Washington, D.C. vaccine papers and Photo ID checks start tomorrow

Let’s check in to see how things are going at the Center of the Free World (TM). From the mayor of Washington, D.C.: Adults need a photo ID to go more or less anywhere in the city. If we beli… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Elon Musk pinball machine

Here are some photos from a recent excursion to the Silverball Pinball Museum in Delray Beach, Florida. Statistics that folks in NY, MA, and CA are passionate about watching showed that Florida was… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Will Americans use their free at-home test kits to ensure negative official test results as needed?

In a triumph of central planning, the test kits that nobody can buy will now be free. “Insurers Will Have to Cover 8 At-Home Virus Tests Per Month” (New York Times, 1/10): The Biden adm… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The Federal Reserve Bank president who said not to print money

Happy Lucky 13 day! Given the recent headlines, e.g., “Inflation rises 7% over the past year, highest since 1982” (CNBC), let’s look at “The Fed’s Doomsday Prophet Has a Dir… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Non-white people considered high-risk when it is time to get COVID-19 medicine, but low-risk when gathering

Welcome to Covidcratic Logic Lesson #731. From the Followers of Science in California, Order of the Health Officer of the County Of Sonoma C19-35: To slow the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“C… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Checking in on the wicked Swedes

One country we haven’t heard much about during the Ominous Omicron Oscillation is Sweden. As noted in Coronascientists are the modern Aristotles? for those who Follow the Science the original… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Is it better to get food poisoning at a women-owned restaurant?

Because I refused to pollute the sacred temple that is my body with a 947th slice of pizza in one month, while the kids and Senior Management had a strip mall pizza on the way to the Tampa Zoo, I w… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Population-wide COVID-19 vaccines a failure measured by death toll?

The mRNA vaccines invented in 1987 by Robert Malone and perfected to build immunity against COVID-19 in 2020 have been hailed by many as a great public health success. CNN, 5/26/2021: “The sp… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Revisiting my coronaplague prediction from July

On July 28, 2021, while we were at Oshkosh, a friend (who is a pre-2020 “scientist” in that he formulates hypotheses and tests them rather than constructing retrospective explanations) … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Measles as a best-case study of how humans stack up to respiratory viruses?

Nearly two years ago, when public health officials first began talking about “science” in the context of the measures they were taking that would eradicate SARS-CoV-2, the medical schoo… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Avoid travel to Australia now that Novak Djokovic is on the loose?

“Novak Djokovic Can Remain in Australia, Judge Rules” (NYT): Novak Djokovic, the Serbian tennis star, moved one step closer to competing for his record 21st Grand Slam title after an Au… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Is it legitimate for the Supreme Court to use numbers to rule on forced vaccinations?

Based on what Justices said during last week’s hearing regarding the constitutionality of President Biden’s forced vaccination orders, the Supreme Court seemed to be prepared to rule ba… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

If vaccines are effective against COVID-19, why doesn’t China vaccinate its way into normalcy?

We’re informed that COVID-19 vaccines prevent nearly all serious consequences from being infected with SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 is no worse than the common cold for those who have accepted the sa… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Take a weekend trip to the desert, to the gay inns, where clothing is optional (and so are masks)

Here’s a mid-December 2021 story from the LA Times: Some excerpts from a newspaper that has supporting school closures, mandatory vaccinations, etc.: The skin wants the sun. The skin wants wa… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Who has recently switched from Verizon to T-Mobile?

We are in an abusive relationship with Verizon right now. They gaslight us by showing at least 2 bars of 5G service in our neighborhood (Abacoa; part of Jupiter, Florida) and at the beach, but, in … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Omicronicles: the high schooler tests positive and then goes to school

A friend back in the Land of Righteousness has a child who tested positive for COVID-19, but whose symptoms were mild. The child with laboratory-confirmed infection decided to go to his/her/zir/the… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Is Service in your DNA?

Here’s a sign that I was able to contemplate at leisure while waiting to get a license plate (Florida delegates what would a massive DMV bureaucracy to counties). The “Is Service in you… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Supreme Court hears arguments on forced vaccination in two parallel universes

The Supreme Court recently took up the question of whether elderly elites can order young peasants to get vaccinated against a virus that attacks the elderly. The argument took place in two paralle… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Coronascience charts

A reader sent me the following Trust in Science page: The Spectator folks track the predictions of Science against actual outcomes. This is enabled by the fact that the UK rejected Science’s … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Merry Collectivist Christmas to Russian Orthodox readers

Last month we visited the Morikami Museum, a building owned by Palm Beach County, notable for its constant efforts to force schoolchildren to wear masks, contrary to orders from the governor, rulin… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How’s COVID test availability in your neighborhood?

From three weeks ago: Why is it still almost impossible to schedule a COVID-19 test? (at least in Maskachusetts) How are things now? Here in the Palm Beach area, using the CVS web site, the earlies… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How is Rivian still worth $78 billion?

In What edge does Rivian have in the truck or EV market? (November 2021) I wondered how Rivian could be worth $127 billion, given that Ford will soon be selling electric pickups. As of today, the c… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Reminder that failure is an option

I stumbled on Closed for Storm in Amazon Prime (it is wedged into a corner of the app behind “Black voices” and “Hispanic & Latino voices” (no “Latinx voices”… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Exploring the land value tax

The U.S. Congress is getting back to “work” soon, trying to figure out how to squeeze enough tax revenue from Xbox-oriented Americans to fund all of the government programs that we drea… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The Science in the movie Don’t Look Up

Don’t Look Up is a cautionary tale of what could happen if Trump-supporters were a majority in the U.S. It is an update, to some extent of the 2006 film Idiocracy, whose underlying message is… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Let’s go to Brandon (Florida)

Our 8-year-old ran out of books to read on our recent excursion around the Florida Free State. Google Maps showed us that the most convenient bookstores between Lakeland and Tampa were in… Br… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The FAA burdened helicopter charter operators with rules to install useless radar altimeters that are now disabled by 5G

“FAA punches a hole in the U.S. economy today” (2017): Today is the day that FAR 135.160 goes into effect. This requires a radar altimeter (“radio altimeter” in the FAA’s parlance or “r… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Karen visits a Florida theme park

This is a quote from a friend’s Facebook post, but I am not going to use the WordPress Quote style because it will be easier to read if not in italics. The names have been changed. The author… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Career Planning Inspiration

This is the time when young people begin looking for their first jobs out of college and/or high school. Where are these jobs likely to lead 40 years down the road? A friend sent me this article fr… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Who followed the Elizabeth Holmes trial?

Who followed the Elizabeth Holmes trial closely? “The Elizabeth Holmes Verdict: Theranos Founder Is Guilty on Four of 11 Charges in Fraud Trial” (WSJ, which is the newspaper primarily r… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Why doesn’t the raging plague in Maskachusetts cause doubt among the true believers in Faucism?

This post generally falls into the category of “Are humans in charge of SARS-CoV-2 infections or is the virus in charge?” One of the principal heresies of this blog, since March 2020, i… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The unvaccinated can upgrade their image by consuming meth and heroin?

The self-described “progressive” who wrote San Fransicko thinks that one reason homelessness in California is so persistent is that individuals are not held accountable for their choice… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Success with Wise money transfer

In Finally a use case for cryptocurrency? (currency conversion fees), Tim suggested Wise as the, um, wise way to transfer dollars to euro-denominated accounts overseas. I recently used this to pay … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

How far would you go to get your child into college?

Now that the Harvard College application deadline is behind us, let’s look at a book by Nobel-winner (like Obama!) Kazuo Ishiguro that turns out to be partly on the topic of what a parent wou… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

COVID-22 for those renouncing U.S. citizenship

“Americans seeking to renounce their citizenship are stuck with it for now” (Guardian): For almost two years, since the pandemic struck in March 2020, most US consular missions around t… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Protected by masks on a 100-percent full flight

Readers may recall that I’ve been an advocate for preventing airlines from selling middle seats during coronapanic, rather than relying on masks to block the spread of germs (see Coronavirus … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Breaking bad habits for the New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! What bad habits are you going to try to swear off for the New Year? A recent conversation in the middle seat of the minivan: 6-year-old: Dad, if you crack your knuckles … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Safe way to celebrate New Year’s Eve: watch Contagion

Contagion, by the brilliant director Steven Soderbergh, leaves HBO Max tonight. Most of the friends who scolded me for lack of coronapanic orthodoxy and weak adherence to Faucism are still in their… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Farewell to Christmas lights

I hope now that everyone has been inspired by the example of Kamala Harris’s family in quickly breaking down the Christmas decorations (illustrated in a photo from her childhood) to make room… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Royal Air Force versus U.S. Air Force

This book will appeal primarily to pilots: An Officer, Not a Gentleman (Mandy Hickson). It’s by a pilot who spends 24 years in the Royal Air Force flying what the Brits call “fast jets,… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Covid epidemic among air traffic controllers in Orlando

Numerous COVID-righteous friends have reported problems getting to vacation destinations this year. Dr. Fauci apparently told them to cram themselves onto 100-percent-full airliners and then congre… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Inflation chronicles: when a $120 steak dinner is underpriced

One of my favorite restaurants is Bern’s Steak House in Tampa. If you don’t order any wine, you could probably get out of there for $120 per person including tax and tip (menu with some… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Kwanzaa stamps an expression of hate?

I went to the Post Office today to get some stamps for our New Year’s cards. It’s Florida so naturally the guy working the counter wasn’t wearing a mask and didn’t ask any c… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

The New York Times explains computers circa 1967

Americans today love to read about cosmology and string theory, but you couldn’t pay most to listen to a lecture on how their beloved smartphones work. Apparently, there was a time when non-s… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Teaching Information Security

This post is to help professors trying to teach information security, a subject typically studied by seniors earning a Bachelor’s in Information Technology. Information Security covers how to… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Avionics News: What’s worse than paying $18,245 for $200 of electronics?

Chatting with some pilots and aircraft owners this evening, one mentioned that he’d ordered an $18,245 Garmin 750Xi. This has some computing power, some flash memory storage, a touchscreen di… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Happy Kwanzaa

Happy Kwanzaa to everyone. The holiday reminds us just how far we have to go in our quest for social justice. Shutterfly, for example, shows only one or two people with light skin as sample images … | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago

Merry Christmas from the Central Planners

Merry Christmas to everyone! Loyal readers will know that I love central planning (seen “Citizens for a Planned Economy,” the political group that I formed after watching the 2012 Presi… | Continue reading


@philip.greenspun.com | 2 years ago