A favorite deposition excerpt

There are occasional moments of humor in the life of a software expert witness. Here’s part of a fact witness deposition transcript: (For the Google: Are you being compensated in any way in c… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Wear a mask and get a vaccine so that SARS-CoV-2 can attack you when you’re older and fatter

Vaccine and mask heresy seeps into the New York Times, via physician-readers commenting on “What We Know So Far About Waning Vaccine Effectiveness”: Ben: I am a physician. We need to lo… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Veterans Day book: Call Sign Kluso

For pilots who want to observe Veterans Day by learning about how the F-15 is flown in combat, let me recommend Call-Sign KLUSO: An American Fighter Pilot in Mr. Reagan’s Air Force by Rick Tollini.… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Prepare for a worldwide market crash

I had some cash sitting in a checking account due to selling our house in Maskachusetts and becoming a renter here in the Florida Free State (a relocation analysis). If this had happened a few year… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Let’s Go, Brandon

I wonder if this Instacart worker gets “Let’s Go, Brandon” messages multiple times per day. Text messages after ordering some canned pumpkin for Mindy the Crippler from the local … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

What’s going on at the Kyle Rittenhouse trial?

I have skimmed headlines regarding the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. This is not the kind of news that I follow closely, so I hope that readers will catch me up on everything important. Is it correct to … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Bidenflation will make it easier for rich people to avoid estate tax?

President Biden promised chicken soup for our envious souls in the form of taking money away from rich people. But the inflation associated with Big Government and Bigger Government is already maki… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Scientists on the gridiron

I love the imagery in this New York Times headline: “Scientists Fight a New Source of Vaccine Misinformation: Aaron Rodgers”. Here’s how it renders, for those who are not loyal su… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Does the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill give us some insight into the cost of immigration?

With the U.S. already having spent more, as a percentage of GDP, on infrastructure than Germany (previous post), how did we get to the point that we needed to spend another $1.2 trillion? (sounds l… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Harvard Art Museums shows us the alternate universe of non-profits

Here’s a request for money from the Harvard Art Museums, recently received in the mail: They lead with the fact that they were closed for 1.5 years. Surrounded by fully open (“essential… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Wisdom from Greta Thunberg at COP26

The wisest comment regarding the most recent mass in-person gathering by the elite? “Greta Thunberg tells protest that COP26 has been a ‘failure'” (BBC): Ms Thunberg said: “… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

What is the practical highway speed limit in Florida? (and in other states)

I caught an Uber from Jupiter to PBI the other morning. My Colombiana driver (I did not actually ask for this driver’s gender ID; should it be Colombianx?) blasted down the left lane of I-95 at 90 … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Locked-down, pregnant, and stoned is actually a great way to go through life…

…. in the opinion of American pregnant people. “Rates of Prenatal Cannabis Use Among Pregnant [People] Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic” (JAMA): Considered an essential bus… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Single image that best summarizes the American spirit?

Here’s an image that, I think, best summarizes the current American spirit. It is from September 7, 2021 at 5 pm and was taken on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University. The appare… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Google Pixel 6 Pro versus iPhone 13 Pro Max camera quality

Google spec’d a bigger sensor than what Apple uses in the latest iPhones and, therefore, should have been able to crush Apple in image quality. DxOMark says otherwise. In lab conditions, the … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Stoking coronapanic is a good way to destroy traditional religion?

The centuries-old struggle of humanism versus traditional religion hasn’t resulted in total victory for humanism, even in thoroughly debauched Western societies. Until March 2020, for example… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

A 1958 UNIVAC airline reservation system

I had thought that SABRE, a joint development of IBM and American Airlines, was the first computerized airline reservation system, going live in 1960. However, “The Univac Air Lines Reservati… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How did Zillow become the world’s dumbest buyer of real estate?

I used to pride myself on being the world’s dumbest buyer of real estate. I like to overpay for a house, overpay for renovations, contract for non-existent products, fail to account for the r… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Is 5G a total fraud?

Mobile phone service back in Maskachusetts was generally terrible, whether the iPhone 12 Pro Max indicated “LTE” or “5G” up at the top right. I attributed this to hills gene… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Urban/rural divide in Virginia Gubernatorial election

Readers will recall that one of my pet themes here is the diverging interests of urban/suburban Americans who get richer when government gets bigger and rural Americans for whom a bigger government… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How’s the Climate Change summit in Glasgow going?

For nearly two years, the global elite have been telling the peasantry not to gather across households for fear of spreading deadly SARS-CoV-2. The global elite have closed borders as well (except … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How was Karen’s Halloween party?

How did everyone enjoy Halloween? In our Jupiter, Florida neighborhood, not a single mask was observed (other than costume masks). Substantial gatherings were observed in the next neighborhood over… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Leasing a car a bad idea now that nobody in the U.S. wants to work?

I used to love the idea of leasing a car. Interest rates were almost zero. Technological improvements seemed like they had the potential to devalue used cars suddenly, e.g., if self-driving cars ac… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Why are there so many Americans still working?

Happy Halloween! It has felt like Halloween for the past 20 months or so, with ordinary Americans dressing us as surgeons or asbestos remediators in masks. I’ve recently had occasion to take … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

The decline of China, explained by population boom

The Fall and Rise of China, a course by Richard Baum (late professor at UCLA), asks how it was possible for an empire that had been so successful for 1,000 years to fall apart in about 100 years. T… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Philip Roth biography: faith in psychotherapy

I checked Philip Roth: The Biography out of the local branch of the Palm Beach County Library. One fascinating aspect is the faith that Americans had in psychotherapy, especially Freudian psychoana… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Is Elon Musk one of the bigger winners from inflation?

Elon Musk gets paid more if Tesla’s market capitalization, revenue, and profit (using the fraudulent EBITDA number) rise, but the goals seem to be stated in nominal dollars, not real (inflati… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Should governments hire and pay workers to check vaccine papers outside restaurants?

“In-N-Out closes in San Francisco over refusal to enforce vaccine mandate” (Guardian, 10/20): In-N-Out burger has become the first restaurant in San Francisco to be temporarily closed f… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

German and Swiss restaurants refuse to accept CDC cards as proof of vaccination

I was chatting with a pilot friend who returned to his native Germany recently and reported that he’d been unable to get into restaurants. “They refused to accept my CDC card as proof o… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Biden and the Democrats try a Great Leap Forward?

The Fall and Rise of China, a course by Richard Baum (late professor at UCLA), has an interesting section on the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Essentially the Chinese economy didn’t produce… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Inflation would be 10 percent per year if house prices were included

Ever wonder what the inflation statistic would be if it included some of the big purchases that people actually make, e.g., houses? A Wall Street economist, Joe Carson, recently wrote a piece on th… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Shut down Facebook for public health reasons?

Facebook has been in the news lately due to testimony at the Senate by Frances Haugen (imagine how much better off the company would be if they’d never hired him/her/zir/them!). From “H… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Art Institute of Chicago reenacts Glengarry Glen Ross

“Art Institute of Chicago Ends a Docent Program, and Sets Off a Backlash” (NYT): Museum officials decided that one area in need of an overhaul was its 60-year-old program of volunteer e… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

My most recent Obama moment

An acquaintance who is a Hilton Platinum member was able to give an unworthy person Hilton Gold status and she selected me. At the time, I said “Now I know how Barack Obama felt when he was a… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Florida now has the lowest COVID-19 risk of all mainland U.S. states

CovidActNow, a Web site for Shutdown Karens (‘We support data- and science-backed policies and decision-making’), starts with a map of “Vaccination progress” by state: The p… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Tesla store as installation art

From the imaginatively named The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the Tesla store: Answers the question, “What if you asked an artist to create a car dealer installation for China… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Social justice and vaccination crusaders meet IEEE floating point arithmetic (Facebook)

For several years I’ve been a member of “Airplanes for Sale” on Facebook. The software at Facebook apparently thinks that an airplane is a car and therefore tries to display the m… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

One bad thing about Florida: fences around the schools and their athletic fields

Most comparisons of Florida to our former home in Maskachusetts are positive. The infrastructure here is new, shiny, and smooth. The landscaping in higher income parts of Florida is beautiful (palm… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Bad news for children, but good news for schools in Maskachusetts

I received a letter from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Jeffrey Riley, the Commissioner, shared some bad news for the children whom the state putatively serves.… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

New England versus Florida (“wear a mask at your discretion”)

The police in New England will drive out to hassle kids playing soccer outdoors and arrest the unmasked for disorderly conduct (example). What about their counterparts in the Florida Free State? I … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

The former Soviet explains his decision to vaccinate his children

An immigrant friend has slender athletic children in high school. Their statistical risk from COVID-19 is negligible, possibly smaller than the risk of being injured or dying in a car accident on t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Movie review: Outbreak

I don’t know how I missed Outbreak during the first 18 months of 14 days to flatten the curve, but the 1995 movie is fun to watch to see what they got right. The virus in the movie is Ebola, … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Does raging inflation prove or disprove Modern Monetary Theory?

Modern Monetary Theory is sometimes cartoonishly summarized as “government can borrow and print unlimited money without negative consequences so long as it issues debt in its own (printable) … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

The new religion on display in Cambridge, Maskachusetts

Our new religion, in which God is replaced (“In Fauci We Trust”): Source: A Deplorable immigrant friend (Joe Biden couldn’t bundle him onto one of the Haitian deportation flights,… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

MIT’s president weighs in on the shunned heretic

MIT’s President weighs in on the situation previously covered here in Corpus Juris Canonici for academic cancellations (MIT). A follower of the Climate Change Alarmism religion held a heretic… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

$112/month to live in a brand-new house in Bowie, Maryland

As part of our move to the Florida Free State, I had Everpresent scan a photo album that my mom made in 1966 (she didn’t use acid-free paper so there was no practical way to preserve it other… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

If Zillow is right about inflation, is everyone who rents stupid?

The Zillow August 2021-August 22 forecast: Zillow expects home values to grow 11.7% between August 2021 and August 2022, and to end 2021 up 19.9% from December 2020. The September 2021-Sep 22 forec… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Who watched the Dave Chappelle special on Netflix?

I didn’t know who Dave Chappelle was, but the protests against his latest show made me curious. See “Netflix Loses Its Glow as Critics Target Chappelle Special” (NYT), for example… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago