Here’s a book cover that shocked me at the San Diego airport: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West bears a subtitle that makes me wonder how many… | Continue reading
If you enjoy computer nerdism and Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me is the novel for you. McEwan imagines a world in which British science and engineering did not become irrelevant after World War II. N… | Continue reading
The NYT did an interesting analysis of the declining fortunes of government cronies (holders of NYC taxi medallions). But the methods stripped immigrant families of their life savings, crushed driv… | Continue reading
The California legal system has determined that Roundup causes cancer. See, for example, “$2 Billion Verdict Against Monsanto Is Third to Find Roundup Caused Cancer” (nytimes): The jury… | Continue reading
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer contains some interesting stuff on the history of paternity adjudication: When faced with paterni… | Continue reading
Bright Air Black is a much more detailed imagining of Medea’s inner life than we get from the ancients (the element that she killed her own children was likely tacked on by Euripides; in prev… | Continue reading
We know from the recent college bribery scandal that wealthy parents are willing to commit (federal!) crimes to get their brats into a good college (apparently contradicting the assertion that bein… | Continue reading
A story of math and romance… “Local professor says he lost $50,000 after being deceived by a Russian mail order bride” (WMAR, Baltimore): Dr. Jonathan Farley met his wife through … | Continue reading
An afternoon in the Northeast, occasioned by a friend needing a ride from KBED to KSWF. Over Bradley Field in the Cirrus SR20… Parked in the family airplane area… After a 13-minute ride… | Continue reading
I’m planning a trip to Ireland, arriving Tuesday, May 28 and returning on June 5. Would any readers like to meet up there? If so, please email: philg@mit.edu. Thanks! (The plan is to teach a … | Continue reading
Mozart’s Don Giovanni is seriously out of step with our times. The producers at Boston Opera Collaborative realized this and posted a trigger warning on the door to the theater: The original … | Continue reading
“Ethiopian MAX Crash Simulator Scenario Stuns Pilots” (Aviation Week) describes an American crew given a comparatively trivial challenge. They were put into a sim and advised in advance… | Continue reading
Aircraft performance is a function of attitude (pitch and bank) and power. So you’d think that, in an ideal world, these two items would be displayed prominently right in front of each pilot.… | Continue reading
We manage a Pilatus PC-12 airplane in which the manufacturer certified a Sony car stereo as cabin entertainment. Totally state of the art… for 1995. The speaker output of the car stereo is us… | Continue reading
Boston traffic, 9:26 on a typical weekday morning, going into the Central Artery, the result of the $15 billion Big Dig: Bostonians generally say, of the project, “It was expensive, but worth… | Continue reading
I’ve been listening to (excellent) lectures on Classical mythology by Professor Kathryn McClymond. One thing that I learned is that Remus and Romulus were described in some Roman sources as h… | Continue reading
If you need help completing your summer wardobe, our Museum of Fine Arts has a “Gender Bending Fashion” show through August 25. Not sure what “Nonbinary” or “Genderque… | Continue reading
In our town that provides sanctuary to any undocumented immigrant who can afford a $1 million house on an $800,000 zoning minimum two-acre lot, the middle school teachers asked the students to writ… | Continue reading
“East Brookfield Man Arrested for Piloting Helicopter From Backyard” (NECN): A Massachusetts man who previously had his pilot’s license revoked after he helped steal a helicopter … | Continue reading
From a virtuous Facebook user: The administration’s shameful all out war on refugees and asylum seekers continues. International refugee and asylum law – the right to cross a border if … | Continue reading
“ATF seizes more than 1,000 firearms at Los Angeles mansion” (The Hill): Girard Damien Saenz, 56, was arrested and is expected to be charged with possessing, selling and manufacturing a… | Continue reading
We have a three-year-old who likes the Noah’s Ark story… Every time I read this I realize that I’m committing the (modern) sin of Gender Binarism. How would an updated Noah’s Ark … | Continue reading
On May 1, we had a Los Angeles-style shootout between a criminal and police officers, complete with SWAT team, helicopters overhead, etc. WCVB: The FBI and Somerville police are offering a reward o… | Continue reading
Breaking news from the New York Times: Newly obtained tax information reveals that from 1985 to 1994, Donald J. Trump’s businesses were in far bleaker condition than was previously known. My commen… | Continue reading
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” was a common expression in New York City during my father’s youth (Great Depression and World War II). I’m wondering i… | Continue reading
An MD neighbor had the temerity to put a Trump sign on his lawn back 2016 (error swiftly corrected by righteous neighbors) so I thought it was safe to bring him a Dorco Pace 7 as a gift to free him… | Continue reading
“What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With” (NYT) is subtitled “Division of labor in the home is one of the most important equity issues of our time. Yet at this rate it will be another 75 y… | Continue reading
“How Luxury Developers Use a Loophole to Build Soaring Towers for the Ultrarich in N.Y.” (nytimes): Some of the tallest residential buildings in the world soar above Central Park, inclu… | Continue reading
I was chatting with the owner of a small public-use (but privately-owned) airport. He’d gotten $3 million in state funding to repave the sub-3000′ runway and a parallel taxiway. I said … | Continue reading
I was chatting with a dyslexia specialist at a public middle school in a wealthy Northeast U.S. district. The union pay scale for teachers reaches $100,000 per year for those with a bit of experien… | Continue reading
I used to back up my computer with Crashplan, but the service failed after I parked some big videos from our MIT Ground School class on a secondary drive. I was able to get it started again by beef… | Continue reading
Friends have been asking me about the Boeing 737 that ran off the runway approximately 9:40 pm last night at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. Here’s the METAR: KNIP 040153Z 13003KT 2SM +TS… | Continue reading
We need to have an electrician come to do some work at our house and I thought it might be fun to have an electric car charger installed. Of course, we don’t have an electric car, but maybe o… | Continue reading
“Two pilots to fly around the globe in Cabri G2” (Vertical) is about a two-seat trainer helicopter that seldom gets farther than 5 nm from its home airport and two French guys who will … | Continue reading
I tend to visit the gym at hours when the only other patrons are less than 5 or over 65. The other day, two Medicare-eligible gentlemen were discussing (in moderately strong Boston accents) the 202… | Continue reading
A friend owns a Tesla X (see my review) that came with “free supercharging for life.” The company periodically pings him to try to get him to trade in the current car on a new and impro… | Continue reading
During the Gillette versus Dorco razor tests (Dorco Pace 7 came out ahead), a reader suggested trying Cremo shave cream. Result: Chemical engineers today are not smarter than chemical engineers of … | Continue reading
“The Bill-Melinda Gates Romance Started With a Rejection; She recounts her evolution to feminist in her new memoir.” (nytimes). Turns out “feminist” in 2019 means “Wom… | Continue reading
… yet today it seems that a larger percentage of the U.S. economy is government-run than is “Communist” Vietnam’s. Something to think about on this, the 44th anniversary of … | Continue reading
“The Company That Sells Love to America Had a Dark Secret” (nytimes) Dawn knew better. While she was acting manager, she had access to payroll forms and had seen some discrepancies: in … | Continue reading
… and it turns out that the answer is not “New York.” From the virtuous Editorial Board of the New York Times, “California Has a Housing Crisis. The Answer Is More Housing.&… | Continue reading
“Mass. Judge, Retired Court Officer Face Federal Charges For Allegedly Helping Defendant Evade ICE” (WBUR): A Middlesex County judge and former court officer are facing federal charges … | Continue reading
… but Uber and their drivers are too stupid to realize this. “Tesla Model 3 vs. Honda Accord — 7 Scenarios” (CleanTechnica) is kind of fascinating. The author figures out that it … | Continue reading
One thing that I haven’t figured out in the college bribery case (see and is why the defendants are having to fly to Boston to be prosecuted by the Federal government. Consider an actress who… | Continue reading
Sharing a “Cirrus SR22T Transition and Engine Management” page in case it is useful to other flight instructors. I found that there wasn’t anything good out there, even from Cirru… | Continue reading
An inter-partes review ( IPR2018-00044) at the U.S. Patent Office is not the most exciting part of my life as a software expert witness, but it more often leads to a clear resolution (timeline) tha… | Continue reading
Nearly a year ago, the New York Times carried the story of the master spy Maria Butina (post). One photo showed her as a student pilot in a Piper Warrior (market value: $30,000?). Later it turned o… | Continue reading
My Facebook feed is a good indication of how Democrats aged 40-65 think. In 2016, these folks yearned to be led by a senior citizen. They would have been happy with Bernie Sanders (77 years old) or… | Continue reading