for the elite.

“The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, explains exactly why! The fall in population from the Black Death in Florence led to a dramatic reduction in the economic power of the elite. Skilled and unskilled laborers experienced at least a 3X boost in wages. She attributes the Ciompi Revolt (1378) and similar uprisings elsewhere in Europe (e.g., one in England) to the loss in elite power that occurred due to the population reduction.

The Florentine elites knew that a shrinking population was going to be bad for them. The miracle of valorizing single motherhood was in the future, so they came up with the idea of giving young single women dowries to ensure that they would get married as quickly as possible and then start to produce children. (See “When and why did it become necessary to pay Americans to have children?”)

It is interesting to see how little has changed in 650+ years!

Examples of headline hysteria:

Related:



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Elizabeth Warren bows out with a dose of cisgender-normative prejudice

by philg

From NPR:

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her bid for the presidency on Thursday, acknowledging her place as the last major female candidate in the race “and all those little girls who are gonna have to wait four more years.”

Absent cisgender-normative prejudice and the heretical assumption that gender is not fluid, how does she know that the U.S. won’t have a president who identifies as a “woman” starting next week? Did God call up Elizabeth Warren and tell her that Donald Trump will never experience gender dysphoria?

Related:

  • “Elizabeth Warren: ‘Girls will have to wait for woman president'” (BBC)
  • “Transcript: Elizabeth Warren Speaks After Suspending Campaign” (WBUR): in response to people saying that she was too angry to appeal to voters, Elizabeth Warren uses the word “fight” three times in the first two paragraphs. “I say this with a deep sense of gratitude for every single person who got in this fight, every single person who tried on a new idea. … I guarantee I will stay in the fight for the hardworking folks across this country who’ve gotten the short end of the stick over and over. That’s been the fight of my life and it will continue to be so.”
  • “If Elizabeth Warren doesn’t become president… will the New York Times blame voters’ prejudice against women or voters’ prejudice against Native Americans?” (post from January 3, 2019)
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Why hoard paper towels for coronadoomsday?

by philg

Earlier this week, I met a friend in the paper products aisle at Costco. She said “This place has been stripped barer than a line of actresses auditioning for a role with Miramax.”

We later learned that they’ve been sold out of paper towels since the last week of February. Why? Food and water are plainly useful after the collapse of civilization, but why paper towels? Will armed bands roaming neighborhoods mock those whose kitchens aren’t sparkling clean? If it is about sanitizing surfaces, shouldn’t the run be on Lysol wipes?

The good news and bad news is that there is no shortage of gefilte fish and matzah:

What happens when rich suburbanites panic? There is a run on extra virgin olive oil:

Readers: Why the madness for hoarding paper towels?

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Elizabeth Warren’s Legacy: Idea that Trump is an ordinary rich guy

by philg

Elizabeth Warren is gone, much to the dismay of my Facebook friends, especially degreed women who don’t work. Before Warren dropped out, one of my friends on Facebook said “More of this, please!” over a video of Elizabeth Warren in which she says that replacing Donald Trump with Michael Bloomberg would “Just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another”.

Of course, I couldn’t resist asking “Shouldn’t she be happy if any Democrat replaces Trump? How can she say that it wouldn’t be progress for the virtuous billionaire to replace the hated dictator?”

His response included the following:

You are making the claim that neither Warren nor I appreciate that Trump and his minions are a threat to democracy and Bloomberg is not. I don’t believe you believe this claim. Therefore I believe you are trolling.

“Trolling” seems to mean “point out a logical inconsistency,” so had to continue:

“Just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another” does not seem like a great way to highlight that one of said billionaires is a “threat to democracy”.

Perhaps Elizabeth Warren would personally have voted for Michael Bloomberg if he’d won the nomination, but that’s just Pepsi vs. Coke according to her, right? Not “new Hitler” or “threat to Democracy” or “insane” versus “reasonable”, “rational”, and “righteous”.

After telling Americans that they might not survive four more years of Donald Trump, that the Trump Presidency was a “national emergency,” etc., the Democrats have their smartest politician on record saying that one of their own is scarcely superior.

I’m wondering if this will be the only lasting legacy of the Warren campaign.

Related (loosely):

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Lessons from the Black Death regarding coronavirus

by philg

The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, talks about places that were spared from most of the waves of plague that swept through Europe starting in 1348.

If we don’t want to die from coronavirus, what can we do?

Iceland was an example of a place that escaped plague for more than 50 years. It took a long time to reach Iceland by ship so asymptomatic carriers of the plague couldn’t walk off into port in Iceland. More likely they, and all of their crewmates, would die before reaching Iceland.

People today travel by plane, however, which is nearly instantaneous. So the “far away by ship” advantage does not seem likely to be realized by any country today.

Finland remained substantially plague-free, says the author, despite having land borders with Sweden, Norway, and Russia, as well as being integrated into the sea trading network of the time that had spread the disease so quickly throughout the Mediterranean and to the British Isles. The secret in Finland was low population density.

Wikipedia says, regarding the influenza pandemic of 1918: “In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 675,000 died (0.48 to 0.64 percent of the population).” Our population is more than 3X the 1918 level and therefore our population density is more than 3X the 1918 level. So the Finland trick cannot work for Americans in general. But maybe for an individual American it could. Move to a non-urban area of a spread-out state, e.g., Alaska or Wyoming. Follow Barbra Streisand and the rest of the Hollywood #Resist crowd to Canada (or pick a different low-density country, such as Argentina).

The professor says that governments that shut down or severely restricted links to the outside world ended up saving most of their citizens and/or subjects. So maybe North Korea or a similarly restricted nation will be comparatively safe?

The professor says that cities with good sanitation did not escape the plague, but death rates were lower. So Japan and Switzerland might have fewer cases of coronavirus? “Mortality burden of the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in Europe” says that Switzerland was not significantly different from France (but sparsely populated Finland suffered only half the death rate).

Integrating what we know from the Black Death and present-day statistics and conditions, Iceland and New Zealand seem like the most obvious places to run for a re-enactment of the Decameron. They’re islands. They have lower population densities than the U.S. They have comfortably high living standards. However, we need to cross Iceland off the list due to the fact that it operates an international airline hub. People from more than 50 different countries might show up on a typical evening. That leaves… New Zealand.

Fun fact: We get the word “quarantine” from the Venetian government’s requirement that ships coming into Dubrovnik wait at a nearby island for 40 days before coming into contact with the townspeople.

At least we’ll never have to worry about plague per se, again, right? Actually… the bacterium has evolved antibiotic resistance in Madagascar (CDC) and the fleas that carry it have evolved insecticide resistance.

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How could Elizabeth Warren have run for President if she couldn’t win her own state?

by philg

Super Tuesday is mostly over. Here in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren seems to be on track to place third (NPR). That’s a dismal performance considering that she is the only candidate with a connection to Massachusetts and is, in fact, our senior Senator.

If politics is mostly a professional endeavor, how could the professionals have failed to predict her lack of appeal? (perhaps it was the 70-year-old’s comparative youth and lack of life experience that caused voters to reject her?) She spent more than a year campaigning.

Separately, below are the diverse political signs at our polling place, which happens also to be a school where diversity is celebrated (said school soon to be torn down and the students moved into trailers for three years). There is good news for Native Americans who want to wear the mantle of modern victimhood: “We are ALL Immigrants.” We can “Respect the Science” by re-electing Senator Ed Markey, who last took a science course in high school circa 1962 (Wikipedia suggests that he got an unspecified BA and then went on to law school).

In short, “If you Vote for Democrats, all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

My Facebook friends seem to be newly excited about Joe Biden. One of them posted a recent quote:

“We can and we must build a more perfect union. Because the American people have seen the alternative, so let’s get back up. We’re decent, we’re brave, we’re a resilient people. We can believe again. We’re better than this moment and we’re better than this president. So get up and let’s take back this country. We’re the United States of America. There’s nothing we cannot do if we do it together”

This sounds a bit like a Hollywood Democrat back in 2016:

“I don’t want to move to Canada, but I certainly don’t want to see Donald Trump [win] with bigotry and racism. … This is really serious. It’s somebody appealing to the worst in us.”

But if people who vote for Biden are “better than this president,” aren’t those Biden voters also better people than Trump voters? Why would the “better people” want to do stuff together with people who are racist, sexist, and stupid?

Since there’s nothing we cannot do if we do it together, we will be able to make our own mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and tunneling machines instead of buying them from the Chinese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Germans? We will be able to dig new metro systems and build out nationwide high-speed rail at a reasonable cost? We will be able to deliver health care without bankrupting ourselves? We could construct cruise ships as good as the ones currently made in France, Italy, Finland, and Germany and not be shut out of this multi-$billion market? If true, why wait until the hated dictator is removed from the White House? Why not start doing these things together tomorrow? Is Trump actually stopping us from working together? How?

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Do all of the Democrats support effectively unlimited immigration?

by philg

Voters are choosing today among the remaining Democrats running for President. What is the choice on what many would consider to be the biggest issue and one with the most long-term impact: low-skill immigration ? (transfers $500 billion/year right now from the working class to the rich, for example, and chips away at every American’s infrastructure endowment)

Let’s look at Mike Bloomberg’s immigration policy page:

Mike’s plan will protect Dreamers and TPS holders and create an earned pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented.

Mike will rescind President Trump’s disgraceful travel ban, end family separations at the border, establish rigorous safeguards for children, and promote alternatives to detention for individuals and families who pose no threat to public safety.

A “dreamer” is someone who shows up prior to turning 16 (but since none show up with documents, it is necessary only to say “I am 15”?). There will be no family separation at the border if an adult shows up with someone who is, or says he/she/ze/they is under 18.

Isn’t the effect of these policies essentially unlimited immigration? A would-be adult immigrant shows up with a “child” and neither can be detained (one is a blameless child; detaining the adult would be “family separation at the border”). Once in, the child cannot be deported because he/she/ze/they is now a “dreamer”. Once the “child” turns 18, he/she/ze/they is entitled to obtain green cards for two parents (“chain migration”).

There are roughly 2 billion children worldwide, age 0-14. Add their parents and that’s at least half the world population that would be eligible for legal immigration to the U.S. under Bloomberg’s plan(s).

Do any of the other Democrats propose a substantially different immigration policy?

[Separately, how does Bloomberg know that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.? There is no citizenship question on the 2020 Census (rumor FAQ) and there wasn’t one on a previous census. The eggheads at Yale say that the likely number is closer to 22 million.]

Exterior of my hotel last week in Los Angeles:

Americans are supposed to call up Mike, charge boldly up to the edge of the coronavirus, and let Swedish vodka merchants tell them how to have sex (but we still want to let the Russians tell us how to vote?).

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Chinese perspective on American Presidential candidates

by philg

Some photos from the November 2019 trip to Shanghai…

Folks there love our Democrat-turned-Republican President so much that they named a car after him. The Trumpchi:

Pure Democrats aren’t forgotten either. Shanghai has a substantial monument to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren:

Happy Super Tuesday!

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Massachusetts has Voter ID

by philg

My Facebook friends love to post about the evils of states requiring ID to vote. This will, in their view, disenfranchise black voters because black Americans are not competent to obtain ID (unclear where this knowledge comes from since, except for selfie time at Black Panther, none of these folks are ever seen in company with African Americans).

In trying to figure out when our polls will be open tomorrow, I stumbled upon “What To Know About Voting In Mass. On Super Tuesday” (WBUR):

You may be required to show your ID when you check in at your polling place, the state says, under these circumstances … The poll worker has “a reasonable suspicion” that leads them to request ID

In other words, a poll worker can make an arbitrary decision, potentially based on skin color, to demand ID.

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Mining Oxygen on Mars

by philg

From a Valentine’s Day talk by Jeffrey Hoffman, an astronaut-turned-professor who is now part of an effort to mine oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere…. If the MOXIE system works and Blue Origin gets humans to Mars, they can come back without having had to pack 80 percent of their rocket fuel for the trip home.

Professor Hoffman explained that, though there is plenty of water in the Martian crust it takes too much energy to extract it. Thus, the plan is to “mine” the atmosphere, which is 96 percent CO2 (should be toasty warm from the greenhouse effect, except that atmospheric pressure is comparable at the Martian surface to what we have at 100,000′ above sea level).

Hoffman and collaborators’ experiment will launch in July 2020 and land in February 2021. The Mars journey will also be 7 months for humans, kind of like being on a cruise ship in Asia right now. The shocking news for movie fans is that The Martian is not scientifically accurate. The dramatic wind that forces an evacuation and is blowing stuff around would have to move at 1,000 mph to have enough force, given the thin atmosphere. In fact, the highest recorded winds on Mars are roughly 60 mph.

As with other astronauts I’ve talked to recently, Hoffman is not a fan of centralized government-run rocketry. Regarding the SLS, which promises to cost taxpayers $20 billion at least: “Maybe they will launch it a few times. It is Saturn V technology.” In his view, SpaceX and Blue Origin are where the innovation happens. The government “monopoly” had cost us decades of potential progress.

One thing I learned: this next Mars mission will include a helicopter! Also, landing on Mars is a combination of the worst features of the Earth and Moon. There is the friction from entering the atmosphere, as on Earth, but not enough atmosphere to slow down with wings or a regular parachute.

Sidenote: Hoffman first came to MIT because of Walter Lewin, whose physics lectures are now securely in a memory hole due to #MeToo issues.

Hoffman flew on five Shuttle missions, logged 1,211 hours in space, and did multiple spacewalks, including one to fix the Hubble telescope. An example of “bravery”? Perhaps not. There’s a talk on real bravery today at 4 pm:

What else do we find in the corridors at MIT? “The Trump administration is the noxious product of the capitalist system” (but didn’t most of the Wall Street capitalists support Hillary?)

A poster on “ethnomathematics”:

(If these “traditional and indigenous societies” are doing interesting stuff, why isn’t it just “mathematics”? Why do they need a special numbers nerdism ghetto?)

We crashed a Valentine’s Day party for a group of PhD students in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Hollywood-style background:

The future engineering PhDs pour themselves coffee:

Circling back to Professor Hoffman… As with other retired astronauts I have met, this guy is incredibly fit and sharp at age 75. Makes one wonder why humans age at all. If we can live to 75 with hardly any deficits accumulating, why can’t we live to 750? If nearly all of us drop dead by 100, why don’t we drop dead at 10? Most of our cells have to go through at least one replacement cycle by age 10, right?

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