Author: philg

Should Californians who bribe other Californians have to fly to Boston to be prosecuted?

by philg

One thing that I haven’t figured out in the college bribery case (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/13/admissions-fraud-layered-on-top-of-the-existing-american-college-fraud/ and https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/20/college-bribery-scandal-is-evidence-of-social-mobility/) is why the defendants are having to fly to Boston to be prosecuted by the Federal government.

Consider an actress who lives in Los Angeles, California and is alleged to have bribed a ringleader who lives in Newport Beach, California, to get a child into University of Southern California. I’ve just finished listening to a lecture series on the Founding Fathers and I don’t think any of them would have imagined the California resident having to travel out of state to be prosecuted.

Suppose that everyone can agree that the alleged actions are crimes. Why are they federal crimes?

Related:

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Cirrus SR22T Engine Management

by philg

Sharing a “Cirrus SR22T Transition and Engine Management” page in case it is useful to other flight instructors. I found that there wasn’t anything good out there, even from Cirrus, for pilots who already knew how to fly the SR22 and needed differences training for the SR22T.

People are actually buying these $1 million non-pressurized piston-powered machines. That’s the magic of (a) the parachute, and (b) Cirrus’s incremental annual improvements. General aviation would be a lot more popular, in my opinion, if the Piper Malibu had entered true mass production. Passengers want a quieter ride, to be above the weather and not wearing an oxygen mask, to walk up the airstair door, etc. But Cirrus has done amazing by focusing on the pilot. The G6 airplanes, for example, will automatically turn off the yaw damper below 400′ AGL. No more wondering how the rudder pedals got so crazy stiff on landing!

I would love to see Cirrus do a clean-sheet piston-powered airplane that concentrated on passenger comfort: pressurization plus dramatic reduction in interior noise for a start.

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Death of a Patent

by philg

An inter-partes review ( IPR2018-00044) at the U.S. Patent Office is not the most exciting part of my life as a software expert witness, but it more often leads to a clear resolution (timeline) than do the Federal District Court cases. The patent in question, 7,302,423, covers a way to browse the contents of a database. For curious readers: the decision.

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Maria Butina: Piper Warrior student pilot turns out not to be a master spy

by philg

Nearly a year ago, the New York Times carried the story of the master spy Maria Butina (post). One photo showed her as a student pilot in a Piper Warrior (market value: $30,000?). Later it turned out that she was planning to move to South Dakota in order to more effectively continuing her spying on the Federal government. Vladimir Putin claimed not to know her (CNBC), exactly as we’d expect if she were a critical Kremlin asset.

Now this from CNN… “How the case against Maria Butina began to crumble”:

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have acknowledged that Butina is no Russian spy. But they insist her crime was still nefarious and that she acted as an “access agent” to help spot people who could be recruited as intelligence assets down the road.

“Butina was not a spy in the traditional sense of trying to gain access to classified information to send back to her home country. She was not a trained intelligence officer,” prosecutors acknowledged in a court filing. But, her actions “had the potential to damage the national security of the United States.”

Maybe next time our counterintelligence agents can be trained to look for spies in turbine-powered aircraft?

[U.S. taxpayers, in addition to paying for the investigation and prosecution, now also get to pay for 18 months of incarceration, Butina’s sentence for failing to register as a foreign lobbyist.]

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Late middle age Democrats wanted to be led by the elderly, but now they want to be guided by children

by philg

My Facebook feed is a good indication of how Democrats aged 40-65 think.

In 2016, these folks yearned to be led by a senior citizen. They would have been happy with Bernie Sanders (77 years old) or Hillary Clinton (71), for example, tottering up the stairs to the White House.

In 2018, they were admiring Stormy Daniels (40) for her bravery and her attorney, Michael Avenatti (48), for his determination and possible Presidential candidacy.

These days, however, they post panegyrics to the wisdom of people young enough to be their children, e.g., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (age 29; “in the media mostly because she’s good-looking,” says an independent friend) and Pete Buttigieg (37).

This seems fickle to me. Google and Facebook don’t change their minds every few years about what age person they want to see in various roles within their companies. Why would passionate Democrats swing wildly between thinking that a senior citizen has the requisite life experience to be their leader and deciding that actually the most sensible choice is to follow the guidance of a 29-year-old?

[More worrisome to me personally: Why the apparent dismissal of those of us in, um, later middle age?]

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True cost of Tesla ownership can now be calculated

by philg

Tesla is offering leases for the Model 3. The stripper version (“Standard Range Plus”) is supposedly $39,500 to buy. It can be leased for $2,000 “down payment” plus $545 per month for 36 months and 12,000 miles per year. In other words, $600 per month.

What does a conventional sedan cost? US News says a Nissan Altima, which is about the same size as a Tesla 3 and has awesome ratings, is about $300 per month (depending on region). The Nissan comes with the added potential benefit of being able to buy the car at the end of the lease in the event that the value is higher than the predicted residual value (likely worth $1,000? Let’s mark it to zero for this analysis).

[Nissan fit and finish should be way better; UBS found that Teslas were well below average: “The car scored ‘below average’ on the fit & finish quality audit which looked at >1, 500 gap measurements,” UBS’ Colin Langan wrote in the note to clients. “The team also found the body-wind noise was ‘borderline acceptable.'”]

So Tesla costs $300/month more. What does it save in fuel (costs, if not CO2 emissions)? Let’s say that 1,000 miles per month are actually driven. The Nissan will consume 33 gallons of gasoline to go 1,000 miles (EPA combined), about $85 worth at current retail prices.

Electricity here costs 22.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (BLS). People say that the real-world electricity consumption of the Tesla 3 is 300 watt-hours per mile. So it would burn up 300 kwh to go 1,000 miles or $67.50 in electricity (but the Tesla Superchargers cost 31 cents per kwh so it would actually be more expensive than gasoline?).

It seems that the gas versus electricity cost is a wash. So the Tesla 3 costs $3,600 more per year to own than a comparable-size conventional sedan.

Maybe it is a better product? Consumer Reports gives the Tesla 3 a score of 65, with a mediocre rating for noise and a poor rating for ride quality (everyone who has been in our friend’s Tesla X, including the owner, says that our Honda Odyssey has a much smoother and quieter ride). The Nissan Altima rates 76 and actually did deliver its EPA-promised gas mileage in Consumer Reports testing. The only area where the Tesla seems to have beaten the Nissan was in acceleration, being about 2 seconds faster from 0-60 (given our average practical highway speed here in Boston of about 30 mph, the relevance of this number is unclear).

How about the autopilot? The Nissan puts virtual fences around the human driver, but does not attempt to drive. Consumer Reports liked the Tesla autopilot overall, but put in some caveats: “Some drivers may be frustrated by how the system operates, because too much pressure on the steering wheel will turn off Autopilot. So drivers must be careful to put some pressure on the wheel, but not too much. The system can be operated in many situations that it is not designed for. For instance, it can be engaged on a curvy back road with only a single lane marking. In such cases, it operates erratically rather than restricting Autopilot’s operation.”

Assuming that the autopilot actually did work perfectly all the time, then we could say that people are paying $300 for every 1,000 miles to have the autopilot drive for them. If it takes 30 hours to go 1,000 miles, it is a $10/hour system.

Finally, let’s look at the three-year cost to lord it over the neighbors with one’s all-electric virtue:

  • $10,800 in extra lease payments
  • $1,000 in expected trade-in value for a lease with the right to purchase (our 2014 Honda Odyssey was worth about $2,000 more to the dealer than agreed-on residual value)
  • $1,200 to install a charger at home (probably closer to $2,000 here in Massachusetts)

Grand total: $13,000 (enough to earn a pilot certificate and do a bunch of family trips in a flight school rental aircraft during those three years, yet I am willing to wager that plenty of Tesla 3 owners would say that they can’t afford aviation as a hobby!).

Related:

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Was there a golden age of religious coexistence?

by philg

“Religious Minorities Across Asia Suffer Amid Surge in Sectarian Politics” (nytimes), first three paragraphs:

The deadly attacks in Sri Lanka on Sunday highlighted how easily religious coexistence can be ripped apart in a region where secularism is weakening amid the growing appeal of a politics based on ethnic and sectarian identity.

In India, the country’s governing right-wing Hindu party is exploiting faith for votes, pushing an us-versus-them philosophy that has left Muslims fearing they will be lynched if they walk alone.

In Myanmar, the country’s Buddhist generals have orchestrated a terrifying campaign of ethnic cleansing against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

(the reader who did not scroll to read the entire article would infer that Muslims were the victims of the recent sad events in Sri Lanka, according to the NYT.)

This is the “news” section of the paper, not “opinion.” There is an implicit factual assertion that there were some good old days of religious coexistence. Everyone in Asia had one of those “coexist” bumper stickers:

Is this assertion true? The “two-nation theory” that led to the partition of India (millions killed and/or displaced) started in the 19th century.

Has secularism “weakened” in the region since 1947 when 14 million people were displaced on the theory that Muslims should not have to live among Hindus?

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The politicians who lowered Stop & Shop workers’ market-clearing wages now support their strike

by philg

One of our local supermarkets is now crippled: “New England Stop & Shop strike enters ninth day, as stores sit empty and unstocked; With support from Warren, Biden and Buttigieg, 31,000 striking workers say the grocery giant’s proposals would mean more expensive health care and worse retirement benefits.” (NBC):

Stop & Shop’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, reported profits in the billions but is asking workers to pay more for their insurance and cutting their retirement benefits, according to Erikka Knuti, spokesperson for United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which represents the striking workers.

Knuti said 75 percent of workers at Stop & Shop are part time, working multiple jobs and barely “cobbling together” a living wage.

On April 12, Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren visited her striking constituents.

“Do not cross the picket line,” Warren said, addressing potential shoppers. “Understand people on the picket line are not just fighting for their families. They’re fighting for all our families. They’re fighting for basic fairness and equality in this country.”

Since Warren’s remarks, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and former Vice President Joe Biden have also joined workers on the picket line.

As a proud former union worker myself, I can sympathize with these folks who work all day on their feet for low wages. (With proper planning, there are a lot of easier ways to make money in Massachusetts!)

But I’m wondering if the workers’ primary enemies aren’t the very politicians who are showing up to “support” them. What better way to lower the market-clearing wage for a low-skill supermarket worker than to open the floodgates of low-skill immigration? Forming a union and striking might bump the paycheck slightly, but it can’t undo the reduction caused by tens of millions of immigrants and their children competing for the same jobs.

My neighbors’ Facebook feeds are lit up with the virtuous recounting their heroic tales of driving to Whole Foods, for example, instead. Yet Whole Foods has fought unionization for decades and the founder compared unionization to herpes.

Given that Stop & Shop regularly hires and trains new workers, I don’t know why the stores are running on such a barebones level. What stops the company from hiring and training replacement workers? (this Obama Administration ruling?) How much training does a person who stocks shelves get?

Related:

  • “Labor Board Tells Boeing New Factory Breaks Law” (nytimes, 2011), in which central planners in Washington, D.C. determined whether or not a company could build a new factory in order to escape a union: “In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina. In its complaint, the labor board said that Boeing’s decision to transfer a second production line for its new 787 Dreamliner passenger plane to South Carolina was motivated by an unlawful desire to retaliate against union workers for their past strikes in Washington and to discourage future strikes.” (see also Licence Raj)
  • “20 women slept with me to get promotion” (life in an English supermarket)
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Another airplane that fights the pilot if one AOA sensor is bad: Cirrus Jet

by philg

In another triumph for American engineering, it seems that the Cirrus Jet‘s stick pusher activates if a single AOA sensor fails mechanically (FAA Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2019-08-51). The system isn’t quite as badly designed as the Boeing 737 MAX’s silent gradual pusher, but it is nowhere near as robust as the early 1990s design on the Pilatus PC-12 (Swiss engineering). An important difference is that it is obvious to the pilot(s) when the Cirrus system is operating and the disconnect button is right on the yoke (just the usual A/P disconnect button).

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Trump Presidency Crisis Continues: Stock market up only 33 percent

by philg

According to the New York Times, the crisis that began when Hillary Clinton failed to defeat Donald Trump on November 8, 2016 only intensified with the release of the Mueller report. Some recent items…

“It’s Not the Collusion, It’s the Corruption” (by David Brooks):

The first force is Donald Trump, who represents a threat to the American systems of governance. … The second force is Russia. If Trump is a threat to the institutional infrastructure, the Russians are a threat to our informational infrastructure. … The third force is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. They are a threat to our deliberative infrastructure.

“The Mueller Report and the Danger Facing American Democracy” (Editorial Board):

But the real danger that the Mueller report reveals is not of a president who knowingly or unknowingly let a hostile power do dirty tricks on his behalf, but of a president who refuses to see that he has been used to damage American democracy and national security.

“In a Functional Country, We Would Be on the Road to Impeachment
Mueller laid out the evidence for members of Congress to take action against President Trump. Will they?” (Michelle Goldberg):

There are a lot of reasons Trump’s election remains a festering wound. It was a horrifying shock to many of us and, given his decisive loss in the popular vote, an insult to democracy. … It was probably naïve to think that Mueller could cut through such a thick web of falsity. But if anyone could have, it would have been him, the embodiment of a set of old-fashioned virtues that still ostensibly command bipartisan respect.

[The hero with “old-fashioned virtue” charged with uncovering Vladimir Putin’s puppet control of the U.S. government spent most of his time looking into which young women were paid to have sex with which older guys?]

“Mr. Mueller’s Indictment” (Editorial Board):

it turns out that Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators found “substantial evidence” that President Trump broke federal law on numerous occasions by attempting to shut down or interfere with the nearly-two-year Russia investigation. … In addition to pointing to possible criminality, the report revealed a White House riddled with dysfunction and distrust, one in which Mr. Trump and his aides lie with contempt for one another and the public.

“Mueller Hints at a National-Security Nightmare” (Joshua A. Geltzer and Ryan Goodman):

President Trump may claim “exoneration” on a narrowly defined criminal coordination charge. But a counterintelligence investigation can yield something even more important: an intelligence assessment of how likely it is that someone — in this case, the president — is acting, wittingly or unwittingly, under the influence of or in collaboration with a foreign power. Was Donald Trump a knowing or unknowing Russian asset, used in some capacity to undermine our democracy and national security?

The public Mueller report alone provides enough evidence to worry that America’s own national security interests may not be guiding American foreign policy.

“Mueller’s Damning Report” (Noah Bookbinder):

The fact that Mr. Mueller explicitly did not resolve whether the president engaged in criminal conduct only reinforces the need for Congress to consider whether Mr. Trump violated his constitutional obligations to the American people. … Congress and the American people have every right to insist that the individual who swears an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” has not abused his powers to protect himself or his associates from the reach of justice.

One thing that professional investors like to do when someone predicts forthcoming trouble for a company is ask “How’s the stock?” The implication is that the market is smarter than individuals and if a company is going to crash it should already be reflected in the price. (This kind of thinking took a beating in the Collapse of 2008!) Boeing seems like an obvious disaster, for example, but its performance is barely distinguishable from the S&P between October 1, 2018 (before the first 737 MAX crash) and the present. So the market isn’t too worried about Boeing even if most of us would rather buy a ticket on an Airbus.

U.S. stocks have been great performers compared to international peers since November 8, 2016. The S&P 500, for example, is up by roughly 33 percent (compare to 14 percent for Germany’s DAX). That’s seemingly inconsistent with the media’s portrayal of grave peril facing our nation and the need for every citizen to be outraged. Why do investors want to buy into a country that is controlled by foreigners who have an incentive to hold back the U.S. economy so as to limit American economic and military power?

If the NYT journalists and readers are convinced by their own hysteria, why aren’t they cheerfully (leveraged) short the S&P and preparing to enjoy a comfortable retirement in Switzerland once the big meltdown does occur?

Related:

  • Paul Krugman’s NYT prediction, Nov 9, 2016: “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? … If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
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