Obama Scandals

* In a Jan 18 letter, Craig Thomas complained that the main-stream media under-reported Obama scandals: IRS, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, NSA, ACA. In fact, these were not unqualified scandals.
* Since Tea Party, Patriot and Progressive organizations were created for politics and propaganda, IRS agents would be derelict not to make those 501.c4 applicants prove that less than half of their expenses would go to politics and propaganda.
* Fast and Furious was part of a poorly designed program initiated by the Bush administration in 2006 to track weapons from southwest gun dealers to Mexican gangs. Under congressional questioning, Eric Holder forgot when he first knew of the program. That's something I could have done.
* While the State Department and CIA can be faulted for inadequate protection of the Benghazi outpost, Susan Rice's talking points reflected early communications from the scene during and after the attack, and the most damning criticism of the American response during the attack was flawed, as there was no stand-down order to assets that could have prevented the deaths.
* After 9/11/01, it is rational for NSA to store communication data so as to identify networks associated with suspected terrorists.
* Given that health-care is 1/6 of GDP, implementing ACA without bugs should not have been expected. Much of the complexity was to accommodate existing stakeholders instead of making Medicaid buyable. Republican governors added to the difficulty.
* Even if all these scandal claims were justified, their total pales beside fabricating reasons to invade Iraq, a secular nation that didn't threaten us and which opposed al Qaeda.

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.