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Two friends and I watched the Trump debate from the Trump hotel in Chicago (one of the best hotels in the U.S.) while savoring the taste of Trump-brand Virginia wine (“pretty good” was the verdict). This was a violation of my normal policy to avoid watching politicians give speeches, but given our location it seemed worth making an exception.

One thing that confused me about the debate was Trump missing seemingly obvious responses to Hillary attacks. For example, Hillary said “you’ve taken business bankruptcy six times. There are a lot of great businesspeople that have never taken bankruptcy once.” Trump responded with “on occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there. … I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I’m running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that’s what I do.”

“I take advantage of the laws” doesn’t seem to me like the best answer. Why not “I’ve done approximately 100 business projects over my lifetime and about 10 of them didn’t work out as I’d hoped. In fact, four of them went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, which saves jobs for employees at the expense of investors. So I’ve had a 90-percent success rate rather than the 100-percent success rate that you seem to be demanding. If you have had a 100-percent success rate in the projects that you’ve done over your lifetime then I congratulate you. If you don’t think businesses should be able to reorganize under Chapter 11, why didn’t you work to change the law when you were a senator?”

Similarly, when Hillary attacked Trump for not paying every contractor whatever amount the contractor had billed Trump could have said “I have built or renovated X million square feet of space. If you’ve ever owned a 2500-square-foot house you may have have a dispute with a contractor over what was the fair amount to pay for the work done. I wish that we had never had any disputes while building X million square feet, but that’s not realistic.”

Trump could also have pointed out that he wasn’t able to find a friendly commodities broker to stick another customer with losing trades (Hillary’s 100X return on investment). Nor could he get companies and countries seeking Washington access to pay him speaking fees or donate money to a foundation that he controlled. So he had no choice but to take risks in the marketplace. Yet the words “donation” and “foundation” don’t appear in the debate transcript.

He could stick in some jabs against Hillary and Obama, e.g., “It is easy to be successful 100 percent of the time when you are spending tax dollars and making up your own criteria. You spent $1 billion on a web site for Obamacare and now you call it a success. I’m sure the contractors were happy that you paid all of their bills for that project, but if a private business had spent $1 billion on a web site it would be bankrupt.”

[This is not to say that I think Trump is a better candidate than Hillary. As a Massachusetts resident whose ballot is primarily candidates running unopposed (and the races in which there are multiple choices are seldom in doubt), I haven’t educated myself on the relative merits of these two. The point of this posting is just to show that Trump could have done a lot better by practicing standard responses to a handful of predictable attacks.]

[Separately, a bunch of my Facebook friends have complained about me choosing to stay in the Trump hotel. I wonder if they are missing one of the good things about a market economy in terms of breaking down prejudices and barriers among groups. In a market economy you may choose to do business with people whom you wouldn’t ordinarily be friends with or socialize with. This can be the first step toward harmony among groups of disparate people.]

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The New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton: editorial. As my ballot here in Massachusetts consists primarily of candidates running unopposed this is not of any personal relevance. One item caught my eye, however:

She helped promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an important trade counterweight to China and a key component of the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia. Her election-year reversal on that pact has confused some of her supporters, but her underlying commitment to bolstering trade along with workers’ rights is not in doubt.

How is it possible for a politician to “bolster trade” and simultaneously support “workers’ rights”? Does “workers’ rights” refer to the rights of workers in Vietnam to have full access to the U.S. market?

What do readers think? Is there a way to promote free trade and also shield Americans whom employers don’t value (see unemployed = 21st century draft horse?) from the fact that the world is now full of well-educated, hard-working, and sought-after employees? (or the fact that a company may be better off running leaner rather than bringing in less-qualified American workers) If the answer is “give cash handouts to Americans” I don’t think that qualifies as relating to “workers’ rights” because handouts are usually available to those who don’t work (see Book Review: The Redistribution Recession).

Related:

• New York Times suggests that companies other than the New York Times hire transgender workers
• Why do people who chose not to study science and math opine on the virtues of studying science and math?
• White people at the New York Times bemoan the fate of the black man

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Peter the Great: His Life and World talks about folks on the tails of the human height bell curve:

In Peter’s time, dwarfs and giants were much valued throughout Europe as exotic decorations in royal and noble households. King Frederick William of Prussia had collected most of the giants on the continent, although Peter kept Nicholas Bourgeois, the seven-foot-two-inch giant he had found in Calais. For years, Nicholas stood behind Peter’s table, and in 1720 the Tsar married him to a Finnish giantess in hopes of producing oversized offspring. Peter was disappointed; the couple remained childless. Dwarfs were more evenly distributed. Every Infanta of Spain was accompanied by a court dwarf to underscore whatever beauty she possessed. In Vienna, the Emperor Charles VI kept a famous Jewish dwarf, Jacob Ris, as a kind of ex-officio counselor at the Imperial court. More often, dwarfs were kept as human pets whose antics and droll appearance were even more amusing and diverting than talking parrots or dogs that could stand on their hind legs. In Russia, dwarfs were especially prized. Every great noble wanted a dwarf as a symbol of status or to please his wife, and competition among the nobility for their possession became intense. The birth of a dwarf was considered good luck and dwarfs born as serfs were often granted their freedom. To encourage the largest possible population of dwarfs, Russians took special care to marry them together in hopes that a dwarf couple would produce dwarf children.

It was a lavish gift when a dwarf or, even more, a pair of dwarfs was given away. In 1708, Prince Menshikov, a particularly keen collector of dwarfs, wrote to his wife: “I send you a present of two girls, one of whom is very small and can serve as a parrot. She is more talkative than is usual among such little people and can make you gayer than if she were a real parrot.” In 1716, Menshikov appealed to Peter: “Since one of my daughters possesses a dwarf girl and the other does not, therefore I beg you kindly to ask Her Majesty the Tsaritsa to allow me to take one of the dwarfs which were left after the death of the Tsaritsa Martha.”

More: read Peter the Great: His Life and World

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This is the last week for the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Carmen. Six of us went on Sunday afternoon and were favorably impressed.

What is the point of a regional opera company? Grab a recording from the 1970s and you can hear better singers. For that matter, what is the point of a national opera company? Grab a video from the 1970s and the singing and sets will be just as good. Why pay $100+ per seat for something that can be streamed for pennies?

The Boston Lyric Opera’s current production, which will be performed a couple more times this week, actually adds a lot compared to what opera companies were doing in the 20th century.

The text of the opera is all about “love” and yet the characters are intimately involved with each other after only the briefest of acquaintances. The BLO asks, via the action on stage, “What if it is really about sex?”

The men on stage are constantly trying to get sex from the women. The women, even those just entering adolescence, are constantly trying to get cash from the men. When the men aren’t getting what they want they resort to physical force. When the women aren’t getting what they want they resort to lies, deception, and cunning.

The BLO reminds the audience that the opera has only two characters that might conceivably be considered virtuous. There is the on-stage Micaela, Don Jose’s fiancé from the village, and the off-stage sainted mother of Don Jose. Everyone else is corrupt, with the men willing to do almost anything for sex and the women willing to do almost anything for money.

Staging is kind of minimal and relies heavily on some classic Mercedes cars that are rolled around by the actors. This is an idea that I haven’t seen before. If you put old-style (non-radial) tires on a car it is quite easy to push, fills up a good portion of the stage, and lets the actors do a bunch of dramatic stuff. Compliments to the BLO and San Francisco Opera (it is a joint production) who thought of this expedient. Certainly the opera set designers of the 20th century were working way too hard.

See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

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While out at the Reno Air Races a pilot friend and I saw the movie Sully.

Spoiler alert: there is a plane crash in the film.

While watching the movie there were some things that made me curious…

Did they really land off-airport with only partial flaps extended? That would result in a higher impact ground speed and, given that energy goes up as the square of speed, much more impact energy for the airframe to absorb. The full transcript from the cockpit voice recorder indicates that Flaps 2 was indeed used. The NTSB report confirms this and has a section (page 90) titled “Decision to Use Flaps 2 for Ditching.” It was in fact probably a bad idea, especially given the tailwind that further increased ground speed, but the NTSB points out that nobody has done much experimentation landing Airbuses on the water.

I knew that sim pilots had been able to land the plane back at LaGuardia but had they really been able also to make it to Teterboro? And did ATC suggest 1 at KTEB rather than 19 or 24? I.e., suggest that pilots without engine power fly a leisurely downwind leg before turning around to head north on Runway 01 (runway numbers are shorthand for magnetic heading so 19 is approximately a 190 magnetic heading and 01 is approximately a 010 (north) heading)? The transcript confirms this seemingly bad suggestion. The NTSB report, page 50, says that Airbus simulated attempts to land on Runway 19 at KTEB and that it was successful only once out of two tries given an immediate reaction to the engine failure.

The movie shows New York City’s finest not hanging out in a donut shop discussing what to do after a retirement with full pension at age 40. Instead, the police are hanging out in a building right next to a continuously spinning Huey helicopter. Thus they are able to make it to the accident site and a rescue swimmer jumps into the frigid Hudson to heroically save a female passenger who had become separated from the herd. This heroic validation of the rescue helicopter and NYPD is absent from the NTSB report, which instead credits the New Jersey ferry boat sailors. (See Government versus private industry helicopter operating costs for what happens with your tax dollars and helicopters in the NYC area.)

The jet type rating training that I’ve had stresses using the autopilot’s Indicated Airspeed mode following a dual engine failure. This way the plane is guaranteed to be at the best glide speed (also close to the minimum sink airspeed; planes need more power to overcome drag when flying close to the stall and therefore if there is no engine power a slowly-flown airplane will sink like a rock) even if the pilots are distracted by running checklists. The movie shows Captain Sully heroically taking the controls and hand-flying the airplane. This seems to be historically accurate but the airspeeds chosen by Sully were slower than optimum and ultimately slower than safe (see below). His co-pilot was head-down in the checklists trying to get an engine restarted so couldn’t be expected to monitor carefully. Fortunately the Airbus software wouldn’t let the plane stall.

My big take-away from the movie is the lack of credit given to the engineers of that Airbus A320. The plane was presumably designed to withstand being ditched (a) into the wind, (b) with full flaps, and (c) at a minimum sink rate airspeed. Instead it was slammed down with a high vertical speed and roughly twice as much forward energy. Yet the plane did not break up and sink. Also the engineers protected the pilots from stalling. Like a panicked student pilot, Sully had the yoke way too far back fro the last 150′ of the flight, but the Airbus envelope protection software kept the plane from stalling (page 97-98). Of course it might be that Sully knew that the Airbus programmers wouldn’t let the plane stall and therefore this was a feature rather than a bug. On the third hand, Sully said that he was trying to maintain the Airbus-recommended “green dot” Vls speed from the airspeed tape (page 56), not hover right above a stall. See page 120: “The captain’s difficulty maintaining his intended airspeed during the final approach resulted in high angles-of-attack, which contributed to the difficulties in flaring the airplane, the high descent rate at touchdown, and the fuselage damage.”

What about the idea that it is reasonable for pilots to ponder the checklists for 35 seconds before taking action? That is definitely consistent with the airline culture (see below for a link to an accident in which 35 seconds stretched to an hour and the airplane ran out of gas). On the other hand, Julia Link was flying a recently overhauled Robinson R-22 helicopter when the engine quit. If she hadn’t reacted within about 1.5 seconds she and her passenger would have been dead. Instead she lowered the collective, entered an autorotation, and landed on a Honolulu street (NTSB report; TV news). Her photographer passenger got away with a scratch.

The movie features Captain Sully as a psychologically tortured man, kind of like Owen Wilson’s pitch to female guests in The Wedding Crashers. Yet one of our local instructors experienced an engine failure in a Cirrus SR-22 (I prefer the SR-20 partly for this reason; the lower the power of a piston engine the less likely it is to fail), deployed the parachute, and walked away (WCVB news). I saw her the next day going out with a student in a Cirrus SR-22 (not the same one!). She never complained to any of us about psychological torment. (On the fourth hand, she has five kids so presumably she had to get out of the habit of complaining about anything…)

[I wasn’t curious about the fact that the NTSB investigators were hostile and that everyone on the FAA payroll turned out in some big public hearing because I already knew that the NTSB stuff in the movie was fiction.]

Readers: What did you think of the movie?

Related:

• United Airlines 173, in which a three-person flight crew (two pilots plus a flight engineer to handle the cerebral tasks) runs a functional DC-8 out of gas due to the lack of a gear-down confirmation light.
• My visual approach, and Asiana’s (newbie airline pilot flies LGA to Charlotte)
• Review of Highest Duty, Captain Sully’s book, in which I write “Sully matter-of-factly notes that he immediately switched on the auxiliary power unit (APU), but does not take enough credit for this singularly inspired act, for which he would have received no simulator training (the true airline pilot doesn’t touch any switch until after finding and reading the appropriate emergency checklist). With the engines spinning down, the Airbus was a few seconds away from losing sufficient electric power to run the hydraulic pumps. Without hydraulics there would be no flight controls. There is an emergency backup ram air turbine (RAT; a window fan basically), but it doesn’t run the whole airplane and is not something you’d want to rely on.”

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Peter the Great: His Life and World explains life in the Ottoman capital:

But in the seventeenth century, Constantinople was the capital of the Moslem world, the military, administrative, commercial and cultural hub of the mighty Ottoman Empire. With a population of 700,000, larger than any city in Europe, blending many races and religions, it was studded with great mosques, colleges, libraries, hospitals and public baths. Its bazaars and wharves were piled with merchandise from every corner of the world.

Inside this city 5,000 servants fulfilled the sultan’s needs. The sultan’s table was presided over by the Chief Attendant of the Napkin, assisted by the Senior of the Tray Servers, the Fruit Server, the Pickle Server and the Sherbet Maker, the Chief of the Coffee Makers and the Water Server (as Moslems, the sultans were teetotalers). There were also the Chief Turban Folder and the Assistants to the Chief Turban Folder, the Keeper of the Sultan’s Robes, the Chiefs of the Laundrymen and Bathmen. The Chief of the Barbers had on his staff a Manicurist who pared the sultan’s nails every Thursday. Besides these, there were pipe lighters, door openers, musicians, gardeners, grooms and even a collection of dwarfs and mutes whom the sultan used as messengers, the latter being especially useful for attending the sultan during confidential moments.

In rooms where the sultan might wish to speak confidentially to an advisor, there were fountains so that the sound of running water would keep the wrong ears from hearing what was said. The harem was a closed world of veils, gossip, intrigue and—at any moment of the sultan’s choosing—sex. But it was also a world rigidly ruled by protocol and rank. Until the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, sultans had married; the Moslem religion permitted them four wives. But Suleiman’s wife, a red-haired Russian woman named Roxelana, had interfered so much in matters of state that thereafter Ottoman sultans did not marry. The sultan’s mother, therefore, became the ruler of the harem. The Turks believed that “heaven lay under the feet of the mother,” that no matter how many wives or concubines a man might take, he had only one mother, who held a unique place in his life. Sometimes, when the sultan was young or weak, his mother issued orders in his name directly to the grand vizier. Beneath the sultan’s mother ranked the mother of the heir apparent if there was one, and then the other women who had borne the sultan’s male children. Finally, there came the odalisques, or concubines. All of these women, technically at least, were slaves, and, as Moslem women could not be enslaved, it followed that all the harem women were foreigners: Russians, Circassians, Venetians, Greeks. From the end of the sixteenth century, most came from the Caucasus, because the blue-eyed women of that region were renowned for beauty. Once she passed through the harem doors, a woman remained for life. There were no exceptions.

More: Read Peter the Great: His Life and World

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Over the years I have written a few posts with the assumption that Americans whom the government pays to not work would be avid videogamers. “The Free-Time Paradox in America” (Atlantic, September 13, 2016) confirms this casual assumption:

Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago, was delivering a speech at the Booth School of Business this June about the rise in leisure among young men who didn’t go to college. He told students that one “staggering” statistic stood above the rest. “In 2015, 22 percent of lower-skilled men [those without a college degree] aged 21 to 30 had not worked at all during the prior twelve months,” he said.

“Think about that for a second,” he went on. Twentysomething male high-school grads used to be the most dependable working cohort in America. Today one in five are now essentially idle. The employment rate of this group has fallen 10 percentage points just this century, and it has triggered a cultural, economic, and social decline. “These younger, lower-skilled men are now less likely to work, less likely to marry, and more likely to live with parents or close relatives,” he said.

So, what are are these young, non-working men doing with their time? Three quarters of their additional leisure time is spent with video games, Hurst’s research has shown. And these young men are happy—or, at least, they self-report higher satisfaction than this age group used to, even when its employment rate was 10 percentage points higher.

[Note that the decision of a young man to refrain from marriage, at least in Professor Hurst’s hometown of Chicago, could be a rational one given the winner-take-all character of Illinois divorce law (Census 2014 data show that 94 percent of the Illinois winners (obtaining custody and collecting child support) happen to be female).]

And what about those of us who aren’t living with relatives and/or in government-provided housing?

Elite men in the U.S. are the world’s chief workaholics. They work longer hours than poorer men in the U.S. and rich men in other advanced countries. In the last generation, they have reduced their leisure time by more than any other demographic. As the economist Robert Frank wrote, “building wealth to them is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”

[Elite women don’t work as hard? Is that because they get paid 23 percent less? (See “Should the SEC make it illegal for public companies to employ men?“) Or do they get paid less because they work less? (see this article on Claudia Goldin’s work about how companies pay more per hour to employees who work more hours)]

Here’s the most depressing part of the article:

Rich, ambitious Americans are already spending more time on what makes them fulfilled, but that thing turned out to be work. Work, in this construction, is a compound noun, composed of the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle.

Credit: Mark Hurst (no relation to the economist cited above) of Creative Good told me about the Atlantic piece.

Related:

• Rethinking 99 weeks of unemployment (2011)
• Formal analysis of effects of government-funded 99 weeks of Xbox (2013)
• Academic Eggheads: Unemployment benefits encourage unemployment (2013)
• Book Review: The Redistribution Recession (2015)

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Peter the Great: His Life and World:

Essentially, Peter’s attitude toward morality in relations between men and women was based on a utilitarian social ethic. He was indulgent toward behavior and indiscretions which did no harm to society. Prostitutes enjoyed “perfect liberty in Russia,” reported Weber, except in the case of one who had “peppered some hundreds of the Preobrazhensky Guards who, being unable to march on their duty with the rest, were obliged to remain behind at Petersburg in order to be cured”; this woman was knouted [whipped] for having harmed state interests.

Unmarried women, when pregnant, were encouraged to bear their infants. Once, when Peter found a pretty girl barred from the company of other maidens because she had an illegitimate son, he said, “I forbid her to be excluded from the company of other women and girls.” The girl’s son was placed under the Tsar’s protection.

But if Peter was tolerant of indiscretion, he was implacable in criminal matters. Prenatal abortion or the murder of an unwanted infant after birth was punishable by death.

Related:

• Where New York Times readers don’t want to follow Europe: Legalized prostitution
• Book Notes: The Origins of Sex

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The Reno Air Races attracts a political demographic more or less 180-degrees opposite of what prevails in the Boston area. The national anthem was played every morning around 10:30 pm as a military parachute team carried the flag down from the sky. As shown in the photo below, it was hands-on-hearts (easy to find your heart when you’ve been breakfasting on deep-friend Twinkies and Snickers, both readily available at the races) and hats-off time. I didn’t see anyone protesting!

I shared a table in the VIP tent (highly recommended for food, drinks, and shade!) with a local divorce litigator: “I’ve been in Nevada nearly all of my life because I like my guns, my space, and low taxes.”

The other locals at the table agreed that they did not want to hand over their wages to the government so that it could be redistributed to the non-working. (Fact check: Nevada taxes are low, at 8.1 percent of income and $3,349 per resident (Tax Foundation); compare to New York at 12.7 percent and $6,993 per resident. On the other hand, the state has a full range of welfare programs and for many citizens it will be better to collect welfare than to work.)

[The divorce litigator would be a lot better off in Massachusetts. She is able to charge only a flat $3500 per divorce, plus $6000 additional for the 5 percent of cases that go to trial. Compare to $100,000 to $300,000 (or more!) in the Boston area. Her female customers would also be a lot better off financially if they’d chosen a different state. “We got a new law in October 2015 that slipped by the lawyers and judges,” said the litigator. “Judges are interpreting 125c.0035 to require joint custody [a 50/50 schedule] in almost all cases.” What about the domestic violence escape clause that works for plaintiffs in Alaska? “It works only if she can get an actual conviction for domestic violence,” said the litigator. “Most moms are going into court saying ‘I want primary custody because I’m the mom’ and judges aren’t persuaded.” The law also applies to children that result from one-night encounters. Let’s compare outcomes for a woman earning $125,000 and suing a father earning the same.

Massachusetts

Nevada

Mom wins “primary parent” status with greater than 90 percent probability. Free babysitting from the defendant every other weekend. Along with primary parent status comes $20,000 per year until child reaches 23 years of age (up to $460,000 total, tax-free). Given approximately equal costs of having a child around 1/3 time versus 2/3 time, assuming continuing equality of income at $125,000/year, winner parent will be nearly $900,000 richer than loser parent after 23 years.

Child receives week-on/week-off access to both parents. (better expected well-being for the child) No winner/loser parent division. Mom receives no cash due to equal incomes and equal schedule (her revenue would have been limited to $13,000 per year per child regardless). Potential for litigation and child support profit ends when child turns 18. Minimal opportunity to become wealthier than defendant; parents who start with equal incomes will have approximately the same level of wealth after 18 years.

]

Affection for Donald Trump was in short supply but resistance to Hillary, the Democrats, and the idea of a bigger government was strong.

Of course this is a selected group due to the passion for aviation and the tendency of pilots to valorize personal responsibility. On the third hand, the folks with whom I had lunch were not pilots, just airport neighbors.

Related:

• Life Lessons from Successful Pilots
• Blue Angels at the Reno Air Races 2016

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Peter the Great: His Life and World has an idea that we might be able to use, given the number of wars in which we are involved:

Before leaving Moscow for St. Petersburg in early March 1723, Peter invited his friends to another astonishing spectacle: the burning of the wooden house at Preobrazhenskoe in which he had first secretly planned the war against Sweden. With his own hand, the Emperor filled shelves and closets with inflammable colored chemicals and fireworks and then he put the house to the torch. Many small explosions and brilliantly colored flames erupted from the burning structure, and for some time before it collapsed, the heavy log frame of the house stood silhouetted against an incandescent rainbow. Later, when only the blackened, smoking rubble was left, Peter turned to the Duke of Holstein, nephew of Charles XII, and said, “This is the image of war: brilliant victories followed by destruction. But with this house in which my first plans against Sweden were worked out, may every thought disappear which can arm my hand against that kingdom, and may it always be the most faithful ally of my empire.”

[The war with Sweden above was the Great Northern War, which had lasted for 21 years.]

More: Read Peter the Great: His Life and World

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