Author: philg

Progress in aviation as measured by the Robinson R88

by philg

Robinson has figured out that the big money in helicopters is government and medevac (also government, since Medicare and Medicaid pay). Consequently, they’ve released the R88, a machine big enough to serve as an air ambulance (government pays) or firefighter (government pays) or police (government, obviously, and oftentimes air taxi for bureaucrats). Here’s what it looks like:

The turbine powerplant is made in an Islamic country and generates 950 hp. Rumor has it that the new helicopter will cost $3.3 million so let’s call that $4 million in today’s dollars by the time it goes out the door with useful equipment.

My summary to a pilot group:

Never in the history of humanity has there been a single-engine helicopter that could carry two pilots and 8 passengers underneath a two-blade rotor system.

Let’s have a look at the Bell UH-1 (“Huey”), which first flew in 1956 and of which more than 16,000 were built. The Huey had…

  • two pilots
  • seats for 11 passengers
  • a single engine (700 hp in the prototype; 1100 hp by 1960)
  • a two-blade rotor system

What did the first Hueys cost? $250,000 (source). Adjusted from 1960 into today’s mini-dollars… that’s $2.7 million.

The Robinson R88 is surely an improvement over the Bell in many respects. There are LCD screens in front and a modern autopilot to “pitch in” (so to speak). It may also be more reliable and cheaper to maintain (I hope!). But it’s kind of interesting that there hasn’t been more of an improvement in specs or cost after nearly 70 years.

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Update on the American Heart Association

by philg

As you observe International Day to Combat Islamophobia and work on your taxes (one month to go!) and contemplate your charitable contributions, check out this post from two years ago… Our first grader learns about the non-profit world (American Heart Association):

The CEO earned $2.44 million in 2020,

How’s this lady with a bachelor’s degree doing more recently? For 2023, her compensation is up to about $4.15 million (source):

The organization’s revenue went up 32 percent from $700 million to $926 million while her compensation went up by 70 percent.

(Our local public school is still enlisting children to help raise money for the American Heart Association.)

Just as in 2023, the American Heart Association’s giant medical brains recommend that babies get their first COVID-19 shot at age 6 months. Contrast to the Science-denying Trump-worshipping fools who run the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (previously an exemplar of what government and health care could be) who say that baby’s first COVID-19 shot is at age 75.

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Have Americans of color been enjoying a cleaner environment?

by philg

“E.P.A. Plans to Close All Environmental Justice Offices” (NYT):

An internal memo directs the closure of offices designed to ease the heavy pollution faced by poor and minority communities.

Mr. Zeldin’s move effectively ends three decades of work at the E.P.A. to try to ease the pollution that burdens poor and minority communities, which are frequently located near highways, power plants, industrial plants and other polluting facilities. Studies have shown that people who live in those communities have higher rates of asthma, heart disease and other health problems, compared with the national average.

Last month, Mr. Zeldin placed 168 employees who work on environmental justice on leave, but this week a federal judge forced him to rehire dozens of them after finding that the action had no legal basis. Several E.P.A. employees said they were bracing for many of those people to again be eliminated, as the agency and others prepared for widespread reductions in force.

As president, Mr. Biden emphasized the need to address the unequal burden that people of color carry from exposure to environmental hazards. He created the White House Office of Environmental Justice and directed federal agencies to deliver 40 percent of the benefits of environmental programs to marginalized communities that face a disproportionate amount of pollution. The E.P.A.’s Office of Environmental Justice, which was created by the Clinton administration, significantly expanded under Mr. Biden.

The Trump administration has now erased all of that.

The EPA spends $11 billion every year. Apparently, roughly 40 percent of that has been going to government-identified “marginalized communities” (there are experts assigned to determine which communities have been marginalized?). There are hundreds of EPA employees, at least, working on “environmental justice”. Yet the New York Times journalist couldn’t find any evidence to cite regarding Americans of color (e.g., a lavishly paid Chinese-American school superintendent in the Boston exurbs who claims to be “a person of color”) experiencing any benefit as a consequence of this huge effort.

Is there any evidence that Americans are experiencing more environmental justice as a result of 10+ years of government effort in this direction? If one aspect of the environment is not being crowded, I would think that urban Americans have experienced less environmental now that low-skill migrants have been dumped into their neighborhoods (never into the neighborhoods of the elite advocates for open borders).

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Columbia says that it hates inequality and also that it wants more federal money

by philg

There is one thing that students and faculty at Columbia say that they hate more than than the state of Israel: inequality. The flip side is that there is one thing that students and faculty at Columbia love more than the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad: equality. Columbia has accumulated $15 billion in profits (its endowment) and, therefore, is near the top of the top 1% of the richest colleges in the U.S. (list; there are about 4,000 colleges and universities total in the U.S).

One would think thank these inequality-haters would be delighted that the Trump administration had decided to redirect money from their rich school, thus freeing up funds to be distributed to comparatively poor schools. Yet instead we learn that folks at Columbia are upset. Example video: “Columbia University staff, students aren’t pleased with $400M cut in funds”.

From the student newspaper:

From the article:

“The AAUP is actively working with our members across the nation in preparation to resist these draconian policies that severely undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education,” the statement from [union leader Todd] Wolfson reads.

An elite academic is truly free only if he/she/ze/they is receiving an unconditional paycheck from working class taxpayers? In a now-deleted tweet, a Columbia grad student wrote that her F31 grant was worth only $100,000 per year in salary and tuition and that this was “pennies”, serenely unaware at the time that quite a few taxpayers would consider $100,000/year to be actual money. (the BLS says that median wage in Q4 2024 for a full-time worker was $1,185/week = $61,620/year)

(Same question about Californians. They say that they hate inequality and then they complain that California purportedly pays more in federal taxes than it receives in federal spending. (Much if not most of this is due, I think, to Californians paying into Social Security and Medicare while working in California and then receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits in retirement after moving to other states.) Californians want money extracted from taxpayers in Mississippi for their gold-plated high-speed rail system, for example, when that is completely inconsistent with their philosophy of promoting equality.)

Another question about Columbia… most of the academics I know who get federal money said that they would leave the U.S. in the event of a second Nakba (Trump victory). Nearly all should be living in Canada or Europe by now. Why are there enough of these folks still at Columbia to soak up so much federal money?

Separately, how is the noble enricher Mahmoud Khalil doing?

Loosely related, a couple of official White House tweets, Shalom Columbia and Shalom, Mahmoud:

Related:

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California white savior gets arrested

by philg

A few screen shots from joesanberg.com before it gets taken down…

His X profile consists of just a single quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and shows no white people other than himself:

Here here says that he wants to give money extracted from native-born taxpayers to “low-wage, undocumented workers” (via a state EITC analogous to the federal cash hand-out program). He’s also proud that, if “single motherhood” occurred in the manner convention for white Jews, mom sued dad. I appreciate that every photo of Californians includes at least some Followers of Fauci:

A big donor to the Democrats, he was considering running for President in 2020 (Atlantic):

Wall Street Journal, Sustainable Business Section, 2022 (sponsored by the accounting experts at Deloitte):

Since it is Women’s History Month, one of Sanberg’s tweets regarding this most noble of gender IDs:

More recently… “Joseph Sanberg, Co-Founder of Aspiration Partners, Arrested for Conspiring to Defraud an Investment Fund of at Least $145 Million” (U.S. Department of Justice):

Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini Pleads Guilty to Scheming with Sanberg

SANTA ANA, California – Joseph Neal Sanberg, 45, of Orange, the co-founder and largest shareholder of the financial and sustainability services company Aspiration Partners, Inc., was arrested today on a federal criminal complaint alleging that he conspired to defraud two investor funds of at least $145 million.

Sanberg’s coconspirator, Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini, 51, of Venice, pleaded guilty today to an information charging him with wire fraud for falsifying documents and information to assist Sanberg. According to his plea agreement, signed on February 7, 2025, and unsealed today, AlHusseini personally received approximately $12.3 million in payments from the scheme. AlHusseini is scheduled for sentencing on September 29, 2025. … AlHusseini was arrested on a criminal complaint on October 7, 2024, and has been released on bond since November 13, 2024.

I can’t figure out what Mr. Sanberg allegedly did with the $145 million? Spent it on 8 Mar-a-Lago’s (using the New York judiciary’s estimated value of $18 million)? Used it in some business where he was the primary shareholder? I guess it is at least fair to say that Sanberg was telling the truth when he tweeted out “We need Court reform. Now.”

Flash back to 2023, when Mr. Sanberg tweeted “Justice, justice shall you pursue!”

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An old guy is #4 in the Iditarod right now

by philg

The Iditarod leaders should cross the finish line within the next 24 hours. The leader, from Alabama(!), has just 73 miles to go.

As with aerobatics and endurance flying (see Department of Old Guys can Fly: nonstop cross-country at 1,100 lbs gross weight: “EAA keeps saying that their mission is to inspire young people, but if you look at the ages of the airshow performers, the round-the-world and over-the-poles pilots, and achievers such as Ebneter, maybe what EAA is actually doing is inspiring the elderly!”), it seems that the most inspiring story from the Iditarod is likely to be Mitch Seavey’s finish. The current #4 musher’s bio says “At 65 years of age, I’m running the Iditarod because it’s hard.” He won the race, which requires a lot of physical effort by both mushers and dogs, in 2004, 2013, and 2017.

It’s too bad that Donald Trump has gutted NIH funding, at least to the Queers for Palestine League. I would love to see a Columbia University study on the heritability of dog mushing prowess. (Mitch Seavey’s son Dallas Seavey has won the Iditarod six times.)

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Learn to Code

by philg

I don’t know if Joe Biden is dead or alive right now, but I have fond memories of his 2019 career advice to coal miners:

Suppose that a high school student took Joe Biden’s advice in 2019 but skipped the coal mining phase. He/she/ze/they will graduate from college in 3 months with a CS degree. We randomly selected this person so he/she/ze/they will have median skills as an entry-level computer programmer (“coder”).

Let’s hear from an LLM expert to get some insight into what the demand for a median-skilled programmer is likely to be…

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Five-year anniversary of the first U.S. lockdown order

by philg

According to “Statewide COVID‐19 Stay‐at‐Home Orders and Population Mobility in the United States” (2020), today is the five-year anniversary of the first American lockdown order:

In the United States, the first coronavirus‐related activity restrictions were issued on March 12, 2020, when a community within New Rochelle, New York, was declared to be a “containment area.” A traditional quarantine order would require individuals presumed to be exposed to stay at home. This containment order was not intended to limit individual movement. Instead, it mandated the closure of schools and large gathering places within the zone, including religious buildings (Chappell, 2020). Residents were allowed to enter and leave the containment zone, but they were not allowed to gather in large groups within the designated geographic area.

On March 16, 2020, a “shelter‐in‐place” order was issued for six counties in the San Francisco Bay Area (Allday, 2020). Shelter in place was a term many Californians were familiar with due to its use during wildfires and other natural disasters, active shooter drills, and other short‐term emergency situations. In those contexts, “shelter in place” means “stay where you are,” but that was not what the COVID‐19 orders were asking residents to do. The order did not require individuals to stay where they happened to be located when the order was released. Residents were allowed to leave home for essential purposes, including food, medical care, and outdoor exercise, and people working at businesses deemed to be “essential”—such as grocery stores, hospitals, pharmacies, veterinary clinics, utilities, hardware stores, auto repair shops, funeral homes, and warehouses and distribution facilities—were allowed to continue onsite work.

Related:

  • “COVID-19 Lockdowns Unleashed a Wave of Murder” (Reason, December 2024): “In 2020, the average U.S. city experienced a surge in its homicide rate of almost 30%—the fastest spike ever recorded in the country,” write Rohit Acharya and Rhett Morris in a research review for the Brookings Institution published this week. “Across the nation, more than 24,000 people were killed compared to around 19,000 the year before.”
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Market is tanking or merely mean-reverting?

by philg

A Ukrainian immigrant friend has been (understandably) expressing rage at Donald Trump for wanting to shut down U.S. support of Ukraine’s military. He also recently texted us that he was enraged with Trump’s tariffs (that never actually happen? I can’t keep track) tanking the stock market. As an index investor who worships at the Church of the Efficient Market Hypothesis I don’t trade and, therefore, don’t check the market.

Not having previously checked, I proposed the following:

Compare to June 1, 2024 so that we filter out some of the noise (back in June the market thought that we’d have continuity with Genocide Joe)

I don’t think we can count the market’s optimistic run-up when it looked like Trump was going to win

Then I looked at a one-year chart:

The Google says that we’re up

adjusted for inflation, perhaps not

5643/5283 [the March 10 price divided by the June 3, 2024 price] compared to around June 1 that’s up 7%

actual inflation (not the government’s fake number) is 4%/year (3% in 9 months)? so we’re up about 4% real in 3/4s of a year, which means the market is on track to deliver a 5% real return (more like 6% if we accept the government 3% annual inflation stat)

that’s not too different from normal (7.5 percent real annual return over the past 20 years using the government’s understated inflation figures, so probably closer to 6 percent if we adjust for inflation by looking at the stuff that an investor might want to buy (houses in decent neighborhoods and upscale vacations, not DVD players at Walmart))

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Five-year anniversary of universities charging full tuition and delivering almost nothing

by philg

Five years ago, here: Coronavirus enables elite universities to pull off the ultimate scam?

First the big research universities figured out that they could charge more than $50,000 per year in tuition for in-person classes taught by graduate students with a tenuous hold on the English language. Now they’ve figured out that they can charge $50,000 per year without having to deliver in-person classes at all!

… A poster cluster in Harvard Yard, afternoon of March 10, 2020:

Speaking of universities, here’s one from the official White House X feed to Columbia:

Note that I don’t believe Columbia will receive less money as a result of this purported “cancelation”. The money will be “unfrozen” soon enough. It will be like the billions of dollars that the U.S. taxpayer has paid to Hamas over the years. We see a headline about “aid” to UNRWA (i.e., a funnel straight to Hamas) being cut off and then the “aid” is quietly restored a few months later after some weak promise is made by UNRWA or affiliates. Nonetheless, I enjoy hearing the former New Yorker saying “Shalom Columbia”!

In case the above gets memory-holed one day by a righteous administration:

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