…. but 1+ million migrants per year is good for the U.S.? “Hillary Clinton: Europe must curb immigration to stop rightwing populists” (Guardian): “I think Europe needs to get a ha… | Continue reading
“A $2 Billion Question: Did New York and Virginia Overpay for Amazon?” (nytimes): Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended the deal, arguing that New York has to offer incentives because of its compa… | Continue reading
If you’re traveling today, God help you! I made it back to Boston from Denver via United Airlines on Wednesday. Buried in the fine print of a “Fare Breakdown” was “September… | Continue reading
According to The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us, by Douglas Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law. My dim memory of Classical hist… | Continue reading
Thanksgiving weekend seems like a good time to ponder the big picture. Here are a couple of potentially helpful articles. From Newsweek: The United States has spent nearly $6 trillion on wars that … | Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! After listening to The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us, by Douglas Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School o… | Continue reading
Some of my Facebook friends posted in outrage over a synagogue in New York City being defaced with graffiti by a guy named “James Polite” (you can’t make this stuff up!). To them … | Continue reading
“Michael Bloomberg: Why I’m Giving $1.8 Billion for College Financial Aid” (nytimes): Let’s eliminate money problems from the admissions equation for qualified students.America is at it… | Continue reading
“Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Proclamation Targeting Some Asylum Seekers” (nytimes): A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims from mi… | Continue reading
I’ve been enjoying The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us, by Douglas Linder, a professor at the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law. One of the trials c… | Continue reading
The life of a software expert witness involves quite a bit of “hurry up and wait.” Thus did I recently find myself in Easton, Pennsylvania waiting for things to move in the Federal Cour… | Continue reading
A Facebook friend with a Ph.D. in Physics posted the following as her status: All six US science Nobel prize winners this year are immigrants.Last year, all six US noble [sic] prize winners were al… | Continue reading
“What the Lion Air Pilots May Have Needed to Do to Avoid a Crash” (nytimes) contains a lot of good cockpit photos and illustrations explaining the combination of manual and automatic fl… | Continue reading
“How to Date a Lot of Billionaires” (nytimes, 11/10/2018): The Matharoo sisters never intended to become a cautionary tale about the perils of social media influence. They were born and… | Continue reading
“7 Women Accuse Dartmouth Professors of Sexual Abuse in Lawsuit” (nytimes): Seven women are suing Dartmouth College for sexual assault, harassment and discrimination they say they exper… | Continue reading
I got the cold shoulder from a couple of aviation companies when I invited them to come speak and demo in our three-day FAA Ground School class at M.I.T. Maybe it is Boston’s typically miser… | Continue reading
I’m wondering if the Amazon HQ2 deals show how to implement a planned economy without having to acknowledge that one’s country has transitioned away from the market. Planned Economy v1.… | Continue reading
“The Subway Bomber’s Journey to 42nd Street, Captured on Camera” (nytimes, November 5, 2018) is a little shocking for showing just how many security cameras are running in our cities th… | Continue reading
“Amazon Announces New York and Virginia as HQ2 Picks” (nytimes): Amazon could receive more than $2 billion in tax incentives across the two top locations, the company said in its announ… | Continue reading
Today we observe Veterans Day. In addition to remembering those who died in previous wars, let’s consider our arsenal for the next ones. The F-35 was used in combat by the US for the first ti… | Continue reading
We went to the New England Air Museum today, home of a beautifully restored B-29, and met two former B-29 crew members. One is 92 and one is 94. Both were navigators, which meant a lot of radar wor… | Continue reading
The Lion Air 610 mystery/tragedy seems to be mostly solved. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane, which uses a de Havilland Comet (1949; also BBC)-style hydro-mechanical flight control system, has a touch… | Continue reading
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau says that Canada welcomes any refugees or asylum-seekers that the U.S. rejects. “Central American Migrants in Mexico Want Buses to US Border” (nytimes) s… | Continue reading
The professor in Why You Are Who You Are: Investigations into Human Personality cites research that personality is highly heritable and disordered personality characteristics are even more heritabl… | Continue reading
“Schneiderman Will Not Face Criminal Charges in Abuse Complaints” (nytimes): After a six-month investigation, prosecutors said Thursday that they would not pursue criminal charges again… | Continue reading
We in the temperate zones of Planet Earth have been waging war on folks at the Equator for the past few hundred years. We dig up dinosaur blood and coal, set it on fire, and fill with atmosphere wi… | Continue reading
A friend’s new two-refrigerator kitchen: | Continue reading
We have a new (better?) Congress as of today. The Uber driver who picked me up recently in “North Bethesda” (Rockville!) happened to be an immigrant from Venezuela. His parents and sibl… | Continue reading
A California Democrat on Facebook posted a link to “College students say they can’t send in their absentee ballots because they don’t know where to buy stamps” (Business Ins… | Continue reading
… but not Mexico? “Barbra Streisand Can’t Get Trump Out of Her Head. So She Sang About Him.” (nytimes): How are you feeling these days?I want to sleep nights, if we take the Hous… | Continue reading
Folks: What are your election outcome predictions? So much of the ballot in our town is taken up by candidates running unopposed that I haven’t put much effort into considering Massachusetts … | Continue reading
… part of the collection at the New England Air Museum (also a B-29!): | Continue reading
… by voting for Democrats. From “Letter from [MIT] President Reif: Consoling each other and helping to heal the world”: As our nation once again confronts heartbreaking mass viole… | Continue reading
Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America by James and Deborah Fallows identifies the presence of refugees and immigrants as a sign of an American town’s success. What’… | Continue reading
I flew the Cirrus recently to Gaithersburg, an airport that supposedly sees only 131 operations per day (airnav). On the flight from Allentown, Pennsylvania to KGAI, the controllers did not even on… | Continue reading
I’ve recently finished Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America by James and Deborah Fallows. James is a Cirrus pilot and the couple traveled around via light airplane so I… | Continue reading
The deCordova museum hit the financial wall recently and is being absorbed by a more successful nonprofit. From the press release: Like many non-profits, deCordova has an endowment that has not gro… | Continue reading
A Swiss surgeon recently came to Boston for a conference. East Coast Aero Club prices are 1/3 to 1/2 what it costs to rent a plane in Switzerland so he decided to spend a week before the conference… | Continue reading
I’ve been going back through some old blog postings here as part of the migration effort from Harvard’s server. Here are some things that I got wrong… Media Lab has boomed along w… | Continue reading
As technology takes over American lives, literally in the case of Facebook, I wonder if voting Republican tomorrow isn’t the best way for Americans to #Resist total domination by their smug r… | Continue reading
A subclass of employees of Google today will stop working and “walk out” (to where? a suburban parking lot?). The management of the company says that they support this walkout. Can we i… | Continue reading
A big law firm partner shared the following (friends-only) on Facebook: I have something to say to all the young girls out there. Love yourself. Appreciate your body. Tell yourself that you are bea… | Continue reading
This year we voters in the Land of Righteousness (i.e., Massachusetts) get to decide… Question 3: whether the government should continue to be able to imprison people for up to 1 year and/or … | Continue reading
An East Coast Aero Club customer from Switzerland wanted to burn up some Cirrus SR20 time. So it was off to KHVN and the Yale University Art Gallery. Walking around the campus we saw signs preparin… | Continue reading
From a coastal elite venture capitalist friend on Facebook: When these 5,000+ migrants inevitably arrive at the US / Mexico border and begin to force their way across, what if we rallied 10,000 Ame… | Continue reading
I think it is time to plan a new Bahamas/Caribbean trip. The last one was in 2003 in a Diamond DA-40 (write-up). Back then I wrote “The bible of Caribbean flying is the Bahamas & Caribbea… | Continue reading
Folks: As you may have noticed, as of today this 15-year-old blog is now integrated into my regular philip.greenspun.com server. Can you please test signing up for email alerts, commenting, and any… | Continue reading