We were told by the Biden-Harris administration and their media allies that reducing undocumented immigration would require PhDs in Migration Science, $118 billion in new laws and funding from Congress, and decades of hard work by properly credentialed people. We also needed a pa … | Continue reading
I stopped going to movies when Maskachusetts made it illegal and, apparently, I haven’t resumed the habit because, except for the Bob Dylan bio, none of the movies that won Oscars last night are ones that I had heard of, much less seen. I thus appeal to readers to say which of th … | Continue reading
The Iditarod starts at 3 pm Eastern today. As has happened 3 times before (2003, 2015, and 2017), the sled dog race begins in Fairbanks rather than near Anchorage. This is due to a lack of snow. As we all get set up to watch the puppies run, here are some tips on traveling to Fai … | Continue reading
I’m listening to The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen (“One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023”). The author was born in 1963, just as I was. Unlike me, he did not drop out of high school but, by contrast, was … | Continue reading
Thanks to Alaska Airlines’s focus on DEI rather than on starting and/or completing flights, I had a multi-hour opportunity to inspect the gates and the art collection at FLL. As we look back with nostalgia on Black History Month, here’s a Southwest gate: Remember that 15 pieces o … | Continue reading
From state-sponsored NPR: An organization is calling for a national boycott in the form of an “economic blackout” on Friday, urging Americans not to shop for 24 hours. This movement, spearheaded by The People’s Union USA, a grassroots group, follows the rollback of diversity, equ … | Continue reading
Closing out February with a reminder that this month is host to Valentine’s Day…. From our local “5th Grade Gifted Science Teacher” (Florida state law requires that public school systems offer gifted education beginning in 2nd grade): I am writing to all parents to remind you tha … | Continue reading
Leftover Inflation? (November 2024): I wonder if there is a significant “leftover inflation” yet to come, though, from companies and people who neglected to raise prices or who were locked into long-term agreements during the core years of Bidenflation. Our electrician, a solo pr … | Continue reading
Here’s the Alaska Airlines July 2024 DEI update: Their commitments didn’t include committing to flying to Seattle from FLL on February 20, 2025 at 7:00 am. I got a text message from them about cancellation just as I was walking up to the gate shortly before 6:00 am. Note that the … | Continue reading
A heart-wrenching story from the NYT, “Government Workers Who Have Lost Their Jobs Worry About Their Housing”: After losing his job at the U.S. Forest Service, Cameron McKenzie was worried about finding a new job. But first, he had a more immediate concern: How was he going to pa … | Continue reading
Wokipedia says that the Gulf of Mexico/America was referred to at some point by at least some people as the Golfo de Florida. Here’s the cited source with, in turn, some of its citations: Here’s the section that seems to be the basis for Wikipedia’s “other explorers”: This seems … | Continue reading
Our mole inside Queers-for-Palestine Brown University signed up for Linear Algebra and was sentenced to read “Mathematical Microaggressions” by a past president of the Mathematical Association of America, Francis Edward Su. He/she/ze/they starts off by relating his/her/zir/their … | Continue reading
My mother died on January 6, 2025 (obit). She’s still eligible to vote in New Jersey and some other states, I think, so it makes sense that a new Proud Democrat card arrived in the mail this month: I can’t figure out why the righteous are limited to 3 outrage choices in each cate … | Continue reading
The Villages is very likely the world’s most active “active retirement” community in the world. A friend retired in his 50s (the magic of a U.S. military pension supplemented by work for and retirement package from a U.S. military contractor) to The Villages and showed me around … | Continue reading
One of the casualties of our move to Florida was a knob that locks down the quick-release plate on my old Arca-Swiss B1 ball head ($350 in pre-Biden dollars! Adjusted for inflation back to 1995, that’s equivalent to 740 Bidies today). To my delight, I learned that Arca Swiss stil … | Continue reading
This is a follow-up to Landing a CRJ in Toronto. Much has been written about Endeavor’s passion for diversity, inclusion, and equity (consistent with parent company Delta’s passion for DEI) so it seems fair to say that any landing by Endeavor is a “DEI landing”. Viewed in isolati … | Continue reading
Other than riling up Democrats into fits of hysteria, has the Trump-Vance administration accomplished anything so far? Or have all of their initiatives been thwarted by judges? Here’s one where a judge forced the CDC to stick with its old web site (NYT): A federal judge has order … | Continue reading
Kanye West was dumped into a memory hole due to his unwise exercise of First Amendment rights. Before he was purged I saved some favorites from Ye’s X account? (Below are screen shots for preservation.) For our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Palm Beach County with May … | Continue reading
From the front page of the New York Times, February 5, 2025: The path to “the best sex” starts at the local family court, promises the front page. Does the article deliver? In 2019, I divorced, at age 46, and went on to have more and better sex than I ever would have thought poss … | Continue reading
I wrote about my experience landing a Canadair Regional Jet in Toronto (July 2013): On week after I completed IOE I was assigned to fly with a young recently upgraded captain to Toronto. I had about 75 hours of experience at this point during one month of flying the CRJ. The Towe … | Continue reading
I recently took a refresher class that is required to maintain my privileges as an FAA-certificated flight instructor. I filled out the multiple-guess quiz and then fed the questions to ChatGPT, which was in 100 percent agreement with me and both of us were in 100 percent agreeme … | Continue reading
For those who didn’t feel sufficient love from the first Valentine’s Day post, let’s look at what it takes to be a successful husband in progressive urban America. “How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” (New York Times, February 4, 2025, by Daniel Oppenheimer). Ma … | Continue reading
I found my mom’s Melrose High School Class of 1951 25th reunion newsletter and scanned it. The high school today is ranked #1,568 in the nation (among public high schools) and #60 in Maskachusetts. My favorite excerpt from what is presumably a 1976 document is “then I became a ba … | Continue reading
From bestcolleges.com: President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 14 to withhold federal funding from schools — including public colleges and universities — requiring COVID-19 vaccines for attendance. The article then provides a partial list of the righteous: I verifie … | Continue reading
A hedge fund manager pointed out “Human Reproduction as Prisoner’s Dilemma; The decline of marriage in the West.” (Aporia, January 21, 2025): [the effort required to raise a child to adulthood] makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner’s dilemma. Both father and mother can … | Continue reading
I accepted the offer of AI assistance from the WordPress admin page here. Here are some of the insights it had on a recent post… A Silicon Valley AI isn’t familiar with a favorite drug of Silicon Valley? A San Francisco Bay Area AI isn’t familiar with the San Francisco Bay Area? … | Continue reading
“Inflation Heated Up in January, Freezing the Fed” (Wall Street Journal, today): Consumer prices rose 3%, as fight against inflation continues to face headwinds So prices are going up 0.247 percent per month, the rate that compounds to 3 percent after 12 cycles? Consumer prices r … | Continue reading
As part of my mother’s moving from independent living to assisted living (February 2024) and then onward from assisted living into the next realm (January 2025) we have needed some assistance from a local moving company. The February 2024 quote: “Charge is 2men $150 per hour 3h m … | Continue reading
“As Trump Attacks Diversity, a Racist Undercurrent Surfaces” (New York Times, February 3, 2025): “His attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion aren’t about a particular program or some acronym — they’re just a sanitized substitute for the racist comments that can no longer be s … | Continue reading
One aspect of the DCA Black Hawk-CRJ tragedy that is notable to a civilian pilot is the low reported number of hours of both the pilot and instructor on board, i.e., 500 and 1,000. A civilian helicopter pilot won’t get anywhere near a turbine-powered helicopter until beyond the 1 … | Continue reading
A Berkeley-based Effective Altruist invested in Sam Bankman-Fried‘s FTX after seeing a promotion for it by Tom Brady. He/she/ze/they becomes angry and lets loose an 15′ alligator inside Brady’s Miami mansion. Brady, unfortunately, cannot be extracted from the beast’s stomach in t … | Continue reading
A follow-up to What I learned about aircraft paint at Oshkosh… Let’s start at the Okeechobee, Florida airport (KOBE): This Skyhawk-with-Hawk might be the way to put a golden retriever on the side of a Cirrus (via wrap): Back in Stuart, Florida (KSUA), a subtle design that whisper … | Continue reading
Folks are upset that Trump and DOGE may shut down USAID and cut U.S. foreign aid spending (state-sponsored NPR). This is consistent with a classic 2005 interview “For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!”. Quotes below, but not in quote style for improved readability (my highlights i … | Continue reading
I recently visited friends who own 80 acres in Napa County, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. The wife describes herself as a “political moderate” and the husband as “apolitical”. Here’s a sticker on the front door: Once inside, hanging on the wall: The local gourmet establishm … | Continue reading
Back around 1990, a federal government economist whom we knew decided that he wanted to live overseas at taxpayer expense. He applied for and obtained a job as USAID, currently in the news as a target for Elon Musk’s Efficiency Nazis (TM). USAID paid our hero for about 6 months t … | Continue reading
The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress scores are out and American public school students are doing worse than ever. “American Children’s Reading Skills Reach New Lows” (NYT): In the latest release of federal test scores, educators had hoped to see widespread reco … | Continue reading
A recent trip to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)…. They’ve gone big into Yayoi Kusama, still productive and creative at age 95. Both of these works are from 2023! (Perhaps she had some help with the physical construction.) The “Get in the Game” exhibit appears to be … | Continue reading
Honda is in talks to merge with or purchase Nissan. I can’t figure out the rationale. In the old days maybe you’d say that it takes a long time to build factories, establish dealer networks, etc. and, therefore, Nissan’s assets might be valuable. But Tesla and BYD started from no … | Continue reading
Today is the 80th anniversary of the Yalta Conference, in which the UK, US, and Soviet Union agreed on plans to force German civilians to work as slaves for years after the war. Clearing minefields was a popular assignment (popular with the assigners, that is) and also agricultur … | Continue reading
“The parents who dared to question Newton’s educational equity experiments” (Boston Globe): The three mothers had always voted Democrat. One had a Bernie Sanders mug on her desk. They worked in helping fields — international aid, mental health, yoga instruction. They volunteered … | Continue reading
Donald Trump has demanded that Canada stop sending us fentanyl and undocumented migrants. (why wouldn’t Canada try to keep at least all of the migrants for itself since we are informed that low-skill migrants make any country richer?) Canada refused to try to do this so Trump has … | Continue reading
One tends to think of government as slow-moving, but President Trump’s order to stop preaching the rainbow flag religion seems to have been implemented at near-Silicon Valley speed. As of Friday evening, all of the CDC pages that recognized gender as distinct from sex seem to hav … | Continue reading
LLMs don’t have gender IDs as far as I know and, therefore, the LLM equivalent of gender dysphoria would be an LLM imagining that it identifies as some other LLM. Has this ever happened? From techradar.com: As you can see, after trying to discern if I was talking about Gemini AI … | Continue reading
More than 36 acres of Pacific Palisades were burned, which is a tragedy, of course, but also an opportunity for California’s central planners. We are informed that California is suffering from a housing crisis, an affordable housing crisis, a crisis of unhoused people, and a cris … | Continue reading
I’m so old that I mail out hardcopy Christmas/New Year’s/Kwanzaa cards. Quite a few friends hadn’t received them by New Year’s, which seemed odd because I’d put nearly all into a mailbox before Christmas. One friend sent me a picture of the card that he received in Berkeley, Cali … | Continue reading
Friends have been asking me about this evening’s crash between a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter and a Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) that was on final approach to DCA (Reagan National). It’s a terrible tragedy, of course, and has led to speculation on X regarding terrorism. A r … | Continue reading
I was concerned that links from this blog to X posts by President Biden and trailblazing VP Kamala Harris would be broken by the transition to dictatorship. Yet it seems that my fears were unfounded. In Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting? I included a tweet fro … | Continue reading
My mom had a first-rate art history education, was an accomplished artist herself, and had a fine eye for talented work by others. How did the art that she collected do as an investment? One example is “Elijah Ascending to Heaven” by “Shalom of Safed” (Shalom Moskovitz) in 1973. … | Continue reading