Party of Science scores lower than Party of Stupid

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Green New Deal will not cost as much as feared

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Gillette versus Dorco Shaving Test 4

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Mediocre U.S. average income makes it tough to reduce health care spending?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Folks who identify new victims can’t figure out why the old victims are forgotten

“‘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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Jussie Smollett case shows how much faith Americans have in government officials

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Transgender solution to the Boeing 737 MAX problem

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Germany reparations at 200% of GDP were unpayable; national debt of 200% is no problem

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Maybe we love war so much because we tell ourselves that we’re good at it

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

What did we spend and what did we learn from the Mueller Investigation?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Empress of the Seas Cuba and Haiti cruise review

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Taxpayers funding all sides of migration litigation

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Tesla Y shows that the electric car revolution is proceeding slowly?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

We didn’t need to re-take the Philippines during World War II

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Optional Angle-of-Attack Sensors on the Boeing 737 MAX

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Other than Elizabeth Warren, who would be eligible for reparations?

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

College bribery scandal is evidence of social mobility?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

The aviator with songs stuck in his head

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Could the Boeing 737 MAX be flown safely with a robot dome light third pilot?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

New York Times highlights academic achievement-skin color correlation

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Robot kamikaze submarines shaped like blue whales render navy ships useless?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Fly upside down in a helicopter

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Immigration is the Reverse Black Death?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Certification process for the 737 MAX silent gradual pusher system

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Bostonians: Meet at Don Giovanni on April 5?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Now that the road network is useless, why aren’t subway system operators rich?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Evaluating trustworthiness; lessons from Theranos

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Sizing a UPS for cable modem and router; market opportunity for a long duration low power UPS?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

New Zealand 1993 versus now

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Google shows that James Damore and Econ 101 were right?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Less than a month to go before Google breaks hundreds of thousands of links all over the Internet

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Why weren’t families coming over the border to seek asylum 30 years ago?

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Du Bois Orchestra concert

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Why aren’t all dishwasher detergents the same?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

MIT Private Pilot Ground School in streaming video

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Dear Evan Hansen: A musical for 12-year-old girls…

… 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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Bad year for air shows and the U.S. military

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

The 16-month project to convert a U.S. pilot certificate to a European license

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Doing business in the home of the free

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Is it okay to say “LGBTQ”?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Solve the world’s toughest problems for $100 million…

“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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Shop from women-owned businesses at Amazon

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Inspiration to adopt FAR 121 landing runway minimums

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

New York City without Amazon

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Asian-style guest linen rental for Asian-style U.S. cities?

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Successful criminal mastermind avoids scrutiny…

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago

Order of tidying up from Marie Kondo

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


@philip.greenspun.com | 5 years ago