Who has good Christmas shopping ideas? The most impressive book that I’ve seen, and one of the few that is a good argument for print, is a 1200-page Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals. For the ma… | Continue reading
What happens when Disney expands into China? How do the master storytellers of Hollywood tap into 5,000 years of history, art, language, and culture? Answer: you get U.S. Disneyland with a Chinese … | Continue reading
“Rape-Prevention Scholar Who ‘Celebrated #MeToo’ Is Accused of Sexual Assault and Harassment” (Chronicle of Higher Education; paywalled, but this link might still work): [Erin] O’Callag… | Continue reading
… at least as measured objectively. The 2020 Hyundai Sonata is rolling out of the Alabama factory now (Korean brains and American brawn?). A candid media presentation shows that “road n… | Continue reading
Thanks to my comments scolding Facebook posters on their failure to fully embrace socialism, LBTQIA+ rainbow flagism, etc., I am on Joe Biden’s email list. From November 16, 2019: Subject: I … | Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving! (Or, for National Day of Mourning, depending on whether your perspective/ethnicity.) Here’s a friend’s nostalgia shelf: I hope that we can all agree to give thanks t… | Continue reading
If the Chinese ever start celebrating Thanksgiving (or joining Elizabeth Warren in a National Day of Mourning), the supermarkets are ready. Turkey-flavored Cheetos: (purchased in Shanghai) | Continue reading
Although the New York Times and CNN bravely spoke truth to power in China by covering the Trump impeachment intensively (not leaving any space in their respective China editions for coverage of unr… | Continue reading
“Those fancy tea bags? Microplastics in them are macro offenders” (Guardian) says that excessively rich and/or pretentious people who drink tree from nylon bags are ingesting a lot of p… | Continue reading
While I was in China, Tesla introduced its 6-seat Cybertruck. At $40,000 for the 2WD version, it does not seem overpriced (and the 4WD version at $50k with 16″ of ground clearance would have … | Continue reading
Back in September, from the VP for Alumni Affairs and Development at Harvard: As the academic year begins at Harvard, I wanted to share with you this welcome message that President Bacow sent to th… | Continue reading
American newspapers are tireless advocates for what are essentially middle class welfare programs: affordable housing, Medicare for all, etc. These proposals won’t help the poor, all of whom … | Continue reading
The financial struggles of New England liberal arts colleges have been in the news lately. “Marlboro planning to give campus and endowment to Emerson College” describes the end of 73 ye… | Continue reading
One self-made moderately rich friend (lawyer/entrepreneur) related that he’d told his daughters that their expenses would be paid through college, but after that they were on their own. He an… | Continue reading
I happened to be in downtown Washington, D.C. on the same day as somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million Nationals fans gathered to celebrate the recent World Series victory. The parade ended with … | Continue reading
… by a member of the coastal elite. On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., we had lunch with a highly educated highly paid person who expressed hatred of Donald Trump and the kind of people wh… | Continue reading
One of my students recently was a 30-year-old who struggled for 14 years before getting an FAA medical certificate. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD as a young teenager (like 13 percent of young… | Continue reading
I’m listening to the Billionaire Raj on Audible. For those of us who live in a U.S.-centric bubble, there is a lot of interesting modern history regarding India’s most successful people… | Continue reading
In my review of the Trump Hotel, D.C.: Given that the intensity of Trump hatred among Democrats is much stronger than the intensity of Trump love among Republicans, I wonder if the narrative that T… | Continue reading
I’m listening to the Billionaire Raj on Audible. The author says that intensive government regulation (the Licence Raj) and high income tax rates motivated Indians to operate a “black m… | Continue reading
“Barrett Sworn In As Secretary Of The Air Force” (AVweb): As Secretary of the Air Force, Barrett is responsible for Department of the Air Force affairs including “organizing, training, … | Continue reading
Check out this comprehensive web site on a pole-to-pole flight in a Twin Commander (turboprop) scheduled to start today. The pilot, Robert DeLaurentis, dead-sticked a Lycoming-powered Piper Malibu … | Continue reading
Software is so smart that it will soon be driving us around, recognizing and dodging pedestrians. WIRED and similar cheerleaders for technology assure us that our software pals will also diagnose u… | Continue reading
Lexington, Massachusetts runs what is generally considered the best of the Boston-area public school systems (a task made slightly easier because the typical student there now is the child of Chine… | Continue reading
Tonight at our local school (free tickets): Waking up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race Please join the Lincoln community as we welcome Debby Irving – local author, racial justice… | Continue reading
I’m in Shanghai and on WeChat with the imaginative name of “PhilipGreenspun”. Who wants to get together? I’ll be visiting Suzhou and Hangzhou next week before returning to S… | Continue reading
My personal favorite charity (after the Clinton Foundation, of course), is Kids on Computers, which sets up labs in public schools. They are headed to Oaxaca, Mexico in December and if you want an … | Continue reading
On STEM boosterism… “In the Salary Race, Engineers Sprint but English Majors Endure” (nytimes): The [annual salary] advantage for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathem… | Continue reading
It is Veterans Day. When I was in Ireland back in May/June, I learned that, despite being part of the UK at the time, Irish men were exempt from the World War I draft. Nonetheless, quite a few volu… | Continue reading
“Air quality in the US is getting worse and could be killing thousands, study finds” (CNN). The implication of the article is that, given sufficiently aggressive government regulation, … | Continue reading
Our plan to fly to Washington, D.C. on a recent Friday was thwarted by 40-knot wind gusts and a SIGMET for “severe turbulence.” The goal was to attend a 7:30 pm concert so we couldnR… | Continue reading
“Can You Still #Resist When Your State’s on Fire?” (nytimes) is an interesting window into the thinking of the West Coast Righteous: There’s something about the situation here this seas… | Continue reading
“World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” is signed by 11,258 scientists worldwide. Let’s have a look at principal author Thomas Newsome’s conference papers, indica… | Continue reading
JetBlue was honoring Justin Trudeau on the way out (September) … Nobody who arrives at the Denver Airport in the late evening is going to get claustrophobia: My experience at the Maven at Dai… | Continue reading
“Boston Medical Center employees to protest Melania Trump’s visit on Wednesday”: Some 250 people who work at Boston Medical Center are protesting a scheduled visit Wednesday by first la… | Continue reading
Life of a software expert witness: I carefully arranged my calendar this fall so as to be available at four scheduled trials. Trial 1: moved to April 2020Trial 2: settled two weeks priorTrial 3: ca… | Continue reading
“Bill Gates criticises Elizabeth Warren’s plan for tax on super-rich” (BBC): Under the original plan, households with a net worth between $50m (£39m) and $1bn (£780m) will be char… | Continue reading
One reason for a $15/hour minimum wage cited by advocates is that current minimum wage workers are generally on welfare (public housing and Medicaid if not also food stamps, etc.) and therefore, th… | Continue reading
Yesterday’s post regarding Kshama Sawant, the immigrant running for reelection on a platform of “the rent is too damn high,” motivated me to check the election results. Ms. Sawant… | Continue reading
Kshama Sawant is running for re-election to the Seattle City Council. One of her campaign posters from August: From her site: Seattle needs rent control, citywide and without corporate loopholes, t… | Continue reading
Several executives speaking at a recent 25th anniversary celebration for a health care informatics lab spoke hopefully about solutions that might be forthcoming from startups yet to be founded. Thi… | Continue reading
At a celebration of a health care informatics lab’s first 25 years, Boston’s most experienced hospital leaders came in to speculate on what an American hospital would look like in 25 ye… | Continue reading
Good news: I can share with you a complete functional and business blueprint for how to make a personal portable electronic medical record. Bad news: The plan is from 1994 and almost no progress ha… | Continue reading
Native American and Eskimo/Inuit mythology is full of stories about human overpopulation leading to a catastrophic winnowing of the herd. (And then Europeans showed up and dumped about 350 million … | Continue reading
“Reading Scores on National Exam Decline in Half the States” (nytimes): Two out of three children did not meet the standards for reading proficiency set by the National Assessment of Ed… | Continue reading
Happy Halloween! Dr. Tina (a real doctor of aeronautical engineering) and I are teaching an FAA ground school at MIT in January once again. The course is free and open to anyone, though only MIT st… | Continue reading
In the last two years, the new FAA attitude toward avionics in light aircraft has resulted in what looks to pilots like a revolution (ordinary consumers, though, will say “You mean it couldn&… | Continue reading
This is a review of the MS Roald Amundsen based on a three-week Northwest Passage cruise in 2019. photo: Karsten Bidstrup, one of the ship’s staff photographers Our cruise was during the ship… | Continue reading