Checking in on the wicked Swedes

Sweden hasn’t been in the news lately. Let’s see if the wicked never-masked never-locked-down Swedes are being punished by the mighty and just coronagod. First, “cases” (adj… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

130-hour pilot takes off for a round-the-world flight in a light airplane

“Pilot Attempting Around-the-World Flight Crosses Atlantic” (Flying): Zara Rutherford wants to be the youngest woman to fly around the world solo, as FlyZolo. She has completed the Atla… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Public health advice from the experts at McDonald’s

A coffee cup from a McDonald’s in Jupiter, Florida (August 15): (Since I am vaccinated and therefore don’t have to worry about COVID-19 attacking me via obesity, I enjoyed this coffee with an apple… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

The consequences of telling the public that simple cloth and paper face coverings are protective

On arrival in Florida, which coincided with a (presumably typical going forward) summer COVID-19 case peak, I noticed that the wearing of face masks was actually more common than in Maskachusetts. … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Maskachusetts tries to preserve the fat and financially unsuccessful with Regeneron

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that, unlike most new pharma (see Book review: Bad Pharma), Regeneron is actually helpful to humans trying to fight off coronavirus. Florida … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Coronascience: pack a plane to 100 percent capacity and then have everyone de-mask simultaneously

“18 US Orthodox Jewish girls kicked off a Delta-KLM flight following a COVID-19 protocols dispute, reports say” (Business Insider): Eighteen Orthodox Jewish girls were barred from board… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Will there be more post-war Afghan refugees than the entire pre-war population of Afghanistan?

We started the war in Afghanistan in 2001. The country’s total population then was 21.6 million (Google). The estimated 2021 population is 40 million (source). If roughly half of Afghans don’t like… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

All will be well in the garden; There will be growth in the spring! (Dr. Fauci as Chance the Gardener)

“Fauci: U.S. can get control of pandemic by spring if vaccinations rise” (Axios): NIAID director Anthony Fauci told CNN on Monday the U.S. could “start getting back to a degree of… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Pre-move discoveries of things that we owned…

A floppy disk in a filing cabinet… And then a 5.25″ floppy! (“Mini” because it isn’t 8″ in diameter) Two baby carriages (our youngest is almost 6) Inch-thick fol… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Could Donald Trump get asylum in Greece, where they’ve just finished a border wall?

Democrats in New York are continuing to pursue Donald Trump (see, for example, “Trump Organization Could Face Criminal Charges in D.A. Inquiry” (NYT, June 2021)). Where could our former… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How do I return 6 square miles of Plexiglas?

What if you rejected my harebrained idea, Build downdraft paint booths for K-12 schools?, and #FollowedScience by investing in acrylic barriers? “Those Anti-Covid Plastic Barriers Probably Do… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Can income from prostitution be factored into the alimony formula?

Someone earning $700,000 over a 6-year period seeks alimony from a spinal surgeon spouse earning substantially more over the same period ($3 million in one year alone). For purposes of calculating … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Florida implements my renal dialysis-inspired COVID care idea (sort of)

Since all that hospitals are generally doing for COVID-19 patients is providing supportive care (i.e., not treatment) and, in fact, patients can do just as well at home with an oxygen bottle (nytim… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Nation’s leading Shutdown Karens complain that schools were shut down

This is kind of fascinating… the New York Times, which was a principal cheerleader for lockdowns, now complains about American public schools having been shut for roughly one year… R… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Internment camps for the unvaccinated?

Nobody loved my previous modest proposal: Euthanize the unvaccinated? Here’s another idea for keeping the righteous safe from those who deny #Science… internment camps for the unvaccina… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Envy in the Home Depot parking lot

In prep for our move to the Florida Free State, we stopped at Home Depot in Waltham, Maskachusetts to pick up some packing supplies and a trash barrel (out of stock, of course, like everything else… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changed

I’m preparing to teach a class at Florida Atlantic University and one of my talking points will be “look at insurance rates if you want to understand the risk of data loss.” In ot… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Knocking it out of the park with high-end audio

I stopped by Goodwin’s High End, an audio store that has been going reasonably strong since 1977. Coronapanic has been great for business. Governors helpfully locked people into their homes w… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Islam is more powerful than Rainbow Flagism?

An Islamic army has beaten the U.S. military’s proxy force in Afghanistan. The embassy that flew a rainbow flag in June was overrun in August. The U.S. military is nominally secular, but its focus … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Incentives and Coronapanic

In response to Recycle Chinese and Soviet anti-landlord propaganda to bolster support for Rochelle Walensky’s rent moratorium order?, Mitch wrote: So getting vaccinated and slowing the spread incre… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How the Taliban can fund and run Afghanistan forever

“The Taliban Have Claimed Afghanistan’s Real Economic Prize” (NYT): How exactly the Taliban plan to keep all systems running, in one of the poorest countries of the world that depends o… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Archival properties of CD-ROMs after 20 years

As part of the move from Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State, I decided to dispose of all of the CD-ROMs that I had lying around in the garage and hangar. These contained backups of long-discar… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Never say never: Maskachusetts back in masks

Back in April, when we told friends and neighbors in Massachusetts about the decision to follow the reverse underground railroad to freedom (see Relocation to Florida for a family with school-age c… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Elizabeth Warren’s plane at Oshkosh

Parked along the main drag at EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) was a homebuilt airplane with Native American portraits airbrushed on the vertical stabilizer: As we walked by on Day 1 of the e… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Where does former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani go?

“Russia says Afghan president fled with cars and helicopter full of cash – RIA” (Reuters): Russia’s embassy in Kabul said on Monday that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fl… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Nostalgia for the old neighborhood

Discovered in the entryway of our old condo building in Cambridge: I.e., one of the local righteous had taken the trouble to write “Please do not lock bike on tree — damages the bark… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Annals of Government Computer Programming

On August 4, 2021, the Web site for renewing a Global Entry card tells me that I can’t start the renewal process until September 28, 2020: One for the textbook chapters on the merits of the I… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

What do we think of the American defeat in Afghanistan?

Our puppet government has folded and we now have to recognize that we achieved nothing after spending 20 years, 100,000+ Afghan lives, 3,000 American and European lives, and unknown $trillions (the… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Karenhood in Massachusetts measured quantitatively

After 40+ years of sitting at a computer and typing, my back is in no shape for packing and moving to the Florida Free State. A friend’s 16-year-old soccer star and some of his teammates have… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Where did India end up in the COVID Olympics?

Four months ago, India was the subject of media attention due to a wave of coronavirus infection. Nearly all of the journalists whipped up hysteria by citing absolute numbers of infections and/or d… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Reverse underground railroad journey complete

Our journey on the modern underground railroad (Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State) is complete as of yesterday! Billboards on I-95 were interesting. Excluding those for travel-related service… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

How can city vaccination requirements be enforced without RFID chips in residents’ necks?

Cities are casting out heretics (i.e., those who haven’t accepted a non-FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine). See “San Francisco to require vaccine proof at indoor venues” (AP): Worried… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Now that we have real leadership from the White House, are Americans better at fighting the COVID War?

We were informed by the media that a principal reason the U.S. was unequal to the task of fighting the COVID War was poor leadership from the White House. Donald Trump was anti-science and refused … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

German Emperor (BMW) has no clothes?

Our recent trip through the charred American economic landscape involved three rental cars and five Uber/Lyft rides. Nobody in Detroit wants to work, apparently, so it was tough to get rides. We en… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Wright Brothers on the science of COVID-19

From Greenfield Village, to which Henry Ford moved the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop: The sign: “Thousands of pages had been written on the so-called science of flying, but for the most… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Universal health care and vaccinations would have saved us from COVID-19

We’ve spent 1.5 years listening to people say that universal health care like in the UK and France would have prevented many COVID-19 deaths. We’ve spent 0.5 years listening to people say that univ… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Euthanize the unvaccinated?

“Unvaccinated Covid-19 patients are filling up hospitals, putting the care of others at risk, doctors say” (CNN): Hospitals are surging with unvaccinated patients infected with the Delt… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Why are masks required for public transit riders when nobody rides public transit?

If you want to be by yourself in the U.S., one sure way is to get on a public transit bus outside of rush hour. Pre-coronapanic occupancy of a city bus, including during rush hours, was about 6 (U.… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

What is the point of city- and state-level lockdowns in a borderless nation with mass gatherings?

I wasn’t invited to Barack Obama’s 700-person mass gathering and I haven’t followed the example set by the former President by hosting my own. However, I did recently attend my fi… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Our current economic situation highlights the disconnect between GDP and well-being?

The world economy is reasonably healthy, as measured by GDP. From the OECD: This is small comfort to the poor, of course, who were predictably devastated when rich countries shut down (see If All L… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

One-percenters irresponsibly gather in Sturgis starting today

“Despite delta, Sturgis Motorcycle Rally poised to ride again” (ABC): South Dakota’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which begins Friday and runs through Aug. 15, is expected to draw up… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Electric Aircraft at Oshkosh

Given the $billions pouring into electric aircraft via SPACs, etc., I expected to see huge progress compared to 2019. Instead, the airshow featured a functional Volocopter quietly doing maneuvers t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Free money isn’t free (Maskachusetts unemployment insurance rates going up for employers)

Suppose that you can convince an American worker to get off the couch, stop cashing checks from Joe Biden, and don a mask for the CDC-required 8 hours per day? If you’re an employer in Maskac… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Recycle Chinese and Soviet anti-landlord propaganda to bolster support for Rochelle Walensky’s rent moratorium order?

“CDC Issues Eviction Order in Areas of Substantial and High Transmission” (cdc.gov): CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky today signed an order determining the evictions of tenants for fa… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Non-Profit Ideas

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@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

No vaccine clinic at Oshkosh

The government had approximately 50 years of warning that hundreds of thousands of people would be gathering at the Oshkosh airport last week (608,000 through the gates (but the same person could b… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

Early Retirement: The Depressing Truth

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@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago

What does Andrew Cuomo do for his next job?

Andrew Cuomo was celebrated less than a year ago: “Andrew Cuomo To Receive International Emmy For ‘Masterful’ COVID-19 Briefings” (NPR, November 21, 2020). At the beginning … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 3 years ago