“What Americans Know About Science” (Pew Research) is subtitled “Science knowledge levels remain strongly tied to education; Republicans and Democrats are about equally knowledgea… | Continue reading
It turns out that a powerful Vestas wind turbine can be purchased for $199 on Amazon.com. Related: “Vestas Retains Position As World’s Leading Onshore Wind Supplier” (imagine how much m… | Continue reading
After four weeks of shaving alternating sides of face with a Gillette Fusion 5 ProShield with FlexBall and a Dorco Pace 7, the Dorco was plainly doing a better job and also holding its edge better.… | Continue reading
One thing that I learned during a month at Harvard Medical School is that health care spending is inversely correlated with income. The poorer people are, in other words, the more they cost for an … | Continue reading
“‘Women Here Are Very, Very Worried’: Afghan women used to be championed by almost everyone. Now they’re all but forgotten.” (nytimes): It was once a prominent and bipartisan cause: the… | Continue reading
If a prosecutor had disliked Jussie Smollett for any reason, he could have been tried for 16 felony counts and been sentenced to as much as 64 years in prison (CBS). The prosecutor, however, decide… | Continue reading
How to handle the public relations challenge of operating a new two-pilot two-jet-engine airliner with a safety record far worse than that of a 50-year-old single-pilot piston-engine plane such as … | Continue reading
An Economic History of the World since 1400 by Donald J. Harreld takes the conventional view that the reparations Germany was obligated to pay following World War I were so large that they forced t… | Continue reading
Catching up on 2017 must-reads for Bostonians, I recently enjoyed The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism by John U. Bacon. The main story … | Continue reading
After reading World War II at Sea: A Global History you won’t accept media reports of military success uncritically. Some examples: The Americans, too, inflated their achievement in the Coral… | Continue reading
My Facebook friends are talking about the Mueller Investigation recently wrapping up (Wikipedia page on Special Counsel investigation (2017-2019)). Samples: We don’t need investigative journa… | Continue reading
This review is based on a December 9-17, 2018 trip from Miami to Havana, Cienfuegos, Grand Cayman, and Labadee, Haiti. See for some thoughts about seeing Cuba by ship versus land tours. By virtue o… | Continue reading
“This court ruling could have big implications for public-service loan forgiveness” (Washington Post, February 25, 2019): Public servants denied student loan forgiveness by the U.S. Edu… | Continue reading
Forbes predicts that the new Tesla Y crossover won’t be in volume production until 2021. That would be 9 years after the 2012 introduction date of the Tesla S. Is it fair to say that Earth… | Continue reading
World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig Symonds reminds us how painful it was to be a grunt in the Pacific: The Marines went ashore on Peleliu on September 15[, 1944]. The landings were diff… | Continue reading
“Doomed Boeing Jets Lacked 2 Safety Features That Company Sold Only as Extras” (nytimes): Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous r… | Continue reading
“2020 Democrats Embrace Race-Conscious Policies, Including Reparations” (nytimes): Last week, on the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” Senator Kamala Harris of California agreed … | Continue reading
Frequent U.S. media theme: social mobility in the U.S. is low. If your parents aren’t rich and/or famous, you’re never going to get anywhere (unless you vote for Elizabeth Warren and AO… | Continue reading
Participants at a local gathering of pilots were required to tell a joke. Here’s what I said… I don’t want to tell a joke because so many people in this world are suffering with s… | Continue reading
Unfortunately, we now know that a two-pilot crew cannot safely handle the silent gradual pusher system of the Boeing 737 MAX. “Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 Day Before Deadly Cr… | Continue reading
“Only 7 Black Students Got Into N.Y.’s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots” (nytimes): Students gain entry into the specialized schools by acing a single high-stakes exam that … | Continue reading
One lesson from World War II at Sea: A Global History by Craig Symonds is that a huge expensive ship might be destroyed in a few minutes by a submarine or airplane: Displacing 71,890 tons when… | Continue reading
“Chuck Aaron opens helicopter aerobatics flight school” (Vertical) is interesting news! The school is just NE of Charlotte, North Carolina. Perfect spring time activity! (Separately, Ea… | Continue reading
Let’s consider the political goals of righteous Americans today: higher wages for the average personan improved environment with less human impact on the landless concentration of wealth in t… | Continue reading
A reader was kind enough to send me “Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing and FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system” (Seattle Times), which gives some more de… | Continue reading
Boston Opera Collaborative, whose La Boheme I loved last year (review), is doing Don Giovanni March 28-April 6 (tickets). I’m planning to attend on April 5 and would love to meet readers at i… | Continue reading
The other day I had to be in downtown Boston for a 9:00 am meeting. Our road network melted down circa 2005 and there is no way to know if a 20-mile trip from the suburbs will take 45 minutes, 1.5 … | Continue reading
From Bad Blood, the authoritative book on the rise and fall of Theranos. [Jim Mattis, U.S. military hero and Theranos corporate board member] went out of his way to praise her integrity. “She … | Continue reading
Things that our neighbors hate more than Donald Trump: cell towersunderground power lines Power failures are routine and, when they happen, we lose all communications capability (since a mobile pho… | Continue reading
I was buried in work yesterday so missed the news about the shooting in New Zealand. I was there only once, back in 1993 (my travelogue and photos), and it seemed decades removed from any of the wo… | Continue reading
James Damore, the Google Heretic, was cast out for saying that intelligent people who identify as “women” did not enjoy staring at a screen and typing out pages of boring C and Java cod… | Continue reading
Google purchased Picasa, a super efficient photo editor that offered seamless integration with online publishing (e.g., you add a photo to an album on your desktop computer and it automatically get… | Continue reading
“Border at ‘Breaking Point’ as More than 76,000 Migrants Cross in a Month” (nytimes): The number of migrant families crossing the southwest border has once again broken records, with un… | Continue reading
We escaped the suburbs recently for a concert by the Du Bois Orchestra: Founded in 2015, the Du Bois Orchestra offers the opportunity to listen to and perform both the standard and historically neg… | Continue reading
Here’s a conundrum… given that dishwashers haven’t changed in the past couple of decades and fundamental detergent chemistry hasn’t changed substantially since 1946 (source)… | Continue reading
Folks: I finished uploading 1.6 TB of “pro res” video to YouTube and assembled it all into a playlist for our Private Pilot Ground School. Do the videos work reasonably well? Is it fair… | Continue reading
… and their parents too. Most of the newer Broadway musicals seem to be targeted at 12-year-old girls (e.g., Wicked). In order to guarantee that at least one member of the Greenspun 2019 busi… | Continue reading
Readers: Who has some good ideas for air shows this year? My personal favorite, the Rhode Island Air Show, has been canceled (NBC) : “Hundreds of key National Guard members will be called to … | Continue reading
AOPA Magazine’s March 2019 issue has an article on the bureaucratic saga of converting a U.S. pilot certificate to a European license: That completed, I embarked on a 5-month process of exten… | Continue reading
A Facebook posting from an entrepreneur: San Francisco City Law requires all companies in SF to do harassment training for all employees every year.Any recommmendations for best practices and progr… | Continue reading
From “Sen. Booker quizzes judicial nominee on ‘sin’ and same-sex marriage” (Catholic News Agency): Booker also asked Rao if she had ever employed an “LGBTQ law clerk.”The no… | Continue reading
“New Competition for a $100 Million Grant: Round Two of 100&Change”: MacArthur today announced it will launch a new round of its 100&Change competition for a single $100 million… | Continue reading
A friend recently pointed out this feature from Amazon: “Shop women-run businesses”: In a gender-fluid age, what does this mean? Can any enterprise in which an owner or manager clicks &… | Continue reading
Here’s a Piper Malibu landing at Courchevel (1,762′): videos. The typical Malibu pilot is experienced and well-trained, so this supports my theory that we should all use FAR 121 minimum… | Continue reading
I’m just back from working with a team at an 850-lawyer firm (as an expert witness in a software and hardware patent infringement case). Despite the top pay, none of the associates were able … | Continue reading
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, says not to store guest linens because they take up a lot of space relative to their infrequent use and they’ll smell like mildew after … | Continue reading
While driving back from New York City this afternoon, I briefly listened to AOC and fellow Democrats question one of Donald Trump’s former lawyers. I learned that Trump was a successful crimi… | Continue reading
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, suggests a tidying-up order. The Preface, typically used by authors and publishers to motivate readers to invest time in the rest of the book,… | Continue reading