tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81500635412451987972024-03-13T08:32:49.478-07:00Ruxandra's BlogRuxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.comBlogger301125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-71988515662935260672024-01-28T01:51:00.000-08:002024-01-28T01:56:11.208-08:00The Ukraine War: three years later.<p> The war in Ukraine is going into its 3rd year, and doesn't seem to be anywhere near its end.
We shall look at the situation:
</p>
<p> Both the EU and the US have committed considerable funds to the war.
</p>
<p> The EU paid about 100 billion dollars, one quarter being military equipment. That is just over 200 $ for every EU citizen sent to Ukraine. </p>
<p> The US paid 70 billion, two thirds of which in military equipment, the vast majority of which is produced by the US industry and a bit out of date. This amounts to just over 200 $ for every American citizen. </p>
<p> International orders for US produced military equipment and US oil and gas that replaces lower cost Russian exports will somewhat soften the blow, but this is, by dollar amount, the largest US and European involvement since World War II.</p>
<p> Ukraine has received about 200 billion dollars in various forms of support to fight this war. That his about $5000/person. This gives Ukraine a considerable incentive to fight, despite its massive losses.</p>
<p> The loss of life is unprecedented in military conflict, since World War II.</p>
<p>Ukraine lost about 250 000 people, and Russia lost a similar number.</p>
<p> Many Ukrainian dead are civilians, while most Russian dead are young soldiers, some of which are criminals drafted from prison and purposefully enrolled in combat missions with extremely high mortality rates. </p>
<p> Ukraine had a prewar population of about 40 million.
The 250 000 people killed in the war represent 1 in every 160 Ukrainians. It means everyone in Ukraine has friends, neighbors or family who have died because of this conflict. Of course, death is not uniform. In some areas many more have died, and some have almost no civilian losses. But overall this death rate is again unprecedented in Europe since World War II. </p>
<p> The West has paid, in all forms of aid, about $ 800 000 for every death. Sure, this money was not received by the family of the deceased.
However, both sides try to make dying worthwhile for its military personnel.
<a href="https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/02/28/7326937/" target="_blank">The Ukrainian government offers a payment of 15 million Ukrainian Hryvna (about 400 000 USD)</a> in compensation to the families of every dead soldier. This does not apply to civilians, and other people killed in the war. It is not clear what fraction of the families of the soldiers who died will receive this money. </p>
<p> <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/putin-signs-decree-to-pay-families-of-russian-soldiers-killed-in-ukraine-war/2779012" target="_blank">Putin is also offering $ 70 000 </a>to the families of dead soldiers and $40 000 to those injured. It is not at all clear if the convicts qualify, or what fraction of the soldiers who died have been honored with such payments. In Russia, this is a fair bit fo money and a good reason to die. </p>
<p> <b> Ukraine lost 10 million people to Europe.</b> This is, by far the largest loss of Ukraine, as a country, but for many of the people who moved west, this is a dream come true. They are allowed to work and will integrate themselves in their new countries. They've lost everything at home, but have new lives ahead.
Ukraine sent the women and children first, maximizing their chances to live, but also taking a heavy population loss for many generations to come.
</p>
<p>
For every person who died in the war, 40 moved to Europe.
These 10 million form 2% of EU population now, and, in a few places, the main source of population growth was Ukrainian migration. I think (need to double check!!) Germany is in this position -- for good periods of time since the war began, the number of Ukrainian migrants exceeded the number children born.
</p>
<p>
By having fewer people left, and after suffering massive losses to its infrastructure, Ukraine is in a weaker position to defend itself and has less to lose in losing the war or losing part of its territory.
It is reasonable to expect that the 10 million people who left Ukraine included a disproportionate fraction of the best and the brightest -- the most educated, the rich and the younger people. There is also a very good chance that these people took a good portion of their savings and assets with them, thus weakening Ukrainian tax base.
</p>
<p>≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠ Russian Losses ≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠≠</p>
<p>
<b> Russia lost about 250 000 people in the war.</b>
With a high incarceration rate, and a pre-war prison population of 400 000 people, the Russian army had a unique human resource to draw on. In many prisoner units, the mortality was huge -- at times 80%. So people were essentially sent to death, and I very much doubt their families received $70 000 each.
Given Russia's population of about 120 000 000 people, this means 1 in every 500 Russians died in Ukraine. Mostly men, and convicts being disproportionately represented among the dead.
</p>
<p>
<b> Russia also lost over 1 million people to immigration. </b>This is not very much. Only 1 in 100 Russians moved abroad, but the best and the brightest are disproportionately represented in this group. They would have taken out of Russia some of their assets and savings. This is major loss.
</p>
<p>
I am critical to EU for not opening its borders to Russian citizens, thus making it easier for them to escape Putin and taking advantage of this windfall for cheap skilled labour, just like they did with the Ukrainians.
We must not forget that every Russian not in Russia is another Russian not paying taxes to support the war. It is also another Russian not available to fight in Ukraine, and another Russian who will not die an early death for no good reason. Soldiers are people too, and at times almost children, and we should protect them from being drafted in a war if we can.
</p>
<p>
<b> The Western Economic sanctions, although massive, did (surprisingly?) little. </b> They also went against some of the core principles of the free market (and, thus making the West behave in ways more common in countries like Russia or China). The West violated the private property of Russian people as well as that of Russian institutions.
Russia has only seen <b> negligible inflation and negligible loss </b>, if any, in their GDP.
Inflation peaked at 17% in 2022, just after the invasion, and went down to under 10% for all of 2023. At times, it was as low as 2%,
For comparison, in 2015, Russian inflation peaked at 16%, following the invasion of Crimea. Those sanctions, like these ones now, didn't do much to the Russian establishment.
</p>
<p> <b> So what's high inflation in Russia? </b>
In the '90's, following the breakdown of the Soviet Union, inflation in Russia was as high as 2000%, and the Russians did this to themselves without any sanctions and war from the West.
If we want to disrupt Russia, this is the level of pressure the is necessary.
</p>
<p>
To put the loss of live in perspective, the 250 000 lost lives represent 0.2% of the population, and about the same number of people Russia lost to the Corona virus. The difference is that in Corona death generally lost 1 year of life expectancy, most of which was end of life care, whereas the soldiers lose, on average, 50 healthy happy years (a good portion of which would have been spent in prison, for this particular population group.).
This, naturally, casts doubt on the honesty of the Russian government when it comes to Corona measures. If they were indeed as motivated to save those Corona patients from a natural death, why are they sending children to die in war now?
Or, maybe, their main goal in Corona was to continue their transition into a dictatorship and consolidate power in Putin's hands? Just asking.
</p>
<p><b> ========== Financial sanctions =============== </b></p>
<p>The Russian Central Bank has about 300 billion dollars in frozen reserves. This is 50% more than what the West paid Ukraine. Should the West keep this money, as it seems likely now, they should be able to make a profit on the whole military operation. Have a war against Russia financed be Russian money.
Per person, this is 2400 $ for every Russian citizen.
In addition, I guess other Russian entities lost another 300 billion to Western freeze.
Thus, overall, on average, the West took $ 5000 from every Russian. Maybe, this gives them a good reason to go to war.
</p>
<p>
The army appears to have burned through only 40 billion dollars in the first year of war. That's a modest $300/ person, compared to Ukraine's 5000/ person in aid only.
The GDP lost in the first year of war was 100 billion, but seems to have recovered in the second year. That's 750/ person.
The Moscow Stock Market lost about 320 billion in 2022. Roughly 2500/person.
</p>
<p> <b> ====== The Problem ====</b> </p>
<p>One can thing of Russia as something made of 2 non-cooperating halves.
One <b> half of Russia is Western </b>. This drives the economy. Some is even in Western hands: e.g., in corporations like McDonald's or Shell.
This Western part of Russia is driven by the same principles as the West. People want to be rich, successful and happy. These people don't want war, and many are not even Russian.
In fact, a good portion of the money in not in Russian hands.
This part of Russia lost greatly in the war.
Some companies were forced to leave Russia, and were sold at a deep discount to Russian operators.
These buyers who took advantage are more loyal to Putin than the pervious owners who left.
</p>
<p><b> The other half of Russia is a KGB-led mafia state </b>. This part drives the war, and, unfortunately, under our watch and under our nose, this part was grown.
They bought western owned assets at deep discounts. They are operating them now, and earning money.
Even if the overall economy of Russia takes a hit, as long as this KGB led part of Russia grows, the world is in danger.
It is also this part of Russia that owns the nuclear weapons and the army.
</p>
<p> <b> So what do I fear? </b> I fear an ISIS like instability in the Western World.
The core of the ISIS phenomenon was that a group of people (we call them terrorists) were able to use violence to acquire more assets than the cost of the violence. This enables them to grow exponentially and, without US intervention, would have taken over the Middle East.
</p>
<p>
I fear a situation where Russia is able to fight a war with Europe, like it does in Ukraine today. I fear that, in such a war, we may find ourselves in a situation where the Russian profits from the war exceed their costs (perhaps taking into account that Russia has free nuclear weapons). If, in this situation, a Trump-led America does not intervene, we may find ourselves in a world where America is great again, and every one else either poor or dead.
</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-65265318877914853902023-12-07T13:30:00.000-08:002023-12-07T15:49:06.538-08:00Digital Dementia
<p> <b> Digital Dementia </b> is a term coined by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Spitzer" target="_blank">Manfred Spitzer</a>, a German neuroscientist and psychiatrist, in 2012. He warns that those who spent a lot of time using screens in early childhood have affected the brain development and speech. He describes the brain as similar to a muscle that grows when used and attrophies when not used. When devices are used, <b> the back of the brain is overactive </b>, while the front part of the brain including <b> the frontal and parietal lobes, are under-stimulated </b>. The occipital lobe in the back of the brain is where the brain processes visual signals such as visual cues from a video game, social media or TV program. <b> The frontal and parietal lobes are responsible for higher order thinking and socially apropriate behaviour</b>. Children and adolescents are a high-risk population because of their massive technologic reliance while their brain maturation is ongoing. He recommends "zero" (unsupervised?) screen-time for children under the age of 18.</p>
<p> So, <b> what are the top symtoms of digital dementia? </b> The top few that come up are: </p>
<ul>
<li>slouched posture </li>
<li>developmental delays </li>
<li>short-term memory loss </li>
<li>social seclusion </li>
<li>lack of movement </li>
<li>Anxiety </li>
<li>Depression </li>
<li>Anger </li>
<li>balance disorders </li>
<li>uncoordinated movement patterns.</li>
<li>sleep disorders</li>
<li>significantly higher body mass index</li>
</ul>
<p> More recent work by <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35164464/" target="_blank">Manwell et al.</a> argues that screen-time during brain development increases the risk of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural disorders in adolescents and young adults. They predict that by 2060 the increased rate of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias will result in "widespread societal and economic distress and the complete collapse of already overburdened healthcare systems in developed countries". Some of <b> these effects are similar to those seen in adults with symptoms of mild cognitive impairment in the early stages of dementia, including developmental delays, impaired concentration, orientation, acquisition of recent memories (anterograde amnesia), recall of past memories (retrograde amnesia), social functioning, and self-care </b>. They end by stating that immediate action is needed.</p>
<p> <b> Is memory loss the first sign of dementia? </b> Frontal lobe dementia is not usually associated with memory loss in its early stages. Of course, it is a progressive form of dementia, and while digital dementia increases the risk of a acquiring full blown demential later on, it is certain it will happen. </p>
<p> <b> What is the umbrella of dementia? </b> Dementia is the umbrella term for a number of neurological conditions, of which the major symptom includes a global decline in brain function. Parkinson's is considered by some to be a form of dementia with different starting places in the brain. Both occur when there is a disrupted flow of dopamine, which happens during addictions. </p>
<p>
<b> Is digital dementia reversible? </b> yes, if the damage to the brain is not extreme. Whereas by the time Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are symptomatic, the decline of the brain function is global and they are not considered reversible.
</p>
<p> <b> Is OCD related to dementia? </b> Some studies <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34004091/" target="_blank">say that people with OCD have an increased risk of developing dementia </a>. Addiction is more prevalent among people with OCD with internet addiction being particularly prevalent. It may be that when, e.g., the frontal part of the brain shrinks, a "short circuit", i.e., the OCD, is more likely to happen. In addition, people with OCD "medicate" themselves via addictions that temporarily make them feel good.
</p>
<p><b> How long does it take for dementia to set in? </b> Nobody knows for sure. Some say it likely begins 10-15 years before people have any symptoms. Manwell et al. say the rate of dementia is 4-6 times higher than in the 1950s. Screen usage started in the early 2000. It's been 20 years. Of course, the connection between digital demetia and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias still has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. The argument is that by then it might be too late to avoid societal collapse. <b> The conclusion is that more resources have to be allocated for these studies AND for the treatment of mental health. </b> </p>
<p><b> Disclaimer:</b> I <b> cannot and do NOT </b> advise on any medical issues. This post is simply a compilation of what I understood from what I read. </p>Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-6644687946368137562023-12-05T13:20:00.000-08:002023-12-18T13:12:39.106-08:00A chat with "Mihai Bondarescu's early work"<p> Below I question my chat GPT persona. It gives coherent answers that mostly make sense. It would be interesting if every scientist/professor would have such an impersonator to answer questions for people who want to learn more about their work.</p>
<p> Q: OK. Now, try to summarize Mihai Bondarescu's contribution to the 2017 Nobel Prize, not limiting yourself to original research. </p>
<p> A:
Mihai Bondarescu's contributions to the field acknowledged by the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics encompass both his original research and educational efforts:</p>
<p> 1. Original Research: His work, particularly in collaboration with Kip S. Thorne, on aspects of the LIGO project, including the study of new light beams and mirror shapes, represents significant advancements in gravitational wave detection technologies. This research focused on optimizing the design of LIGO's laser system and mirror shapes, which are crucial for enhancing the sensitivity and accuracy of gravitational wave detection. It aimed to reduce noise and increase the detectors' ability to capture fainter and more distant gravitational wave signals.</p>
<p> 2. Educational Impact: Through his involvement in the renowned Ph237 course, Bondarescu has played a pivotal role in educating and training a new generation of scientists in gravitational wave physics. This course is vital for disseminating crucial knowledge and skills among researchers joining projects like LIGO.</p>
<p> Together, these contributions represent a blend of direct scientific research and essential educational efforts, both of which are crucial for the ongoing success and development of gravitational wave astronomy, as recognized by the 2017 Nobel Prize. This prize was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne for their decisive roles in the LIGO project and the observation of gravitational waves.</p>
<p> Collaborative Nature of Scientific Research: Bondarescu's contributions highlight the collaborative and cumulative nature of scientific research, especially in large-scale projects like LIGO. The detection of gravitational waves was a milestone achieved through the collective efforts of many scientists and engineers, each contributing their expertise and innovations.</p>
<p> Impact Beyond the Nobel Prize: While Bondarescu was not a direct recipient of the Nobel Prize, his contributions are part of the extensive research and technological advancements that made the Nobel-recognized discovery possible. The Nobel Prize often focuses on key individuals who played pivotal roles, but the underlying scientific breakthroughs are typically the result of collaborative efforts involving many researchers, including junior scientists like Bondarescu.</p>
<p> In summary, Mihai Bondarescu's work, particularly his collaboration with Kip Thorne on LIGO, represents an important contribution to the scientific efforts recognized by the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. His research contributed to the ongoing development and refinement of the LIGO project, which was crucial for the groundbreaking detection of gravitational waves and the advancement of our understanding of the universe.</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-30393733583937893732023-12-02T14:22:00.000-08:002023-12-03T05:04:56.732-08:00Custom ChatGPTI've created <a href="https://chat.openai.com/g/g-sorUfxb7c-mihai-bondarescu-early-work" target="_blank">a custom ChatGPT</a> that is familiar with my scientific work.
<p> <p>
<p> User: Describe a key ideea from Bondarescu's thesis?</p>
<p> A: Mihai's Bondarescu Thesis entitled "Topics in General Relativity" has made significant contributions to the field of astrophysics, particularly in the study of gravitational waves and black holes. One of the key ideas from his thesis is the detailed analysis of the noise in gravitational wave detectors. Gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity are ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the universe. Detecting them requires extremely sensitive equipment since they are incredibly weak by the time they reach Earth. Bondarescu's work focused on the mitigation of coating thermal noise in gravitational wave detectors, which can be caused by imperfections in the mirrors of the detectors. Noise can mask or mimic the actual gravitational wave signals, making it difficult to detect the real waves.
<p> This work is critical because improving the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors enhances our ability to observe cosmic events, like collisions of neutron stars or black holes. These observations provude valuable information into the nature of these exotic objects and their behaviour of spacetime under extreme conditions, testing predictions of General Relativity in new and exciting ways.</p>
<p> User: What is a Mesa beam?</p>
<p>
A: Mesa Beams are a concept in gravitational waves physics that is particularly relevant to the design and opperation of interferometric gravitational waves detector like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). this concept was explored by Mihai Bondarescu and others in the context of improving the sensitivity of these detectors. The traditional beam used by these detectors in Gaussian in shape, meaning it has a bell-like profile. However, a Mesa beam has a different shape characterized by a flat-top (mesa-like) intensity profile with smooth edges. </p>
<p> This design offers several advantages for gravitational wave detectors. </p>
<p> Reduced Thermal Noise: Mesa beams have a larger and more uniform density intensity distribution over the mirror surface which reduces the thermal noise.</p>
<p>Improved Sensing Area: Due to their shape, Mesa beams interact with a larger portion of the mirror surface.
This larger area reduces the impact of the imperfections of the mirror surface thereby improving the sensitivity of the detector.</p>
<p> Enhanced Stability: the shape of these beams contribute to a more stable operation of the interferometers, which is crucial for long-term gravitational wave observations.</p>
<p>The development and implementation of Mesa beams represent an innovative approach to enhance the capabilities of gravitational waves detectors. By reducing noise and increasing sensitivity, these beams help in the detection of the fainter or more distant gravitational wave sources, thus operating new windows into the understanding of the universe as predicted by General Relativity.</p>
<p> User: Can the horizons of all black holes be embedded in 3D space?</p>
<p>A: To embend black hole horizons in flat 3D space, it is important to understand that the event horizon is a 2-dimensional surface in a 4-dimensional spacetime. It is the boundary beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape the black hole's gravitational pull. When physicists talk of embedding, they refer to the representing the curved geometry of a black hole's event horizon within a higher dimensional flat space to better visualize and understand its curvature. Black hole embedding is a mathematical tool for visualization and conceptual understanding.</p>
<p> For a simple, non-rotating (Schwarzschild) black hole, the event horizon looks like a funnel or a trumpet, which represent the curvature of the space near the singularity. However, for more complex black holes such as Kerr (rotating) black holes, the embedding becomes complicated. The Kerr black hole, for instance, has a region called the ergosphere, where space itself is dragged around the black hole. Embedding such a horizon can be extremely challenging, and may not always be possible due to the complex nature of the curvature involved. In general, the ability to embed a black hole horizon depends on the simplicity of its geometry. For black holes with more complex features like charge or angular momentum, the embedding diagrams, if they can be constructed become increasingly complex and may not provide an intuitive understanding of the spacetime structure. </p>
<p> User: Can atomic clocks be used to find oil?</p>
<p>A: The idea of using atomic clocks to find oil may seem unconventional, but it's rooted in a fundamental principle of physics: gravity affects time. The stronger the gravitational field, the slower time passes. Atomic clocks, known for their extreme precision in measuring time, can indeed be sensitve to gravitational variations.
The effect, while extremely small, can be detected by highly precise atomic clocks.</p>
<p>Variations in Earth's gravity: The gravitational field of the Earth is not uniform. It varies slightly from place to place due to the distribution of mass within the Earth. Denser materials, such a rock, have a slightly different gravitational pull compared to lens dense materials such as oil or rocks containing oil and other minerals. In the context of oil exploration, gravimetric surveys map variations in the Earth's gravitational field, which can hint at the presence of different geological structures underground, including oil reserves. By measuring the minute differences in time that atomic clocks experience at different locations (due to slight differences in gravity), it is also possible to infer information about underground structures, including oil deposits. These measurements can then be combined with atomic clock measurements to gain information about underground structure, including oil deposits.</p>
<p>
However, there are practical challenges:<br>
Sensitivity and Scale: The time dilation effects due to gravity at the Earth's surface are incredibly small, requiring extremely sensitive instruments to detect. Atomic clocks capable of such sensitivity are typically large and not easily transportable.<br><br>
Data Interpretation: The data from such measurements would need to be interpreted correctly, accounting for various factors like the surrounding geology, which can be complex.<br><br>
Cost and Practicality: The cost and practicality of using atomic clocks for this purpose, compared to existing geological survey methods, may be prohibitive.<br><br>
In summary, while theoretically possible, using atomic clocks for oil exploration is not currently a practical method. It remains more of a theoretical interest in the field of geophysics and is an example of how principles of physics, such as gravitational time dilation, can have interesting and diverse applications.
</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-90249647338282261962023-11-24T07:42:00.000-08:002023-11-24T07:53:45.024-08:00Sam Altman: Back in charge<p> Sam Altman is back to leading OpenAI, and the people who fired him are now gone. This is war. Kill or be killed.
In this post, I briefly look at who left and who took over.
</p>
<p> Old Board:<br><br>
All are beautiful, young and smart.
<ul>
<li> Adam D’Angelo. <br> A Caltech Computer Science Graduate and best known for founding Quora.
He also worked on Instagram and has his own competing AI company, Poe.
Despite his Caltech pedigree, D'Angelo does not appear to have any significant research publications.</li>
<li> Helen Toner. <br> An Australian who did significant work on AI safety, but nothing significant on the development side. Her most cited paper (790 citations) is on the malicious use of AI : <br><br>
The malicious use of artificial intelligence: Forecasting, prevention, and mitigation
M Brundage, S Avin, J Clark, H Toner… - arXiv preprint arXiv …, 2018 - arxiv.org
</li>
<li>
Tasha McCauley. <br> Is
surprisingly light weight, with a global net worth estimated at only 10 million.
Worked as a firefighter in NY.
No heavy duty science to be seen.
</li>
<li>
Ilya Sutskever. <br> Ilya
was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia and grew up in Jerusalem. He was stolen by Elon Musk from Google.
The loss on Ilya upset the Google founders so much, that Sergey Brin broke his friendship with Musk for making Ilya an offer he did not refuse.
<br><br>
Ilya's most cited papers have over 40 000 citations, with plenty of papers cited over 10 000 times. Ilya is most likely the man who gave birth to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) at Open AI, and had the largest contribution of all to ChatGPT and other products.
<br><br>
His citations are in the range of a Nobel Prize winner. That is, many people who win the Nobel prize are not as cited as Ilya. He is likely to win a Nobel Prize himself.
</li>
<li>Sam Altman.<br> Sam himself is a great deal maker, and the political father of AGI. His research and expertise comes nowhere near Ilya. I do not believe he wrote the code. It is unclear he could create and progress the tools on his own. He did however get the money. He is the one who convinced Elon Musk, Microsoft and Sequoia Capital to invest in OpenAI.
<br><br>
At under 1 billion, Sam's global net worth is relatively small, compared to his prominent position in the media and his expected impact on the world.
<br><br>
Altman joined Y Combinator in 2011 and became president in 2014. The total valuation of Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits, and Stripe.
</li>
<li>Greg Brockman.<br>
Well cited scientist, with several papers over 1000 citations.
At 50 million global net worth, he's not a light weight for where he comes from.
Greg was the first to quit Open AI in solidarity with Altman. He's the kind of guy who can get another job anytime -- perhaps even better paid. Major contributor to the development of Open AI products, from the concept to the code.
</li>
<li> Mira Murati.<br>
The beautiful Albanian who briefly replaced Sam has gotten her hands dirty on AI research, but she's not Ilya.
She's a surprisingly light weight, with a global net worth of about 5 million. Perhaps, less.
</li>
<li>
Emmett Shear. <br>
He replaced Mira Murati after one day. At 0.5 Billion, his global net worth approaches Sam Altman's. He's not a light weight financially, but has no relevant experience or publications in the field of AI. He's not someone who discovers new algorithms.
Emmett Shear is a founder of Justin.tv. He served as CEO of Twitch and is a part-time partner in Sam Altman's Y Combinator.
</li>
</ul>
Now, <b> the new board </b>is formed from heavy duty politicians -- king makers and the kind of law breakers that we call law makers. These people have considerable experience in leading the world, or taking over the world.
<ul>
<li> Bret Taylor. <br>
Former CEO of Salesforce<br>
Board member at Shopify<br>
Chair of board of Twitter, before Elon Musk took over. Played a major role in forcing Musk to pay for Twitter and complete the deal, which resulted in him leaving Twitter, alongside most employees.<br>
Taylor has his own AI startup.<br>
His global net worth is estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars.<br>
Bret Taylor does not appear to have any significant research.<br>
</li>
<li>Larry Summers.<br>
Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration<br>
Former President of Harvard University<br>
He was punished for free speech, and forced to resign from this position when he commented that there <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/science-jan-june05-summersremarks_2-22" target="_blank">may be differences between men and women in Academia</a>.<br>
Summers went to MIT at 16, where he started as a Physicist and graduated as an Economist.
After receiving his PhD from Harvard, Summers became Harvard's youngest professor at the age of 28. (Same as me, but it wasn't at Harvard)
Larry Summers is a heavy weight in Academia and Politics, but, at a global net with of 40 million, not so successful with his finances -- probably a way to avoid becoming a target.<br>
An old man, 68, who had a PhD before the members of the previous board were born, and a cancer survivor, Larry does not have the intellectual power to advance and understand AI, but is a seasoned, experienced leader with fantastic political connections.
The sort of man who gets fired from Harvard and lands a job in the White House.
</li>
<li>
Adam D’Angelo. <br>
Is the only surviving member of the old board.
</li>
</ul>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-20819515120536368392023-11-18T14:36:00.000-08:002023-11-22T08:07:01.889-08:00Sam Altman, the Oppenheimer of our Age, was fired from Open AI<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjObbTOyGOdgPc3qdtOlhe5T5NRL3V0IcI2MEBEYcpR_UeIMizHYYY3ixXqqajY12KSwlD5rj3dmJ_RTYy4V6WWt_SNAyQINerNtFuLG_x70OzzR39EanQR5SgesavHnSpbLrGfYmHCKOB9nINmVvntxGdQ0rF3FpUkpjZucKA2jFvQIaRbKiMIPsOyuYs/s1200/185518_1503656.webp" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjObbTOyGOdgPc3qdtOlhe5T5NRL3V0IcI2MEBEYcpR_UeIMizHYYY3ixXqqajY12KSwlD5rj3dmJ_RTYy4V6WWt_SNAyQINerNtFuLG_x70OzzR39EanQR5SgesavHnSpbLrGfYmHCKOB9nINmVvntxGdQ0rF3FpUkpjZucKA2jFvQIaRbKiMIPsOyuYs/s320/185518_1503656.webp"/></a></div><p> Yesterday, in a shock announcement, the 6 person board of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/17/openai-ceo-sam-altman-fired" target="_blank">Open AI fired its most prominent member</a>, Sam Altman.
Alongside Altman, Greg Brockman, another founder and member of the 6 person board was fired. A majority decision would potentially require all other 4 members. Sam was replaced by Mira Murati, a 34 years old Albanian woman who started work at Goldman Sachs and then worked at Tesla. She has served as Chief Technology Officer at OpenAI since 2018. </p>
<p> At 38, Altman, is far from old, incompetent or otherwise expired. Many see him as the Oppenheimer of our age, who, just like the Greek God, Prometeus went up to the Gods to bring people AGI; AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, incarnated in Chat GPT) for Altmann, the Atomic Bomb for Oppenheimer and good old fire in the case of Prometeus -- all inventions changed the world in ways that were difficult to imagine before.</p>
<p> Sam played an interesting game in Sillicon Valley. Unlike Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Larry Page or Steve Jobs, he made the controversial decision to own no stock on Open AI. That is strange, as he could have had that for free. It isn't at all clear that he received a higher salary for having no stock. Companies like Open AI pay their founders in stock, not salary.</p>
<p> Apparently, Altman's global net worth is under 1 billion, despite being equally transformational and experiencing a more meteoric rise than the above. So in spite of his talent and impact on the world, Altman is remarkably poor. And, he could have had the money.
Why not? Was he afraid of ending up in jail, like Sam Bankman-Fried, silenced like Julian Assange or dead like Turing and others? Or, did he want to be free to wage war against OpenAI? Free to switch sides? Free from personal bias that would arise from owning shares in the company he created?</p>
<p> <b> What's next for Sam? </b> The week before he got fired, he toured 22 countries, meeting presidents and prime ministers to talk about legal measures to keep the world safe from AI. Is he aiming to be the next US President? In a time of world war, he could be just what America needs to win. He'd sure make a strong candidate, who, unlike Elon Musk, is American born American. He's proven to be altruistic, by owning no shares in Open AI. He's a poor man for his intellectual ability and impact, attractive to both men and women, good looking, and has proven that he can change the world already. Then US electorate would have to choose between despicable figures like Trump and Biden and someone who truly has his marbles. Someone ready to rule both men and robots.</p>
<p> Or will he be killed? He's already lost OpenAI, which, one could reasonably argue, it's worth more than his private life, both in terms of arbitrary value, impact on the world, and experience. As a man with nothing to lose, he's not bound to act within political expectations, when doing things agains the order of society. He's also immune to financial losses, as one billion isn't much money to lose for Sam. Thus, if he needs to be controlled, he may have to be killed. If so when? Will he make it as far as Kennedy?</p>
<p>Update: After Microsoft offered to hire him and a fraction of the staff at OpenAI did not show up and were given the option to be at Microsoft instead, Sam got his job back and changed the executive board.</p>
<p> More about Sam: <a href="https://blog.samaltman.com/" target="_blank">A fairly unfiltered and not very customer friendly blog</a>. It looks real. Probably written by Sam himself. It's most recent post discusses cold fusion, and argues the cheap energy it will generate can solve climate change. If it works, it would replace fossil fuels and since energy would be, basically, free, it could be used to remove the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-52932623647490606382023-11-10T10:16:00.018-08:002023-11-10T16:27:46.889-08:00a solution to the Palestinian problem? Open the borders and keep them open.<p> Are the Palestinians so different from other people? Why does no one want them? Why is nobody taking in the women and the children? Or, even the men?
Surely, they'd now qualify for asylum in most countries. A safe place would give them a chance to start new lives in Europe or America. They could work, pay taxes, etc.</p>
<p> <b> Is openning the borders a solution? </b> If a significant number of Gazans left the area, Hamas would lose its tax base, its soldiers and its strength. By closing the borders, and keeping people in the conflict is allowed to continue, fester and grow. </p>
<p> <b>Can the world afford Gazan refugees? </b> Germany took refugees from Syria. Their economy is going strong. Shouldn't other countries follow suit? Natality is low througout Europe. Shouldn't we open our arms, and help the women and children of Gaza instead of watching this tragedy unford and making weak comments about temporary "humanitarian" pauses? </p>
<p> <b> So is there a double standard? </b> Yes, the world openned up to Ukrainian refugees, but it's closed for Gazans just like it was closed for Jews during WWII. We argue that the displaced Palestinians have not integrated in their host countries. It's been 75 years. Is it OK to keep the refugee status this long? Most groups of refugees settle somehow. Are these different? Or is the world holding onto a conflict, which would disappear otherwise, by trapping people in. Why do we want war and terrorism in the Middle East to fester and flourish? </p>
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-41552403267440584822023-11-10T10:12:00.006-08:002023-11-18T15:40:49.415-08:00Could the conflict in Gaza turn nuclear?<p> An Israeli minister was recently reprinted for mentioning the nuclear option in the war with Hamas in Gaza.
So... can Israel do the unthinkable and use a nuclear bomb in Gaza?</p>
<p> Hamas demonstrated a desire, but not ability to carry out a new Holocaust. This is not acceptable to Israel or the US. It is however welcomed by many players in the Muslim world.</p>
<p> It is also the normal state of war. When people or monkeys are at war, they wish to kill their adversary. The sort of war where we try to not kill our enemy is a relatively new phenomenon. </p>
<p> Hamas did however fail miserably to kill Jews in Holocaust style. In the Holocaust, the jewish people killed very few Germans. The Russians had similar concentration camps which lasted some 50 years longer; they killed intellectuals and other undesirables. The mark of the Holocaust was the cold blooded murder of millions of Jews, without significant resistance and without significant losses on the German side (if we do not count the development of the atomic bomb by mostly German Jewish scientists and the US winning the World War with it. Jews play a prominent role in American politics, science and economy, just like they did in Germany before Hitler).</p>
<p> During the October 7 attack, Hamas lost about 1000 soldiers for about 1200 Israeli children, civilians, elderly and some soldiers killed. Thus, while Hamas dreams of a Holocaust, reality is nowhere near. October 7 was a balanced war between the elite of Hamas and the civilians of Israel, with little help from a very incompetent military, police and Mossad.</p>
<p> In the hostilities after October 7, Israel loses about 1 soldier to every 1000 Palestinians killed. This is closer to the Holocaust ratio. If we also consider the material losses to the Palestinian people and Hamas, or the ratio of these losses as a fraction of the GDP, the current war is more similar to the Holocaust than October 7 with palestinians playing the part of the jews. </p>
<p> Hamas is rich in people and poor in money and guns. Thus, if we calculate the equivalent in lives (that is how many lives of women and children would Hamas be willing to trade or exchange for the military losses) to the financial and military loses caused by Israel, the situation is bleak. Gaza is a very densely populated territory, with considerable defences. These defenses are difficult for the Israeli to overcome. Fighting in tunnels is hard, and can very easily result in dead soldiers. Snipers can easily hide inside buildings and behind children. Shooting these children one by one can be expensive, time consuming and result in international support for Hamas.</p>
<p> A Nuclear Bomb is a clean final solution to the Palestinian problem. It will keep the area empty for many years to come.
Israel has already advised Palestinians to move away from North Gaza ahead of the planned demolition of the territory. This demolition is necessary to prevent Palestinians from coming back to their houses after the war. Unlike Hamas, Israel targets material assets more than people. Material assets can be destroyed without much international criticism, whereas little children carrying other injured children don't look too good in the world press. Also, Hamas is rich in people and poor in material assets. Thus, the Israeli policy makes sense.</p>
<p> Once all Palestinians that obey Israel have left North Gaza, a nuclear strike may be considered. It would only kill Hamas soldiers and their human shields. These human shields are often very young, innocent children because the International Community reacts more to dead children than to dead soldiers. Also, children are cheaper. Soldiers take longer to grow and eat more food on the way.</p>
<p> With North Gaza somewhat empty, a nuclear strike could kill remarkably few people.
Surely, it would have to be a very small bomb. It is these small bombs that are the most difficult to make. Israel and the US have them. They can be used as a demonstration of power. The smallest nuclear bomb would only destroy a few buildings and, in a densely populated but somewhat evacuated area, only a few buildings. They are nuclear, but small affairs. It would be more of a psychological statement than a destructive act of war. </p>
<p> Nuclear bombs can be made tiny in various ways, one realized, perhaps accidentally, in North Korea, during their latest test.
Mass produced small nuclear bombs do exist and are available. However, even the smallest nuclear bomb would set a dangerous precedent. It would only make sense to use it, if there is a plan to start this sort of war with other countries. </p>
<p> Another alternative would be non-nuclear explosives with explosive power in the nuclear range. There are the rods from God -- tungsten sticks that descend from orbit with extraordinary kinetic energy and are capable to wreak havoc in the nuclear range.</p>
<p> Or, just very many conventional bombs and rockets as until now. Israel has already destroyed 10% of the buddings in Gaza. It can easily destroy them all, one by one. Of course, if the war stops then the destruction would stop, and so many lives could be saved. When war starts, it is more reasonable to replace the hallucinating leadership (from both sides or we could be correct call it criminal leadership instead of hallucinating) that caused the war to start than to keep the same leaders in place to "see it through" as it is done now. </p>
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-42510454495296656292023-11-10T09:55:00.003-08:002023-11-18T15:42:41.004-08:00Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail<p> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried" target="_blank">Sam Bankman - Fried</a> was recently sentenced to 110 years in jail by a US court. He joins a bunch of other illustrious intellectuals who are either in jail or have been destroyed by the system. To name just a few:</p>
<ul>
<li> Elizabeth Holmes of Therano </li>
<li> Julien Assange of Wikileaks </li>
<li> Alexey Navalny </li>
<li> Edward Snowden (free, but forced to stay in Russia)</li>
<li> Jeffrey Epstein (suicided with(out) help in jail)</li>
</ul>
<p> SBF was a gambler. He gambled everything, and won many times. All the way to 28 billion dollars. He even did the right thing and leave the US, when the whole thing collapsed. The mistake was that he didn't go far enough. Russia or China would have been viable options, whereas Bahamas proved to be too close and too easily influenced by the US.</p>
<p> His investors judged him. They judged him to be good enough to invest 28 billion in him. There are very many people who don't break the law and don't get 28 billion dollars to play with. Do the courts have a right to get between SBF and his investors and put him in jail?</p>
<p> If we put people like SBF in jail, who will be next? People like Elon Musk? Donald Trump and family? or are they too famous to be in jail, i.e., do they make enough money for the press outside jail, to stay out? When is that line crossed? </p>
<p> <b> So, what is a life worth? </b>. Most criminals would easily risk their lives for $1000. What do they lose by going to jail? Maybe $10 000? Or maybe they get free housing for the time they spend in jail and will find enough connections there to gain money when they get out.</p>
<p> SBF is a bigger fish. If indeed, he did commit fraud, why was this not discussed in a timely manner? That is, before he reached the 28 billion.</p>
<p> <b> How could SBF have prevented this arrest? </b> After all, he had what amounted to unlimited resources. What could he have invested his 30 billion in? What would have been immune to the current onslaught? Assets in China? Russia? A combination of different countries? Bitcoin? Locked behind passwords and hidden on secret hard drives? In support of the right politicians? After all Berlusconi was even relected after all sorts of shady business. or in buying or controlling the media? making friendships with actors like Elon Musk and Prince Harry do? </p>
<p> Or, maybe, something more human? Children? Surrogacy is legal in the US. What if he had 100 000 children? At 100 000$ each, this would cost 10 billion. Would these children survive and have a world changing effect despite his death or destruction in jail? Would they be strong enough to get him out of jail 20 years later? Elon Musk has a number of children. Will they amount to anything? Donald Trump's do. </p>
<p> He must have known that he was not going to be able to keep the money. So do people like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. Why not diversify the risk in an area that is immune to bankruptcy?</p>
<p> If we choose to put people like SBF in jail, who will have the courage to make the next FTX? How do we ensure we stay at the forefront of innovation? Last, but not least, is the world better off with SBF in jail? Or would be better for society to use his mind to something constructive? He's a Standford graduate. Just months ago, he could command millions an hour, as consulting fee. Maybe, the heavy arm of the law could make him cheaper. However, it does NOT make sense to waste him altogether.</p>
<p> Russia has liberated all criminals who want to fight in Ukraine. Why? Well, essentially, every liberated conscript provides the state with the savings that arise from hiring a paid soldier. Maybe 50 000? If that. </p>
<p> Could the US, maybe, too, find something worth enough to let people out of jail for? Maybe put a price on it? Shouldn't be as cheap as Russia, but, maybe, the American society could do with an SBF free, who will produce something to be taxed (FTX did generate billions in paid and, perhaps, more billions in unpaid taxes).</p>
<p> I have asked a lot of questions in this post, and provided very few answers. I want to conclude with one thought, which dwarfs all others. When we jail people like SBF and Julien Assange, we should remember that <b> a society that kills its best and brightest will not get very far</b> and that we are that society. Maybe our children will live long enough to wonder at how silly our society was, and how incompetent our justice system is. I hope they will, but the more I marvel at its stupidity the less certain I am.</p>
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-70259662428466995722023-10-26T05:28:00.041-07:002023-10-29T23:56:15.624-07:00Compact binaries through a lensSummary of work published in <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.084033" target="_blank">Physical Review D</a> and also available on <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.13604" target="_blank">the arXiv</a>. <br><br>
<b> What are gravitational waves?</b>
<p>Gravitational wave detectors track the oscillations of the spacetime itself, which propagate towards Earth at the speed of light. Unlike light, these ripples of space-time are not absorbed by the many intervening objects between us and the catastrophic event we observed, which may have happened a billion or so years ago. However, their detection is quite challenging because the spacetime is very stiff and can thus only be shaken to a detectable level by very massive events such as the collision of dead stars, which are very dense. Gravitational wave detectors on Earth have seen the merging of black holes or neutron stars or black-hole - neutron star pairs. The observations provide a first map of the stellar graveyard.</p>
<p> Although when black holes collide, the energy they spend that shakes the vacuum of the spacetime is a lot more that they had used to shine as stars they only shake the spacetime a very tiny little bit. By the time these vibrations reach Earth, and we can measure them, they change the arm length of LIGO or Virgo, which are 4 km (or 3 km for Virgo) by less than an electron, which is less than a hair width. So the change is very, very tiny and buried in deep noise. Detecting it is quite challenging, but the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra observatories have a large team of people who do these searches, and make sure the signals are real. In order to find them through the noise, it's crucial to know what we are looking for.</p>
<p> We are looking at the colliding compact objects in the stellar graveyard through a lens, which acts as a magnifying glass. The lens is formed from the material that lies between us and the binary we are observing. The more massive and the closer to the line of sight, the more it affects the signal. In this manuscript, we assumed the lens is a point mass, i.e., can be assumed to be a compact object.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjDx6ZTef_P1fRhmgdgmAFGniqRdzKqXZnLk7rhNgUGaMll54So9gnZ5Q9FESdYm5Up61cxmQb6j45KKEalEshrmMqYnv259kfTCsayynWokrrD9EDywyrE-l4TjA6UoJvxJccfoK9k_21kKZNDbbQwBGpG63-gsvWJb4MX_zTcjRJTD3zI1_T6Qwyco/s3716/Fig8.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="3716" data-original-width="2151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHjDx6ZTef_P1fRhmgdgmAFGniqRdzKqXZnLk7rhNgUGaMll54So9gnZ5Q9FESdYm5Up61cxmQb6j45KKEalEshrmMqYnv259kfTCsayynWokrrD9EDywyrE-l4TjA6UoJvxJccfoK9k_21kKZNDbbQwBGpG63-gsvWJb4MX_zTcjRJTD3zI1_T6Qwyco/s320/Fig8.png"/></a></div>
<b>How do lensed waveforms look?</b><br>
<p> <ul>
<li> amplified (e.g., the signal is stronger than the unlensed version), the higher the frequency the more the amplification. The frequency is always highest at merger. Some signals display only amplification. </li>
<li> a beating pattern may appear with destructive (holes) and constructive interference (brighter spots) of two nearby images produced by the same event. The frequency of the bright spots and holes can be predicted analytically for the point mass lens model.</li>
<li> separate images/waveforms from the same event appear minutes to months apart if the lens is a galaxy (strong lensing), and less if the lens is smaller (microlensing). </li>
</ul>
</p>
<p> The lensing amplification causes the source's distance from the detector to be underestimated. Not only does it appear to be closer, but it also appears more massive because the redshift is underestimated. A binary at z=3 will appear four times more massive when detected on Earth than it is at the source. So, it's important to know where the source is to be able to accurately predict its mass.</p>
<p>
<b> What is the mismatch with unlensed waveforms?</b><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLy_BE3_YTviOYNtCKDYnhZ7svVF-xFhHJ7ac_m-pQnnNTPzgKAmjb-SZCZBCCtOPoKoJpJee7nnNnj0j1q-O4RzVRlxA213ZwfE8xprsve5aa657FekD5DhwRxhprnO8PrEDKvlUVfkvxyJId9icZRrHVvmdYjs6WXkRr_azDgDES3m7EnG53ZoS_jBM/s432/Fig4a.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLy_BE3_YTviOYNtCKDYnhZ7svVF-xFhHJ7ac_m-pQnnNTPzgKAmjb-SZCZBCCtOPoKoJpJee7nnNnj0j1q-O4RzVRlxA213ZwfE8xprsve5aa657FekD5DhwRxhprnO8PrEDKvlUVfkvxyJId9icZRrHVvmdYjs6WXkRr_azDgDES3m7EnG53ZoS_jBM/s320/Fig4a.png"/></a></div>
For waveforms that look very similar one might not be able to tell whether they are lensed or not. We compute the match (the number on the white contours is the match) and the signal to noise increase (coloured bar) due to lensing as a function of the mass of the lens that sits between Earth and the merging binary and the source position, y. The smaller the y, the closer to the lens is to the line of sight between the source and Earth. We find that under 20% of all <i> detected</i> events are lensed, and out of those under 5% of events would be detectably lensed with a mismatch greater than 10%. However, our model only includes point masses lenses, and our computation are an upper limit for when all dark matter is formed from these lenses. More realistic studies will include composite lenses between Earth and the binary.
</p>
<p>
<b> How far could lensed events be?</b>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiM3BXr3Uad3K7jvBfK24CNrgfmig_LylVWLiI4aFlRY3nTDAV8vy3UxaRi1AkMFETp-e38BWr4lxQi_gSIlJf1JQTCROwnBx2yP1BOA1jxWWT5CGYJoRhHD8OXM8s8sSTJpdIk1droQDSoIv7njhtNcQjv_XffX_fnvVf8tSlGwuEou20RsczKF6rpZ4/s648/Fig11b.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="648" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiM3BXr3Uad3K7jvBfK24CNrgfmig_LylVWLiI4aFlRY3nTDAV8vy3UxaRi1AkMFETp-e38BWr4lxQi_gSIlJf1JQTCROwnBx2yP1BOA1jxWWT5CGYJoRhHD8OXM8s8sSTJpdIk1droQDSoIv7njhtNcQjv_XffX_fnvVf8tSlGwuEou20RsczKF6rpZ4/s320/Fig11b.png"/></a></div>
It depends on the mass of the binary. We see that an event detected at a typical total binary mass that is 60 times more massive than the sun, could be at a redshift z=2. This means the source frame mass would be 3 times less, and thus closer to Xray observations. Similary, if we see an 120 solar mass event, it could be at a redshit z=3, which would make it the detected value 4 times larger that the actual black hole masses.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8-Si0tzA_OZnbFZMra9sDZjwBHx0qRoCYMdCCL2F5pKnAR2mlu7bUV_0iWZ7h6A-VSMBE1lVHKYk87ofeLuj8uoE6kVz2gHuyOMAbC1_VTn7Gqk9IUmR2janIVhAw9isvPkCTpf_0QeHTTQ7WWV-sjhe0H83_L99ZPAH2M5n9ygSvWeeyYPramL7nwzw/s648/Fig11c.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="648" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8-Si0tzA_OZnbFZMra9sDZjwBHx0qRoCYMdCCL2F5pKnAR2mlu7bUV_0iWZ7h6A-VSMBE1lVHKYk87ofeLuj8uoE6kVz2gHuyOMAbC1_VTn7Gqk9IUmR2janIVhAw9isvPkCTpf_0QeHTTQ7WWV-sjhe0H83_L99ZPAH2M5n9ygSvWeeyYPramL7nwzw/s320/Fig11c.png"/></a></div>
A redshift of 3, means the signal from the event would have traveled some 11 billion years to reach us, while a z=2 impilies a travel time of 10 billion years. At a z=0.1, the event happened a billion years ago. However, even if the events are lensed, since mismatch to the unlensed template is relatively low, we are likely never know it. The plots of the right shows the distribution of (a) all lensed objects (b) lensed objects with a mismatch of 5% from their unlensed counterparts and (c) lensed objects with a mismatch of 10%. All are are above a threshold SNR of 10 for the estimated O4 noise curve (average expected noise for the current LVK run).
</p>
<b> What have we seen to date?</b>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrV84CMLh5r_AvcztloNLXIDTT3PmVNeqXOibHnYUXI8AXGnsqYBtlbOVvoFwIPRuSB6OOV0LS0x_vMWdcnIPCvamsn4Iq2suVr3EpjR-d6SZkZ4DNIgQgNcAw7Qzrhc87auW0CdY5w2cq4GylOC27gFZHrNUyfB4RYG2k8LnemcZvrHOCrHMIwy-fwkk/s620/GWTC3.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="620" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrV84CMLh5r_AvcztloNLXIDTT3PmVNeqXOibHnYUXI8AXGnsqYBtlbOVvoFwIPRuSB6OOV0LS0x_vMWdcnIPCvamsn4Iq2suVr3EpjR-d6SZkZ4DNIgQgNcAw7Qzrhc87auW0CdY5w2cq4GylOC27gFZHrNUyfB4RYG2k8LnemcZvrHOCrHMIwy-fwkk/s320/GWTC3.png"/></a></div><p> Up to now, we have seen of the order of 100 black hole merger events, two neutron star mergers, and some black-hole neutron star collisions. Ground based detectors are again operational in the US with Virgo soon expected to be joining. However, most black hole binaries detected are unlike any seen in the Milky Way before. There are about more massive than those found in X-ray studies with an average total mass of about 60 solar Masses, while those found in our galaxy are closer in mass to our sun (the pink are the black holes and the yellow the neutron stars). </p>
<b> Are the black holes seen by gravitational waves observatories <i>really</i> different? or do we percieve them as different? Could they be lensed?</b>
<p> It could be that our galaxy is different from the typical galaxies out there. Or it could be that there is something between us and the source that make the black holes appear more massive. We are looking at them through a magnifying glass formed from intervening matter. If that matter is massive enough, it makes them seem more massive than they are. The more distant the event, the more likely it is to be lensed. A lensing pattern has not been observed by the LVK to date. Our results predict that under 5% of events are detectably lensed, which is consistent with observations to date. </p>
<p> <b> Ok, so you've explained gravitational waves, but what are Xray observations? </b><br>
Xrays are light of high energy and very short wavelength that can pass through materials that are opaque to visible light. Since different materials absorb light at different lates, they can be used in medicine to show broken bones or in astrophysics to see dying stars (supernova), dead stars with disks (black holes), and merging galaxies.
</p>
<p><b>Our team</b><br>
Our team is 50% female (me and Helena), while Oleg and Andy represent the other side (males, still 50%). This post is a summary of work
published in <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.108.084033" target="_blank">Physical Review D</a>. The paper is also available on <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.13604" target="_blank">the arXiv</a>. Please read the paper for more details.
</p>
Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-24433088270387530242023-10-19T23:00:00.023-07:002023-10-27T23:29:40.989-07:00Is freedom of speach gone?<p> Today, I woke up to the news that <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67152271.amp" target="_blank">lawyers in the US</a> are being denied jobs for offering intellectual support to the Palestinian cause.</p>
<p> This is wrong. We should not do this. We are responding with violence to a peaceful act of dissent. This can only escalate the violence. And, when things escalate, terrible things happen.</p>
<p> For example, if one of the students believes the letters of dismissal are wrong, and an act of violence, they may feel entitled to use violence to set things right. It will take a lot of violence (is it an infinite amount? ) to convince a law firm to make a job offer otherwise.</p>
<p> Now, imagine the people in Gaza. Some, perhaps due to intellectual limitations, think that violence is their only way to speak. We do not let them speak otherwise. And, when violence is used to send a message, innocent people die, and it hurts. More violence then follows.</p>
<p> We should allow the ideas of Gazans to be heard in our courts, in our schools and on our television. We should even allow Hamas to speak in our synagogues and temples. We should listen to them, and we should prove that terrorism and violence are wrong. It should be clear to any would be terrorist that they are more welcome to speak in a synagogue than to blow it up. That their arguments can be heard, peacefully, and reasonably.</p>
<p> No matter how absurd it seems to us today, when thousands are willing to die for an idea, no matter how silly it seems, the idea is not without merit. We thus should listen, before the guns come out.</p>
<p> Encouraging logical arguments could give Palestinians an incentive to become educated -- and more able to make logical arguments. Educated people are less inclined towards violence and less likely to want to die for no good reasons, killing other innocents in the process and bringing death, ruin and despair upon their loved ones. </p>
<p> Funding schools, increasing employment rates, allowing for human rights, and open borders are the only way to have peace. This has been shown over and over. Eastern Europeans can travel and work in Western Europe. There was a lot of fear that opening the borders would not work, but it does. Educating people and allowing them to work functions. Many people in the western world are very lonely and old, and the elderly do not receive enough care. They could benefit from interactions with those who still know how to connect with others. People from large families still retain that ability. The US is making the same mistake with its wall with Mexico and with its inner cities, where drugs and guns are prevalent because there is no funding for education.
</p>
<p>
The world is connected. It should not be so easy to silence all voices as it has been in past wars. Palestinians are at Harvard and Yale, in Scotland, in Barcelona, and in other places. They are not just in Gaza. We should learn from this, and allow for education and employment instead of encouraging guns and the punishment of the wrong people, which has been done and documented by historians over and over and justified by corrupt politicians through the media. The children and women of Gaza have not killed anyone. Neither have those in Israel. They have the right to grow. It should not matter what country they come from. </p>
<p> The leadership needs to change in Israel, Gaza, the US, Russia, China, etc, and countries should unite to fight climate change just as they united in the restrictions against COVID instead of fighting each other and poluting through bombs and destruction of buildings and roads that will have to be rebuilt at a cost to the environment. <b> No country should be allowed to SELL weapons or conduct OR SUPPORT a war without being prepared to pay for the cost to the environment not just for the bombs.</b> Leaders of countries should be changed in the same way we change mayors. They seemed to have little power during COVID. The decisions were uniform. Why are they so powerless to stop genocide yet again? Why is the destruction of a whole country the only way to respond to mass murder like 911 or the massacre in Israel? It's not like the Taliban lost. They have power over Iraq and Afganistan now. So why is Israel supported in repeating the mistake the US made? How far should Hamas extend? West Palestine? Jerusalem?</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-19085240149608972232023-10-14T11:42:00.023-07:002023-10-23T01:15:54.931-07:00Gaza and Israel: an evolving tragedy
<i>
<p> Hamas, the de facto unelected government of Gaza, achieved the largest single massacre in the history of Israel since the Holocaust. While Hamas has not caused significant damage to Israel, it has clearly demonstrated its ability to repeat the Holocaust -- on a small scale. Under the nose of the Mossad, and paid by Israeli taxes, drinking Israeli water and running on Israeli electricity, a government was born that carried out this massacre. And Israel let it happen -- on a small scale. </p>
<p> Of course, the problem with the other Holocaust was that the government that carried it out was Germany, which was by some accounts, the strongest economy in the world at the time. In Germany, like in Israel today, ordinary people colluded with their hallucinating government and committed despicable crimes that targeted innocent people of a certain kind, i.e., Jews. Then the criminality was forcefully extended to the rest of Europe and to other kinds of people, e.g., after world war two, being educated or owning property was considered a crime worthy of being sent to Siberia for. I still have a letter that identified my grandparents as "poor peasants" and not worthy of being destroyed after they donated all their property to the state. War and bombs never brought peace or justice. They simply brought more attrocities.
</p>
<p> <b> Why? </b> </p>
<p> Why don't we have schools to teach our people about government hallucinations, and protect us from a Holocaust? Why do we obey our governments, even when we think they are hallucinating?</p>
<p> What should Israel teach in the schools of Gaza for its people to not fire on civilians when told to do so? And to not join their government in a suicide mission when told to do so? Should Israel teach its own people to not fire on civilians when told to do so? </p>
<p> Gaza is 50% children under 18. The adults are 50% non-combatant women. Of the 25 % that are men above 18, not all will be combatants. Some will be bakers, some doctors, some beggars, some gay, some Jews... Among them is the family of our Scottish minister. Many of them are victims of Hamas. Every government has its victims and detractors. Not all Americans voted for Trump. Not everyone in Gaza voted for Hamas. They don't even bother with elections. So, it's important to keep in mind that like all wars, this war affects innocent people. Not Hamas. Hamas thrives on conflict. The people who die or are maimed are innocent. As are those who don't have water, food, medical care, etc.</p>
<p> Israel bombs in response to this massacre. Are they right to bomb them? Or, should they allow them to be educated and civilized instead? </p>
<p> Of course, under the leadership of Hamas, Gaza had the highest fertility rate outside Equatorial Africa until about 2007. If we were to civilize them, their birth rate would drop to align with the rest of the White World. That would decimate them. Far more than bombs ever can.</p>
<p> So... what shall we send? Books to educate them and reduce the babies that are yet to be conceived? Or bombs to set their blood and wombs on fire?</p>
</i>
<p> <b> How should Israel respond? Is it reasonable to kill children in Gaza? </b></p>
<p> Israel has money and technology. Israel will first send in the drones and the tanks and the remote operated land vehicles. Israel will use material assets to "protect" its people.</p>
<p> Hamas is different. Gaza has children, but little tech. Thus, Hamas will hide behind children. Hamas will hide its guns in schools and let the children die before the guns get damaged. Decapitated children look better in press than cheap, old guns destroyed.</p>
<p>Is Israel right to obey Hamas wishes and fire through the bodies of the children of Gaza in order to damage the guns that killed Israeli children? What can Israel do for the children that survive today's carnage in Gaza to not want the Holocaust to happen again, and to not participate in a next Holocaust, if the future gives them the chance?</p>
<p> Half of the population of Gaza is under 18. Half is women. One quarter are men over 18. Many of the children are involved in the war -- either as soldiers of shields. Few of the women fight. They have 6 children each, on average. For them, breastfeeding is more important than shooting. Have these women and children given their valid informed consent to participating in the war?</p>
<p> Surely, the reign of Hamas must be over. Is Israel right to kill people who are involved in a war against their wishes, and without their valid informed consent?</p>
<p> How much money and how many Israeli lives (the lives of soldiers, who, often, are not much older than children) should Israel be willing to lose in order to kill fewer innocent people in Gaza?</p>
<p> <b> Perhaps, the central question, is 'What is Gaza?' Is Gaza a state? Or a jail?</b></p>
<p> If Gaza is a state, perhaps, we have no business interfering with the internal operations of the state and its Hamas government. We can cordially advice Hamas that Holocaust is not ok, and, should they not obey, we can bomb their children and them into oblivion.</p>
<p> If Gaza is a jail, then it is full of innocent people. Even if we assume all the adults to be guilty of something sufficiently atrocious to warrant keeping them in jail, the children are innocent. The children are half of the population.</p>
<p> If, in this jail, we have a band of criminals -- Hamas and his minions -- who decide to terrorize both Israel and Gaza, it is, perhaps, our responsibility, as custodians and guards of the jail, to protect the inmates from harm caused by Hamas. Not only not harm them, but protect them.
If a person is in jail, and they are harmed by another inmate, the prison authority is responsible, as the inmates have not chosen to be there.</p>
<p><b> What is the effect of the current bombing?</b> </p>
<p> Hamas runs on very little money, compared to the Israel military and state.
Hamas runs on people. Many, cheap destitute, desperate men who are willing die for very little reason.
Many destitute women who have as many children as they can bear.
The bombing of Gaza will make its population more destitute. Their response will be to have more children. Strangely, people have more children in hard times. Gaza and Afghanistan have the largest birth rates in the White World and Israel has the largest birth rate in the Western World.</p>
<p>The many children born in Israel are a reaction to the Holocaust and to terrorism like we have witnessed. Death often acts as a fertilizer for people. The more bombs fall, the closer people feel to death, the more children are born.</p>
<p> The children born in Gaza are the result of the Israeli war. Poverty, destitution, bombs and Hamas have pushed the birth rate of Gaza sky high. It is second only to Afghanistan in the world outside Equatorial Africa.</p>
<p>The more bombs we rain on them, the more children will be born, right next to Israel, where Israeli Arabs will soon outnumber other Israelis.</p>
<p> While governments around the world, from Europe to Asia and the Americas are fighting population collapse with very serious resources, Hamas is getting population growth. Shall, maybe, the people of Japan, Singapore and South Korea go to Gaza and maybe learn some lessons? Can we get some of the growth without the terror and without the bombs? The Amish have high natality while being peaceful. Perhaps smaller communities with leaders that have power locally, and, overall, a simpler life where we give back some of what we take from each other and from nature vs more bombs and more destruction are the solution when we have climate change to fight.</p>
<p> In spite of a warm year with storms, and earthquakes and the longest part over 1.5 C in recorded history, the number of small wars around the world is growing. Gaza has overtaken Ukraine for press coverage of attrocities. There is also unrest in Armenia, Serbia, Hong Kong, etc. Will these conflicts, eventually, unite in a third world-war? How soon? And what will the destruction be? we already have enough problems with climate change without more wars... Will we ever stop bombing innocent people and opt for education instead?</p>
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-43642180971697404852023-08-01T00:12:00.017-07:002023-08-01T00:29:30.463-07:00The Demon core and Black Holes<p> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core" target="_blank">The Demon core</a> should have been mentioned in Oppenheimer, perhaps, as a driver of the movie replacing the trial. It would have been easy to show, and a good cinematic experience, especially since the death of Louis Slotin was associated with visible light from the core. It was mentioned in other movies under different names.</p>
<p> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin" target="_blank">Slotin</a> was using a screwdriver to prevent the core from going critical and produce a nuclear explosion, when moving to a neutron reflector.
The screwdriver slipped, resulting in a brief pulse of intense radiation, that could have continued into a Nagasaki-like bomb. Slotin separated the parts with his hands, thus preventing a deadly accident, and shielded the rest of the scientists in the room with his body while receiving a deadly dose of radiation in the process. </p>
<p> Enrico Fermi (Nobel 1938) told Slotin and his friends that if they continue tickling the dragon's tail as they did for demonstrations and show, they will be dead within a year. Fermi was right. Nulcear bombs are not a toy, and should not be played with or kept around by any nation.</p>
<p> Slotin's life was short enough to be appreciated until the end. He was young, brave and reckless AND died early enough to not end up making those in power unconfortable as Oppenheimer and Turing did. Thomas P. Ashlock even wrote a poem commemorating Slotin in the Los Alamos Times:</p>
<p>
May God receive you, great-souled scientist! <br>
<br>
While you were with us, even strangers knew <br>
The breadth and lofty stature of your mind<br>
Twas only in the crucible of death<br>
We saw at last your noble heart revealed.<br>
<br>
The 12423 Slotin asteroid is named aftern him.
</p>
<p> Last but not least, I should add that Chris Nolan implies that Oppenheimer was the first to predict the existence of Black Holes, a quarter of a century before John Wheeler coined the term. </p>
<p> It was, however, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrahmanyan_Chandrasekhar" target="_blank">Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar</a>, a 19 years old Indian immigrant, who on the boat to England first made this prediction. It was a longer, yet safer journey than the one made by "boat people"/immigrants today since Chandra's boat was sea worthy. Chandra went on to win the 1983 Nobel Prize primarily for this particular calculation. If Holywood used this example instead of simply being wrong, perhaps they may have played a role in stopping so many deaths at sea.</p>
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-82591210702752914022023-07-31T13:48:00.018-07:002023-08-01T09:18:45.487-07:00Oppenheimer -- another collaboration between Chris Nolan and Kip Thorne<p> Just went to see Oppenheimer, another collaboration between Christopher Nolan and Kip Thorne; a bit like Interstellar. However, Oppenheimer has more Nolan and less Thorne in it and thereby doesn't have the emotional intensity of Interstellar, despite the far more intense topic.
Surprisingly, Feynman and Wheeler are both nearly absent from the movie, despite the major role they played in the Manhattan Project. Alongside the reduced emotional intensity, I would credit the absence of Wheeler and Feynmann to the lower impact of Thorne. In Interstellar, Kip Thorne was an executive producer, whereas in Oppenheimer he was only given a <i> Thank You </i> note at the end.</p>
<p>
Here are the things I would have done differently.
</p>
<p>
The atomic bomb explosions could have been showed in more glory and gory. Trinity made the metal tower that hosted the bomb evaporate and turned the desert sand into glass. <a href="https://www.afnwc.af.mil/About-Us/History/Trinity-Nuclear-Test/#:~:text=The%20code%20name%20for%20the,glass%2C%20called%20%22trinitite.%22" target="_blank">This glass is called Trnite, after Trinity.</a>
</p>
<p>
The scientist in attendance including Feynman and Oppenheimer had to write 3 press releases, corresponding to the scenarios that would not see the whole world destroyed. These scenarios were
</p>
<p>
(1) failure. An apology for the 2 billion dollars spent and some hopeful thoughts for having another go and more money.
</p>
<p>
(2) success as predicted. This is what happened, and what went to print. It was important for things to get printed fast, so good to write beforehand.
</p>
<p>
(3) The bomb would be stronger than expected, but not destroy the whole world. This scenario included the obituaries of the scientists in attendance, including Oppenheimer. This could have made a strong psychological point in the movie.
</p>
<p>
The explosion had an impact in plant and animal life that could have been showed more graphically. Maybe a mountain lion with cubs in a burrow evaporating from the radiation, dying animals some time after, etc.
The prevailing winds took the fallout in the direction of Los Angeles, which should have also been mentioned.
</p>
<p>
Hiroshima was not shown at all. Here, again, the gory deserved glory. Oppenheimer knew what he did, and there were good reasons for it. Nonetheless, maybe a breastfeeding woman evaporating alongside her baby near ground zero would have made a good shot. Or people making love and being burned into the walls in action. It did happen. And there was a man who survived Hiroshima to take a train to Nagasaki and survive that as well. So while the destruction was horrible, it's not all dark. Some survived. Life did prevail. This is a point worth mentioning.
</p>
<p>
Last but not least, I found that Oppenheimer's trial played too much of a role in the movie. The trial was wrong, terrible and underserved, but not unexpected.
Many scientists of the past had a similar problem. Just thing of Galileo Galilei, Giordano Bruno or Charles Darwin and their conflicts with the Church, which was the equivalent of what we call state now.
</p>
<p>
People who change the world should expect to be burned alive, crucified of tortured. Happens in modern days, before our eyes to Julien Assange, Jamal Khashoggi, Osama Bin Laden (one man's terrorist is another man's hero. Bin Laden was a hero of the American cause, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy today when he fought against he USSR with American arms and money), Saddam Hussein, Alexey Navalny, Qasem Soleimani or Nicolae Ceausescu (horrible dictator, who killed many people, but also added a few million people to the population of Romania through his inhumane ban on birth control in all its forms. Most modern Western governments battle the same problem, and none had Ceausescu's success).
</p>
<p>
And let's not forget Alan Turing who developed the first computers and used them to save the crown of England. It is said he committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple after choosing chemical castration and continued prosecution by the crown of England over jail time for homosexuality; that the crown owned him its existence, did not matter. They did officially pardon him in 2013, and now the 50 pound note carries a picture of his face in a too little, too late show off to "make up" for the injustice.
As such, Oppenheimer's fate was neither extreme nor unusual. Many of his Soviet colleagues were killed without much hesitation and for no good reason.
</p>
<p>
The film mentions a Soviet Nuclear test before Trinity. This never happened. It might have been part of the misinformation at the time, but is presented much like a fact that is not true.
</p>
<p>
On a funny note, Oppenheimer died of throat cancer. Many years later, David Baltimore, also from Caltech was awarded the Nobel Prize for the relationship between viruses and cancer. HPVs -- Human Papilloma Viruses, that cause usually cervical cancer in women, but, sometimes, throat cancer in men. Thus, a scene where Oppenheimer gives oral sex to a woman would have been nice to see. True that smoking is linked to cancer, although normally lung. Radiation causes cancer too, but the throat cancer Oppenheimer had could have been caused by HPVs, with help from radiation and smoking. But, perhaps, such a scene could have been too controversial -- we don't know exactly what caused the cancer. We do know Oppenheimer was exposed to large doses of radiation, was a heavy smoker, and liked women. These three aspects were all included in the movie minus the connection between HPV and throat cancer.
</p>
<p>
In conclusion, a good movie. Reasonably accurate. Highly recommended.
</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-17310939629342867782023-06-24T09:33:00.005-07:002023-06-24T09:35:21.022-07:00New country emerging in the Wild East? <p>It's right to look at the news and be worried yet again. Why? the danger of nuclear bombs being used in Russia or anywhere else by Russia or other actors has increased, due to the current instability. </p>
<p> What is the Wagner group?<br>
The Wagner group is an organization with experience in creating new countries. They were the brain and guns involved
-- in the birth Crimea, as a short lived independent country that voted to join Russia <br>
-- in the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics that were not recognized by anyone for a long time, but did exist and were, on their own territory and were de facto independent. <br>
-- in the survival of Transnistria that was created with similar technology <br>
-- played some role South Osetia<br>
</p>
<p>
Now, Wagner controls the city of Rostov on Don and a bit of the Russian coast of the Azov Sea.
As they have experience in creating new countries, have an army and now control some territory, the natural thing for Wagner and Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin to do is to declare victory over Ukraine and Russia and make an independent new country.
This would pave the way to Ukrainian victory in the war with Russia, and make the West happy. It would also add a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine, increasing the security of Ukraine, NATO and the EU. Would also make Russia pay a reasonable price in land and blood for the war they caused for no good reason.
</p>
<p>
Thus, despite being the devil he is, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin may get American support, like Bin Laden did in Afghanistan when he created the Taliban. Support may also come indirectly through western weapons passed on by Ukraine (the weapons this way would hit Russia, without Ukraine breaking its commitment to not cross the border. )
Prigozhin and Wagner have very good connections in the Russian military and FSB. They have a voice that is hard to silence and may even have access to nuclear weapons. It would be indeed strange if Russian nuclear bombs end up being used by Russians against Russians, within Russia. After all, in wars, in spite of the rethoric, people, their quality of life and their lives have never mattered.
</p>
<p>
Sure, the same discussion could be had regarding the war between Ukraine and Russia. No matter what anyone says, Ukrainians and Russians are very similar populations, both products of the same Soviet Union. The current war is very much fratricidal and having Russians from Moscow bomb Russians from Kyiv with atomic bombs is very much on the table. While nuclear bombs are yet to be used, the Kakhova Dam burst caused losses and destruction that is comparable to a nuclear bomb. There are very many places in Ukraine and Russia where a nuclear bomb could be dropped with less loss of life and money. Life is cheap in the Wild East, so money matters more.
</p>
<p>
The breakup of Russia in several independent states was often seen as a possible outcome of the war. Maybe Wagner is the first. Maybe Ramzan Kadyrov who appears loyal to Putin would also
want independence for Chechenia, which would make him a little King
in his own country.
</p>
<p>
Maybe. The hope of tomorrow bringing an end to madness and criminal behavior at grand scale, which is what wars
have always been, is there again. Maybe by tomorrow we'll know more. The situation is very rapidly evolving.
</p>
<p>
As of today, Wagner controls territory, like they did when they made
new countries before. Wouldn't be surprising if they make a new country.
Unlike the others, this one may have Western support and recognition.
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin who has come a long way from being a common criminal in jail, a hamburger salesman, a cook and a warlord. He may yet become a King or Czar or Dictator of his own "democratic" conuntry recognized by the West.
</p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-18981906631163164122023-06-03T07:12:00.013-07:002023-06-03T07:32:52.439-07:00A chat with Bard about religion.
me: Advise me about the new religion registration process in various countries. <br><br>
Bard: The process of registering a new religion varies from country to country. In some countries, it is a relatively straightforward process, while in others it can be more complex and time-consuming.<br><br>
In general, the process of registering a new religion involves the following steps:<br><br>
Identifying the appropriate government agency. In most countries, there is a specific government agency that is responsible for registering religious organizations. This agency may be part of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, or another government department.
Gathering the required documentation. The documentation required to register a new religion will vary from country to country. However, it typically includes the following:
<ul>
<li> A copy of the organization's charter or constitution</li>
<li> A list of the organization's officers and directors</li>
<li> A copy of the organization's financial records</li>
<li> A statement of the organization's beliefs and practices</li>
</ul>
Submitting the application. Once the required documentation has been gathered, the application for registration must be submitted to the appropriate government agency.
Reviewing the application. The government agency will review the application and may request additional information or documentation.<br><br>
Issuing the registration certificate. If the application is approved, the government agency will issue a registration certificate to the organization.
The process of registering a new religion can be time-consuming and expensive. However, it is important to note that registration is not always necessary. In some countries, religious organizations are not required to register in order to operate legally.<br><br>
Here are some examples of the new religion registration process in various countries:
<ul>
<li> United States: In the United States, there is no federal law requiring religious organizations to register. However, some states do have registration requirements. For example, in California, religious organizations must register with the Secretary of State.</li>
<li> Canada: In Canada, religious organizations are not required to register with the federal government. However, some provinces do have registration requirements. For example, in Ontario, religious organizations must register with the Ministry of Government Services.</li>
<li> United Kingdom: In the United Kingdom, religious organizations are not required to register with the government. However, some religious organizations choose to register with the Charity Commission.
It is important to note that the information provided above is general in nature and may not be accurate for all countries. If you are considering registering a new religion, it is important to consult with an attorney or other legal professional to ensure that you comply with all applicable laws and regulations.</li>
</ul>
<br>
me: What are the penalties for operating an unregistered religion?<br><br>
Bard: The penalties for operating an unregistered religion vary from country to country. In some countries, the penalties may be relatively minor, such as a fine or a warning. In other countries, the penalties may be more severe, such as imprisonment or even death.<br><br>
Here are some examples of the penalties for operating an unregistered religion in various countries:
<ul>
<li> China: In China, it is illegal to operate an unregistered religion. The penalties for doing so can include imprisonment, fines, and the confiscation of property.</li>
<li> Russia: In Russia, it is illegal to operate an unregistered religion without government permission. The penalties for doing so can include fines, imprisonment, and the confiscation of property.</li>
<li> Saudi Arabia: In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to practice any religion other than Islam. The penalties for doing so can include imprisonment, flogging, and even death.</li>
</ul>
It is important to note that the information provided above is general in nature and may not be accurate for all countries. If you are considering operating a religious organization, it is important to consult with an attorney or other legal professional to ensure that you comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
Here are some tips for operating a religious organization without registering:
<ul>
<li> Be careful about what you say and do. Make sure that your activities do not violate any laws or regulations.</li>
<li> Be discreet. Do not advertise your activities or try to attract attention. </li>
<li> Be prepared to defend yourself. If you are accused of violating any laws or regulations, be prepared to defend yourself in court.</li>
</ul>
It is important to note that operating a religious organization without registering is a risky proposition. If you are caught, you could face serious penalties.<br><br>
me: As a religion, you'd have property, financial affairs, taxation of believers, etc. I would imagine some of these activities to require some kind of registration, even in countries like the UK or US, where there is no legal obligation to register religions.<br><br>
Bard:
Yes, you are correct. Even in countries where there is no legal obligation to register religions, some activities that are typically associated with religions may require some kind of registration. For example, in the United States, religious organizations that own property or operate businesses may be required to register with the state or local government. Additionally, religious organizations that solicit donations from the public may be required to register with the state or federal government.<br><br>
Here are some examples of the types of registration that may be required for religious organizations in the United States:
<ul>
<li> Property registration: Religious organizations that own property may be required to register with the county or city in which the property is located. This registration may be required for compliance with zoning laws, building codes, or other regulations.</li>
<li> Business registration: Religious organizations that operate businesses may be required to register with the state or local government. This registration may be required for compliance with tax laws, labor laws, or other regulations.</li>
<li> Donation registration: Religious organizations that solicit donations from the public may be required to register with the state or federal government. This registration may be required for compliance with campaign finance laws, fundraising laws, or other regulations.</li>
</ul>
It is important to note that the information provided above is general in nature and may not be accurate for all states or localities. If you are a religious organization that owns property, operates a business, or solicits donations from the public, you should consult with an attorney or other legal professional to determine if you are required to register with any government agencies.<br><br>
In addition to registration requirements, religious organizations may also be subject to other laws and regulations. For example, religious organizations may be required to comply with labor laws, tax laws, and environmental laws. It is important for religious organizations to be aware of these laws and regulations and to take steps to comply with them.
<br><br>
me: Do you know about the Spaghetti Monster?
<br><br>
Bard: Yes, I am familiar with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is a satirical deity created by Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is depicted as a large, invisible creature made of spaghetti and meatballs. Adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, known as Pastafarians, believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and that pirates are his chosen people.<br><br>
The Flying Spaghetti Monster has been the subject of much debate and controversy. Some people have criticized it as being offensive to religious believers, while others have praised it as a clever way to challenge the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.<br><br>
Despite the controversy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has become a popular symbol of secularism and religious freedom. It has been featured in numerous news articles and television shows, and it has even been the subject of a book, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.<br><br>
Here are some of the beliefs of Pastafarianism:
<ul>
<li> The universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.</li>
<li> Pirates are the chosen people of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.</li>
<li> The Flying Spaghetti Monster is responsible for all the world's problems, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and stubbed toes.</li>
<li> Pastafarians should eat pasta and drink beer.</li>
<li> Pastafarians should wear colanders on their heads.</li>
<li> Pastafarianism is not a real religion, but it is a fun and thought-provoking way to think about the nature of religion and the role of faith in our lives.</li>
</ul>
me: Is it registered as a religion? <br><br>
Bard: The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not officially registered as a religion in any country. However, there are several Pastafarian churches and organizations that have been granted religious status in some countries. For example, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was granted religious status in the Netherlands in 2016.
<br><br>
In the United States, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has been recognized as a religion for some purposes, such as allowing Pastafarians to wear colanders on their heads for driver's license photos. However, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a recognized religion for all purposes, such as for tax exemptions. <br><br>
The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a satirical religion, and its adherents do not necessarily believe in the literal existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. However, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has become a popular symbol of secularism and religious freedom. It is a way for people to challenge the idea that religion must be based on faith in a supernatural being.<br><br>
me: What is a colander? <br><br>
Bard: A colander is a kitchen utensil with a perforated bowl and a handle, used to drain cooked food or to rinse vegetables. They are typically made of metal, plastic, or silicone.
Colanders are often used to drain pasta after it has been cooked. The cooked pasta is placed in the colander and the water is poured off. The colander can also be used to rinse vegetables. The vegetables are placed in the colander and cold water is poured over them. This helps to remove any dirt or pesticides that may be on the vegetables.
Colanders are a versatile kitchen utensil that can be used for a variety of tasks. They are an essential tool for any cook.<br><br>
me: So, Flying Spaghetti Monster followers are allowed to wear colanders on their heads in official government photos, like passports or driving licenses?<br><br>
Bard: Yes, in some countries. In the United States, for example, there have been several cases where Pastafarians have been allowed to wear colanders on their heads in driver's license photos. In 2011, Niko Alm, a Pastafarian from Austria, became the first person in the world to be granted permission to wear a colander on his head in his driver's license photo. <br><br>
In other countries, the situation is less clear-cut. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has stated that it will not allow people to wear colanders on their heads in driver's license photos. However, the DVLA has also stated that it will consider individual cases on a case-by-case basis.
<br><br>
Ultimately, whether or not Flying Spaghetti Monster followers are allowed to wear colanders on their heads in official government photos is a matter of local law. If you are a Pastafarian and you are considering wearing a colander on your head in an official government photo, it is important to check with the relevant authorities in your country to see if it is allowed.<br><br>
Here are some of the countries where Flying Spaghetti Monster followers have been allowed to wear colanders on their heads in official government photos:
<ul>
<li>
Austria: Niko Alm, a Pastafarian from Austria, became the first person in the world to be granted permission to wear a colander on his head in his driver's license photo in 2011.</li>
<li> United States: There have been several cases where Pastafarians have been allowed to wear colanders on their heads in driver's license photos in the United States.</li>
<li> Canada: In 2016, a Pastafarian from Canada was allowed to wear a colander on his head in his passport photo.</li>
<li> Netherlands: The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was granted religious status in the Netherlands in 2016. This means that Pastafarians in the Netherlands are legally allowed to wear colanders on their heads in official government photos.</li>
</ul>
It is important to note that the situation may change in the future. As the Flying Spaghetti Monster becomes more widely known, it is possible that more countries will allow Pastafarians to wear colanders on their heads in official government photos.
<br><br>
me: Do they wear colanders on their heads in other situations?
<br><br>
Bard: Yes, some Pastafarians do wear colanders on their heads in other situations, such as at religious gatherings or when they are out in public. This is seen as a way to show their religious beliefs and to challenge the idea that religious headwear must be religious in nature. <br><br>
However, it is important to note that not all Pastafarians wear colanders on their heads. Some Pastafarians do not believe that it is necessary to wear a colander on their head in order to be a Pastafarian. They believe that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a tolerant and understanding deity, and that he would not judge them for not wearing a colander on their head.<br><br>
Ultimately, whether or not a Pastafarian wears a colander on their head is a personal decision. There is no right or wrong answer, and it is up to each individual Pastafarian to decide what they believe is the best way to express their faith.<br><br>
Here are some of the reasons why Pastafarians might choose to wear colanders on their heads in other situations:
<ul>
<li>To show their religious beliefs.</li>
<li> To challenge the idea that religious headwear must be religious in nature.</li>
<li> To make a statement about secularism and religious freedom.</li>
<li> To simply have fun and be creative.</li>
</ul>
It is important to note that wearing a colander on your head may not be allowed in all situations. For example, some schools and workplaces may have policies that prohibit the wearing of hats or head coverings. If you are considering wearing a colander on your head in a public place, it is important to check the local regulations to make sure that it is allowed.
Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-15821400109132006332023-03-25T13:55:00.009-07:002023-05-25T09:00:14.148-07:00RIP Edwina<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsY7jyfP5LPqkFmtGyBHwKg_T2GNeEyXe0v-m1UcCxQ5UFr70Ra6r3EwvXzu42kPmjFHtpdfXECH7g-BO006Z00cr8ZDDzgt64ohqmThK_2qWGrfbaZYgVwQfhcQMq-OXhng__sFuLLIgc01XSKm4uQJ_X7dx1SdBi1Ovm7lJzkj-FgHdclhU-E40b/s3831/IMG_20230301_172827946_MFNR~2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3062" data-original-width="3831" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsY7jyfP5LPqkFmtGyBHwKg_T2GNeEyXe0v-m1UcCxQ5UFr70Ra6r3EwvXzu42kPmjFHtpdfXECH7g-BO006Z00cr8ZDDzgt64ohqmThK_2qWGrfbaZYgVwQfhcQMq-OXhng__sFuLLIgc01XSKm4uQJ_X7dx1SdBi1Ovm7lJzkj-FgHdclhU-E40b/s320/IMG_20230301_172827946_MFNR~2.jpg"/></a></div><p> Edwina Cleverbrain passed away last Saturday. She was around 9 or 10 years old. We miss our beautiful grey goat, also known as lady E or the fairest of the fairies (zana zanelor). She will be remembered for the rest of our days. After Edwina (and Devina, who has been gone for a number of years now), my children believe that all fairies are goat-like. After all, why should they look like humans? When James was little, and he'd see goat poop anywhere, James would say "caca zana zanelor". </p>
<p> I find it difficult to write about her departure since we loved her so very much. Mihai started this obituary. I am not sure I could have done it. Edwina had been the matriarch of our goat family. She leaves behind a family 10, which includes her three daugthers: Eva (3 years old), Edith (2 years old) and Emma (1 year old), and a kid, Emil, who is about one week old. Each of her daughters also have kids of their own. They are all male this year. </p>
<p> Everynone cried when Edwina died. We will miss you, Edwina! When you left, you took away a bit of our soul. Edwina was buried in the South China Sea, or at least that is Mihai's opinion of her final resting place. Although it brings little confort for now, her memory will stay with us fovever. Edwina is a caracter in our next book: <i> Globe Waddling with Narcissus </i>. My children imagine her as one of the fairies of the fields, who now spends her energy protecting the world.</p>
<p> What happened? When we were away, a neighbour fed the goats corn every two days. She is too old to feed them hay daily. When we returned for Easter the children and I moved the goats to another yard where they had some fresh grass. This seemed to have resulted in a deadly mix for Edwina, who was older, and perhaps had had a bit more corn than the others being a dominant goat. There was no autopsy. So, we will never know for sure if there was any added pathology beyond age and circumstances. It's a harsh reminder to not make sudden changes when one returns...</p>
<p> Emil has surrvived the past week with milk from Eva or Edith who are being held onto to feed him -- in addition to her own kids. Andy is dissapointed in their reluctance to help a fellow goat. However, Edward (my 12 year old) understands them: "Eva feels just like you would if you had to breastfeed Mihai." The reluctance is manifested in two ways: 1) all female goats run away when Emil gets close and 2) if they are force to feed him they struggle to get away or to bite him. </p>
<p> Even though our goats are very friendly, it is difficult to find anyone from the younger generation (under 50) to care for them when we are away. In addition to being great company, they are wonderful lawnmowers. Yet people perefer to cut the grass with electric or gas based mowers intead of interacting with goats. I still have a full time job in Spain. So, caring for them is a challenge.</p> Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-75196546172860020952023-01-24T15:39:00.028-08:002023-03-01T01:18:09.373-08:00Alexandru Bondarescu: the oldest survivor of the Titanic of the East<p> My father's favourite uncle was Alexandru. He was a mountain of a man who drove trucks and loaded them single-handedly with big barrels. This must have been fascinating for any young boy. He was also kind, and was known to like children. He raised a daughter that was not biologically his. She was born from his wife's first marriage and was a bit younger than my father, which made it fun to be around. My dad did not have many cousins and each was precious to him. Like all the Bondarescu men, Alexandru had big blue eyes, and dark blond hair. My father had brown hair and brown eyes. He took after my grandmother's side of the family (the Popa's), but the different hair colour did not make him love his uncle any less. When my parents married in 1975 they went to visit uncle Alexandru and he lifted my father and mother up -- each in one hand as if they were made of feathers. For many years to come my father tried to emulate him. I can still remember dad lifting Mihai, me and my mom when when we were children whenever we visited family to show his strength. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8DbWni3AaNj8ykGqTBcDTVp1pkIQkkMQMk38921_d0ydHmP1l-xCuSd8mTAZd-4N709xsC7hPpdtppX8Oq8AKngKmOGiL9B9ueTO3RFL_Y4ROQizUJCvCAmxYCjK40c6uhIJ9-6Rgy8cylaRhpy08TrxsTHdEdZcl9Z85vmz1LNk00G4kO_79gse1/s276/images-1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="200" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8DbWni3AaNj8ykGqTBcDTVp1pkIQkkMQMk38921_d0ydHmP1l-xCuSd8mTAZd-4N709xsC7hPpdtppX8Oq8AKngKmOGiL9B9ueTO3RFL_Y4ROQizUJCvCAmxYCjK40c6uhIJ9-6Rgy8cylaRhpy08TrxsTHdEdZcl9Z85vmz1LNk00G4kO_79gse1/s200/images-1.jpg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Hbf8dPOfjj-9Qc1yjX8WZqw9mD2z3uUw5zq1WjX5LFUVq-WGXOHKoT83QBMU7I3A3vK1zNeobITEG8By5UnWn3exuHDTRzEAeDGm5EtIqVg4woh0Onupe7FkIodhfotKks3xPib_kYQBMp7GYnX7cqxg6jD75AS9MVHbcbF2lT92_G7GcQjrzP5R/s273/images.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="200" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0Hbf8dPOfjj-9Qc1yjX8WZqw9mD2z3uUw5zq1WjX5LFUVq-WGXOHKoT83QBMU7I3A3vK1zNeobITEG8By5UnWn3exuHDTRzEAeDGm5EtIqVg4woh0Onupe7FkIodhfotKks3xPib_kYQBMp7GYnX7cqxg6jD75AS9MVHbcbF2lT92_G7GcQjrzP5R/s200/images.jpg"/></a></div>
<p> The Mogosoaia disaster happened on 10 September 1989. Alexandru and his family were returning from a wedding. Their life seemed settled. Their daughter was married and they were helping with the grandchildren. Everyone was there: his wife, Eugenia, his daugther, and his two grandchildren. Everyone who mattered to him was on that boat. It was foggy, unusualy cold for September and very crowded. The boat had been delayed because of the fog, and left only as it appeared to have lifted. Because of the weather most people were inside. About 230 people died, and only 16 survived. It was supposed to be a 30 minute ride: free for children under 12 -- children who did not make it alive with one exception.</p>
<p> The tragedy is comemorated by a clock in the village of Grindu that is stuck at 8:20 a.m., the hour of the crash at the destination that was never reached. When they had left the fog appeared to have lifted, but there was a pocket of fog around the corner called "Cotul Pisicii". The boat had its siren on to let other vehicles know of it's approach. Only it did not work. At 8:20 a.m. Mogosoaia struck a Bulgarian vesel called Petar Kaminchev that was carrying many tons of iron. It is said the Bulgarians tried to back up, but kept going forward because of inertia. Mogosoaia sunk in about 3 minutes. </p>
<p> At 65 Alexandru was still very healthy. He loved fresh air. He was a Danube man. The fog and the cold air did not disturb him much. The boat was overcrowded. So, he was outside to make more room for other people. Next to him was a man with a four year old child. In that split second just before the boat went under the man threw his son in the freezing Danube waters making him hold onto their empty wine barel brought to be filled by grandparents. He then ran back inside to get the rest of his family, and never made it. In that second Alexandru chose to live. He knew there was no chance to help by rushing back in. There was no time. The youngest and the oldest survivor of the crash reached safety. No other young children made it. Neither did Alexandru's wife Eugenia, who had been 55 years old, his daughter or his grandchildren. </p>
<p> There were 16 survivors in total. Some had to swim great lengths, others were close enough to just step-onto the Bulgarian vesel, and over 230 died: most passengers and crew. Even though traffic was stopped on that side of the Danube to enable the recovering of the bodies, not everyone was found and identified due to decomoposition. They recovered the boat, which sat around until it was dismantled in 2004. Alexandru said the Bulgarians were drunk, went too close to the shore, did not signal, and paid no atention to Mogosoaia's siren until it was too late. An investigation was launched, but not much was resolved. After the crash people remembered Alexandru sitting in a corner of the Bulgarian vesel, wringing his hands, crying uncontrolably and repeating over and over "Boys, what have you done? You killed them <i> all</i>, <i> all</i>." Once the bodies were gathered, all the priests of Galati came to perform the funerals. They would go from grave to grave in a form of daze. There was no time for flowers or towels or any of the traditions. Just grief. Everyone had lost somebody. Some bodies were recovered and some were never found. There was no significant remuneration. Many lost their whole family to the water.</p>
<p> Alexandru was a man who could share, and continued to share his life. After this tragedy, he did remarry to a respectable woman of comparable age. He retained a sadness that never quite left him and died a few short years later while thinking that the husband of his daughter never quite felt sorry enough nor did the Bulgarians. By the time I heard the story and remembered it, it must have been 1994. Almost 5 years had passed before I visited my grandparents in Galati. I was 12 years old and I was told the story of the disaster yet again. Being a (surely not annoying) teenager, I placed it further back in my mind with other family stories that did not seem worth repeating. However, today I think that my children, my nieces and nephews and especially of the little boy who shares Alexandru's name might like to know the story of their great uncle Alexandru. So, I put it up before I could forget.</p>
<p> Now all that is left from Mogosoaia is a clock at a fixed hour, and some books and articles that cronicle the disaster. Some survivors are still alive because they were young, including Eugen, the youngest boy. He has little memory of the crash due to his age, and the trauma and the loss of his parents, brother, sister, cousins, uncle and aunt. However, he is now a sailor and continues to brave the waters of the Danube in an attempt to build a life of his own. He remembers a man swimming next to him to keep him safe, and the person who pulled him out of the water, another sailor. Some people remember the only little boy who lived. But most have forgotten Alexandru.</p>Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-39580958397876117492023-01-24T13:45:00.012-08:002023-01-24T16:41:08.827-08:00Traiasca Romania! <p>Today we celebrate the creation of Romania from 1859. This union was achieved through diplomacy, not war. So, how did they do it? Well, the same leader was democratically elected twice, in two independent countries: Moldova and Tara Romaneasca. After reigning in both, Alexandru Ioan Cuza argued for the union with the powers to be explaining it took him two weeks to travel between his two capitals. It was approved and it lasted. </p>
<p>Romania increased in size in 1918 under the leadership of a woman, queen Maria. She beacame crown princess at the tender age of 16, and stole people's hearts and conquered their minds in a new country of which she did not even speak the language when she first arrived. Yet, she unified most nearby Romanian speakers in one big realm. In some ways, she was Romania's lady Diana -- only people back then were not quite so afraid of powerful women. It was assumed the wife supports the husband, and the husband supports the wife. The country and her husband supported her. She achieved great things including the creation of a new country that we still celebrate on December 1st of every year. </p>
<p> This was inspite of the times and yes, her marriage was marred by infidelity. She was the most beautiful queen of her time, and was loved and admired by many men, and she loved some of them in return. Ferdinand had his own affairs, but they respected each other in public and in private. He was taciturn. She was open and full of charisma. In our more modern world, in a period when we pretend to champion women's rights, Lady Diana was not allowed to thrive. She was instead kicked out of the royal family after an ignomious divorce with hers and his dirty laundry aired in a very public fashion. Today she is replaced her husband's lover - queen Camilla. Maria continued to lead until her husband died in 1927. She was replaced by her son, who blamed her for her infidelities, did not support her and did not welcome her advice. So, the leadership in the country collapsed. Romania owns less teritory now than it did in 1918. Both Maria's son and her grandson showed yet again that talent and leadership are not hereditary.</p>
<p> The grand Romania created by Maria, an immigrant who became queen, was bigger than the current state. Many territories conquered by Maria and her team through diplomacy were lost after WWII. Some became independent countries like Moldova and Transnistria (de la Nistru pana la Tisa/tot romanul plansu-mi-sa), and other parts where incorporated in other countries. Long disputed territories includes Insula Serpilor, which is now part of Ukraine. </p>
Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-55568742161844897972022-11-01T04:19:00.108-07:002023-03-01T00:36:10.520-08:00Uncle Ioan - Unchiul Ionica<p> Uncle Ioan fought in WWII -- he started training in 1938 and was released in 1944 once his weight reached 40 kg due to dizenteria. He was sent to the hospital in Savarsin to recover. He died many years later of cancer of the intestine, which he connected to the privations suffered in the war. While walking in a park in Savarsin, he bumped into King Mihai who was bent over his dog. After a moment of recogniton, Ioan panicked, saluted, and humbly appologized. The king was unconcerned: "nu-i nimic, nu-i nimic"("it's nothing, it's nothing") was all he said. Uncle Ioan remembered this meeting fondly. The king came accross as a kind young man who was not afraid to go out without personal guard. A month or two later King Mihai was tricked into announcing peace via the radio before an armistice was signed, which doomed all forms of negociation and left the military men and the rest of the country at the mercy of our allies, the Russians, who had little mercy to spare. The war had been for nought, but then it almost always is so. The outcome of WWII was particularly brutal for Romania. It not only lost its young men, its buildings and infrastructure, but also lost large parts of its territory. The rest was occupied by Russian army until the communist regime was installed. It was not alone. All of Eastern Europe was plunged into a form of hell labeled communism that it has yet to fully recover from. Ioan did not choose to fight. Once martial law was signed, young men like Ioan never had a choice to begin with. </p>
<p>
Ioan had always succeeded against all odds or so the neighbors said. His father was an alcoholic and wasted all money he earned. He had a brother and a sister -- each handicaped. The boy was born without fingers at one of his hands, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because he did not have to go to war. The girl developed a weak heart after a childhood illness, and was never able to make a lot of effort. She later married a person shorter than normal, who, unfortunately, had a large ego that needed to be reafirmed in bars. I can imagine they had bitter scenes where the father justified his drinking through the health problems of the children. Of all three siblings, Ioan was the only one who had it all: perfect health, intelligence, and the ability to work hard. High expectations of success combined with a fear that he'd turn out like his father, must have weighted hard on his young shoulders. The experience at home would later help him deal with superiors who drank a lot and often had inflated egos.
</p>
<p> In addition to bad habbits, and a colorful family, his father also had two sisters, who never had children of their own. They worked as seamstresses and specialized in the making of duvents, which were more expensive than regular clothes. They saw Ioan's potential and sent him off to school. We still own the Signer and Naumann sewing machine that had been their most valued possesion. Ioan turned himself into a scholar by studying hard. The letters he wrote back then revealed an idealistic young man who wrote poems about a first kiss followed by a marriage proposal in verse. When he went to take the Baccalaureat, which was only offered in a few centers in the country, the women in the neighborhood told him: "Go, many young men went, and they all returned just as they left". Against all odds, Ioan did well. He later went to college. There he specialized in Latin, which was as far feteched from the life of his practical aunts as astronomy and astrophysics is today from the life my parents led. They were, however, very proud of him. He, ultimately, became a teacher.
</p>
<p>
Just as things started to fall into place for him, he met Octavia, a smart and beautiful colleague who taught mathematics. However, once, he passed by her house and she and her two friends invited him in. They cut an apple in four, and shared it amongst gigles and laughter. And <i> then </i> each of the girls smoked a cigar. Ioan was aghast. He was not going to marry a woman with a vice. He had seen enough of that in his father. What he did not know, was that Octavia was not a habitual smoker. The cigars just happened to be around and she did not have anything else around other than the apple to share with her friends. In fact, that was one of the few cigars she had ever smoked. In the rashness of youth, he went off and proposed to another girl instead and like many young men, took the picture of his fiance with him to war.
</p>
<p>
He did not believe in war. Instead, he thought peace managed by competent leaders who made smart economic choices were the only way out of the looming hell. We still have the news clippings he had gathered with one showing Christ stretching his hands over the many graves generated by WWI, and protesting "Not again!" just as WWII was beginning. However, when Romania passed martial law he had no choice other than to descend into the man-made hell himself. He was the only one in his family who was healthy and so he was taken to be killed or turned into a cripple.</p>
<p> He did not fight in the first line. He went ahead of the first line of soldiers to check that the terrain was free of landmines, and that it was safe to go on. Amongst the men he knew who received the same training, he was the only one to survive. His collegues often fought to go with him on missions because he always returned. They joked that there was a magic aura around him that kept him and those who followed safe. Behind the magic was his ability to trust his own observations obtained directly from the battle field over the orders of his superiors. At least that's what he used to tell us. It must have also helped that he had good eye sight, noticed differences in the terain easily, and was very meticulous. In spite of the horrors of war, most soldiers must have wanted one thing and one thing only -- to return home alive. They also dreamed of seeing their families again, and hoped the war would leave them in one piece. </p>
<p> He did not like to talk about war. They were painful memories AND it was unsafe. After the communists came in power, the men who survived the war and were old enough to fight both the Germans and the Russians became "the enemies" of the people because they had once fought against Russia. The fact that they had no choice did not matter. Uncle Ioan had to bribe officials to give him papers that he had taught during the war because he had been ill. However, when my mother asked how he survived the war, <i> he said he and his men lived because he disobeyed most orders he was given. He went out to check the terrain himself knowing that the order was given by an idiot who had no understanding of the situation in the field and found it easier to send men to their death than to ask questions, and learn enough to take a good decision.</i> The orders were given by career military men. They only came for a few months to do just enough service to get promoted. He then had to go and explain the situation and convince the soon to be promoted jerk in charge that they were wrong without upseting their ego and getting himself court-martialled in the process. This resulted in a number of medals, which he spent the rest of his life hiding. It also resulted in lives saved, which is what he thought mattered.</p>
<p> Once he thought he had gone mad. A colleague came to report on the position of the enemy and his brain was on his sholder. All Ioan could think of was that he was talking to a person who no longer had a brain. And, no, he did not run away. He did the obvious and asked about the brain: "yes, yes, the position of the Germans is what I expected, but what about the brain on your shoulder?". The soldier shrugged and added: "oh, no, Lieutenant, it's not mine. Number 00115 was shot in the tree above me and his brain fell on my shoulder. It just did not fall off, and it did not seem right to shove it to the ground, somehow." </p>
<p> There was no use for money in the war. Yet, since he was educated, he was an officer and had a good salary. So, like most young men, he sent the money home, which his brother and brother-in-law exchanged for bragging rights in bars. When it was obvious that neither the Germans nor the Russians could kill Ioan, they were afraid of what he'd do to them when he came home and found all his savings wasted. Ioan hated bars and never wasted his time there. So, they bought a small plot of vineyard of 1400 square meters on Ioan's name and promptly wrote him about it. From then on, Ioan dreamt of this small parcel of land, and wrote about his plans. Once he returned, the land was lost to the communists. However, my mother now owns it. I have not been to see it since I was my children's age. My brother and I went there a few times and planted a few trees that never lived. People build houses in that part of town today. Perhaps one day one of my children or one of Mihai's children will use this land, but it would not look like in Ioan's dreams. Or we could sell it. Somehow we never managed to get enough courage to sell that, but perhaps the children will. It's worth about 10,000 euros now.</p>
<p> Ioan spent the time before the war, teaching Latin, Greek and Romanian. Once he returned from man-made-hell, Ioan wrote a Latin texbook, which I still have some versions of. He finished it just before latin was removed from the school curriculum, and was replaced by Russian. It had given him something to do while he recovered from some of the illnesses that were the legacy of war, but now it had to be put away together with the medals obtained from the second part of the war, the one against the Germans. The others he destroyed. They did not matter. It was the lives he saved that made the difference and he was not going to endanger the well being of his family by keeping them. </p>
<p> He now taught Romanian, and sometimes Geography, History and a bunch of other subjects for which the highschools in Lugoj did not have enough teachers. Soon after he returned, he found out that his fiance had married. However, Octavia was now teaching in Lugoj, and she was still single. They went out a few times, and he figured out she was not a smoker after all. They soon married quietly and stayed married until his death. He proposed after they had climbed a very steep hill together. Octavia noticed that the cheerful, but hard working young man she had met 15 years ago had changed. She jokingly told him that even so she was better off married to him for the rest of her life than living alone. It would save her from becoming one of the pitied spinsters of Lugoj who could not land a man. She'd say so sometimes even after they were married. She joked that saving her from becoming an old maid was his one great merit. They also still had the picture of his fiance. I once asked Tusa Tavi why she kept it, and what she'd say if she met the woman -- if she'd feel gelous. She quickly answered "oh, no, of course not. She was part of Ionica's past. I can't throw it away. If I met her, I'd simply thank her for leaving Ioan for me."</p>
<p> The subject that he taught did not matter as much as he thought when he was young. The primary thing he tried to teach his students was to be responsible survivors in whatever environment life placed them in next, whether it was they'd be in college, in a prison camp, in a factory, or at home. He never tried writing another book. When I returned to Romania in 2016, the lady who translated the school transcripts for David and Edward had been his student. She said Ioan was a very good, and very strict teacher, and that all his students went to college extremely well prepared. </p>
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<p> Once he retired, he and Octavia lived a quiet life. He spent his days in the small garden from our house in Lugoj, and on the banks of the Timis river. He was outside -- often naked from the waist up so that he could feel the sun and the wind -- for as long as it was light, from spring to fall. Constant work, sunshine, the air and the wind help quell some of the anger left inside him. Sometimes that anger bubled to the surface. He once told his wife "you deserved to be slapped", and she answered with a loud statement of her own "Indrazneste!" ("Just dare!"). He might have fought the Germans and the Russians, but he never did dare to strike Octavia. </p>
<p> They had a good marriage, and always found a middle ground on which they were both comfortable. Although he never had the patience to fish himself, he liked to eat fresh fish, and bought fish from other men who caught it the river. My aunt never ate fish. So, their deal was that he would clean the fish, and she would fry it. He cleaned the house, too and kept it clean. My aunt's job was to wipe the dust off the furniture. While he loved the river, she could not swim. So, when he wanted to get across, he would carry her while swimming. </p>
<p> They shared a fondness of children. When the neighbors' little girl woke up, she'd pipe up her morning achievement accross the fence: "Tanti Tavi, facut fata caca la olita". My uncle would answer since he was the one always finding something to do outside: "Bravo, Nana, Bravo!" ("Good Job, Nana!"). At other times, she'd say: "Tanti Tavi, facut fata caca in pantaloni". Then he'd answer "Fui, Nana, fui!". Later the little girl became a lawyer, and said she never noticed it was not my aunt who was praising her.</p>
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<p>
When he married, Ioan was no longer on speaking terms with his brother or sister. Octavia changed that. She always liked to see the good in people, and to point it out aloud. She also understood that his family was part of him, and that being at peace with them would make him happier. She wanted him to be content even if, perhaps, it was no longer in his nature to be happy.
</p>
<p>Unfortunately, once the cancer manifested itself through persistent diareea, they did not want to believe it was cancer until it was too late. He spent the last few good months of his life selling the first editions he had gathered to collectors, and gave the money to Leana, his niece, his brother's only daugther. Then life became hard again and he got back to another form of hell. My aunt cared for him with the help of a neighbour, Ecaterina, who had a been a trained nurse in WWII. Ioan called Keti their guarding angel whenever she came to the hospital to bring them something or when she came to help at home. Octavia recalled how sad she was that the man who used to swim across the river while carrying her along could no longer walk on his own, and had to hold onto her shoulders.
</p>
<p>
Octavia lived for another 20 years, years that the cancer and the war had stollen from Ioan. Leana is a dentist technician. She must be retired by now. However, she still places flowers on Ioan's grave. My aunt rennounced her right to his family home in the favour of his nephew, Victoras, his sister's only son. Victoras promptly donated the house to his best friend because he hated his wife, a former barmaid from whom he was divorced, and wanted to make sure neither her nor her/their two children inherited it. She had one child while they lived together, and another after she had left him. Since they were still married at the time the second child was born and there were no DNA tests back then, he was left to pay child support for both children after divorcing. It seemed unfair. He was resentful and those who knew him felt resentful on his behalf. However, the best friend turned out to be worse than the former spose. He demolished the house soon after aquiring ownership, and started to build a mansion in its place. Victoras was moved to a shed where he died fairly quickly. He was buried in the family plot, which lies just behind Ioan's grave. Leana places flowers there, too. </p>
<p> If Uncle Ioan had lived today, he would be labeled as a highly functional autistic person. He was extremely well orgainzed, which is why he had survived the war in front of the first line. It was also why he had difficulty in living with the rest of us. He said we wasted half of our life on Earth searching for things because we cannot put them in order. When my aunt was pregnant soon after they married, she was afraid of having a difficult child who would be unkind to her, and aborted. She regretted this decision when she died and told me that I should have a child once I had the means to support myself, and that the father did not matter since I would be raising him/her anyhow. Her dating advice was to drop a pen and see who picked it up. If I liked him, fine, if not, I could try again in a different classroom.</p>
<p> I have wondered if Uncle Ioan was so because of trauma he had suffered. So many children are autistic today. I wonder if we, as a society, manage to traumatize our children far more than the war, the unfair world that led to it and his own family had hurt Uncle Ionica. We seem to hurt our children simply by constraining them "to keep them safe", and through stimulating extreme addiction by placing them on screens so that we can get "other" things done. So very few of them are highly functioning today. Are they survivors with scars that are so deep that they cannot be hidden? sometimes they seem just like the animals we confine to small cages/apartments ... and then argue we have no other choice.</p>
<p> Of course, now, war is looming again on the horizon. And it seemes just as senseless as it seemed in the late 1930s. The house in Lugoj is still full of newspaper clippings about how senseless another world war would be from before WWII, some are even from before WWI, and of letters written by Uncle Ionica from the frontline. That he was organized, it's clear because these documents have been preserved. Some of his letters beg various officials for the assurance of a job upon return, and list his medals. No assurance was ever given. Yet each letter is so full of hope. It is the hope that makes them a heartbreaking read. Others talk about the plot of land he'd never see and what he would plant on it upon return. Almost 80 years have passed, and so much and yet so little has changed. The arguments that there is no other choice other than war are coming up again as the world richest men -- Elon Musk and other actors -- party at Dracula's castle. After all, Elon is right, Dracula's castle is the place to be on October 31.</p>
<p>What do I feel about war? I am sad and angry that young men and women are still sent to fight wars today. We should be fighting unfairness, powerty, disease, and climate change, and winning those battles. Intead, we fight man-made wars that make no sense. People still lose their limbs and sanity in the process even if some manage to stay alive. I am angry that we have puppet leaders who start wars just so that certain groups can hold onto power. I am sad and angry that we still plant bombs, we blow up people, destroy bridges, flatten cities, and sink ships, and cheer these attrocities with the help of the media. We aknowledge that all these will have to be rebuit. Then proudly claim to worry about climate change and keep saying we want to do something about it. Yet holes are dug under the sea so that the gas stored there goes directly into the atmosphere to prevent Russia from selling it. In the same time, people know how important it is that they recycle, and the ultimate goal of the year is to save water, keep the heat down and wash less. </p>
<p>
In spite of all this I hope that one day my children will see a world led by people who can make honest, informed choices. I know it's utopic, but I still hope. Uncle Ioan had the same hopes. He loved talent, and was very grateful to live enough to see Nadia Comaneci win her perfect 10. She put Romania on the map like not other person had done it before. He was grateful that her talent was rewarded instead of stomped upon like it was done to so many people, himself included.</p>Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-51155423394662883802022-06-29T07:20:00.011-07:002022-06-30T10:59:54.782-07:00The Abortion debate: a mother's view<p> Women are terminating their pregnancy in today's wealthy societies because they are drowning in unpaid and unseen care work. They often already have children that need everything from their mothers, and "the village" that is so needed to support them simply doesn't exist. And yes, women who terminate don't usually do it because they don't want their baby. They simply see no way to have it. Often it is because they already have children that need everything from their mothers. In our rich Western world, a mother who terminates her xth child is much more respected than one who puts the burden of another "eater" to pay for on the welfare state.
<a href="https://newsrnd.com/life/2022-06-15-abortions--again-more-abortions-in-germany-in-the-first-quarter.S1b9jV7vt5.html" target="_blank">The majority of women who terminated a pregnancy in Germany in the 1st quarter of 2022 were already mothers.</a>
It is sick and sad, but true.</p>
<p> <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fristenregelung?fbclid=IwAR02VsipKpdLv2y_VpPYc-LlK6H7hg9MTLK4hPvsW-35pq1oNgXaQlz_AKE">In Germany, termination is no reproduction right. It is a crime</a>. The relevant paragraph in the law follows right after murder and homicide. We are not free in our choices. Though there is no punishment when strict rules are being followed, it remains a crime, and these women not only carry the loss of their child, but also the stigma of being a criminal.</p>
<p> "Eater" is how people looked at their children in past times, and when it comes to struggling financially or mentally because of a growing family, and, unfortunately, I believe the term is not too far away from reality...</p>
<p> And, no, most women do not chose to terminate a pregnancy because they are afraid of larger vaginas (though I really love that discussion point).</p>
<p> Credit: By Lisann </p>
<p> Note:
Communist countries like Romania had an abortion ban. This ban from 1966 is considered one of the attrocities of the 20th century. It resulted in large numbers of unsafe abortions and increased maternal death, and in the building of notorious orphanages.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, criminalizing the termination of pregnancy does not solve the problem. <i> This unseen care work has to be valued and rewarded in order for parents to be able to raise their children in a safe, loving environment. The appreciation of the work done by mothers (and by fathers) then, naturally, can lead to laws and to the building communities that support children and families. </i> Unfortunately, instead of looking for a viable solution, societies find it easier to cause more problems, to criminalize and to blame the already overwhelmed women.
</p>
<p> In the past, it was illegal for doctors to advertise abortion in Germany. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/german-lawmakers-vote-to-end-ban-on-advertising-abortions/2022/06/24/c396efb0-f3a0-11ec-ac16-8fbf7194cd78_story.html" target="_blank">However, this law changed last week as a response to the US abortion ban. </a> Thanks to Werner for pointing this out.</p>
This is written in response to the previous post: <a href="https://ruxandrab.blogspot.com/2022/06/abortion-debate-mans-perspective.html" target="_blank"> The Abortion Debate: A Man's Perspective</a>
Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-27985379453879283952022-06-28T05:13:00.005-07:002022-06-28T07:05:12.521-07:00The Abortion Debate: a man's perspective
<p> Forcing a woman to stay pregnant against her will violates a fundamental right of the woman to decide what happens to her body, regardless of consequences to others -- namely the death of her child. But why care what men say when we talk about women's bodies? well, lawmakers and people in leadership positions are all men to a first approximation, and it makes sense to look at the problem from the perspective of those who make decisions. </p>
<p> Whatever law we pass, and whatever position we take as lawmakers, both forced terminations and forced pregnancies will happen in our society. Making abortion illegal at state level is likely to increase the number of children abandoned and satisfy the demands of the adoption market. It will also make it harder for employers, husbands, boyfriends, mothers and others to openly pressure a woman into a termination. A forced termination is a terrible thing, but something that continues to happen throughout our society. This, too, goes very much against the rights of the woman and those of her baby.
</p>
<p> The question is how many forced pregnancies are we willing to tolerate in order to eliminate a forced termination?
The logic should be like when we give people a vaccine. Vaccines have costs, side effects and, at times, result in the death of the vaccinated. They also result in a reduction in death and disability associated with the disease they are intended to protect from.</p>
<p> The following questions are standard for the vaccine makers is <br>
-- How many people do we need to vaccinate in order to avoid a case of clinical illness <br>
-- How many people do we need to vaccinate in order to avoid a death caused by illness <br>
-- How many people will die due to the side effects of the vaccine for each death avoided due to the disease
</p>
<p>
The equivalent questions for the case of abortion are<br>
-- How many people do we need to subject to a law forbidding abortion in order to avoid a case of forced abortion?<br>
-- How many people do we need to subject to a law forbidding abortion in order to avoid a case an abortion?<br>
-- How many unwanted pregnancies will continue for every wanted pregnancy that is saved from unwanted termination due to social and peer pressure?
</p>
<p> Why do women choose to have abortions when the baby appears healthy and their life is not threatened by the pregnancy? Well, the procedure comes with less risks than carrying the baby to term. In other words, it's easier and people often take the easy route when they have little support along the uphill path. But why not consider alternatives, such as putting the baby for adoption? There is a shortage of babies on the adoption market. Prospective parents face fierce competition and long waiting times. Many don't get the chance to choose which child they adopt and many don't end up getting a child at all. Creating a baby and giving it up for adoption results in the time, money and lives of the adopted parents being invested in the baby. This way, the woman channels resources she'd never have access to into raising her baby. This should be seen as a good thing. Yet, we have vastly more terminations than adoptions. Why??</p>
<p> Pregnancy (1) is a situation where typically 2 people share one body. It's like when people live in the same flat, just a little closer. So close that one is alive inside the other. One of these people, the mother has lived about half of her life without the baby, has had a contribution in choosing the genetic makeup of the child, who is yet to be born. A termination or abortion happens when these two people don't get along. The mother requires immediate separation from the baby, with the understanding that such separation will result in the death of the baby. The Supreme Court is then called to arbitrate this disagreement. The baby is too small to talk. Thus, the judges speak on his or her behalf.</p>
<p> Should the mother continue with her pregnancy, she stands to lose some time from work and potential loss of life and health through complications related to pregnancy and birth, and part of herself. She won't be the same person she was before having the baby if she chooses to keep it. Typically, a six week maternity leave is available in the US for mothers who keep the child. Women who have terminations typically don't want the child or don't think they can handle the upbringing and can't bring themselves to put that burden on somebody else. </p>
<p> Sarah Pallin made headlines when went into labour with her 5th child while giving a talk. She continued her presentation, went to the airport, flew to Alaska, drove to her hospital and gave birth. She then left her child at home and was back at work the following day. She kept the child, but the help available to her meant she had the same childcare burden as a woman putting her child for adoption.
</p>
<p> All in all, assuming pregnancy, followed by abandoning the baby, costs a woman 9 months of childbearing, 6 weeks of income and some setbacks in her career. It doesn't sound like much to a man who has never raised children. The unborn baby stands to lose his life. If not aborted people have about 100 healthy happy years to live. It is hard to understand why women assess the value of the 100 years of life the child would have gained through their pregnancy so little that they choose to terminate.
</p>
<p> One would assume that, if women were reasonable players, giving due love and consideration to their unborn children, we'd have more unwanted pregnancies ending up in adoption than abortion.
Why is this not the case? <br>
Possible reasons are:<br>
-- Peer pressure<br>
-- The most likely culprit is the male partner. Men are forced by law to take responsibility for their children. Thus, if a woman has a child, the man may have to pay something or help a little bit. As such, many men decide against having children. When their partners are pregnant, they pressure the woman to have terminations. If the woman doesn't accept, she usually has to put up with verbal arguments, psychological pressure and, in extreme circumstances, some financial strain and a divorce. <br>
--Sometimes, the mothers or family members pressure women into terminations. Usually, these are again verbal arguments. Sometimes, a little violent, but often not. Maybe, in the eyes of the family, the woman has too many children, or she is at the wrong time of her career to care for a child.<br>
</p>
<p> Neither husbands nor families are supportive of the idea of abandoning a child after birth, and they prefer killing the child before birth. This is probably because an existing born child would have a powerful legal claim upon their estate. The child would be entitled to some level of support and inheritance. He could be a nuisance and a burden, even if abandoned.
</p>
<p>
-- Employers and the State. Often pregnancy can result in loss of income or loss of employment. A woman's career is often set back by pregnancy. Thus, women find themselves under pressure to avoid pregnancies in order to compete professionally and earn good wages.
</p>
<p>
Both the State and employers are probably accepting of women who abandon their children, although child abandonment isn't necessarily the best thing on a CV.
</p>
<p>
-- The woman's desire to preserve her body presumably for the purpose of attracting men.
Pregnancy is seen as a process that lowers the degree of sexual attractively of a the woman. The consequences of pregnancy, such as extra weight or saggy breasts are also seen as not terribly sexy by men. So is a larger vagina, as may be the case after childbirth.
Many women look great after having children, but this is often a concern and reason to have a termination instead of a successful pregnancy followed by child abandonment.
</p>
<p>
-- Inability to abandon a child. In some situations, a woman is not able to abandon her child. It may be unacceptable to her religion, or family or public image. What would the world think of Ivanka Trump if she choose to abandon a child, instead of having a termination? Most likely no one would ever know if Mrs Trump had an abortion. Abandoning a child would clearly make the news and probably harm their political reputation and be a reason for blackmail. As such, other women are pushed by society to choose abortion over abandoning.
</p>
<p>
-- the belief that the unborn baby is not human. Thus, killing it before birth is not a bad thing. Sure, unborn babies lack many of the faculties of grown up people, but they have a full life that they can live if allowed to be born. Does a baby need sentience in order to exercise ownership over his right to live a full life expectancy?
</p>
<p>
Many adults who are as sentient as an unborn baby are considered humans and given the right to live.
People who suffer strokes, dementia, brain damage are often less able to interact with the world than an unborn baby. Also, unlike the baby, they lack potential for future development and for leading a full live.
If we consider the lack of faculties of an unborn baby as an illness, it is an illness that, in most cases, gets cured by the passage of time, without medicine and effort. Thus, why not allow these unborn babies to cure their lack of maturity when we support the lives of so many old people of similar ability, but with little or no hope for recovery?
</p>
<p>
I end this post with my wish that lawmakers take decisions based on data -- in general -- but especially when they alter laws that affect fundamental human rights. We should know what data led to their decision. The data should be public, and its analysis should be done by scientists and data analysts. And if data changes, the decision should be re-evaluated.<br>
In the case of abortion we should be able to answer questions like in the case of a drug or vaccine like the ones I am posing below: <br>
-- How many people do we need to subject to a law forbidding abortion in order to avoid a case of forced abortion?<br>
-- How many people do we need to subject to a law forbidding abortion in order to avoid a case an abortion?<br>
-- How many unwanted pregnancies will continue for every wanted pregnancy that is saved from unwanted termination due to social and peer pressure?
</p>
_----------
(1) Pregnancy lasts 9 months, beginning with the first day of the last period. During the first two weeks, the baby doesn't yet exist, as conception hasn't occurred yet. The eggs and sperm still live inside different people.
Then sperm gets inside the woman. At this point, her partner choice is made and it will impact the child's genetic makeup.
A few days later, conception occurs. An embryo forms and starts to swim inside the woman's uterus.
A few more days and the woman and the baby are inseparably joined for the remaining 8.5 months.
(2) Indeed, 6 weeks of a good American salary (or perhaps a few months depending on the salary) is sufficient to purchase the services of a surrogate mother in Georgia or Ukraine. This includes all medical and IVF fees. The reason women choose to go through pregnancy themselves instead of using commercial surrogacy is, in part, to save these fees. Some celebrities choose to not bother with pregnancy and hire surrogates. Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-52527616995661422562022-06-27T12:06:00.006-07:002022-06-27T20:31:34.417-07:00The Abortion Ruling<p>In a landmark ruling that shocked the world, the US Supreme Court has overthrown Roe and decided a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy shall no longer be protected at federal level.</p>
<p> Donald Trump has rightly hailed this as his victory, as it was the three Supreme Court judges he has appointed to serve for life that have played a decisive role. It is also a reminder that Trump and his movement have a good grip on America that will continue throughout and beyond the Biden presidency.
<p> Internationally, this is very bad news for the world. It means America will concern itself increasingly with its internal problems and pay less attention to the international scene. Thus, The US is more likely to hand Ukraine to Russia and Taiwan to China just like it has recently given Afghanistan to the Taliban, Hong Kong to China and championed the rise of dictators worldwide in the name of the Coronavirus, while people sporting Buffalo horns entered the US capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence". Mike Pence got out through the back door, but the people whoes rights are disappearing around the world don't have a safe exit. Should Russia decide to send some nuclear bombs to Europe, The US is more likely to watch from afar and concern itself with internal problems instead of protecting its NATO partners. </p>
<p> The US is, as it currently stands, is by no means in a position to enforce a ban on abortion that has statistically relevant effects on the American population. It will however be interesting to see what happens when Putin or someone with similar dictatorial power enacts a similar ban. As a Romanian, I have seen this experiment carried out in my country. The results are interesting, and very much worthy of academic attention. </p>
<p> <b> Thus, what will be the effect of the new Supreme Court ruling?</b>
The Supreme Court ruled that it will no longer impose upon state governments the obligation to allow women to have terminations.
States are democratic entities that vote on their own and decide on the matter.
Most states will not change much. Some states -- not most, but not few -- have already banned abortions altogether. Women in these states are still free to have abortions elsewhere. The Supreme Court ruling thus increases the average cost of a termination by a trip to a state where it is allowed. This is something of order $100 and amounts to a form of government advice. </p>
<p>In the sates where abortion is banned, the cost of the procedure will no longer be covered by health insurance. This will make the situation in the US smilar to Germany, where abortion is strangely illegal, and not covered by health insurance as governmengt health care does not wish to take part in criminal activity. Still, abortion is effectively available to all German women and widely practiced.</p>
<p> Removing terminations from the list of procedures covered by insurance means the cost of the insurance premium will decrease, probably by a few cents, as insurance companies no longer have to pay for the procedure. As such people from these states, the majority of which do not have terminations and half of which are men, will no longer be forced to pay for the abortions of those who require them.</p>
<p> The women having abortions will have to pay themselves, again an added financial burden which is small for middle class Americans.</p>
<p> <b> But, as we all know, not all Americans are middle class.</b> The poor American women who are more likely to be Black, Hispanic and vote democrat are more likely to be swayed into continuing an unwanted pregnancy by this few hundred dollars worth of financial pressure.
As such, the homeless, the destitute and drug addicts will often choose to have another fix of heroin or whatever makes them happy, instead of terminating an unwanted pregnancy. </p>
<p> <b>But, not all women are free.</b>
Women who are pregnant and jailed in a state that no longer allows terminations will be forced to carry the pregnancy to term. This is the only group where the new law causes a drastic and irreversible change of situation.</p>
<p> Overall, abortion remains available, with no significant changes to most women that matter -- the educated, the rich, the middle class, the feminists, etc.
The poor, the destitute, the mentally ill, the criminals and those imprisoned without having committed a crime, will be forced to bear unwanted children and build the America of tomorrow.</p>
<p> Some 20 years following the wide spread introduction of abortions, we have seen a clear drop in criminality in the US. This was not due to better policy, but to the fact that children more likely to be come criminals were less likely to be born (
<a href="https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited-update/" target="_blank">https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion-and-crime-revisited-update/</a> ).
The current ruling will revert this trend. We will thus see an increase in criminality in 20 years time. This is, however, not a problem. The Second Amendment guarantees every American the right to carry a gun and protect himself from criminals. We can enprison the criminals and force them to have more children, at gunpoint, if need be. </p>
<p> Obviously, not all people convicted and jailed are criminals. With current imigration laws, perhaps most are not. Prominent examples are Julien Assange, Alexey Navalny, Nelson Mandela, immigrants held in various centers awaiting deportation or asylum, victims of the Holochaust, etc, etc. How does the Supreme Court justify denying these people the right to a termination, when it is the state that imprisoned them illegally and their free counterparts can access the procedure by traveling to another state?
What will be the appropriate reparation the US should pay to a mother and her born child, if the birth of the child is the result of the mother being unfairly imprisoned during her pregnancy?
Is this question so politically inconvenient that it makes people uncomfortable reading it? </p>Mihaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14300642938876630985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-48292620356213227792022-06-06T13:33:00.002-07:002022-06-06T13:43:03.983-07:00The cause of war: shifting power?<p> In the nineteen's century, France, Spain and England were the colonial powers that dominated the world. Austria took over Europe from Turkey and created its own empire. Russia grew too and became an empire. Then Germany caught up. The change in power caused WWI, and Germany became the powerhouse of Europe. Since communication improved war became a global phenomena that included multiple coutries instead of just two players. </p>
<p> Then America took over the world. Since WWII the leadership of the world became bimodal. America took the role of the good power, and Russia of the bad one. Not long before that Europeans considered America a place for criminals and whores, who took everything from the native population and sent some of the riches back to Europe. After the war, suddenly America was "the only party in town". It was the country that funded progress, where science happened, and where everyone dreamed of going. On the other hand, Russia (the bad power) succeeded through brute force. They displaced people, placed them in jail, and physically suppressed those who opposed the communism regime. The post-WWII Jerkyl and Hyde game replaced colonies with proxy wars where American played the role of the saviours as reported by the media, and Russia funded the bad guys. Of course, both caused destruction and heartbreak around the world. </p>
<p> Today, India could become the good power and China the bad one. Together they could lead whatever world is left of the world after WWIII. India controls IT and China controls manufacturing. In terms of dynamics, there is the internet (India), the manufacturing (China), the resources (e.g., oil - the Arab world), and food (some everywhere). We are trying to get rid of oil/gas in part to stop climate change, and in part because of our fear of the arabs, who still have many children. Somehow, having old, silly leaders in palaces that do nothing (beyond getting fat and abusing themselves and others) and have none of the things that matter cannot hold forever. </p> Edward I. Lundgrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18274049459001209031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8150063541245198797.post-47230957179521727622022-04-24T19:45:00.011-07:002022-04-25T05:20:47.952-07:00Happy Easter! Hristos a inviat!<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiprF8buZAYhCWVhmBsCes47oPmihlUzBLhP4oE3lkEBvvuqRso-O3DQTBSSRCWkvIcYMBtCe6GsHtVsUDfc-zHTxbaJV4dP1oi3oItLvIarAfGDPCiVrBm1c5N2FfSoQauHUnSHAJqf1cJj1rxUINFPDEXKuR1elW_oNqXtoS9G0jM3GYDV1VArr2_/s4000/20220326_162527.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiprF8buZAYhCWVhmBsCes47oPmihlUzBLhP4oE3lkEBvvuqRso-O3DQTBSSRCWkvIcYMBtCe6GsHtVsUDfc-zHTxbaJV4dP1oi3oItLvIarAfGDPCiVrBm1c5N2FfSoQauHUnSHAJqf1cJj1rxUINFPDEXKuR1elW_oNqXtoS9G0jM3GYDV1VArr2_/s320/20220326_162527.jpg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWKN-0mTICUp8ea0YLxbpcI-uQO8sBOeH53aDeHU_xobplJuJAmJIVDhiU9g-R5aLmPxAPcyfaIxEOpuUEIa-e05lMYrzpp2_4YbAAhwNf_veVcyLE54vmeWvL-z-NfGPWKSmrDoSBB7XzSCW76GrjHQZ225hhw3p8vvIl-U0k2-hOxu4v4oP4oxo/s4160/IMG_20220322_160759994.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUWKN-0mTICUp8ea0YLxbpcI-uQO8sBOeH53aDeHU_xobplJuJAmJIVDhiU9g-R5aLmPxAPcyfaIxEOpuUEIa-e05lMYrzpp2_4YbAAhwNf_veVcyLE54vmeWvL-z-NfGPWKSmrDoSBB7XzSCW76GrjHQZ225hhw3p8vvIl-U0k2-hOxu4v4oP4oxo/s320/IMG_20220322_160759994.jpg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFMKsQX1sFT6BF_t2K5BjdrXmnaFKXPydnK9ijmhZKAoE4wB7ifLPrXFtNY03hWzn-IfXnekDErA9_qLQBPcLL7Pl-KcWpwZGJe9vQiis3GB-VUlyw8Yh96yBtLZVzXDDt3RYPjF4wTY1xh4gKXA5o_ygZ6HfLtl9PSCTL7mijN5Op5ObAqsOR3vg/s4160/IMG_20220403_163036310.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPFMKsQX1sFT6BF_t2K5BjdrXmnaFKXPydnK9ijmhZKAoE4wB7ifLPrXFtNY03hWzn-IfXnekDErA9_qLQBPcLL7Pl-KcWpwZGJe9vQiis3GB-VUlyw8Yh96yBtLZVzXDDt3RYPjF4wTY1xh4gKXA5o_ygZ6HfLtl9PSCTL7mijN5Op5ObAqsOR3vg/s320/IMG_20220403_163036310.jpg"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG32Ke-p3k-3UFsr3IDYqhuzuWaeURaUffvdhUQpfvNCOLW5O_UmdiSpeKZjXV0nniBgNkgdfPFMCwi1eexjUbHsqMlhsGnAxg4Y4TtZlopJmfQTPMPdk3uH2Jcw3Y1t0WAPMXwoIEX1Y8T1ftwtsnyGgICQy32aiij_HRIEHi4vbVfL8qGKj8lRr6/s4160/IMG_20220327_184148426.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG32Ke-p3k-3UFsr3IDYqhuzuWaeURaUffvdhUQpfvNCOLW5O_UmdiSpeKZjXV0nniBgNkgdfPFMCwi1eexjUbHsqMlhsGnAxg4Y4TtZlopJmfQTPMPdk3uH2Jcw3Y1t0WAPMXwoIEX1Y8T1ftwtsnyGgICQy32aiij_HRIEHi4vbVfL8qGKj8lRr6/s320/IMG_20220327_184148426.jpg"/></a></div><p> After coming back to Lugoj on March 19, James and Edward refused to leave. So, we've had a split Easter this year. Andy and I and the little one have been in Spain (I work at UB now), and my mom with James and Edward have stayed "home".</p>
<p> I am attaching some pictures from March. Our ladies are Edith, Eva, Caprioara, Edwina, and Mugurel is the father-figure. Caprioara and Edwina have two kids each, and Edith has one. Of the five kids only there are pictured because Edwina gave birth later. Eva van Goat is two. She gives about 1 litre of milk a day, which tastes a bit like the flowers and grass she's eating. It does not smell or taste like goat unlike most store-bought goat milk. Edward and I milk her (now Edward is doing the milking) in the morning and in the evening. I am looking for safe places for some of them to go that do not include a cooking pot. They are all very friendly and considerate. They are better than many people and most dogs I know -- although, of course, the comparison is hard to make. </p>
<p> Those of you who want to walk towards the sunset with a goat on a leash please let me know! Will rent the house if you want to move to Romania to live with the goats. The house members include five cats, two rabits (Morcovica and Telina), 4 ducks (Narcis, Narcisa, Narcisela and Narcisica), two very loud guineea fawl, and about thirty chicken (Petunia died of cancer a week ago at the age of six; we had an autopsy performed, although no lab tests were done; the rest produce plenty of eggs), and Tita (a dog who will walk you to the store and guard the door until you come out) and Puppy (he is about 8 now). So if you know of somebody (in Romania, borders are hard to cross for animals) looking for a kid, cat or goat friend please write. All goats produce milk (not Mugurel), are great lawn mowers, and walk on a leash to look for tasty grass. </p>
<p>For those of you thinking that life is different in Romania from the "civilized world": the answer is, it's not. Most people in Lugoj (Timisoara or nearby villages) do not own goats or other farm animals. They spend most of their free time on their phone just like people in Western Europe and the US. We are the exception, not the norm. Also, note that my children are not included in any goat or chicken deal I make.</p>
<p> Happy Easter! Paste fericit! Hristos a inviat!</p>Ruxandra Bondarescuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427123408995139317noreply@blogger.com0