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Planned Obsolescence

In The Concept and Measurement of Product Quality (1976), researcher E. Scott Maynes observed that quality is subjective, dependent on consumer preferences. New technology may offer “better quality” but something old may demonstrate durability. The consumer must decide which of these characteristics is more valuable.

A culture of austerity emerged after the Great Recession (2008–2014). This has been replaced by a culture of efficiency = minimized costs. Elon Musk (1971 – ) is the primary promotor of the culture of efficiency, aided by Mark Zuckerberg (1984 – ) and Jeff Bezos (1964 – ). Dark factories = robots and automated systems have replaced humans.

It is 2025, efficiency means nothing is made to be appreciated, only to be bought, then discarded. Product pessimism makes everything new seem inferior. In part this is because the promise of capitalism has been withdrawn. Work used to offer a decent life, including house ownership. Increasingly, your house is someone else’s investment. The social elevator that allowed social mobility has broken down, with the Billionaire class increasingly owning more. Social media focuses on lives that are unattainable for most people.

With public services, the situation is different. Part of the difference is that there is no competition, so most services can be provided at or below cost. I remember working at a school that had declared its first profit. The principal announced it with pride and enthusiasm, that lasted until the next day where the school was sued by parents of a special-needs pupil who did not receive the support required, due to profits being prioritized over required services.

In most democratic countries, health care is provided to residents. This costs about 35% less than the services provided in a for-profit system. Of course, the system has to be dimensioned appropriately. Systems have to evolve and adapt to social expectations. Currently, demographic changes in the number of elderly, is creating an increased need for health care. A market based system will not improve the situation, only increase its costs.

There’s one conclusion that comes up repeatedly throughout this report: the perception that everything is of lower quality is more pronounced among older people. The reasons are varied. One is that attributes like durability — which used to be a major factor in how people judged a product’s quality — have lost relevance.

Longevity is an important issue with me. Until we purchased our last vehicle, I always used ten years as a benchmark for its life span. With our first three cars, we needed to trade in our vehicles to afford a new one. With the next three cars, we could afford to give them away. However, expectations for our last vehicle, a VW ID. Buzz, is that it should last a century. Of course it may be necessary to install new batteries, and make other technical changes such as adding all-wheel drive.

In addition I am married to someone who has an in depth understanding of textiles. She understands fabrics, and provides me with all of my shirts and sweaters. I dislike discarding clothing that is not completely worn out. I have no use for a fast fashion industry that encourages impulse purchases. I attempt to develop an emotional attachment to all of my garments. I can afford to develop respect for them, because I hope to develop an emotional attachment with that garment, that will last a lifetime.

I don’t follow fashion, but wear what I appreciate. I hope that the clothing that I have not worn out can be used by others, particularly relatives. One point of contention is that my religion stipulates that my dead body should be wrapped in silk. I find that extravagant.

Similarly, I have a concern about food, avoiding as much processed food as possible. Once again, I appreciate being married to someone who understands food preparation.

The dissonance between who we are now and who we used to be is reinforced by an even more powerful tension: the gap between who we are and who we want to be. While it’s only natural to blame multinational corporations for maximizing profit margins at the expense of consumers, and governments whose budget cuts have strangled already depleted public services, market logic is hard to dispute: things are worse, because they are exactly where the billionaire class wants them to be. Purchasing power has been taken from workers. At the moment, automobiles are a luxury. People are holding on to their old cars because they cannot afford to replace them.

A century ago, in 1924, the American automobile market began reaching saturation point. To maintain sales, General Motors Vice President Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1875 – 1966) suggested annual model-year design changes to convince car owners to buy new replacements each year. This development was headed by Harley Earl (1893 – 1969). Smaller companies could not maintain the pace and expense of yearly re-styling. Henry Ford preferred simplicity and economies of scale and design integrity. Thus, GM surpassed Ford’s sales in 1931. However, frequent design changes also made it necessary to use a body-on-frame structure rather than the lighter unibody approach.

Bernard London (c. 1872-5 – ?) first used the term planned obsolescence in a pamphlet Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence (1932). He wanted governments to impose use-by dates on consumer products. The term was popularized by American industrial designer Brooks Stevens (1911 – 1995), in a talk at an advertising conference in Minneapolis in 1954. Yes, I have previously written a weblog post about Stevens. I had ended the post with: Stevens acknowledged the fact that all of his designs were ephemeral. He envisioned good design as changing from year to year, to adapt to new technologies and new tastes.

In 1959 Volkswagen mocked the term planned obsolescence in an advertising campaign. While acknowledging the widespread use of planned obsolescence among automobile manufacturers, Volkswagen pitched itself as an alternative: We do not believe in planned obsolescence. We don’t change a car for the sake of change.

Cultural critic Vance Packard (1914 – 1996) wrote The Waste Makers (1960), it exposed the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals. Packard divided planned obsolescence into two sub categories: obsolescence of desirability = psychological obsolescence = marketers’ attempts to wear out a product in the owner’s mind, quoting industrial designer George Nelson: Design … is an attempt to make a contribution through change. When no contribution is made or can be made, the only process available for giving the illusion of change is “styling”!

The other sub category is obsolescence of function. the reduction of an object’s usefulness or desirability because of an outdated design feature that cannot be easily changed or updated. Returning to Buzz as an example, VW’s batteries represented a near state-of-the-art when they were made in 2023. However, by 2033 solid-state batteries should be available that should reduce cost, mass and charging time, and increase range. Thus, it might be time to install these. My intention is that Buzz should last a century, although not in Trish’s ownership all that time. At the century mark, 2123-02-13, my grandson, Quinn, will be 97 and some months old, almost time for him to transfer ownership to someone in a younger generation.

Juan Villoro (1968 – ) in No soy un robot (I Am Not a Robot) (2024) comments: Advertising and subliminal messages have turned human beings into zombies with no other goal than consumption. Zombies have no time to waste. They rush around and shop for convenience. Perhaps the best-known example of buying for convenience is paying around €75 per kilo for coffee just because it comes in capsules. People are now digital beings. They have transitioned from McLuhan’s Gutenberg galaxy to the digital galaxy. This affects their perception of reality.

In Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America (2022), historian Wendy A. Woloson (1964 – ) asks: When did people stop having standards? She answers that’s it all began in the mid-19th century. Before that, very few people owned many things. Objects were typically multifunctional: a table might serve as a work surface by day and a dinner table by night. Things were cared for and repaired — an old housecoat might become a child’s pair of pants. But as markets expanded and mass production took hold, cheaper and more accessible goods began to appear. People were enchanted by the mix of variety and low price, as if they’d stumbled upon a secret treasure at minimal cost.

Over time, fashion trends fused with cheap products, and buying something new became almost mandatory. There was no longer any excuse not to have the latest thing, because it was within reach of almost everyone. People have embraced this degraded material world, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. The things we need to live our lives are fundamentally cheap and alienating. This overabundance of things makes people poorer. Interactions and ways of thinking have become mediocre: superficial, ephemeral and degraded.

While technology can improve product quality, it can also increase mediocrity and flaws. Yet, consumers openly reject virtual assistants. Society isn’t adapting to the pace of technological advancement.

Some argue that automation improves customer service. Some reject the idea that companies do so to cut costs. Artificial intelligence does not save money or personnel, because the initial investment in technology is extremely high, and the benefits remain practically the same. Yet, a key tool gained from the internet, real opinions from users, has been rendered useless, because it is unknown how many are fake! Reviews may have been generated by robots, to either encourage or discourage purchases, depending on who programmed them.

Bot activity accounts for a substantial portion of internet traffic. This poses a serious problem: language models are trained with data pulled from the web. When these models begin to be fed with information they themselves have generated, it leads to a model collapse.

The production and purchase of low-quality products is not sustainable. A good product contributes something useful to the environment.

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Climate destroying Capitalism

Palmdale, California 2021-09-22 Photo: Polina Kuzovkova, Unsplash

Caitlin Moran (1975 – ) defines Schrodinger economics as a situation where some few people (and corporations) are both wealthy and entitled, yet too poor to pay for the materials they profits from. They want to move fast and break things, as long as that which is broken originally belonged to someone else, preferably someone poor.

I mention this as the situation arising as heat aka climate change is expected to end capitalism, possibly in the next ten to twenty-five years. So the few rich people are the capitalists, while the things they break are the lives of everyone else. What follows is a summary of an article Damian Carrington, Environment editor of the Guardian, published on Thursday, 2025-04-03. Quotations by specialists have been eliminated and replaced by more generalized comments.

The climate crisis is on track to destroy capitalism with the vast cost of extreme weather impacts leaving the financial sector unable to operate, because the world is approaching temperatures where insurers will no longer find it profitable to cover many climate risks. Yes, this includes your house. Insurance and other financial services from mortgages to investments may not be viable.

Global carbon emissions are rising with an estimated rise in global temperature between 2.2C and 3.4C above pre-industrial levels. There are claims that damage at 3C will be so great that governments will be unable to provide financial bailouts, and it will be impossible for companies and governments to adapt to many climate impacts.

At the core of the insurance industry is risk management. While many insurance companies have taken the dangers of global heating very seriously, they have failed to communicate their concerns to their clients. So, these clients have done nothing but promote the status quo, which means using fossil and other forms of combustion, rather than switching to zero-emission energy. Thus, companies do not sense urgency, or have any idea of the scale of change required.

As temperature levels increase, insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for many risks. Premiums will exceed what people or companies can pay. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable, such as home insurance in California, due to the risk of wildfires. Insurance is the foundation of the financial sector, an inability to insure something means other financial services become unavailable. This situation applies to housing, infrastructure, transportation, agriculture and industry. This means that the economic value of entire regions will begin to vanish. Some analysts predict that markets will experience a rapid and brutal repricing, resulting in a climate-induced market failure.

Beyond this there is a civilizational threat posed by climate change. While it may initially affect the global south, challenges in more northerly regions will quickly follow. Heat and water destroy capital. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Governments will be unable to cover the damage when multiple high-cost events happen in rapid succession, as climate models predict. Australia’s disaster recovery spending has already increased sevenfold between 2017 and 2023.

Civilization cannot adapt to worsening climate impacts: “There is no way to ‘adapt’ to temperatures beyond human tolerance. There is no way for cities built on flood plains to move uphill.

In other words, at 3C, climate damage cannot be insured against, covered by governments, or adapted to. That means 1) no mortgages, 2) no new real estate development, 3) no long-term investment, 4) no financial stability. The financial sector ceases to function. Capitalism ceases to be viable.

The only solution was to cut fossil fuel burning, or capture the emissions, he said, with everything else being a delay or distraction. He said capitalism must solve the crisis, starting with putting its sustainability goals on the same level as financial goals.

Many financial institutions have moved away from climate action after the election of Donald Trump, who has called such action a “green scam”. However, the cost of inaction is higher than the cost of transformation and adaptation. If the transition succeeds people will enjoy a higher quality of life. If I add my own personal addendum, it would be … without capitalism.

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Personal Geography

Poplar Island from Queensborough close to where the Heaps family had their factory, both in New Westminster. Photo: Dennis Sylvester Hurd, 2020-08-20.

I was born in Vancouver in 1948, but in 1951, moved to New Westminster. Both places are in British Columbia, Canada. New Westminster occupies 15.62 km2, located on the banks of the Fraser River. In 1951 it had a population of 28 639 that had increased to almost 90 000 in 2023. For me, New Westminster was noted geographically for its steep slope from downtown to uptown. I walked down to elementary school, but up walking home. In contrast, the walk to secondary school was almost level, but slightly in the opposite direction. My AI assistant tells me New Westminster’s maximum difference in elevation is 152 m.

Many people see their communities in terms of sports. Thus, New Westminster patriots are supports of the Salmonbellies, a lacrosse team. I have seen a game, or more correctly, half a game, when I took my daughter to see one. The only sports I voluntarily played were curling and tennis. New Westminster is world famous (at least in New Westminster) for its anvil battery, which consists of two blacksmith anvils and some gunpowder, pretending to be a canon. Then, there is the Mayday celebration with maypole dancing. One of the aspects of New Westminster that I find most disturbing is its royalist orientation, calling itself the royal city, until 2021-07, when it decided to phase it out as its official brand. Yes, I have a republican political orientation, despite being a citizen of two monarchies. I would prefer to be a citizen of two republics.

Founded 1957-04-03, The Royal City Power Squadron offered a series of courses. I took their basic course, Boating, in the mid 1960s. Completion of this resulted in a boating licence, totally useless at the time. They also offered other courses: Seamanship (now called Piloting), Advanced Piloting, the VHF Course, Marine Maintenance and Marine Electronic. The name of the organization changed to Royal City Power and Sail Squadron. It is now CanBoat Royal City.

The Fraser River has always captivated my attention, and I remember travelling in a fishing boat up the Fraser River to Mission, with my father and members of the dyke commission. For many years I was captivated by Poplar Island located in the Fraser River, in New Westminster. I only visited it once, using my father’s boat. Trees made it very difficult to walk on the island. The Queensborough area of New Westminster is close by, but on Lulu Island, that separates the Fraser River into north and south arms. This is where members of the Power Squadron parked their boats. Trish’s maternal family, the Heaps, at one time had a factory in Queensborough, making forestry equipment in peace time, and ships’ engine shafts during wars. Adjacent to Lulu Island is Annacis Island, located in Delta Municipality. I had worked there building pre-fabricated houses for Habitat Industries. The municipality of Richmond is mainly located on Lulu Island. At one time I lived there for a short period, on Lynas Lane. Harry Andison, my material grandfather, lived in Steveston on Lulu Island, when he first immigrated to Canada from Gateshead, in England. Richmond also occupies Sea Island, where YVR, the Vancouver airport is located.

My favourite walk in the world is along the Fraser Foreshore Trail, mostly in Burnaby, the municipality adjacent to but west of New Westminster. There are additional, similar trails in New Westminster and Vancouver, including Avalon Park. There are many other places that I would like to visit that are located along the Fraser River. Thus, I would like to take a trip by boat down it, starting at Yale, where Harry Andison lived in the 1940s, a fact I only found out looking at census records in 2024. Another stop would be along the Lower Stave River, particularly at Ruskin, where Trish’s ancestors owned a lumber mill and railway. They also owned another railway for transporting timber on Narrow’s Inlet, on the Sunshine Coast, that would not be part of this proposed trip, but could be part of another.

Jennie, my mother, was born at Eburne, now called Marpole, in Vancouver, but she was raised in Kelowna, where her father owned a butcher shop. I spent much of my summers there, and in its eastern, rural offshoot, Okanagan Mission, where my aunt lived. We would also spend a week fishing in the interior of British Columbia. Sometimes we would use a boat to traverse Beaver Lake, walk across a portage to a second boat, then motor up Dee Lake to a wilderness fishing resort at the end of that lake. One time we took a Dodge Power Wagon along the worst road I have ever travelled to get to a fishing resort at Monte Creek. Both of my parents were hunters and fishers, and if there is any one indication that I have not inherited their genes, it is my lack of interest in these two activities.

My father, Edgar’s family lived on Vancouver Island, mostly in Nanaimo. His father was a coal miner who came from Cape Breton Island. Before that his family had come from Swordland, Morar on the mainland of highland Scotland, and South Uist, an island in the outer Hebrides. His mother was born in Pakenham, Ontario, but spent much of her childhood and youth in the Jumping Pound area of Alberta, before moving with her parents to Nanaimo. Her family came from Mohill, in County Leitrim, Ireland.

My father would often take my sister and I out in the woods, frequently to Buntzen Lake, and other wilderness locations in the Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody area. I find much of Inderøy similar to the places we visited.

In terms of Vancouver Island, our family spent many Easters at Qualicum, the preferred location of my parents for their later active retirement years. We had relatives in Nanaimo, Port Alberni and Victoria, so we also visited these places. In 1974, I worked on an archaeological excavation in Port Alberni. My daughter Shelagh attended secondary school at Shawnigan Lake in 2006-7. At one time we had discussed retiring to an apartment at Sidney, at the northern end of the Saanich Peninsula.

In addition to Vancouver island, I also appreciated other, smaller islands in the Salish sea. In Canada, this includes Saltspring and Galiano. When I turned sixteen, I was asked where I wanted to go for a vacation. One place was Orcas Island, in Washington State. We visited it. I also have an attraction to Deception Pass, a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island, connecting Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A pair of bridges known collectively as Deception Pass Bridge cross Deception Pass. The bridges were added to the American National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Somewhere here, I should ad that I appreciated a visit to Barkerville, and some of the places in the Cariboo. This includes: Cache Creek, Lillooet, Lytton, Quesnel, Spences Bridge, Williams Lake, in addition to the various mile houses, such as 108 Mile Ranch. While I did learn how to ride a horse, I also learned how to sail. I regarded sailing as a more important skill.

Scandinavia

In 1979, Trish and I went to Europe, for what we thought would result in a traditional tour of the continent = United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Spain. We started out in England, then heading off on a Baha’i pilgrimage to Israel. There we met some Baha’is who lived in Sweden. They encouraged us to change our plans and to visit the Scandinavian countries. So, after spending a month in Greece, we flew back to England, then took a SR.N4 hovercraft from Dover to Calais. We then took a train to Copenhagen. We then spent a month each in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland before returning to Norway. In Sweden, we almost ran out of time on our tourist visa, so we managed to get a one year extension. After a second visit to Norway, we returned to England and Ireland, visiting many of Trish’s relatives in the process. Then we returned to Canada.

Some of the more interesting places we visited included several islands.

In Denmark we spent almost two weeks on Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of Poland. Apart from the southern coast, it is mainly a granite island. In term of architecture, round churches are found throughout the island. In addition, Bornholmerskolen = The Bornholm school of painters began at the beginning of the 20th century. The artists developed a distinctive style of classic modernism, inspired by the island’s unique landscapes and light. experimented with color, abstraction and cubism. Artists included: Otto Haslund (1842 – 1917), Karl Isakson (1878-1922), Edvard Weie (1879-1943), Oluf Høst (1884-1966), Olaf Rude (1886-1957), Kræsten Iversen (1886-1955) and Niels Lergaard (1893-1982).

Karl Isakson (1878–1922) Bastions, Christiansø (1921)

In Norway, we visited the archipelagos of Lofoten and Vesterålen, which are climatic anomalies with higher temperatures than their latitude would indicate. I am considering a visit to see Hurtigrutemuseet = (Norwegian) Coastal Express Museum, located in Stokmarknes, the location where it started. This will be done off season because, in recent years, they have been inundated with tourists, but without the infrastructure to support them. Potential tourists should be aware of this.

We travelled by ferry between Stockholm in Sweden and Mariehamn (the capital of Åland). Åland is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland, with its autonomy determined by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations. It is the smallest region of Finland by both area (1,580 km2) and population (about 30 000). The Åland archipelago consists of nearly 300 habitable islands, of which about 60 to 80 are actually inhabited. The rest—more than 6,000—are small skerries or bare rocks. After visiting the Åland Islands, we continued on by ferry to the Finnish mainland port of Turku.

Norway

For better or worse, we declined vague employment offers in Stokmarknes, located on Hadseløya in the Vesterålen archipelago in Nordland county. It is located just north of Lofoten and west of Harstad. Instead we applied for student visas to Norway ending up in Molde, located on the Romsdal Peninsula. Originally, Molde was a shipping port for lumber to the Netherlands in the late 1500s. It grew throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, becoming a centre for the Norwegian textile and garment industry, as well as the administrative centre for the region and, more recently, a major tourist destination. For me, geographically, it had some similarities to New Westminster, with a steep increase in elevation.

We moved to Molde in 1980, where I took a cand. mag. degree = bachelor’s degree at the regional college with a dual major in business management and computer science. After five years in Molde, and with Alasdair (1983 – ) with us, we moved to Bodø in 1985. When we moved there, the municipality had a population of about 28 000. In 2024, the population had increased to almost 53 000. I also enrolled at the University of Tromsø, to take an advanced degree in computer science. I was awarded cand. scient. degree = master’s degree in 1988. The 14.91 km2 town is the administrative centre of Nordland county, located between Vestfjorden and Saltfjorden, just north of the Arctic Circle. It is the largest urban area in Nordland county. At this time we were able to convert our student visas into work visas, which ultimately resulted in permanent residency permits. Note: It was not until the 2020’s that we became Norwegian citizens. In part, this was because dual citizenship was not allowed until 2020-01-01.

In 1988, we made our final move in Norway to Inderøy. We settled at Vangshylla, at the extreme western end of the Inderøy peninsula. Vang refers to a plain with grass, while hylla refers to a shelf. So Vangshylla is located on a shelf below the other Vang farms. At the end of 1990, we were able to buy a house, where we still live today.

Biology

Some months before my father died, he gave me my original birth certificate. This was probably in 1990. My name at birth was Richard Edwin Salter. In my late 50s, almost twenty years ago now, I applied for (2006) and received (2007) my adoption records. This allowed me to contact my biological mother’s family, the Salters who lived in Essex county, Ontario. I was welcomed as family by my aunts, uncle, cousins and other relatives. I have visited Point Pelee National Park. This is as far south as one can go on the Canadian mainland, and still remain in Canada. Unfortunately, I have not yet visited Pelee Island, which is further south, in Lake Erie. It is on my bucket list. Originally, the Salters were from St Tudy, Cornwell. Then there were the Pentlands, who had settled at Goderich, in Huron county, Ontario. They were from Greyabbey, located on the eastern shore of Strangford Lough, on the Ards Peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland. It too is on my bucket list. Before that, they had come from the Orkneys, in Scotland.

I enjoyed meeting all of my biological relatives, and appreciate the kindness they have shown me. In terms of geography, I realized that much of southern Ontario was a little too flat for optimal appreciation. I will write a separate post on the geography of Ontario in the future.

On 2018-10-01, a month before I turned 70, I was contacted by Brad Laesser (1947 – ), who explained that he was my biological (half) brother. We share the same father, Percy Bradd. He was from the same area of Windsor, where my biological mother lived, and where Brad was born. Much of my biological heritage is American. This will be the subject of another post in the future.

Islands

I have a fascination with islands. Inderøy, where we live can be literally translated as Inner Inland. It was an island until 1 000 years ago, but since then has been a peninsula. The closest real island to use, of any size in Ytterøy = outer island.

In the Baltic, I have visited: the Åland islands and Bornholm in 1979, and Gotland possibly 20 years later. I visited two Estonian islands Saaremaa and Hilumaa in 2025. Two islands should have been visited previously, when I had the opportunity: Öland and Rügen.

In the Atlantic I have visited Iceland and the Faeroe islands in 2023, Newfoundland and subsidiary islands as well as the Saint Pierre archipelago in 2024. Then in 2025 there was Cape Breton and Prince Edward Islands, as well as Greenland. There are others still waiting for a change to entice me. These include: the Western Isles of Scotland, especially South Uist, from where the MacLellans sailed to Cape Breton in the 18th century. Then there is Shetland and Orkney archipelagos.

In the Mediterranean there was Rhodes and Patmos, in 1979. In 2015 there was Sicily. In 2025 Corsica. I hope Sardinia will welcome me in 2026.

Literature

In terms of literary geography, I have been significantly influenced by five authors, all male, three Scottish. Chronologically they are: Walter Scott (Edinburgh, 1771 – Abbotsford, 1832); Robert Michael Balentyne (Edinburgh, 1825 – Rome, 1894); Arthur Ransome (Leeds, 1884 – Heald Green, Greater Manchester, 1967); Peter Dawlish (pseudonym) = James Lennox Kerr (Paisley, 1899 – Lamorna, Cornwall, 1963) and Archie Binns (Port Ludlow, Washington, USA, 1899 – Sequim, Washington, USA, 1971). Yes, there are books by all of these authors in our library.

Somewhere around the eighth grade, I read Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake (1810). By that time I had learned that the name MacLellan was associated with the gilley/ servant of Saint Fillan. However, I had no geographical association for the family, apart from Nanaimo and Cape Breton Island. Thus, after reading some of the poem, I wondered if the Trossachs was our place of origin in Scotland. It refers to an area of wooded glens = valleys, braes = hills, and lochs = lakes lying to the east of Loch Lomond. The fictional setting for Scott’s work is Loch Katrine.

Balentyne’s juvenile novel, The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857) has as its setting an unspecified island in the south Pacific ocean. Balentyne never visited this part of the world, but borrowed details about its characteristics from other fictional authors. The work concerns itself about the civilizing effect of Christianity, 19th-century imperialism in the South Pacific and the importance of hierarchy and leadership. Presumably, this work was intended to inspire me, including to accept my, at best, middle-class place in the world. Fortunately, it inspired William Golding (1911 – 1993) to write his novel Lord of the Flies (1954), which inverted the Coral Island’s morality where children encounter evil. In Lord of the Flies evil is within them. I do not need to visit a specific coral island, but would appreciate the opportunity to visit one of the Hawaiian islands, preferable one that is not overly populated. The most recent book I have read about south Pacific islands was by the Anglo-Norwegian author Sue Prideaux (1946 – ), Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin (2024), read earlier this year.

Arthur Ransome wrote juvenile novels mainly set in the Norfolk Broads and the Lake District of England. I have visited both places. Ransome can be regarded as my favourite author.

The novel that resonates most with me is Archie Binn’s Sea Pup, set in Puget Sound, on the Salish Sea, south-west of Vancouver, in Washington state. I have two copies of this book to give to descendants.

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Hilbert’s Sixth Problem.

David Hilbert, as he appeared in 1912. The photographer and creation date is unknown, and the photo is undoubtedly in the public domain.

David Hilbert (1862–1943) concluded his retirement address to the Society of German Scientists and Physicians on 1930-09-08, with Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen. = We must know. We shall know. The words were given in response to the Latin: Ignoramus et ignorabimus = We do not know and we shall not know. His epitaph on his tombstone in Göttingen repeats his response. This weblog post is being published on he 95th anniversary of this address.

Hilbert was a German mathematician and one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas including invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics, particularly proof theory.

Hilbert revealed a list of 10 problems on 1900-08-08, during the International Congress of Mathematicians held at the Sorbonne in Paris. These were problems later numbered 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 13, 16, 19, 21 and 22, when the list was expanded to 23 problems. Sources for these are listed at the end of this post. This weblog post is only concerned about the sixth problem, often described as: Mathematical treatment of the axioms of physics: (a) axiomatic treatment of probability with limit theorems for foundation of statistical physics; (b) the rigorous theory of limiting processes “which lead from the atomistic view to the laws of motion of continua.”

Until recently, that status of this problem was unresolved, or partially resolved, depending on how the original statement is interpreted. Items (a) and (b) were two specific problems given by Hilbert in a later explanation. Kolmogorov’s axiomatics (1933) is now accepted as standard for the foundations of probability theory. There is some success on the way from the “atomistic view to the laws of motion of continua”, but the transition from classical to quantum physics means that there would have to be two axiomatic formulations, with a clear link between them. John von Neumann made an early attempt to place Quantum Mechanics on a rigorous mathematical basis in his book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1932), but subsequent developments have occurred, further challenging the axiomatic foundations of quantum physics.

The sixth problem called for axiomatizing physics = determining the bare minimum of mathematical assumptions behind all its theories. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that mathematical physicists could ever know if they had resolved this challenge. However in the intervening 125 years, researchers have refined Hilbert’s vision into concrete steps needed to meet its solution.

In 2025-03 mathematicians Yu Deng (ca 1987 – ), Zaher Hani (ca 1986 – ) and Xiao Ma (1972 – ) posted a new paper to the preprint server arXiv.org that claims to have cracked one of these goals. If their work withstands scrutiny, it will mark a major stride toward grounding physics in mathematics and may open the door to analogous breakthroughs in other areas of physics.

These researchers may have figured out how to unify three physical theories that explain the motion of fluids. These theories govern a range of engineering applications that rested on assumptions that hadn’t been rigorously proven. This breakthrough won’t change the theories themselves, but it mathematically justifies them, which means that it strengthens mankind’s confidence that the equations will be useful.

Each theory differs in scale. At the microscopic level, fluids are composed of particles, which can be regarded as balls zooming around, sometimes colliding. Here, Newton’s laws of motion work well to describe their trajectories.

At a mesoscopic level a model cannot effectively model each particle individually. It needs to model the collective behavior of vast numbers of particles. This was originally developed in 1872 by Austrian theoretical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who addressed this when he developed the Boltzmann equation, that considers the likely behaviour of a typical particle, rather the the individual behaviour of every particle. This dismisses low-level details in favor of higher-level trends. The equation allows physicists to calculate how quantities such as momentum and thermal conductivity in the fluid evolve, without considering every microscopic collision.

More cosmology

In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble published a paper demonstrating that the universe is expanding. It gave rise to the Hubble constant, the number that describes how fast the universe is expanding. This created a puzzle, the Hubble tension, because this cosmic expansion differs depending on what cosmic objects are used to measure it. However, a new mathematical model could resolve the Hubble tension by assuming the universe rotates. New research, published in 2025-03 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that our universe completes one revolution every 500 billion years. This rotation could resolve the discrepancy between different measurements of the Hubble constant.

Note

I am not a mathematician. In my studies, I learned some mathematics, including calculus and mathematical logic. However, at irregular intervals I felt I should add some extra synapses to my brain, by spending time working with physics and mathematics problems. In particular, I remember: 1. the first of these was devoting energy attempting to understand Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, as found in Ernest Nagel (1901-1985), James Roy Newman (1907–1966) Gödel’s Proof (1958). This was in the late 1960s. This proof demonstrates that in any sufficiently complex mathematical system, there are true statements that cannot be proven within that system. This means that no set of axioms can be both complete and consistent, fundamentally changing mankind’s understanding of mathematics. 2. I have also worked my way through George Polya’s (1887 – 1985) How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method, second edition (1957) [My copy was purchased 1983-04-19, 42 years ago, and I studied it shorly after that time.] 3. Alexander Woodcock and Monte Davis, Catastrophe Theory (1978). [My copy is undated, but states it was bought in Bodø, where we lived from 1985 – 1988.] 4. On a daily basis, working my way through Joseph Kane (1938 – 2024) and Morton Sternheim (1933 – 2023), Physics, 3rd edition (1988) [purchased 1997-05-31]. After that, I felt capable of taking university physics courses. Much later, I took some applied physics at the Andøya Rocket Range, now Andøya Spaceport, on Andøya (a municipality and an island) in northern Norway.

Source materials:

These are for a detailed study, only suitable for mathematicians and historians of mathematics and physics.

The original ten problems can be found in: Mathematische Probleme. Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Mathematisch-Physikalische Klasse = News of the Society of Sciences at Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class: 253–297. The larger list of 23 problems was published in 1901 in the original German in Archiv der Mathematik und Physik in Mathematische Probleme. Archiv der Mathematik und Physik. 3rd series (in German). 1: 44–63, 213–237. from which an English translation was made in 1902 by Mary Frances Winston Newson and published in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, as Mathematical Problems. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 8 (10): 437–479. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1902-00923-3. The authorship of these works is attributed to David Hilbert.

Problem 6, is examined in detail in: Corry, L. (1997). “David Hilbert and the axiomatization of physics (1894–1905)”. Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 51 (2): 83–198. doi:10.1007/BF00375141. S2CID 122709777, and in: Gorban, A. N.; Karlin, I. (2014). “Hilbert’s 6th Problem: Exact and approximate hydrodynamic manifolds for kinetic equations”. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 51 (2): 186–246. arXiv:1310.0406. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-2013-01439-3

Kolmogorov’s axiomatics were initially formulated in Andrey Kolmogorov: Foundations of the theory of probability (1933). New York, US: Chelsea Publishing Company.

One source of John Von Neumann’s approach is found in, John Von Neumann and Nicholas A. Wheeler (editor). Mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics (2018). Translated by Robert Beyer: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17856-1

New updated information about the sixth problem, can be found in Scientific American 2025-04-14.

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Nuuk

Nuuk Airport in 2025.

Adventure #4 in 2025 took place in August. It began when Alasdair asked me if I wanted a trip to Greenland. He discovered some inexpensive tickets, that he could buy with points. I had not thought about this possibility before, but decided a long-weekend in Nuuk was irresistible.

The trip began on Tuesday, 2025-08-19, when I flew from TRD = Trondheim airport to OSL = Oslo airport, then took the train to Røyken station. Alasdair joined me at about the half way point, at Oslo Central Station. We then drove to Alasdair’s house where we spent the rest of the day, and Wednesday.

On the trip, Alasdair reminded me that this was not our first connection with Nuuk. One of our former neighbours, Olav Næss (1950 – ), had worked there as a machine operator during the construction in the early 1990s of a hydro-electric power plant that provides Nuuk with its electricity.

On Thursday evening, 2025-08-21, we returned to Røyken station, taking the same journey in the reverse direction, to overnight at OSL. There we met Simon Gulstad, the third adventurer, who had flown in from Bergen. Simon was originally from Inderøy, and his mother was Alasdair’s kindergarten teacher! We overnighted at the Radisson Red hotel.

Early the next day we flew from OSL to CPH = Copenhagen airport, then waited several hours, mainly in a lounge, before taking a flight to GOH = Nuuk Airport = Mittarfik Nuuk (Greenlandic), Nuuk Lufthavn (Danish). The reason for the IATA = International Air Transport Association, code is that Nuuk was formerly called Godthåb (Danish) = Good Hope (English).

Nuuk (Greenlandic) = cape (English). It is commonly found in Greenlandic place names. It is so named because of its position at the end of the Nuup Kangerlua fjord on the Labrador Sea’s eastern shore. Its latitude, at 64°11′ N, makes it the world’s northernmost capital, a few kilometres farther north than Reykjavík (64°08′ N). In Comparison Cliff Cottage is 63° 50′ 31.33″ N. This means that Cliff Cottage is about 37 km further south than Nuuk. Because the two places are at almost the same latitude, the distance between them has been calculated to be 2528 km. The flying distance is considerably more.

When home rule was established in 1979, the authorization of place names was transferred to Greenlandic authorities, who preferred Greenlandic names to Danish ones.

The airport was originally constructed for STOL = short take off and landing capable aircraft in 1979. In 2019-2024, the airport was comprehensively rebuilt and expanded, including a runway extension and a new terminal, which allows larger jet aircraft to serve more international destinations. The airport is located 3.7 km northeast of downtown Nuuk. On our arrival we walked into the town. The distance seemed much longer because of the many changes in elevation along the chosen route.

Nuuk Airport New Terminal Airside Interior Photo: Asxm000, 2025-06-14.

At this point I will interupt the story to mention our diet, which was largely meat based. From Friday to Monday in Nuuk we ate three beef burger dinners, along with one pizza dinner. Alasdair, at one point wrote on Signal to family members that store prices are through the roof. 150cl Pepsi costs DKK 45 = NOK 71 = USD 7.

Our accommodation in Nuuk.

Our accommodation in Nuuk is shown above. We occupied the left side of the building. A kitchen and living area, along with a bathroom, were on the main floor, while two bedrooms were located on the upper floor. Many buildings have two numbers on them. A black number on yellow indicates a street number, while a white number on black seems to be a town-wide serial number. Older houses have lower numbers.

Serenity Cruise

Open Street Map showing the fjord system we explored with Raw Arctic. We visited a waterfall at Sermitsiaq = the Saddle, then continued along the western channel bending to the right continuing deeper into the long fjord on the extreme right of the map. We returned passing to the west of Qeqertarsuaq, before reaching Nuuk.

On Saturday, we took a 6 hour serenity cruise offered by Raw Arctic. Our first stop was at a waterfall at Sermitsiaq = the Saddle, then continued along the western channel where we met lots of small clumps of ice in the water. These would be too small to be considered icebergs.

We also observed a whale diving and feeding in the fjord. My suspicion is that this was a Humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). We also watched a hunter, alone onboard a smaller vessel, powered by an outboard motor, attempt to kill a seal sitting on a clump of ice. He fired four shots, and missed. Below is a photo of a large clump of ice, complete with seagull on the top.

A larger clump of ice in the fjord system. Smaller clumps of ice can be seen in the background.

Our cruise continued, bending to the right so that we reached deeper into the fjord on the extreme right of the map. However, we did not reach the end of the fjord. After turning around, we passed by Qoornuup, located on the north end of the island Qeqertarsua. The inhabitants of the settlement were forcibly removed from the village in 1972. Qoornuup also once had a railway used for transporting fish. The railway was used in the 1950s, with a small diesel-hydraulic locomotive hauling flat wagons full of fish. The line closed shortly before the town’s last resident left.

We then continued our return journey, passing to the east of Qeqertarsua, before reaching Nuuk.

The crew of the Eqaluk consisted of Martin and Line.

Eqaluk, the name of the boat, refers to Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus). It is designed to carry a crew of two, along with up to six passengers, as long as two or more of those are children, or up to five adults. The boat was built by Targa in Nykarleby, Finland, north of Vaasa, and across the Gulf of Bothnia, from Umeå in Sweden. The boat is powered by Swedish Volvo-Penta diesel engines, made in Vara , Sweden, in a plant that opened in 1977. The Scandinavian in me says it is a good choice!

Among the equipment on board was a life raft for 8 people, a radar system, an electronic chart plotter, and a very high frequency (VHF) marine radio with Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder to broadcast the vessel’s identity, position, speed and course over VHF radio to other ships and shore-based systems, enhancing collision avoidance and maritime safety. It uses global positioning system (GPS) to determine location and transmits this data automatically to other AIS-equipped vessels within range. In the case of an emergency we were told to activate Digital Selective Calling (DSC) by pressing (and holding for 3 seconds) a single red distress button, sending a digital alert with the vessel’s GPS position, Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number, a unique nine-digit number that identifies a specific vessel, and other identification to nearby DSC-equipped vessels and shore stations. The system then automatically switches to VHF Channel 16 and waits for a verbal Mayday call to provide two-way communication for assistance.

Alasdair at one point measured the vessel’s speed = 40 km/h = 21.6 knots. Inside Nuuk’s harbour the speed limit is 3 knots = 5.5 km/h.

National Museum of Greenland

There is no admission charge to the National Museum of Greenland on the last Sunday of every month. Despite the last Sunday being 2025-08-31, there was no admission charge on 2025-08-24 either.

The museum was typically ethnographic, showing aspects of the culture that were non western. Below is a photo of one cabinet, filled mainly with masks, along with other artifacts.

There were also other objects on display, many showing artifacts that were part of a transition to a modern society. One cabinet showed a typewriter as well as musical instruments including an accordion and various brass instruments.

Greenland, has a number of prominent rock and rock-influenced bands including: Nanook: a popular and award-winning band that performs in Greenlandic and is known for its energetic shows and for touring internationally; Sussat!: a basic rock’n’roll band; Inuk: a pop-rock band; Pukuut: a metal band; Sound of the Damned: another metal band; Both metal bands blend traditional elements with aggressive sounds; Îva: a collaborative group that includes members from the hip-hop group Tarrak and the previously mentioned band Inuk.

It should be mentioned that there are a lot of places in Nuuk that sell alcohol. I imagine that its consumption is a social problem throughout Greenland.

Monday

Rash decisions. Yes, we had agreed to meet Line at her boat building yard (actually a rubber hall) at 9:00. Our flight was at 14:00. So we had to leave our accommodation at 8:30, visit her, then find something else to do before we walked to the airport. We walked to the yard, and saw a vessel, more stored in the form of raw materials (oak), than in formed parts or something ready to launch. The work had taken a year already. It would take another year to remake into something useful. It was a little less than 20 m in length, and had been originally made in 1938. That makes it 86-7 years old!

I don’t know the details, but the vessel had been damaged by ice breaking the hull.

I thought I would put a photo of Line’s truck here to show that much of Greenland relates to functionality than to superficial beauty.

After the visit we returned to the centre of Nuuk and visited a cafe. We then walked to the airport, including a walk through the only vehicular tunnel in Nuuk, possibly in Greenland.

Nuuk tunnel. There is space for pedestrians and cyclists at the edges, but no physical separation. It is one way driving controlled by traffic lights at the two entrances to the tunnel.

At the airport, we ate our last Greenlandic hamburger, then proceeded to a seating area. Soon we were called for boarding, which was completed 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time.

Then came the announcement from the captain. He explained that the airport had run out of jet fuel. The delivery truck had to drive to Nuuk, fill up more fuel, wait half an hour for the fuel to settle, then take quality measurements which – if passed – would allow the fuel to be used in the aircraft. After that the truck would drive back to the airport, pass through security, and then fuel the aircraft.

We ended leaving Nuuk 90 minutes late. This resulted in many passengers missing connecting flights and having to overnight in Copenhagen. We had booked accommodation in advance, staying at the Comfort Hotel. While this is relatively inexpensive, Comfort is undoubtedly my least favourite hotel chain. I am surprised that they don’t rename it Cheap. For example, the bath towels are too small for large creatures. I had to use two of them to dry myself after showering. The coffee tasted python. Yes, that is a Norwegian expression to express food/ drink that is inedible, or tastes terrible.

After breakfast we then went to the airport terminal, where two people checked in luggage, then we all went through security. Once there we went to a lounge, where better tasting coffee – and more edible food – could be found.

We were taking three separate flights back to Norway: Simon to BGO = Bergen, Alasdair to OSL = Oslo, while I returned to TRD = Trondheim.

Impressions

Nuuk is not the place to go for a beach holiday, or gourmet meals. It is a place to do something! Hands on guided hunting and fishing trips are available, as is camping in the wilderness. While Greenland offers more remote locations, I suspect that most tourists will find a weekend visit to Nuuk is enough to satisfy their curiosity about Greenland.

Note: The video and many of the photos were provided by Alasdair.