Month: October 2015

The son of Canada’s 1970s leader, Pierre Trudeau, was recently elected to be the new leader. At first glance this would seem to make a mockery of the idea that Canadian society is a meritocracy. How can it be that among the 35 million Canadians the most qualified person to lead the government is the son of the old leader? Won’t this example of nepotism discourage young Canadians from striving their hardest?

On the other hand, Justin Trudeau‘s parents are well-known to Canadians and genetics determines 50 percent of behavior (see The Nurture Assumptionfor where the rest comes from; it will be a rude shock to helicopter parents!). So perhaps for Canadians who thought that Pierre Trudeau did a good job the most rational choice, more or less regardless of qualifications, is any child of Mr. Trudeau.

What do readers (esp. those from Canada) think? Is electing the son of the old leader a good or bad idea?

Related:

• Family Law in Canada (summary: a country that offers the possibility of making $1+ million in tax-free child support after a one-night sexual encounter will now have fully legalized marijuana…)

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Back in 1993 I established a reputation for insanity by asserting that desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office, were dead. “Everything will run inside a browser and be backed by a web server,” I argued. People around me (EECS department at MIT) pushed back hard against this statement. I had to admit that not everything could run in a browser, even if the browser were augmented with the ability to interpret small computer programs downloaded from the server (browsers would get Java and Javascript capabilities about 1.5 years later). The application that I was most willing to give up on was computer-aided design (CAD). Plainly the performance could never be acceptable without running compiled software directly on the user’s personal computer (desktop Unix workstation, actually, at the time).

With Microsoft Office alive and well and iOS and Android apps being released every few seconds it seems that I was dead wrong about native applications being supplanted. And recently I learned that I was dead wrong about CAD being restricted to running in a native application. Onshape has released a collaborative server-based full-blown mechanical CAD system that runs in a browser. A lead engineer in Shanghai can design a widget and watch in real time as a junior engineer in Indiana tweaks the design. Either of them can spin a 3D model of the design around at any time. As with Google Docs, changes are saved back to the server automatically. The version control system is much more elaborate, however, and it is possible to name versions of a design.

What’s behind the wrongness of my prediction? Three things:

1. anything related to 3D graphics or display in a modern computer or smartphone is done by the graphics processor (GPU), not the CPU
2. companies such as Google have put tremendous resources into making Javascript execute fast within browsers
3. there is a 2011 standard that lets a Javascript program running inside a browser tell the GPU what to do: WebGL

The client side of Onshape is essentially the mother-of-all-Javascript systems telling the graphics card what to do. It turns out to be more than sufficiently responsive. Other than a thin shell of an iOS or Android app, the company offers no software to download and install.

Onshape has an interesting way of pricing their system. It is free if you don’t mind the rest of the world looking over your shoulder. I.e., you don’t have to pay if your design can be looked at by others. They charge for keeping a design private.

I’ll be interested to hear from Mech. E. readers what they think about this. Current distributed work in mechanical CAD seems to be done using standard programs that write big files and then sharing those files with Dropbox or a private equivalent. This has all of the same problems as using Microsoft Office in a distributed collaborative fashion, e.g., files named “20151007-widget-design-FINAL-v2-edits-philg-FINAL”. Looking at the US News list of the best global engineering universities I note that they don’t seem to be clustered. Among the top 20, 9 are in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, 5 are in Europe, and the remaining 6 are in the U.S. I would think a company could realize a significant competitive advantage by facilitating collaboration across those continents.

Separately, what games are making heavy use of WebGL? This seems like a useful substrate for online multiplayer video games.

[Disclosure: I have a little personal history with CAD. I was co-author of the ICAD system. This enabled the specification of a family of designs such that it was possible to go from specifications to a 3D model automatically. It was the most popular application program on the Symbolics Lisp Machine. Given that it required typing specs in a machine-readable language, my standard retrospective description became “the world’s best mechanical CAD system for people with PhDs in computer science.”]

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Here’s something Hillary Clinton said in the October 13, 2015 Democratic Presidential debate:

I remember as a young mother, you know, having a baby wake up who was sick and I’m supposed to be in court, because I was practicing law. I know what it’s like. And I think we need to recognize the incredible challenges that so many parents face, particularly working moms. (Clinton)

All of the Democrats agreed that Americans should be compensated for the burden of parenthood, e.g., with “family and parental leave to all of our families.” (Sanders; see also this posting on who should pay for said leave) And given the array of subsidies for parents already in place it seems that there is political consensus around the idea of paying Americans to reproduce.

My question for today is when and why this became necessary. At the time of the nation’s birth parents did not get any federal tax credits for having children. There was no income tax (the Sixteenth Amendment was passed in 1913). Parents also had to educate children themselves or pay a private school (Wikipedia says that it wasn’t until 1870 that “all states had free elementary schools.”). Real incomes were much lower than today. There were no disposable diapers, dishwashers, or washing machines. Yet “the average woman had over seven livebirths in 1800” (NBER). Suppose that five of those children survived through age 18. Is it truly the case that going to work in an air-conditioned office in 2015 and coming home to meet two children who have returned from their government-provided K-12 class and after-school program is actually “an incredible challenge” compared to doing home-based work while dealing with five children circa 1800?

[Separately, the candidates who showed up to the debate were apparently all in agreement that the way to alleviate the “incredible challenge” of dealing with a couple of kids is to pay mothers to stay home for three months following a child’s birth. Does that make sense? What about the remaining 17.75 years of supposedly “incredible challenge”? If I sit on a Carnival cruise ship for three months doing nothing am I then ready to face an “incredible challenge” for 17.75 years? As noted toward the end of my maternity leave posting, it seems as though it would be better to take all of the benefits given to parents (except for K-12 schooling) and load them into the 0-5 period. But even then I am not sure why extra benefits during the first three months will make all the difference.]

What do readers think? Compared to the days in which Americans were having kids without being paid, we have disposable diapers, a river of inexpensive imported clothing and shoes, home appliances, electric lights, take-out food on almost everyone’s way home from work, taxpayer-funded babysitting from age 5-18 (a.k.a. “K-12”), mostly taxpayer-funded babysitting from age 18-22 (a.k.a. “kollege”). Why is it that American parents bellyache about how tough it is and how they need to be subsidized by childless Americans?

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“FAA to Let Airlines Seek to Delay Navigation Upgrades” is a Wall Street Journal story on how the FAA is going to allow airlines to wait until 2025 to install ADS-B equipment. ADS-B requires a GPS receiver comparable to what is found in consumer electronics devices retailing for less than $100. It also requires a radio to transmit GPS location out to the Air Traffic Control computers. The whole thing can be done for $699 for experimental airplanes (Flying magazine). How much does complying with regulation and FAA certification add to the cost when a transport-category aircraft is involved? This article estimates up to $700,000 to retrofit an older airliner and as little as $130,000 during production of a new airliner.

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“Pipistrel Alpha Electro: The trainer of the future?” is an AOPA article about the electric airplane that is closest to realistic availability and practical use.

Some interesting facts that I learned about this Slovenian-made product…

The Siemens (German-made?) 80 hp motor isn’t all that cheap, at $10,000, but it costs about as much to overhaul as a light aircraft alternator ($400). The motor will last for 6,000 hours with two overhauls in the middle. With 80 horsepower this machine will have the same power as the original Rotax-powered Diamond Katana, a thoroughly awesome trainer with an engine that U.S. operators found tough to maintain (partly due to poor support from Rotax).

Perhaps the age of hard-of-hearing flight instructors will be coming to an end: “The aircraft is quiet. There is some noise, but it’s mostly from the propeller, and headset-free conversation is no problem, even at takeoff power.”

No innovation can survive an encounter with U.S. bureaucracy: “One big hitch in the Alpha Electro’s future is the United States’ LSA rules, which make no provision for electrically powered aircraft. So for the time being the airplane lives in a sort of regulatory limbo. It can be flown in the Experimental category, but this permits no commercial activity—including flight training, the airplane’s principal mission.”

The batteries can be recharged in just 45 minutes, meaning that a flight school scheduling students into 2-hour blocks might just barely be able to substitute this plane for current trainers.

Who else is excited by this development?

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From Facebook:

• User 1: “Not sure a man could have pulled off the Theranos scam as he would have been asked questions.”
• User 2: “Nobody wants to ask ‘How is a young uneducated American woman more capable than 100 chemistry PhDs at Siemens in Germany?'”

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Back in August I wrote a posting about the New York Times portrayal of Amazon as a sweatshop. Most of my friends who have worked at Amazon were there in the mid-1990s and have departed for various reasons (“called in rich” being one; didn’t agree with Jeff Bezos being another; wanted to help rid the world of Republicans being a third). Thus I don’t have personal knowledge that would support or contradict the Times story. As a database programmer, though, I find Amazon’s rebuttal interesting. Some of the response rests on information queried from database management systems:

Elizabeth Willet, who claims she was “strafed” through the Anytime Feedback tool, received only three pieces of feedback through that tool during her entire time at Amazon. All three included positive feedback on strengths as well as thoughts on areas of improvement. Far from a “strafing,” even the areas for improvement written by her colleagues contained language like: “It has been a pleasure working with Elizabeth.”

Chris Brucia, who recalls how he was berated in his performance review before being promoted, also was given a written review. Had the Times asked about this, we would have shared what it said. “Overall,” the document reads, “you did an outstanding job this past performance year.” Mr. Brucia was given exceptionally high ratings and then promoted to a senior position.

I’m wondering if this is the future. Companies who are attacked by journalists will be able to use DBMS queries to argue that information was presented selectively and/or incorrectly.

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A new emergency procedure, in Year 70 of widespread helicopter flying… a technique for getting out of vortex ring state with a powered bank instead of by reducing power and lowering the noise: “Flying Through the Vortex” (Rotor & Wing, September 1, 2015) by Tim Tucker, reporting on a technique developed by Claude Vuichard, a Swiss pilot.

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I had dinner with Stefan Cavallo, a test pilot for NASA (“NACA” in those days) during World War II (interview). Cavallo intentionally flew a P-51 fighter into a thunderstorm to figure out why they were breaking up on the way back from bombing runs into Germany whereas the supposedly weaker B-17s were fine. It turned out that the stresses from turbulence caused the engine internals to come apart. Gaining this knowledge meant the loss of the airplane and Cavallo was forced to bail out of the test airplane.

At age 89, in 2010, Cavallo was off the Long Island coast when the engine on his Cessna 210 failed. He dead-sticked the plane onto the beach (the media account is interesting because the journalist adds an ejection seat to the P-51 (“I crawled out” said Cavallo when I showed him the piece) and conventional landing gear (with a tailwheel) to the Cessna 210).

Cavallo is also notable for being an inventor of the rigid flight helmet. His 1943 design was used by the federal government as prior art in a patent infringement lawsuit defense and subsequently donated to the Smithsonian.

What does this quiet widower hero, still flying light airplanes, think of the society that younger folks have created? “Somewhere along the way younger Americans squandered what we had built,” said Cavallo, though not with any bitterness. When he looks at us he sees timid paper shufflers, aggressive divorce lawsuit plaintiffs, and a general “can’t do” attitude: “By our mid-20s nearly all of us were in what would turn out to be lifelong marriages and we already had kids. The Empire State Building was built in a year.” I was pretty sure that this was an embellishment. They could not have actually built the world’s tallest building in 1/5th the time that we would today spend in the planning and approval process, could they have? Wikipedia shows that Cavallo’s 94-year-old brain is in fact working better than mine!

Related:

• “Generation Wuss” by Brett Ellis Easton

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“On Tinder, Off Sex” is a New York Times article by a graduate student in English at USC. She’s is “interested in both men and women” and consumed half a bottle of bourbon before her last sexual encounter. The author sets a pretty high bar for indecisiveness.

Some of my Facebook friends (i.e., not my friends!) are interested in this. What I find most interesting is why the New York Times would run the piece. Readers of traditional newspapers are pretty old. Is this article there to make them feel better about their own sexuality? E.g., “Well, I thought things were bad here at age 70 but at least I have figured out who I want to have sex with and sometimes we get the energy to follow through.”

Readers: Why would the Times run this? How is it newsworthy if a young person is confused about sex and unable to act?

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