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I was asked to pick up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Champagne for a thank-you gift. I was accompanied by a 5-year-old and she asked what it meant. I explained that it was “the widow named Clicquot” and that she had taken over a business previously run by her husband, but that she proved to be a far more able manager than he. Then I said “I wonder if that guy was the first empty suit?”

What do readers think? Who besides Francois Clicquot is a reasonable candidate for the honor?

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A friend and I watched the movie Chef and we wondered what bureaucratic hurdles a real-life food truck operator would have to jump. We discovered that the Boston License Raj requires seven separate permits (flow chart from Harvard Law School experts) and that one must become a customer of at least two government-selected companies (Trimble and Sprint). Los Angeles doesn’t seem to be very different (example; see also this guide). Chicago bans food trucks within 200 feet of any restaurant (Huffington Post). How about in Miami, where the movie food truck gets its start? This site says that 10 separate licenses are required and notes that “Miami entrepreneurs will find no shortage of licenses they must obtain.”

Related:

• America’s License Raj (Economist)
• “The Unequal Effects of Liberalization: Evidence from Dismantling the License Raj in India” (American Economic Review 2008), in which the 10 lb. heads of Harvard, Princeton, etc. found that “industries located in states with pro-employer labor market institutions grew more quickly than those in pro-worker environments” (i.e., employers chose to locate in employer-friendly places)

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I read The Unsubstantial Air: American Fliers in the First World War and learned that World War I military pilots would climb to as high as 20,000′ without oxygen (and 22,500′ for some German photo reconnaissance equipped with oxygen). The Wright Brothers flew to an altitude of 10′ during their famous 1903 flight. So that’s 10 feet to 20,000 feet in 15 years. Not a bad rate of progress!

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The New York Times carried an article today wondering how it was possible for wages to stagnate while the unemployment rate fell. This Bureau of Labor Statistics chart shows that the percentage of American adults who work has fallen from roughly 66 percent of the population (2005-2008) to just 63 percent today. Wouldn’t the BLS chart alone be able to explain a falling unemployment rate while wages remain about the same? With fewer people in the workforce, if there are the same number of jobs at the same pay rate, the unemployment rate falls and generates excited newspaper headlines and dramatic claims by politicians despite the fact that the same number of people go to work every day and get paid roughly the same.

What do readers think? Do all of these American adults on the sidelines have an effect on wage growth? Or are they not significant compared to the available workers worldwide?

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Friends have been asking me about Harrison Ford’s crash landing in Santa Monica. It isn’t too surprising that a vintage World War II airplane with a radial engine suffered an engine failure. Generally it is impossible to get a new or factory-rebuilt radial engine, so you’re relying on at least some parts that are more than 50 years old, albeit regularly inspected.

The Facebook buzz seems to be at least partly along the lines of “Why do they let rich idiots fly their own airplanes?” I.e., pretty much the opposite of the reaction that people had to the engine-out landing of Captain Sully and Jeff Skiles in their Airbus, despite the similar nature of the problem and the similar solution (“choose a reasonable place to land”). Ford’s engine failed at a much lower altitude so he had less time to think and plan.

Perhaps this will be a good marketing opportunity for the Chinese owners of Cirrus Aircraft!

[You might well ask why did the engine choose to quit immediately after takeoff? There are a disproportionate number of power failures in the few minutes before landing and in the 30 seconds or so after takeoff. The pre-landing failures are easy to explain: fuel planning was close but not quite right, thus leading to running out of gas with just a few minutes to go (of course, a conservative pilot would elect to make an unplanned fuel stop rather than push his or her luck). The post-takeoff failures have to do with the fact that airplane engines are run at 100 percent power while rolling down the runway and climbing up to 1000′ or so. This is when piston engines tend to come apart, rather than in cruise flight when 65-75 percent power is standard. Robinson figured this out and designed its helicopters so that the piston engines never run at more than 80 percent power at any time. This reduced the failure rate so much that a piston engine that is typically overhauled after 2000 airplane hours is recommended for overhaul at 2200 hours in a Robinson.]

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When I read about President Obama’s veto of Congress’s approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline (proposed in 2008), I was reminded of the fact that the U.S. announced the construction of the Alaska Highway, most of which is within Canada, prior to obtaining approval from the Canadian government. No wonder they hate their arrogant neighbors to the south!

[Separately, it is worth comparing the productivity of North Americans then and now. The 1700-mile Alaska Highway was conceived in earnest late in 1941. It opened less than one year later. We’re seven years into the Keystone XL project without a single mile of pipeline having been constructed. If it ever is finished it will be less than 1200 miles long.]

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A friend attended Heli-Expo 2015. It seems that this is the year of the all-plastic helicopter.

• brand new: Airbus H160
• potentially consumer-priced: New Zealand’s Composite Helicopters
• back again from last year: Marenco Swiss Helicopter (first flight was October 2, 2014)

Related:

• my first-day Heli-Expo report from 2014
• my second-day report

 

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Some friends and I were touring the Chelsea galleries last weekend. This happens to be one of the corners of Manhattan with a Tesla showroom (service is out on Long Island). The 11-year-old asked “What’s special about this car?” I responded with “You know how 4-year-olds have rechargeable cars that they plug in and then can cruise around suburban driveways?” (example at $118) This is the same thing but it holds five people instead of just one or two and it costs almost 1000 times as much.

Absent spectacular incompetence by the legacy car makers, it is hard to understand how Tesla can dominate the market in the long term. When battery technology advances to the point that an all-electric Honda Civic costs the same as a gas-powered Civic, why aren’t Honda and Toyota the natural market leaders? What will Tesla know that they won’t?

What do readers think? Any Tesla owners who want to comment on what they like about the car?

Here’s what a friend of mine said in 2013 about his Tesla:

It is absolutely fantastic. It drives like a dream, is incredibly powerful, and has plenty of room and creature comforts. My only complaints are that it’s big, which is taking some getting used to since I was driving a BMW 325i for seventeen years, and that the rear visibility isn’t good, although it has an HD camera that mitigates that. But I’m loving it, and regularly feel this strange urge to get up from my desk in the middle of the day and go on a drive.

[in response to “Is it just unbelievably quiet inside?”] Yes, it’s super quiet. The road noise is supposedly not as quiet as some other cars, and the insulation isn’t supposed to be as effective as some other cars, but the complete absence of engine noise makes for a surprisingly quiet experience. … The world will be so much less noisy once electrics take over, if it happens.

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I asked an 8-year-old friend what she likes about her (public) school. It is in a prosperous Manhattan neighborhood.

“We have really good security,” she responded. “They don’t let anybody in.”

Are there really that many criminals who want to knock over an elementary school?

“We have a lot of lock-down drills,” she said enthusiastically.

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A friend has a Steelcase Walkstation that was delivered in September 2013. This is the narrow version that is just barely wider than the treadmill underneath. I tried it out for 30 minutes.

The integration of the controls is nice, especially how they can slide out from underneath the desk surface. However, the controls always protrude to at least some extent.

The treadmill is manufactured by True, a leading brand, and it seems to work reasonably well. The belt was slipping a bit, which my friend attributed to his have over-lubricated the belt recently. The 2 mph maximum speed is a serious limitation for the home user who wants the option to go faster while watching a movie, for example. (The competitive LifeSpan under-desk treadmill goes up to 4 mph; I haven’t found one that goes up to 11.) The treadmill is quiet but not any quieter than any other treadmill that I have used at a low speed. The treadmill is 18″ wide, which turns out to be slightly too narrow for my size-13 feet. A standard treadmill belt width seems to be 20″ and that is what the LifeSpan (above) and NordicTrack (below) products have.

If you’ve been spoiled by the bomb-proof Steelcase desks of the 1960s and 70s, the Walkstation will seem rickety despite the cross-member. There is a long lever arm between the floor and the surface. The work surface is supported with only two legs rather than the conventional four. Those two factors combined make it easy to set the work surface in motion. A $200 table from IKEA is more stable. As this is not the “Sit-to-Walkstation” and there is just one user, my friend basically never adjusts the height. When we tried to adjust it, one of the lifting columns was jammed and thus we succeeded only in tilting the work surface. (i.e., it may not be any more durable than lower-priced competition)

Conclusion: If you want something like this and you’re 5’9″ tall or shorter (see the reviews), the NordicTrack Desk Treadmill is probably a better device. It costs one third as much. The treadmill can be cranked up to 10 mph. Unlike the under-desk treadmills, the treadmill can be inclined as well. Too bad the NordicTrack folks did not include sufficient height for taller consumers.

My research into home office ergonomics continues in the following areas:

• Swopper chair (recommended by a physician)
• height-adjustable desk that is wide enough to be used either sitting or standing (Uplift perhaps? Or Evodesk? Or NextDesk Terra Pro which can also hold an aquarium!) so as to create the equivalent of the Steelcase Sit-to-Walkstation but with (a) faster treadmill option, (b) natural wood finish, (c) sturdier.

If readers have experience with any of the above I would be grateful to hear about it.

Related:

• Tom O’Donnell in New Yorker on his standing desk: “sitting has been called the new smoking. The only difference is that smoking looks cool and is a great way to meet people and isn’t actually that bad for you. (I smoke.) Sitting, on the other hand, looks ridiculous and shameful—like you’re afraid to admit exactly how tall you are—and is terrible for you. … Won’t I look strange if I’m the only one in my office standing up to work? Not as strange as you’ll look when you keel over dead at your computer from a lethal combination of sciatica and weak calves. “

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