One staple of American elite media is the scary headline regarding a potential fall in population. Without open borders and a warm welcome for migrants, the story will read, U.S. population will ac… | Continue reading
From NPR: Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ended her bid for the presidency on Thursday, acknowledging her place as the last major female candidate in the race “and all those little girls … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, I met a friend in the paper products aisle at Costco. She said “This place has been stripped barer than a line of actresses auditioning for a role with Miramax.” We l… | Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren is gone, much to the dismay of my Facebook friends, especially degreed women who don’t work. Before Warren dropped out, one of my friends on Facebook said “More of this… | Continue reading
The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue, talks about places that were spared from most of the waves of plague that swept through… | Continue reading
Super Tuesday is mostly over. Here in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren seems to be on track to place third (NPR). That’s a dismal performance considering that she is the only candidate with a … | Continue reading
Voters are choosing today among the remaining Democrats running for President. What is the choice on what many would consider to be the biggest issue and one with the most long-term impact: low-ski… | Continue reading
Some photos from the November 2019 trip to Shanghai… Folks there love our Democrat-turned-Republican President so much that they named a car after him. The Trumpchi: Pure Democrats aren’… | Continue reading
My Facebook friends love to post about the evils of states requiring ID to vote. This will, in their view, disenfranchise black voters because black Americans are not competent to obtain ID (unclea… | Continue reading
From a Valentine’s Day talk by Jeffrey Hoffman, an astronaut-turned-professor who is now part of an effort to mine oxygen out of the Martian atmosphere…. If the MOXIE system works and B… | Continue reading
If you’re interested in instrument flying, I’m giving a talk on Wednesday (March 4) at 7 pm, MIT Room 32-255. The topic is IFR and also planning for trips over the mountains, over water… | Continue reading
From a forthcoming chapter in Medical School 2020: “I don’t think people realize what is coming. The virus is reported to have almost a 20 percent infection rate. On the cruise ship, on… | Continue reading
This is the month when non-Asians find out if they got into Harvard College. What happens when the world’s smartest people pour themselves some water by opening a tap and letting gravity fill… | Continue reading
Happy South Carolina Primary Day! Who wants to predict the outcome? (Separately, how is it that these folks vote on a Saturday? If that makes sense, why don’t all of the states do it? If it d… | Continue reading
… before the first concrete has been poured. Yeoman suburbanites west of Boston voted overwhelming to build themselves the most expensive, on a per-student basis, school ever constructed in t… | Continue reading
When at Universal Orlando… see a movie! My Irish friend and I saw Knives Out, in which Daniel Craig speaks in a Southern accent that no Southerner since the 19th century (or ever?) has used. … | Continue reading
While flying between the Bahamas and Florida at 8,000′, we were mostly outside of gliding range from land. However, we were often within gliding range of a ship (but we wouldn’t have kn… | Continue reading
“Local emergency declared in San Francisco amid coronavirus concerns”: It is just another day in utopia when driving one’s new Tesla past poor people living in tents on the sidewalk. It is an emerg… | Continue reading
I recently listened to “Story of Human Language”, a 36-lecture course by John McWhorter, a professor at Columbia. Of the world’s 6,000 extant languages, roughly 20 have a signific… | Continue reading
Landing page for a recent Facebook alert: Assuming that I am not special, why does Facebook the Company care whether or not we all vote? (as it happens, the ballot in our suburb is mostly taken up … | Continue reading
I saw from the headlines that the Harvey Weinstein trial in New York is over (but he still has one or more to go in California?). I hadn’t followed the case because the judge had already said… | Continue reading
“Friends are like seashells.” Because they look good at first but start to smell a few days after you get them home? Conch salad at the Fish Fry: Also some drink options and some popular after-drin… | Continue reading
The movie Hidden Figures is out in theaters. We’re planning on going to the theater as soon as our presence is not required in the house every single evening, i.e., in 2033. I looked at the b… | Continue reading
From this morning, in Miami Beach: Rolls Royce, Rolls Royce, Range Rover, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Range Rover. #SickWithEnvy | Continue reading
Sick of the cold weather yet? On a no-plans-in-advance island-hopping trip around the Bahamas everyone we asked for a hotel recommendation in Nassau said “Baha Mar”. The good folks at t… | Continue reading
Top of my Gmail, day after the New Hampshire primary: How do folks think the Nevada caucuses will shake out today? Are there enough government workers and people on the traditional welfare system i… | Continue reading
A Facebook friend in Dallas pointed out that it isn’t reasonable to complain that Michael Bloomberg is trying to buy the election. In his view, so are the other [tax-more-and-spend-more] Demo… | Continue reading
American Factory won the most recent Oscar for Best Documentary. You’re already paying for it so you might as well watch it on Netflix! The level of access and candor is comparable to what yo… | Continue reading
“How to Make Your Marriage Gayer: Same-sex spouses feel more satisfied with their partners than heterosexual ones. What’s the secret?” (NYT): Women in different-sex marriages reported t… | Continue reading
I’m listening right now to “The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague” by Dorsey Armstrong, a professor at Purdue. Unfortunately, due to coronavirus, this is a ti… | Continue reading
Lloyd Blankfein, who amassed a fortune of more than $1 billion while working at Goldman Sachs, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton, and therefore justice, back in 2016 (Business Insider). It made se… | Continue reading
… leaving behind the bad Mexicans to run their own government in Mexico. “Trump Got His Wish. Mexico Is Now the Wall.” (New York Times, February 7): Dozens of Mexican National Gua… | Continue reading
Happy Washington’s Birthday to everyone who wants to celebrate slaveholding, locating the capital city on the same river where you have a plantation and where you’ve invested in a canal… | Continue reading
“Top Seventeen Surprises From The First Year Of Driving A Tesla EV” (Forbes): I was amazed when my electricity bill went down after I got the car, rather than up. This is because in Cal… | Continue reading
Some posts from my Facebook friends, many of whom have coastal elite jobs (e.g., university professor), regarding Michael Avenatti: And, in case you missed it, Avenatti has released a sworn declara… | Continue reading
I recently bought a ticket on Virgin Atlantic from BOS to LHR, July 6-15 (meet friends at the Glyndebourne opera and then maybe out to Oslo). The available coach seats are all way in the back of th… | Continue reading
“The Notorious Michael R. Bloomberg: His racist stop-and-frisk policy as New York mayor can’t be forgotten.” (NYT): “Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims —… | Continue reading
Even if coronavirus isn’t a serious statistical risk from being on a cruise ship, I wonder if the public health response will trim the sails (so to speak) of the hitherto unstoppable industry… | Continue reading
Has anyone ever seen an explanation of why Boeing couldn’t simply remove MCAS from the 737 MAX and tell pilots “you have to push forward on a go-around, just as you would in a Cessna 17… | Continue reading
Has anyone ever seen an explanation of why Boeing couldn’t simply remove MCAS from the 737 MAX and tell pilots “you have to push forward on a go-around, just as you would in a Cessna 17… | Continue reading
… actually it might be more accurate to say “boots in the apartment”. I have been WeChatting with a friend who is a professor in Shanghai. Her university is planning to start clas… | Continue reading
Now that Primary Season is upon us, a Jacob Lawrence serigraph titled “Migrants Cast Their Ballots” (from the Cummer Art Museum in Jacksonville, Florida): | Continue reading
… with a $40 T-shirt celebrating the Space Launch System (SLS): Kennedy Space Center gift shop If the project comes in on budget, it will be nearly $1 billion per launch with roughly 15 perce… | Continue reading
During a recent visit to Orlando, except for one former Moroccan, all of our Uber drivers were former Venezuelans aged 50+. Via communication in a pidgin of English and Spanish, I learned that all … | Continue reading
From a friend: I hate day trading but can’t help but feel like I missed out on Tesla stock. Some people say it is going up another 20x, which would make them worth many trillions of dollars. How ca… | Continue reading
From New Yorker: THE PROSECUTION OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: How the House Democrats, in the face of certain defeat, presented the case for impeachment. The magazine hasn’t been that interesti… | Continue reading
…. as long as it isn’t into their own towns. “California, Mired in a Housing Crisis, Rejects an Effort to Ease It” (NYT): Mr. Wiener’s measure, Senate Bill 50, would have ov… | Continue reading