Some friends who are Democrats have been obsessively and gleefully following the New York trial of Donald Trump. When I asked them what they’ve learned, however, they’re unable to offer anything beyond what was already fairly alleged prior to the trial, i.e., an American got paid … | Continue reading
Our town’s Memorial Day ceremony is about to begin (live stream): The speaker is Brian Mast, a veteran who represents us in Congress and who has been at odds with the Biden administration regarding U.S. support for continued Hamas rule in Gaza. I arranged a brick for my father, w … | Continue reading
I was delighted that the brief trip from the hotel to the airport included a view of the following car: Not sure if I love the reference to Talladega Nights or “I Identify as a Problem” more. A powerful politician directed a river of federal tax dollars into the KSME airport back … | Continue reading
From our President: George Floyd should be alive. He deserved so much more. Today, I join all those who loved him and all those touched by the civil rights movement he inspired in remembering the tragedy and injustice of his death. He changed the world. Now, let's act in his memo … | Continue reading
We didn’t start quite as early as planned in Abilene, but we managed to crank shortly after 8:00 am: We flew over the Promised Land of free wind energy and then straight over the top of DFW: You might think that it is rude to fly directly over one of the world’s busiest airports. … | Continue reading
Discouraged by reports of low clouds at various points along Interstate 10 and Interstate 20, but encouraged by forecasts of improving conditions, we launched from El Paso (KELP) to Van Horn, Texas (KVHN). The airport was deserted, but we managed to get the FBO guy on his cell ph … | Continue reading
In Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 3 (They Built the Wall in Texas) we saw that man proposes and God disposes with respect to flying weather. Unable to proceed over the next batch of mountains, we enjoyed El Paso, Texas for about 26 hours. Downtown El Paso seem … | Continue reading
“Inflation Moderated Slightly in April, Offering Some Relief for Consumers” (NYT, May 15): The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.4 percent in April from a year earlier, down from 3.5 percent in March, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. The “core” index — which strips out volati … | Continue reading
Loyal readers know that I’m a huge fan of the human ability to hold beliefs that are apparent logical contradictions. Here’s an interesting collection from one Tweet exploring the interior of Joe Biden’s mind: The basic mental disease present in all Biden foreign policy is the bi … | Continue reading
I’m a huge fan of Alexander Payne (not just because my cousin produced About Schmidt). If you’re not familiar with his work, try Election, Sideways, and The Descendants. The Holdovers (streaming on Amazon Prime) is Payne’s latest and features a teacher who loves giving bad grades … | Continue reading
All previous tools that were hyped as making programmers more productive had no effect or a positive effect on the demand for computer programmers. I would have thought that we would be in a golden age for young computer nerds as every company on the planet seeks to “add AI”, e.g … | Continue reading
“Pakistan’s Campaign To Expel Millions Of Afghan Refugees Enters Second Phase” (Radio Free Europe, March 20, 2024): Pakistan is set to force some 850,000 documented Afghan refugees back to their country next month if they don’t leave voluntarily. Islamabad is calling this the sec … | Continue reading
From $55,000/year (tuition alone) Boston University Academy, a senior thesis project for 2024: To make sure that the scholar won’t be identifiable if the academic discipline of Comparative Victimhood ever wanes in intellectual prestige, I have removed his/her/zir/their name from … | Continue reading
Israel has given everyone weeks of warning about an upcoming battle in Rafah. Here’s my dumbest question of the week: Why would there be anyone left to fight the IDF in Rafah? After weeks of warnings, why haven’t fighters from the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Pal … | Continue reading
Here’s a question at the intersection of marketing and electronics: who is buying Intel CPUs right now after Intel has told the world that they will render the current socket, and therefore all current motherboards, obsolete before the end of 2024? “Intel’s next-gen desktop CPUs … | Continue reading
Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of what used to be called “gay” or “same-sex” marriage here in the U.S., in which Maskachusetts led the way (modern-style opposite-sex marriage, in which divorce litigation may ensue, seems to go back about 4,300 years to Mesopotamia). Let’ … | Continue reading
Joe Biden, 2023 (whitehouse.gov): You know, I’ve seen firsthand what the reports made clear: the devastating toll of climate change and its existential threat to all of us. And it is the ultimate threat to humanity: climate change. “Biden to Quadruple Tariffs on Chinese EVs” (Wal … | Continue reading
Average American IQ is falling (The Hill; note that this cannot be due to a massive increase in low-skill immigration from countries with a low average IQ because #Science proves that IQ is not heritable). Those who get jobs doing pool maintenance, a process that involves some ch … | Continue reading
“Pro-Palestinian protesters reach agreement with Harvard University to end encampment” (CNN): A group of pro-Palestinian protesters maintaining an encampment at Harvard University have reached an agreement with the university and will end their encampment, the group said in a new … | Continue reading
I’ve been talking to Canadian and American friends after this latest round of college admissions and they have one message in common: Don’t let kids take honors and AP classes in high school. College admissions these days are mostly about GPA, which means that a B in AP physics i … | Continue reading
Israelis and Jews were being attacked in Europe. Latinx protesters were explaining that Zionism was a variant of National Socialism (Nazi), decrying a “Palestinian holocaust”, supporting the liberation of Palestine, and chanting “Death to the Jews”… in 1982: (As part of helping m … | Continue reading
Our story picks up again on an April Saturday morning in Tucson. When checked the previous night, the forecast weather beyond El Paso was a combination of ugly and iffy. Despite the weather forecast and having flown 5 hours (collective-cracked time, so closer to 6 hours of rotor- … | Continue reading
Eden Golan in Sweden (note the big wheel): Another video of the audience in Malmö Arena booing Eden Golan and Israel as she performed in the Eurovision final 30 minutes ago. Some where shouting “Palestine” and “Genocide” She didn’t lose composure for a second 🇸🇪&# … | Continue reading
On a recent American Airlines flight from PBI to DFW, the flight attendants played a prerecorded announcement to the Followers of Science: “If you’re wearing a face covering, please remove your face covering before putting on an oxygen mask.” Other than learning what the world’s … | Continue reading
A follow-up to Talking with a pro-Hamas college student… The righteous at MIT have been demanding that the university cut any and all research ties with universities inside the Zionist entity. The demand has been backed up with demonstrations, including an encampment. From May 6: … | Continue reading
Follow-up to Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 1… We actually did this before landing in Tucson and enjoying Sonoran hot dogs at “EGC”… an orbit of Davis–Monthan Air Force Base. The military wasn’t doing any flying at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon, so I figured that … | Continue reading
A friend’s sister recently died of cancer at age 62 (despite Joe Biden’s pledge to eliminate cancer). He had previously been sued by the mother of the people who used to be his children. As is conventional in Maskachusetts, she was able to obtain a court order that her child supp … | Continue reading
As previously noted, the Miami F1 event featured a race in which drivers who weren’t as good as the F1 drivers were nonetheless featured due to a personal characteristic (gender ID). How about a series in which a different personal characteristic is used to restrict who may compe … | Continue reading
Formula 1 is an all-day three-day event. Consequently, a seat in a grandstand will become more like a prison after a while, unlike if you were attending a 2-hour game. In Las Vegas (see Nine minutes of Formula 1 glory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix) our ticket gave us access only to … | Continue reading
As we wait for someone to explain how the Dali lost power from its 55,000 hp (or 0!) German diesel engine, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I (2023) may be worth a read. In addition to a biography of the man who created th … | Continue reading
All of my attempts at humor fall flat, as a general rule. In January, for example, I jokingly asked a friend who had visited family in Madrid over Christmas if he’d had to navigate around pro-Hamas protests. He took it as a straight question and gave me a detailed straight answer … | Continue reading
Nutrition is critical for any coast-to-coast helicopter flight. I loaded up on dim sum at Din Tai Fung in a Costa Mesa mall, then paid only $13 for a few strawberries at Hannam Chain in our inflation-free economy. The folks who run the supermarket are Korean and had neglected to … | Continue reading
A few photos from a newish $500/night Marriott hotel in Newport Beach, California: Note the circular waterfall in the middle of the driveway. One of the more interesting features is a massive video screen above the bar at the end of the pool: Why can’t we have this in every room … | Continue reading
Back in 2020, a former UK central banker raging post-coronapanic inflation followed by 3-4 percent annual inflation rates starting at the end of 2022 and continuing for decades (see Inflation prediction to check in 2028). Here’s the official chart, mostly fraud because it doesn’t … | Continue reading
The next total eclipse that will reach a significant number of Americans is headed straight for Jupiter, Florida! It will last for a remarkable 6 minutes. From timeanddate: I’m not sure why they say that the average cloud cover is 64 percent. I would have guessed that 1:30 pm in … | Continue reading
Let’s consider how Joe Biden’s proposed new federal long-term capital gains tax rate of 44.6 percent would work without the inflation adjustment that other inflation-plagued economies have. We start with a California-based investor who purchased General Electric stock for $100/sh … | Continue reading
The U.S. got Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican’s embassy in Panama City by playing Van Halen 24/7. I wonder if administrators at elite universities could clear their “river to the sea” encampments of Hamas/Hezbollah/UNRWA/Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporters via the magic of Tayl … | Continue reading
The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (Susan Casey) is an interesting book about privatized and recreationalized (is that a word? ) deep submarine excursions. The book seems to have been written before the Titan imploded near the Titanic (June 2023) and then publish … | Continue reading
the actual encampment at Columbia—i'm here after teaching my final class of the semester—is downright tranquil, impossibly sweet. there is a "nut zone" for the safety of kids with allergies. — Vinson Cunningham (@vcunningham) April 25, 2024 The robust young activists of USC can b … | Continue reading
I recently finished The MANIAC, a concise novelized biography of John Von Neumann bizarrely bolted onto a history of computer programs that dominate chess and go. Somehow the combination works! What I hadn’t realized was how quickly programs that play chess and go can evolve when … | Continue reading
I recognize that Trans Day of Visibility was Easter Sunday, ending Bisexual Health Awareness Month, and that today is Lesbian Visibility Day (we’ve moved past International Asexuality Day, National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Day of Silence, National Transgender HIV Testing Day … | Continue reading
New York Times, today: The U.S. economy remained resilient early this year, with a strong job market fueling robust consumer spending. The trouble is that inflation was resilient, too. Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, increased at a 1.6 percent annual rate in the f … | Continue reading
An aviation connection owns 250 apartments in the middle of the country. I asked him whether he’d lost a lot of money during coronapanic when nobody had to pay rent and he was barred by order of the CDC from evicting anyone. “No,” he said. “Nearly all of my tenants kept paying an … | Continue reading
An addendum to Harvard’s border wall to exclude the undocumented… Although the signs on the border wall explicitly say that no tents are allowed, it appears that a tented pro-Hamas demonstration is thriving nonetheless. View from outside the border wall: Outside of the Yard, the … | Continue reading
Harvard’s best and brightest minds have proved Scientifically that border walls don’t work (see this 2019 Harvard Gazette story, for example, and “Laurence Tribe sues Trump over border wall” (MSNBC coverage of the Harvard Law School prof’s fight to keep the border open)). This we … | Continue reading
Iran launched 120 ballistic missiles at the Zionist entity earlier this month (Wikipedia) and most of them were shot down. America’s expert class ridiculed Ronald Reagan for his credulous belief that ballistic missiles could be intercepted either in space or on their way down to … | Continue reading
We regularly read about foreigners doing heroic deeds on behalf of Palestinians seeking to liberate Al-Quds, destroy the Zionist entity, and establish a river-to-the-sea nation. Most dramatically, we have learned about the deaths of six foreigners working for World Central Kitche … | Continue reading
Who wants to meet at the Miami F1 race, sort of, on Saturday, May 5? This is one day before the “big race” that rich people are desperate to see. There are a lot of events throughout the day, including a spring race, the F1 Academy (from which 73 genders recognized by Science are … | Continue reading