Author: philg

Bad year for air shows and the U.S. military

by philg

Readers: Who has some good ideas for air shows this year? My personal favorite, the Rhode Island Air Show, has been canceled (NBC) :

“Hundreds of key National Guard members will be called to federal duty overseas in support of the RING’s primary mission of national defense,” a news release said.

“With this anticipated federal mobilization commitment in 2019, we have been presented with a difficult decision regarding our ability to safely and effectively conduct this public event. The volume, timing, and the particular trained skill sets of the more than 500 Soldiers and Airmen who will be away during the traditional timeframe of the Open House Air Show presents a unique challenge,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Callahan said in a statement. “Ultimately, we could neither compromise the training and support of those being deployed, nor the planning and conducting of our Open House Air Show. As such, we regrettably must forego the event in 2019.”

So New Englanders are out of luck, particular considering what a total Charlie-Foxtrot the Westover show is (see https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/07/13/great-new-england-air-show-this-weekend-at-westover/ ).

Excited about a female pilot flying a fighter plane (like Hannah Reitsch?) in a tight pattern around the runway? You’re out of luck there too: “Zoe Kotnik: First female F-16 demo commander out after two weeks” (BBC)

Here are some ideas:

  • April 6-7: Blue Angels in Lakeland, FL at Sun & Fun (Oshkosh Lite)
  • May 4-5: Blue Angels at Ft. Lauderdale Air Show (on the beach, so all roads lead to the show!)
  • May 25-26: Blue Angels at Miami Beach Air and Sea Show (same deal; how much worse can the traffic be than usual for Miami?)
  • June 15-16: Blue Angels at Ocean City (Maryland) Air Show
  • June 29-30: Thunderbirds in Traverse City, Michigan
  • July 22-28: Airventure at Oshkosh; air show every afternoon and two evenings!
  • August 21: Thunderbirds at the Atlantic City (NJ) Air Show
  • August 24-25: Blue Angels at KSWF (New York; good for New Englanders); Thunderbirds in Rochester, NY (proceed to Niagara Falls after?)
  • August 31-September 1: Blue Angels in Nova Scotia (how bad can the crowds be?)
  • September 14-15: Thunderbirds at the Reno Air Races (could an F-16 beat a Glasair?)
  • October 5-6: Thunderbirds in San Juan, Puerto Rico (if you’re escaping AOC’s income tax and Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax (payable in wampum?) to enjoy a tax-free lifestyle)
  • October 19-20: Blue Angels in Jacksonville Beach; Red Bull Air Race in Indianapolis (only US location)
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The 16-month project to convert a U.S. pilot certificate to a European license

by philg

AOPA Magazine’s March 2019 issue has an article on the bureaucratic saga of converting a U.S. pilot certificate to a European license:

That completed, I embarked on a 5-month process of extensive interaction with the CAA, sending mountains of paperwork and forms back and forth, ultimately finding that the U.K. CAA is at the moment in a state of disarray. Many items had to be chased through a bureaucratic nightmare, finally resulting in the issuance of my European private pilot license an astonishing five months after the checkride.

In all, the process took 16 months, and cost $4,061; it involved three airline flights, and activities in three countries. Only a few hours of cost involved time piloting an airplane, with the rest related to machinations of paperwork, travel, and onerous fees. The most challenging part was that no single party had an answer on how to proceed, leaving more detective work than I ever imagined to ensure legal compliance.

This tends to support my friend’s theory that regulatory compliance is our modern religion. He notes that folks in the Middle Ages spent a lot of time praying in church and observing rituals. Most Americans and Europeans don’t do that anymore, but they put the same amount of time and effort into filling out forms, reading up on tax law, etc.

Let this be a warning to pilots who said that they would emigrate if Trump were elected… and are still working on the practical details.

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Is it okay to say “LGBTQ”?

by philg

From “Sen. Booker quizzes judicial nominee on ‘sin’ and same-sex marriage” (Catholic News Agency):

Booker also asked Rao if she had ever employed an “LGBTQ law clerk.”

The nominee reminded the senator that she had never previously served as a judge, and so had never employed law clerks. She did said she did not question her staff about their sexual orientation.

“I take people as they come,” Rao said. “Irrespective of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, I treat people as individuals.”

(Kind of a brilliant tactic by Cory Booker! If she says “no” then she is a hater. If she says “yes” then she admits to questioning employees about their sexual activities!)

This reminded me of a bottle of bubbly that I recently purchased:

I posted the above on Facebook, quoting from the label

“Supporting LBGTQ acceptance”; what about IA?

A member of Virtue Corps asked “what is IA?” and I referred him to the taxpayer-funded LGBTQIA Resource Center at UC Davis:

Our center uses LGBTQIA to intentionally include and raise awareness of Queer, Intersex and Asexual as well as myriad other communities under our umbrella.

The Virtue Corps soldier was not mollified:

So, what exactly is your point about the wine bottle? That’s my question. Is it that you have a longstanding concern for the intersex and asexual community, and you’re genuinely concerted for them? Or something else?

Me:

I am genuinely concerned for all communities! That’s why I was upset that IA were left out. (separately, if a bunch of people are “asexual,” why do they need to congregate in a “community”? Isn’t it possible to practice asexuality in one’s own apartment or house?)

So… circling back to Senator Booker. How is it okay for him to imply that the only employees worth highlighting fit somewhere on the narrow “LGBTQ” spectrum? If he is passionate about inclusion, doesn’t he need to go all out with “LGBTQIA”?

[Separately, this product shows how profitable virtue can be. Generic Cava retails for about $3 per bottle over in Spain. I paid $20. The label says 50 cents will be donated to GLAAD, so that leaves at least $16.50 for importation, U.S. taxes (fairly low), and distributor markup (source of John McCain’s fortune-by-marriage). Now I just need to find the perfect occasion for serving. Suggestions welcome!]

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Solve the world’s toughest problems for $100 million…

by philg

“New Competition for a $100 Million Grant: Round Two of 100&Change”:

MacArthur today announced it will launch a new round of its 100&Change competition for a single $100 million grant to help solve one of the world’s most critical social challenges.

I was awed by this until I reflected that it is less than our town is spending to renovate a K-8 school for 440 town-resident children.

Readers: What should they fund if they want to change the world?

My proposal: The typical American can’t afford to live in the U.S. without taxpayer-funded welfare, e.g., subsidized housing and/or subsidized health care/insurance (the income limits for these means-tested welfare programs are typically higher than median household income). The issues around health care cannot be dented for $100 million (due to the cruel anti-science bias of the Trumpenfuhrer, the NIH Budget for 2019 is only $39 billion). But homebuilding is decentralized and done by a lot of contractors with minimal capital and scale. These smaller contractors cannot afford to do any R&D. Therefore the $100 million should be spent to try to figure out how to build housing at a lower cost.

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Shop from women-owned businesses at Amazon

by philg

A friend recently pointed out this feature from Amazon: “Shop women-run businesses”:

In a gender-fluid age, what does this mean? Can any enterprise in which an owner or manager clicks “I identify as a woman” be considered “women-run” as far as the Amazon database is concerned?

[Separately, I’m not sure that this works. I searched for “razor”, hoping to see if it was possible to purchase an anti-toxic masculinity Gillette product from a woman-owned business. The first option was to buy a Fusion 5 (my continued testing against the Dorco Pace 7 and Pace 6 Plus show that the Koreans make a superior product if performance, rather than politics, is the relevant measure) from Amazon itself. In what sense is Amazon “women-owned” or “women-run”?]

Things are simpler here in the Boston suburbs. From a coffee shop in Lexington today, “we source this coffee exclusively from women coffee farmers”:

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Inspiration to adopt FAR 121 landing runway minimums

by philg

Here’s a Piper Malibu landing at Courchevel (1,762′): videos. The typical Malibu pilot is experienced and well-trained, so this supports my theory that we should all use FAR 121 minimums and go to runways in which the book landing length is no more than 60 percent of the actual runway length.

Even a good pilot can have a bad day.

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New York City without Amazon

by philg

I’m just back from working with a team at an 850-lawyer firm (as an expert witness in a software and hardware patent infringement case). Despite the top pay, none of the associates were able to afford living in Manhattan. Most lived in New Jersey and would cross the Hudson River by train or bus every day. An associate who lived in Jersey City said that a PATH train on at least one line came approximately every four minutes and that he could take either line to get to work. Awesome, right? “I usually can’t get on, though,” he said. “The trains are already full when they get to Jersey City so there is at most room for 3 additional passengers.”

Given his experience of infrastructure pushed to its capacity limit, of course I couldn’t resist asking what he thought about migration and population growth. He said that he was “neutral” and had no opinion on the merits of expanded immigration.

Crosstown traffic was predictably horrific and made worse by construction. The city definitely needs an Elon Musk tunnel every five blocks.

Starbucks was packed at 9 am in Midtown, with 50+ people in line at both the Starbucks and the Starbucks across the street from the Starbucks. Maybe this is a peak hour phenomenon? Every retailer in New York could make money with a coffee robot in the corner, assuming that the quality were guaranteed consistent?

I am not sure that the packed-like-sardines public transit riders of NYC will mourn the loss of Amazon HQ2!

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Asian-style guest linen rental for Asian-style U.S. cities?

by philg

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, says not to store guest linens because they take up a lot of space relative to their infrequent use and they’ll smell like mildew after months in storage. Just rent them when guests show up, says Kondo, implying that the typical Japanese reader would find a convenient rental option nearby.

Via the magic of population growth and increased concentration of American economic activity in a handful of places, we’re building Asian-style cities (in terms of population density, if not infrastructure quality). An increasing percentage of Americans going forward will be living in minimum-size apartments.

Is there a business opportunity here? Offer a roll-out mattress and fresh linens for rent. Base the rentals at laundries that have the in-house capability to wash everything. Put a national brand name on it so that consumers know what quality to expect.

Readers: What do you think of this idea? It is apparently a sustainable business in Japan.

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Successful criminal mastermind avoids scrutiny…

by philg

While driving back from New York City this afternoon, I briefly listened to AOC and fellow Democrats question one of Donald Trump’s former lawyers. I learned that Trump was a successful criminal mastermind who had escaped attention from the authorities and prosecutors for decades. Then he decided that the best way to keep a low profile and avoid close scrutiny of his misdeeds would be to run for and become President.

A specific part that I remember concerned the valuation of a Trump golf course. AOC noted that the management valued the course different for investment purposes than for property tax. Yet this would apparently be true for hundreds or thousands of golf courses in the U.S. (see this article for how golf clubs may be taxed based on a low valuation due partly to a belief that it is beneficial to have some open/green space: “In Pennsylvania, for instance a golf facility can apply for inclusion in the ‘Clean and Green’ Act 515 program, which preserves open space in return for a reduction in taxes.”).

Representative reaction from my virtuous Facebook friends:

Well, I was wrong about Trump. I substantially underestimated his perfidious criminal conduct, if half of what Cohen says is true, and I suspect most of it is.

Readers: Did you watch the hearing? Learn anything new?

[Separately, if you want to see what a country looks like when it can’t support any additional people with its infrastructure, try driving Boston to New York and back during what used to be the mid-day off peak. The forecast on Monday morning was for 47-knot wind gusts at Teterboro, of which 37 knots would have been a crosswind component. It would have been 1.5 hours of moderate-to-severe turbulence to get there in the Cirrus. So it was time for the Honda Odyssey to show off its immunity to crosswinds (fairly impressive!).]

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