Israeli security

* About a third of the December-4 Tennessean Opinion page was given to officials of the Jewish Federation of Nashville maligning a limited, provisional and reversible easing of sanctions on Iran in exchange for verified limitations of uranium enrichment by Iran. I believe that Israel, the US and most other nations would eventually regret failure to explore this opportunity to reduce danger in the middle east.
* We can intensify the harming of innocent Persian children, giving rise to another generation of malnourished, humiliated and resentful enemies. Or we can sit around a table with Iranian leaders imagining a future Iran in the community of peaceful nations, as prosperous as their people, myths and resources allow.
* Leaders often misconstrue their national interests, as demonstrated in the "Axis of Evil" speech and the invasion of Iraq. If my view is correct, Netanyahu misconstrues his nation's long-term interest, or he is doing a kabuki dance showing Iranian leaders the dark side of unsatisfactory negotiations.

Football Concussions

* I have suspected for years that the modern football helmet is designed to protect the scalp and skull but to promote concussions. Modern helmet composition is described in: Types of Padding in Football Helmets . A modern helmet has a rigid outer shell, the space between the shell and head being filled mostly with stiff foam. This spreads the accelerating force from an outside blow over a wide scalp surface, defending the scalp and skull from deformation but with little dissipation or damping of the momentum.
* This design transfers linear and shearing momentum from an external blow to the skull as efficiently and quickly as possible, throwing the brain against the skull almost as much as possible and spinning the skull about the brain almost as much as possible (owing to the density difference between brain and cerebrosponal fluid and the lubricating effect of the cerebrospinal fluid between skull and brain). Thus the brain is mechanically deformed by bouncing in the skull and by shearing between brain and skull.
* In a rationally designed helmet, the shell itself would absorb as much of the blow as possible and it would transfer momentum from shell to skull as slowly as possible, thereby minimizing linear and shearing accelerations of the skull. Specifically, the shell would be flexible, resilient, tough and slippery. Its stiffness would be just sufficient to avoid striking the scalp under the maximal blow that might occur in a game, by collision with another helmet or a knee or the ground. The main material between the shell and scalp would be a specially designed bubble wrap, one layer with large loosely filled and crowded bubbles or several layers with smaller loosely filled and crowded bubbles. This design would allow the shell to deform, hence to absorb a blow with slowest possible transmission of linear and angular momentums from an outside blow to the scalp, hence to the skull and brain. Ideally, the hardest blow would bend the shell inward as close to the scalp as possible without hitting it.

How I spent my retirement

* I retired early by academic standards, seeing that my scientific interests were no longer fashionable and hoping to have enough stamina to do something satisfying that ought to be done. What I did was recreational music, recreational inventing, recreational home restoration, recreational inquiry. It might have been more satisfying had one of these been remunerative. I imagined myself filling a societal need for uplifting recreation as technological advances in human productivity would shorten work weeks. I didn't anticipate that smart phones, social media and video games would come to dominate people's leisure time.
* Back in the mid 90s, I was in the "Road to Ruin Ramblers", that played in and was dismissed with cause from several lower-broad venues. Owing to this experience, song ideas came to me. One of them, "Repo Man" seemed to have commercial potential. Two that happened to be video'd were "Road Trip" and "One Christmas Eve".
* Well before the Road-to-ruin days, we had a garage band called "Outbound Freight", that was mostly social picking, though we played for the occasional birthday party or civic gathering. It occurred to me that a book of favorite country parables might be useful for future garage pickers, so I assembled such a book, called "Country Pathos, Country Soul". Getting licenses was too expensive without some kind of institutional collaborator, which did not materialize, so I dropped the project. There was also the "Budget Bluegrass Band", that was constituted in various configurations as needed since the 80s.
* My wife who immigrated from Germany in the 50s asked me to lead some Christmas songs for a gathereing of German Americans in the early 90s. Hoping to share those songs with regular Americans, I composed English lyrics and various arrangements for a bunch of them. I managed to talk the Nashville Parks Recorder Consort into performing several of these arrangements. For example, "Sweetly the bells" and "Holiest Night". They also performed my arrangement of "Silent Night".
* Several times in my life I was in the right place at the right time, eg when I encountered my mentor, Rollo Park, when I met my wife to be, Lieselotte Wilde, and when my church decided to create and present orchestral arrangements of music by members. Our music director, Michael Graham, arranged several of the German Christmas songs that I had worked on, incluiding: Sing and Ring and Quietly Rustles the Snow.
* Back in the late 90s, I began trying to engage people in gospel singing with bluegrass accompaniment. I assembled a group, "Gospelaires", that performed in my church's less formal services about once per quarter. Eventually, we established Wednedsay-evening singalongs during the summers in Woodmont Christian Church. At about the same time, we established the Second-Sunday Singalong in the Bellevue Christian Church. As these two programs progressed, I worked on a two-volume song book of bluegrass-compatible gospel songs and hymns one volume containing regular scores for singers, the other containing lyrics and chords for pickers.
* Also back in the 90s, I tried out several dobro capos and, finding none that suited me, I designed my own. Eventually, I thought others might like my design, so I patented it and set out studying machine-tool technology so as to manufacture it. I produced several in each of five sizes, as resophonic guitars come in several specifications. The capo is essentially a modified scalene-triangular prism with maximal difference between maximal and minimal heights. To easily make one height half way between the maximal and minimal, it was conventient to derive a formula for characteristics of a triangle of known heights.
* Having seen that I could produce and prosecute a patent application on my own (text, drawings, claims) I contemplated an invention whenever I had trouble with a project or when an untoward event occcurred that might be ameliorated by some new product. In revising some electrical wiring in my garage and basement, I decided it would be easier to join several larger wires if the junction box were shallower. It occurred to me that the solid elements of ammunition could be labeled hence traceable to the person who bought it retail.

Edward Snowden

* "Unwelcome truth is better than cherished error", said Edwin Conklin, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science back in the 30s. "As regards civilization, truth is better than pretense, deception and gratuitous secrecy", say I, a senile observer.
* After the intelligence failings of 9/11/01, I assumed that our NSA would henceforth store and analyze communication data gathered by service providers in the course of their business. Considering our vulnerabilities, it's what I would do, if I had the responsibility to minimize future attacks by hate groups.
* The existence of this pragmatic program should not have been classified, since any constitutionally questionable or abuse-susceptible program employing thousands will inevitably be revealed by a conscientious worker.
* There is no evidence that Snowden's revelation has significantly reduced our security, since no concerned person doubted NSA's data gathering. It is almost certain that his revelations and resulting transparency will improve our democracy.
* Owing to gratuitous secrecy, we find ourselves compelled to prosecute someone who has done us more good than harm. If I were the president, I would voice kabuki protests to any government granting asylum to Snowden, while hoping he stays safely abroad long enough for us to forgive him.
* If the administration and military can forgive themselves for revealing how they located Bin Laden and how they discovered al-Qaeda's recent plan to attack oil wells, ports and diplomatic missions, then they can surely forgive Snowden.

Ellipsoid Tension

A couple of decades ago, I became obsessed with the relation among pressure in an ellipsioidal chamber, shape of the chamber and the distribution of tensions in the chamber's walls. The essential results of that obsession are presented below. Physicists might find these orderly-looking/symmetrical equations beautiful, but I don't know whether they will be useful.

Can we talk?

Economics, society, polictics, science, civilization, religion -- fun to think and talk about. It's like a well known dermatologists facetiously said in favor of his profession: it's endlessly profitable, since your patients never get well and never die.

Conventional wisdom from both sides

* For most of a century we have led the free world--essentially compelled to choose sides in numerous foreign conflicts within and across borders. What are the merits of having that role and of various ways of playing that role? Could we have led by example, creating a just and prosperous society that all countries, religions and tribes would gladly emulate? Could we have stayed out of Vietnam, Iraq, the Arab Spring? In these cases, did we support a process that helped the neediest inhabitants? Can we ignore humanitarian crises or threats to allies? Must we care which thugs rule a foreign country? Could terrorism be addressed better as a law-enforcement problem rather than a military problem? Consider the blood and treasure spilled in Afghanistan for a crime that killed less than 3000/decade and humiliated us, a nation that loses 100000/year to medical errors, 40000/year to crime, 30000/year to accidents. Can we prevent nuclear war forever?
* It is widely agreed that unemployment is the major cause of social problems, such as self-destructive excesses, family dissolution, homelessness, demoralization, crime, riots, revolution. It's worth considering the history and dynamics of these problems. Virtually all pundits and leaders believe that too much unemployment is due to too little economic growth, and they propose various remedies to promote economic growth. What are the accepted mechanisms of accelerating economic growth? Are they effective, sustainable? What are their effects on national debt, personal debt, trade imbalance, resource depletion, migrations? How could employment be improved with less of these adverse effects (regulate multistate retailers, print some debt-free money, reduce work week)? Isn't it up to each sovereign country to address its own economic problems? Can our generation justify a stuff throughput about twice what's needed for health and happiness?
* The world's population keeps increasing despite resource depletion and waste accumulation. Production technology has kept wealthier populations from sinking into civil unrest and police/military governance. Any failure of the important technological systems or any failure of agriculturally essential natural support systems could lead to conflict between nations, among population segments and between populations and their governments. We don't have convenient energy reserves or fertilizer-component reserves for more than a century. Isn't it high time for leaders of all kinds to promote population-growth restraint and energy-consumption restraint? What about phosphate conservation? Can balance between destruction and restoration be achieved with gentle incentives? Humanity's greatest enterprise, civilization, is at risk.
* What are the other great challenges that really matter?