In yesterday’s post on Judge Allison Burroughs ruling that it is legal for Harvard to engage in race discrimination, I wrote why is it okay for the judge to imply that a group of Asians is la… | Continue reading
The crowds are thinning out at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. I simply showed up on a recent Sunday afternoon and was able to walk in (in theory th… | Continue reading
“Harvard Admissions Process Does Not Discriminate Against Asian-Americans, Judge Rules” (nytimes) describes how an Obama-appointed judge approved of Harvard’s system of admitting … | Continue reading
I recently attended a talk by the CEO of a hospital with $2.6 billion in annual revenue. She noted that patients on Medicaid are 40 percent of the census and that Medicaid pays only 50 percent of t… | Continue reading
Uber had been, until recently, effectively outlawed in Vancouver (history). I took a taxi(!) to the airport there on September 12 and asked the driver how he felt about the impending Uberstorm. He … | Continue reading
In preparation for three weeks away from decent Internet, I downloaded a five-hour adaptation of Vanity Fair, the mid-19th century novel, from Amazon Prime. To appreciate the achievement of Gwyneth… | Continue reading
From the email inbox of a reader-parent…. Meany Middle School was invited to an amazing opportunity at Microsoft on Thursday, October 3rd from 9 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. This event is in partne… | Continue reading
I’m in Washington, D.C. today. What does the former malarial swamp have to do with the mostly-frozen (still) Northwest Passage? It turns out that timbers from a British Royal Navy ship sent o… | Continue reading
Electric airplanes currently cost more to operate per hour than gas-powered ones. A major factor is the limited life of the battery. Throwing out a $20,000 battery after 700 to 1,000 flights is mor… | Continue reading
Preparing a short talk for an upcoming aviation gathering… My friend David landed his Bonanza at Martha’s Vineyard and the police were waiting for him. “Do you live in Katama in t… | Continue reading
People are complaining that the latest iPhones can’t support 5G, a high-speed cellular data standard that uses high frequencies and therefore will presumably require new antenna and radio circuits.… | Continue reading
I spent three weeks with 471 fellow “explorers” through the Northwest Passage. Most were German, Scandinavian, or from the UK. Only 22 of us were American. Out of 150 staff and crew, on… | Continue reading
Here’s a dumb question, but I haven’t seen it answered in the media: What were young folks in China doing while #ClimateStrike was trending worldwide last week? Related: | Continue reading
We had a strict 8 kg. European carry-on and 23 kg. checked bag limit for our recent cruise. My roll-on bag was 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) empty and a touch oversized for Europe. My 26″ Delsey “su… | Continue reading
U.S. states are sovereign, have the authority to impose income, wealth, and consumption taxes, can borrow money, can make it illegal for employees to work for less than a threshold wage (and also i… | Continue reading
The biggest and best helicopter tour operators have scales hidden underneath the floor at the customer service counter. Thus they’re able to quickly capture passenger weights, oftentimes with… | Continue reading
Photos from a recent visit to a friend’s house in suburban Massachusetts… The daughter, an elementary school student, baked cookies from “women owned” dough: (But how can an… | Continue reading
A friend who is a passionate fencer, and a former Ivy League fencing team member, said “Twenty years ago, you could just send a kid to a few fencing lessons and he or she might get into Harva… | Continue reading
Today is the big day for protesting climate change. Our virtuous neighbors will abandon their pavement-melting SUVs and ride the commuter rail (service ever two hours, whether you need it or not!):… | Continue reading
After Trump was elected, a friend said “If Trump proposes any cuts to the military, Democrats will demand a 600-ship navy.” In that same vein, while I was traveling around Greenland in … | Continue reading
Back in March, I wrote “Robot kamikaze submarines shaped like blue whales render navy ships useless?” and asked “Does it make sense to spend $billions on these Navy ships that cou… | Continue reading
The (awesome) Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark holds five restored 1000-year-old ships: The museum also features seaworthy replicas on which visitors can travel in the summer. One fun part o… | Continue reading
A 5th grader here in Massachusetts relayed some information learned from a (unionized government-paid) teacher: Donald Trump is the worst president when it comes to accelerating global warming. If … | Continue reading
We had a 7-year-old GE refrigerator that would fail every couple of years, requiring $400-500 in service. We got tired of throwing out spoiled food and living out of coolers for 3-4 days so we inve… | Continue reading
The NYT took a rare breather from its study of Donald Trump and calculated that U.S. taxpayers spend $13 million per prisoner per year at Guantánamo Bay (story): The 40 prisoners, all men, get hala… | Continue reading
Some pictures from a summer visit to ARKEN, a waterfront concrete museum that opened in 1996. The entrance… The regular collection is heavy on Damien Hirst… More exciting… Benedik… | Continue reading
“Calls for Kavanaugh’s Impeachment Come Amid New Misconduct Allegations” (nytimes): Several Democratic presidential candidates called for the impeachment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh o… | Continue reading
“Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were ‘Entirely Willing’” (Daily Beast): An MIT engineering alumna, Selam Jie Gano, published a blog post calling for Stallman’s removal … | Continue reading
The two youngest passengers on our Northwest Passage cruise were 13 and 15, public school students in Denmark. I asked the parents what kind of bureaucratic obstacles there had been to taking the k… | Continue reading
Conversation after a neighborhood tennis game…. Dave: Whose Tesla X was that parked in your driveway yesterday?Me: Why it was [John; also part of our tennis circle]’s of course! How man… | Continue reading
“Felicity Huffman sentenced to 14 days in prison in nationwide college admissions scandal” (Salon) provides a good illustration of how much discretion there is for the people who run ou… | Continue reading
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann, author of the fascinating 1491 (what Elizabeth Warren’s ancestors were up to before Europeans arrived to trash these continents), explores what I t… | Continue reading
Democrats will debate tonight, presumably seeing whose empty unfunded promises can come closest to what Hugo Chavez promised voters. What do Trump supporters have? At Oshkosh, we saw the Trump Chop… | Continue reading
Today marks 18 years since 9/11, one of the darkest days in aviation history. Of course, we should remember those who died in 2001. But let me use today to highlight a more cheerful facet of aviati… | Continue reading
During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I worked near the Carnegie Library, dedicated in 1903 as “A University for the People” and engraved with the names of authors such as Shakespea… | Continue reading
Regional airlines were recruiting desperately at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) this year. It occurred to me that the newish 1500-hour hour minimum imposed by Congress for airline pilots imposes an acces… | Continue reading
Billion Dollar Whale is an instructive tutorial from two Wall Street Journal reporters. The “whale” is a pudgy Malaysian-Chinese guy named Jho Low who managed to steal billions of dolla… | Continue reading
Like seemingly every other American enterprise these days, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has added social justice to its mission. Thus, at least a portion of its time and effort is de… | Continue reading
One of my personal highlights at Oshkosh this year was a demo flight in the Icon A5. I’ve been something of a skeptic regarding Icon at its $400,000-ish price (but the company has been making… | Continue reading
Interesting article from the nerds at phys.org: A study published in the international journal Marine Biology, reveals what’s really killing coral reefs. With 30 years of unique data from Loo… | Continue reading
…. by a white middle-class American. A Facebook post from a woman in her 30s who was last seen (by me) thoroughly enjoying Burning Man: I decided recently to get clear on what my future self … | Continue reading
Harvard starts the fall semester today. From “Racist Comments Cost Conservative Parkland Student a Place at Harvard” (NYT, back in June): Two other prominent Parkland student activists,… | Continue reading
During lunch at EAA AirVenture, I encouraged my companions to accompany me to a talk by the crew of Southwest 1380 regarding their emergency landing following an uncontained engine failure during a… | Continue reading
This month marks the 10th anniversary of Deepwater Horizon setting a record by drilling a 35,000′-deep hole (a few months later, of course, we got to see the unfortunate flip side of the edge… | Continue reading
Two of the passengers on Roald Amundsen were on a voyage last year on Fram that had to turn back due to ice in the Northwest Passage. This year we found enough ice to prevent driving through the Be… | Continue reading
An enduring source of amusement is watching people who have a scientific perspective (and oftentimes actual training in science) throw rocks at the religious for being irrationally dogmatic. Part o… | Continue reading
Danish kids aged 5-11 jumping on a trampoline (!) with the nearest parent 200 meters away and not watching. What if one were to fall off the edge and no parent is there to catch?!? | Continue reading
Indulging in a mystery for this cruise… From Big Sky by Kate Atkinson: She was good at what she did—acrylics, gels, shellac, nail art—and was proud of the attention she gave to her job, even … | Continue reading