Are Californians on track to implement universal health care?

Covid-fighting hero Gavin Newsom promised California voters a single-payer universal health care system in 2018. A majority of Californians agree that health care is a human right. California has a… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

COVID-19 boosters cut death risk by 97X?

“Boosted Americans 97 times less likely to die of virus than unvaccinated” (USA Today, 2/2/2022): As the U.S. inches up to a 64% vaccination rate for the entire population, only 42% of … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

CNN educates us regarding the glass ceiling

An immigrant friend’s comment on news from the CNN executive suite: These are defenders of liberal morality and destroyers of glass ceilings A Google search for “glass ceiling” si… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Voter participation increases as government expands?

Friends from Maskachusetts (a.k.a. “Democrats”) were attributing all of the nations’ current woes to Donald Trump. One example that they highlighted was Trump’s reference to… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Even with COVID-19 anxiety, there is always room for climate anxiety

For readers who demand to know why I continue to pay for a NYT subscription… “Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room” (NYT, today): Ten years ago, psychologists proposed that a wi… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

MIT spirit in Washington, D.C.

“‘I am deeply sorry for my conduct’: Biden’s top science adviser apologizes to staff” (Politico): [MIT prof] Eric Lander, the president’s top science adviser and a member of his C… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)

On our return from Denver, we stopped overnight in Buckhead, the rich area of Atlanta that was annexed by the city in 1952 and that soon hopes to vote on seceding into “Buckhead City.” … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The 6-year-old hater responds to an interview with a World War II veteran

Follow-up to The 6-year-old hater… We took the kids to the National Navy SEAL Museum (a mask-free and indoor/outdoor experience, like most Florida experiences). The museum was showing an inte… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Unmasked Vladimir Putin braves a stadium packed with the infected

There is a high demand for pageantry in our household, but we don’t have a TV, so I signed up for the “ad-free” “Peacock Premium Plus” streaming service and used an iP… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

New Orleans update

The Cirrus Vision Jet is a great machine, but one thing that it can’t do is go non-stop from South Florida to Denver against a winter headwind. We decided to stop at Flightline KNEW for fuel,… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Adult life at MIT

Excerpts from today’s email from MIT Hillel (Jewish organization on campus): One trend we have seen is students are still craving IRL (in-real-life) interactions and events, even if MIT rules… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 30 (family medicine, exam week)

The clinic staff throws a party for my last day. One of the secretaries brought in homemade rhubarb turnovers. I express my gratitude and they respond with “We take any excuse to throw a part… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

What are folks reading in Boulder?

Pictures from the Boulder Book Store. SARS-CoV-2 has achieved much more mindshare in Colorado than in Florida. Boulder and Denver are the centers of concern regarding COVID-19. As you enter the sto… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 29 (family medicine, week 5)

We start at 7:45 am to read up on the ten patients we’ll see this morning at the clinic.  The 37-year-old nurse (from week 25) with a large MCA stroke and amputation after subacute bacte… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Do universities force students to wear masks forever?

Here are some young people at the University of Colorado, January 28, 2022: It didn’t look as though anyone over the age of 25 was in the room (a good thing, considering that most were wearin… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

WSJ: Covid-19 was more destructive of American life than World War II

“One Million Deaths: The Hole the Pandemic Made in U.S. Society” (Wall Street Journal, 1/31/2022): Covid-19 has left the same proportion of the population dead—about 0.3%—as did World W… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Verizon 5G: strong enough to disable aircraft radar altimeters, but not strong enough to download a web page

Here’s a better-than-usual Verizon mobile data situation in Jupiter, Florida: Three bars of 5G yields 3/1 Mbps of data, which turns out to be not enough to browse the modern JavaScript and CS… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Did banking leave London after Brexit?

Expert prediction was that Brexit would destroy London’s status as a financial center. Who knows more about London and economics than the Economist? A little over one month before the herd vo… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Why is the conflict over Ukraine happening now?

Please forgive my ignorance of everything that happens beyond the borders of the U.S. (and/or beyond the borders of Palm Beach County), but I’m hoping that readers who follow matters internat… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 27 (Family Medicine, Week 3)

Monday morning: 84-year-old “T-Bone” car accident victim for a hospital follow up. He was admitted to the hospital for seven days with multiple rib fractures and a wrist fracture. A CT … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Malawi and the Church of Sweden

From state-sponsored media, “Africa may have reached the pandemic’s holy grail”: So to fill in the true picture, Jambo and his collaborators turned to another potential source of … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 26

Week 2 on family medicine rotation. Monday morning begins with a one-hour lecture by a 53-year-old talkative palliative care specialist (“helping patients learn how to live with serious illne… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Movie suggestion: Black Death

Leaving HBO Max in a few days… Black Death, a 2010 film that is perfect for “these times.” I don’t want to spoil the movie, but one critical element is attempts by people wh… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 25 (Family Medicine)

We pick up our hero’s story in January 2019, halfway through Year 3. Orientation begins at 7:00 am. Our clerkship director, a 58-year-old family doctor, explains that we are expected to write… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

A corrected history of mRNA vaccines

According to the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, here’s how the history of mRNA vaccines begins: In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed stran… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Did your free COVID tests arrive yet?

Who has received his/her/zir/their free-from-Joe-Biden COVID-19 tests? This handout seems like an ideal political strategy. People will be delighted to pay $40,000 per year in local, state, and fed… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

What is Harvard’s argument for race-based admissions in the #StopAsianHate age?

“Supreme Court to hear Harvard admissions challenge” (Harvard Gazette): “The Supreme Court decision to review the unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts puts at risk 40 years o… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Encanto: Latinx migrants get a free house

The heart-warming story of the movie Encanto begins with Latinx migrants fleeing violence (in Colombia) and almost immediately getting a free house (created by a magic candle). This was a hit with … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How an asset bubble that inflates and deflates makes a lot of people worse off

One might think that an asset bubble that inflates and deflates doesn’t hurt that many people. After all, if you just stay in your house, what difference does it make if the value goes up to … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How is the James Webb Space Telescope doing?

Who has been following the James Webb Space Telescope? It will take a while to travel nearly 1 million miles to get to its working position, but is everything still working as planned? $10 billion … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

At-home test kits are back in stock; triumph of central planning?

As of last night, CVS in the Palm Beach area has at-home test kits back in stock. Do we call this a failure of central planning? The site to order “free” (i.e., paid for by us via taxes… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How’s transitory inflation in your area?

From the in-house economics Nobel-winner at the New York Times (December 2021): Even once the inflation numbers shot up, many economists — myself included — argued that the surge was likely to prov… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Exclude white trash by excluding pit bulls?

In 2017, I wrote High minimum wage is a city’s way to keep out low-skill immigrants Friends on Facebook are discussing “A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Politician characterizes immigrant-rich California as “like a third world country”

At 27 percent, California leads the U.S. in percentage of population who are foreign-born (Wikipedia). Many of these folks migrated from low-income countries where the typical resident is “lo… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Skiing in a country where nobody wants to work and where nobody can afford to live

A friend lives in a $3 million starter home in the Vail valley. He reports having to carefully pick ski days this season due to crowding on the mountain and long lift lines. “They sold a ton … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Soviet management tips for the American executive

To celebrate having gotten through one month of winter, let’s turn our attention to things Russian (since they are the true masters of the cold). Last year, I was invited to a family dinner i… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

We voted for Pedro; did all of our wildest dreams come true?

Joe Biden’s campaign promises were similar to those of Pedro’s (“if you vote for me, all of your wildest dreams will come true”) in Napoleon Dynamite. It has been a year. Ho… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

It will be tougher to get a parking space in Palm Beach

“Rolls-Royce, Bentley, BMW Sales Surge as Cheaper Brands Lag Behind” (WSJ): The most luxurious brands such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche and BMW have reported record sales.Bentley so… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Finished San Fransicko

I have finished San Fransicko, the book by a self-described lifelong “progressive and Democrat” that I wrote about in Reading list: San Fransicko. Let’s go to the solution first. … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Omicron is in Retreat

Adding some support to the Vietnam War analogy, today’s New York Times says “Omicron Is in Retreat”, with the implication that any decline in “cases” is due to the eff… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Will we ever know how the CDC’s cloth mask recommendations changed the COVID-19 death statistics?

“The C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks.” (NYT, Friday): When the C.D.C. finally recommended masks for ordinary Americans, i… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The 6-year-old hater

Rousseau thought that children were innately innocent, but maybe that is because he never reared any. On the way to the Stuart Boat Show, we stopped at a favorite local restaurant for breakfast. I … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

MIT: Groundbreaking research on politics and racial justice

The December issue of MIT’s alumni magazine, Technology Review, arrived. this includes a special sub-magazine that is only about things that happen on the MIT campus or that are done by MIT a… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

City of Boston happy to fly rainbow and Islamic flags, but not a Christian group’s flag

Today at the Supreme Court: Shurtleff v. Boston. Officials of the Cradle of Liberty were happy to fly the rainbow (Pride) flag and the Islamic-themed flag of Turkey, but a Christian-themed flag was… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Book to read if you’re upset that everything is out of stock

Island of the Lost: An Extraordinary Story of Survival at the Edge of the World by Joan Druett is a timely read given for those who are upset that everything has been out of stock for two years. It… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Martin Luther King Jr. on Freedom

I hope that everyone who works for the government, at least, is enjoying having today off. This is a reminder to check Reinterpreting MLK’s ideas of freedom for the Age of COVID (July 4, 2021). Cit… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Plural versus possessive at Harvard

In Teaching Information Security there was a discussion of the fact that young people at a Florida state system university rejected the distinction between plural and possessive. A friend sent me t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Why aren’t emails to an at-work lover copyrighted?

Academia is always great for showing those with inferior credentials (i.e., “inferiors”) how to think and behave appropriately. University of Michigan recently fired its president for h… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago