What’s the verdict on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? Is it safe for casual fans of the movies? I’m still in recovery from having watched Episodes I, II, and III (all three plagued wi… | Continue reading
… and neither do any other lives. I’ve been listening to How the Earth Works, a survey course in geology from Michael E. Wysession, a professor at Washington University (St. Louis). It … | Continue reading
At a dinner party recently, a person who identifies as a “man” and who is married to another person who identifies as a “man”, disclosed his hatred of Donald Trump (not a bi… | Continue reading
“In Christmas Day Message, Pope Francis Shines Light On Migrant Suffering” (NPR): In his annual Christmas Day address, Pope Francis offered a message of hope and a call for kindness to … | Continue reading
As part of the U.S. campaign to make sure that no country interferes in the internal politics of another country, “China’s ‘Abusive’ Facial Recognition Machine Targeted By New U.S. Sanctions&… | Continue reading
Nearly two years ago, I wrote about Scott Booth, a helicopter pilot who suffered injuries in a Grand Canyon accident. He was recently able to post an update to a GoFundMe page (put together by fell… | Continue reading
Merry Christmas Eve. Suppose that you’ve been procrastinating or away on a trip. Your house is not decorated. You have not purchased any gifts. You don’t have any gift wrap. You are out… | Continue reading
From “Having Kids,” by Paul Graham: Partly, and I won’t deny it, this is because of serious chemical changes that happened almost instantly when our first child was born. It was l… | Continue reading
If you’re traveling today (at prices way higher in the U.S. than in Europe) on a jam-packed pre-holiday commercial flight, perhaps you’ll appreciate this business idea… The Hainan… | Continue reading
I’m going to Bermuda January 10-13. Weather supposedly typically involves a high temp of around 70 degrees, perfect for walking around the downtown area. Who wants to join? I don’t have… | Continue reading
Going to Daytona Beach shortly after returning from Shanghai was a bit of a shock. About a third of the people working in retail stores and restaurants were barely capable of doing their jobs, no m… | Continue reading
It would be fun to own a new mid-engine Corvette, but for the fact that the average daytime speed on Boston-area highways is now down around 25 mph. A 1957 Fiat 500 with 13 hp offers ample performa… | Continue reading
A bleak thought for the first day of winter… Whenever I posted a photo of some amazing new piece of Chinese infrastructure, e.g., the Suzhou metro or part of the 24,000-mile high-speed rail s… | Continue reading
Tomorrow will be the first day of winter (or the third month of the bleak New England winter!). Here’s a goodbye to fall from the iPhone 11 Pro: | Continue reading
On the cusp of the next exciting debate among the Democrats, rare images of the New England headquarters of the Elizabeth Warren campaign: (Actually from the deCordova art museum.) | Continue reading
From “How the Collapse of Local News Is Causing a ‘National Crisis’” (nytimes): The loss of local news coverage in much of the United States has frayed communities and left many America… | Continue reading
Shocking: Trump has now been impeached by an impartial group of politicians who said, back before he took office, that they would impeach him. Disturbing: Trump is “an ongoing threat to natio… | Continue reading
The year is almost over so nearly all of the accomplishments of 2019 have already happened. Some people are complaining that Greta Thunberg shouldn’t have been chosen as TIME Person of the Ye… | Continue reading
It seems obvious that people who breathe filthy air would die young. Yet people in Shanghai live 13 years longer than those in poor provinces (source), which are presumably less densely populated a… | Continue reading
A BBC interview with the Nobel Peace Laureate, “Barack Obama: Women are better leaders than men”: If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living … | Continue reading
“The Impeachment Process Is Barely Functioning” (nytimes) is by Elizabeth Drew, “a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate” (i.e., she is not in what the French… | Continue reading
The latest from my inbox: | Continue reading
“California official floats a new idea: House homeless on a cruise ship” (USA Today) ties into some of my favorite themes: If cruise ships could be used as emergency housing in natural … | Continue reading
As previously discussed here, air pollution in China, though it is being cleaned up gradually, is the one problem there that U.S. media is not exaggerating (see below for a good one, though!). Anec… | Continue reading
Marriage Story is a movie on Netflix that centers on a divorce lawsuit. Warning: *** spoilers *** As in about 50 percent of American marriages (source), the wife loses interest in having sex with t… | Continue reading
Aside from missing family and friends and finding that wearing an air pollution mask tended to fog up my glasses, one reason that I was happy to return home from China was that it was no fun being … | Continue reading
The Jew-hater-in-Chief is back in the news for his purported Jew-hatred: “Jewish leaders criticized Trump for telling Jewish audience they have ‘no choice’ but to vote for him ins… | Continue reading
The Trump impeachment is mostly done and Congress will soon be taking its Christmas break (a deranged criminal running an enterprise that spends $100 billion per week is bad, but not so bad that yo… | Continue reading
It’s not gimbal-stabilized or filmed on a blue-sky day, but our helicopter tours around Boston were featured on local TV: WCVB’s Chronicle. | Continue reading
Some practical advice for getting around China as a tourist… Buying a local SIM means you’ll be behind the Great Firewall whenever you’re on LTE. Tourists whom I met said that the… | Continue reading
A Facebook friend posted “GOP reintroduces bill pitting ‘religious freedom’ against gay marriage”, adding the following: I realized today that in future I should call this k… | Continue reading
I met a lot of people in China who were unhappy with some of the Chinese government’s policies, notably the Great Firewall and control of the media (the stuff that is used to whip up Westerne… | Continue reading
“Amid outcry, Seattle Public Library weighs decision to provide venue for ‘radical feminist’ event criticized as anti-trans” (Seattle Times): Community members including transgender loc… | Continue reading
“Hospitals Sue Trump to Keep Negotiated Prices Secret” (nytimes): The nation’s hospital groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over a new federal rule that would require them… | Continue reading
I finished Billionaire Raj. The author continues with his main theme that all of India’s challenges can be attributed to inequality. If only the government were bigger and less corrupt, India… | Continue reading
Our CIA (a.k.a., “the folks who get everything right”) says that China has a per capita GDP of $16,700 per year (Factbook). Compare to the U.S. at $59,800 or Singapore at $94,100. But d… | Continue reading
My visit to China coincided with the peak of the “2019 Hong Kong protests”. How did the U.S.-owned media outlets available in China cover the story? Apple keeps it simple, whether roami… | Continue reading
It seldom strikes me as correct when an American is referred to as being “right wing” or “leftist”. These 230-year-old terms are vague to the point of being useless. Wikiped… | Continue reading
From the guy who runs the U.S. when nobody from Ukraine is available to act as the hidden power behind our government (NY Post): Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday took aim at teenage cl… | Continue reading
“Sex blogger gives advice to men whose wives won’t have sex with them” (Fox News): A sex blogger is providing advice to men whose wives have stopped having sex with them.“Women ge… | Continue reading
This is based on a recent Boston-Shanghai nonstop round-trip, about 14 hours each way on a Boeing 787. Airfare was only $650 round-trip, including up to two checked bags, a sign of the lack of dema… | Continue reading
I thought that “Morgantown Municipal Airport set to expand runway with FAA funding” contained two extra zeroes: The Federal Aviation Administration has given final approval for the exte… | Continue reading
In “Cuba could attract Americans with sin?” I pointed out that Boston and Havana had pretty much switched places in terms of access to debauchery. I think the same may be true of China,… | Continue reading
“Man accused of bias crime, saying ‘go back to your country’ must write essay on immigrants” (KATU): A man accused of spitting on an immigrant and telling them to go back to… | Continue reading
A (female-identifying) reporter on Facebook: Emma Watson says she doesn’t like the term single and prefers “self partnering.” this sounds empowering to me–how does it strike… | Continue reading
Front page of nytimes.com on November 10: “An influx of immigrants has flipped a state….” From the article: Not long ago, this rolling green stretch of Northern Virginia was farml… | Continue reading
“The Architect of Modern Algorithms” (Quanta) is a recently popular link among some computer nerds on Facebook (all of the sharers, when I last checked, identified as older white males)… | Continue reading