Open Your Eyes and See!

This article was submitted to the Waco “Tribune-Herald” newspaper on 18 September 2025,  by me as a member of their board of contributors.  As of today (23 September 2025),  they have not used it. 

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As-submitted article:

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Dear readers,  the Waco “Trib” published an opinion piece of mine this last 19 August 2025,  which warned of the ongoing imposition of a Trump dictatorship upon us.  I have since noted other pieces published on the “Trib’s” opinion page warning,  or at least hinting,  of the same thing!  One piece of that is muzzling the news media,  a hallmark of all dictatorships.  This is happening right in front of you,  if you but open your eyes and see it! 

This is the text of the latest message (of many) that I have sent to Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz,  and Representative Pete Sessions: 

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“First it was Stephen Colbert who was cancelled for speaking against Trump.  That was Paramount,  owner of CBS,  needing administration approval for acquiring Bytedance.  So they cancelled him and got the approval.  Trump even said Jimmy Kimmel was next,  and now the minion-led FCC has threatened Disney and ABC with punishment for “spreading misinformation”,  to get Kimmel cancelled,  and they did.  Trump has said that Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers at NBC are next.  This is abuse of government to muzzle the media,  a hallmark of all dictatorships.  And I have messaged you multiple times about stopping the imposition of a Trump dictatorship. 

The Kimmel case is also extremely and egregiously hypocritical:  if “spreading misinformation” can be punished by the FCC,  then why has the most notorious example,  TV’s Fox News,  never been punished?  Answer:  the misinformation they have spread for decades is pro-Trump.  Simple as that! 

I am messaging you about this,  but I will also be writing to the newspaper’s op ed page.”

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The current claims from administration figures about the Charlie Kirk killing are like most of the other claims made during this term,  the previous term,  and as the opposition all during Biden’s term in between:  they do not stand up to fact-checking!  If you want to find what Charlie Kirk really stood for,  go on the internet;  Wikipedia has an article about him.  There are others.  His assassination was a criminal act not to be tolerated,  but he was definitely not the national hero that Trump claimed.

There is no large left-wing extremist population to go after,  contrary to administration claims.  There were,  more than half a century ago,  but not in recent decades!  However,  there is a large and growing right-wing extremist population today,  and it dominates the statistics of who the recent mass shooters have been.  Mentally disturbed people are the second-largest portion of those shooters,  with left-wing extremists a very tiny portion.

That leads me to try to correct a common misperception.  The conventional notion of “left wing” vs “right wing” in political thought is based upon the false concept that political outlook corresponds to a straight line,  from endpoints at far-left extremism and at far-right extremism.  It does not!  It never did!

The better model is a circle,  which ranges from societies that live in freedom on the near side,  to oppressive military-supported dictatorships,  on the far side.  There are indeed 2 paths from here to the far side of that circle,  one “left wing”,  the other “right wing”.  But once these groups go all the way to that far side,  there's not a dime's worth of difference between them!  It does not matter what they say,  or which way they got there.  The evil is the same! 

I see no operational difference between Stalin's Communist Russia and Hitler's Nazi Germany.  Both were military-supported dictatorships,  with a secret police (or polices) to "disappear" opponents,  concentration camps in which to hold opponents before finally "disappearing" them,  total control of all published information (a point being made here in this article),  government agencies weaponized to persecute opponents (also a point here),  certain minorities demonized as "the enemy",  all the corporate or business heads "bending the knee" to the dictator's every whim (another point here),  stolen or no elections amounting to a sham democracy at best,  and absolutely no accountability for the "fearless leader" in charge.

There are countless other examples besides Stalinist Russia and Hitler's Germany.  Putin's Russia today is only one of the latest.  Xi's China is another.  Kim's North Korea is another.  The ruling "mullahs" in Iran are yet another.  There are many more.

However,  in view of what has been going on recently,  all of those hallmarks of dictatorships ought to sound dangerously familiar to anybody in the US today!

Extremism is the real evil;  left,  right,  political,  religious,  makes no difference!  And totally unregulated social media are completely rife with both extremism and extreme misinformation!  Believe nothing from social media,  even if they tell you what you want to hear!  They lie to you for profit!  That is all they do. 

The real truth tellers,  like CBS News,  NBC News,  ABC News,  and PBS/NPR,  are now more than halfway muzzled already.  Why?  Their corporate owners make more money if Trump approves of what they say.

And we already have several concentration camps around the country!  They currently hold the demonized immigrants that the real statistics say do not threaten,  but actually benefit,  us.  They get deported (“disappeared”) mostly without due process,  if you but look!  Those who oppose Trump will be next!

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End of as-submitted article

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A brief update for the posting here:

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Disney/ABC has since decided to restore Jimmy Kimmel’s show,  perhaps responding to public pressure to do so.  Regardless,  owners of many ABC-affiliate stations Texstar and Sinclair do not intend to broadcast him,  no matter what Disney/ABC decided.  They both have merger deals awaiting approval from the Trump administration.  Surprise,  Surprise!  This is exactly what muzzling the media looks like!

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Update 9-28-2025:

For those who like "real data",  I made up this chart to show a comparison between the hallmarks of Trump's second presidency,  and the hallmarks known for several dictatorships.  There are many others,  of course,  but these are the best-known.  Bear in mind,  this is all based upon what they actually did or actually do,  not what they said.  Words are cheap.  Actions speak louder and very far more truthfully. 

On Pressure Vessels

One can build an unpressurized liquid tank to any desired shape,  unless it is so large that the depth of liquid inside exerts a significant pressure all by itself.  The same is not true of pressurized vessels,  even small ones,  beyond a “single handful of psi” gage pressure inside it.  There are very good reasons these tanks are only made in spherical shapes,  or as right circular cylinders with hemispherical or spherical-segment ends. 

This document presumes the reader knows what “gage pressure” means,  and what mechanical stresses and strains are.

Figure 1 shows a cylindrical pressure vessel holding gage pressure P inside.  This could be a tank,  or even a pipe or a tube.  The “hoop stress” is given by the formula shown top right,  which is sometimes referred to as Barlow’s pipe stress formula,  which is a measure of the stress trying to  split the cylinder open longitudinally.  Technically,  you use the cylinder inside diameter for this formula (a requirement working with pipe and tubing),  but as long as the material thickness is small compared to the diameter,  something true of rocket cases and propellant tanks,  there is little-or-no perceptible difference between inside,  outside,  and average diameters. 

Bottom left,  the cross-section of the cylinder,  or any section through a sphere,  is shown.  For a cylinder,  the “axial stress” is that which resists the pressure trying to part one end of the vessel from the other.  For a sphere,  it’s just the “membrane stress” that resists splitting the sphere apart,  no matter the section orientation.  That stress works out to be just half the hoop stress,  as shown.

Figure 1 – Pressure Vessel Stresses In the Vessel Material

For a cylindrical pressure vessel fitted with hemispherical ends,  Figure 2 takes this notion a bit further,  showing as it does the stress distributions on a tiny patch of material,  located on either side of the joint.  The axial stresses match,  while the hoop direction stresses differ by a factor of 2.  There are (at least theoretically) no stresses perpendicular to the material itself (the radial direction from the cylinder axis,  or from the hemisphere’s center). 

This hoop stress mismatch at the joint corresponds to a strain mismatch in the circumferential direction,  in turn corresponding to a radial displacement mismatch between the cylinder material,  and the end (or “head”) material.  The cylinder swells radially under pressure twice as much as the end or “head” swells radially,  as measured at the joint.  This distorts both the cylinder and the head locally at the joint,  as the materials bend locally,  in order to try to stay joined.  This induces large bending stresses locally,  which add in certain ways to the hoop and axial (or membrane) stresses already described.  That makes the joint quite vulnerable to local overstress failure. 

The ”fix” for this is to locally thicken the cylinder and head materials at the joint.  In effect,  the extra material “sops up” the extra imposed stresses.  For boilers,  there are very specific guidelines for how much local thickening is needed,  and how far “local” extends away from the joint.  Those rules are the ASME boiler code,  which is legally mandatory everywhere in the country,  for designing and building boilers.  Every provision represents a life lost learning that lesson.  This is serious business!

Figure 2 – There Are Distortions With Extra Stresses At the Joints

There are choices allowed for how to implement those localized thickenings at the joints.  Those are depicted in Figure 3,  and also apply to solid rocket motor case designs.  You can increase the thickness toward the inside,  or toward the outside,  or even some of both,  just as long as enough  extra material is supplied.  Finite-element stress-strain analysis can refine this further.

The same figure also shows a variation on the spheroidal end,  where only a sphere segment is used as the end membrane.  This requires a connection ring that resists radial swelling at about the same rate as the end resists radial swelling at its attachment joint.  That way,  no thickening of the membrane is required,  the ring supplies that for the membrane.  You still need a local thickening of the cylinder material at its attachment to the ring,  because of the radial swelling mismatch.

This spherical segment and ring approach lets one enclose more volume within a given length,  without making the assembly any heavier than a full hemispherical end.  This is how most solid rocket motor case closures are designed.  It is a well-proven solution.  The flatter the membrane,  the heavier the ring gets,  though.  It’s a trade-off.

Figure 3 – Full Hemispherical Ends Vs. Spherical Segment Ends With Rings

There are many possible reasons for wanting to use other shapes for one or both cylindrical pressure vessel end heads.  As long as membrane stress is insignificant (meaning very low pressure indeed!),  you can do that!  But as soon as the pressure (and the stresses it induces) become significant,  those other shapes rapidly become infeasible.  This is shown in Figure 4,  where the two spheroidal options are depicted,  along with elliptical and conical ends.  A flat end fails even worse than the elliptical,  from similar stresses that are just higher,  plus a sharp corner effect that locally greatly magnifies the local stresses even further,  right at the corner.

There is one positive benefit to a conical end,  if an axially-directed load must be carried from the cone tip into the cylinder.  This is an efficient load path for such a load.  But it is still a lousy pressure vessel choice!  It will require a lot of internal stiffeners to keep it from trying to “go round”.  Those are going to add significant weight,  there is no way around that problem!  You must trade off the axial load path advantage against the big weight gain incurred to make a conical shape a pressure vessel.

Figure 4 – Which End Shapes Work and Which Do Not,  and Why

It is a common belief that an elliptical shape is as good as the ring and spherical segment.  This is not true from a pressure vessel design standpoint,  as the figure shows.  The elliptical head will try to “go round”,  inducing severe bending stresses.  It is volumetrically efficient,  which is why many unpressurized railroad tank cars use elliptical heads on cylindrical bodies.  But these tank cars are not pressurized!  Their evident abundance is deceptive regarding the pressure vessel issues.

That same effect is why you want to use circular cylinders as your basic tank body for a pressure vessel,  not some elliptical (or other) cross section shape.  Those other shapes will try to “go round” upon pressurization,  leading to enormous bending stresses and very rapid failure.  If you must put pressurized storage within some oddly-shaped volume,  you must fill it with multiple small circular cylinders!  The non-circular cross section is not,  and will never be,  a successful pressure vessel design!  This is why air mattress floats are made the way that they are,  for example:  multiple cylinders,  connected at the ends so as to fill together all at once.

Addendum:  Exact Analysis

The exact analysis for right circular cylinders and spheres is given in Figure 5,  along with the geometries that allow these formulations to be made from very simple measurements.  

Figure 5 – Exact Formulations

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