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We just had a family vacation at a hotel just over the bridge into Cape Cod (“Work is the best vacation,” was Senior Management’s summary after breaking up sand fights between the 4.5- and 3-year-old). Our hotel and the restaurants in Falmouth, Massachusetts were staffed primarily with Eastern Europeans and folks from the Caribbean.

“They’re here from May through September,” explained one of the rare local waitresses. “I’ve learned all of the Serbian swear words.”

Our hotel was within a reasonable commute from the unemployment capitals of Massachusetts (Fall River and New Bedford). Rather than paying all of the bureaucrats and paper-shufflers to get these foreigners here on temporary visas, wouldn’t it make more sense to hire jobless natives to clean rooms and bus tables?

“They’re all on Section 8 [free housing] and MassHealth [Medicaid; free healthcare],” explained a manager, “so they’re happy to work for cash, but we have to pay W-2 so it doesn’t make sense for them to take a temporary job and risk losing their benefits.”

Given that the $75/night motel rooms on the Cape are now renting for $500+/night, why wouldn’t some of the foreigners seek to profit from Massachusetts’s unlimited child support system? I asked a few of the H-2B guest workers what they thought would be the maximum financial windfall from a brief interlude with a hypothetical dentist visiting from the Boston suburbs. They typically estimated annual cashflow of $5,000 per year (the correct answer for a sexual encounter in Germany), with a maximum estimate of $10,000 per year for 18 years (in fact, the guidelines provide for $40,000 per year for 23 years with additional judge-set amounts when a defendant earns more than $250,000 per year). They were aware that it was possible to collect child support without having been married, but not aware that it was possible to collect it while residing back in Eastern Europe, nor that a state-run bureaucracy existed to collect the money for them.

What did the guest workers like best about the Cape? Those from the Caribbean said “the cool dry weather.” Those from Eastern Europe said “the chance to improve my English.”

The H2-B workers seemed to be doing all of the jobs except management. There were Eastern Europeans checking guests in and out at the front desk. There were Caribbeans waiting tables as well as busing them.

While I was there a #Resisting friend posted this on Facebook:

I was going to get on Facebook to rant that we should all ignore the white supremacist march in D.C., but it seems that we (on my FB feed) are already all ignoring it. Excellent. But I will rant anyhow: 400 people wouldn’t even make the news if there were no counter-protestors (I know, from having been in marches that size). By comparison, there are probably more than 50000 tourists in D.C. right now. “Real” rallies in D.C. have at least 100000 people.

Her friends responded that it was actually only a gathering of 10 to 30 haters and thousands of righteous folks who hate the haters (plus thousands of overtime-collecting police officers?). My response, which garnered 0 “likes”:

Today I attended a gathering of roughly 200,000 white people. Traffic was slowed to a crawl and local services were overwhelmed. A handful of counter-protesters had been brought in from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. The white supremacists said that they called their movement “Cape Cod.” (Census data regarding the 93% whiteness)

Our best tip for Falmouth with kids: Flying Bridge Restaurant, from which everyone can watch boats in the marina. If the food is slow to arrive the kids can walk up and down the edge of the marina. Maison Villatte is a great/authentic French bakery, though not a great choice for kids due to long lines in the summer (waiting to be served by an authentic Russian H2-B visa holder!).

Related:

• “DHS to issue 15,000 more guest worker visas amid clamor over labor shortage” (Washington Post, May 25, 2018)

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Folks:

I’ll be in Denver (Golden, actually) from Monday morning through Thursday morning. Would anyone like to meet for breakfast at the Table Mountain Inn on Tuesday morning (August 21)? 0800? Alternatively…

• the Wings over the Rockies Museum on Monday morning
• the Morrison Natural History Museum on Tuesday or dinner before Rodrigo y Gabriela
• Boulder on Wednesday
• Thursday morning breakfast at the Table Mountain Inn
• Beaver Creek on Saturday or Sunday

Let me know! Email philg@mit.edu or text me at 617-864-6832.

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I’m hoping that readers can help me out here…

The trial of Paul Manafort is basically over. When it started there were headlines saying that he had evaded taxes on $60 million of income by keeping the money in offshore accounts.

Yet the government itself presented evidence at the trial that Manafort was broke. See “Bookkeeper says Manafort was broke in 2016 and lied to banks” (CNN).

If he’d ever had $60 million in taxable income (i.e., actual profit from running his lobbying business), how could he be broke? Did he spend $60 million on personal non-deductible consumption?

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“What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?” (nytimes) concerns a woman who is a college professor and therefore holds her job based on being smarter than everyone else (at least smarter than the tuition-paying students!). What happens when the super genius gets into bed?

Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed, held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian.

In a metro area with a population of more than 20 million, the professor couldn’t find anyone to sleep with other than a student. Okay. She allegedly used her status as a professor to coerce a male student into bed. Unfortunate if true. But given that the professor identifies as female, how challenging would it have been for her to find a heterosexual male student?

Most Americans who lack a college degree, much less a Ph.D., are nonetheless able to find someone in roughly the correct category for sharing a bed (I share with Mindy the Crippler and we’re both happy!).

Will this cause readers to lose respect for Academia? NYU tuition is over $50,000 per year. Is it worth paying $50,000 per year to learn from someone who can’t figure out that a gay man+woman is not a great bed combination?

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“Trump poses with supporter with sexist patch at motorcyclist event” (Washington Post) leaves out some classics, e.g.,

• “Honk if you’ve never seen a gun fired from a motorcycle”
• “Better your sister in a whorehouse than your brother on a Honda”

but it is still kind of fun to see the Uber-riding media elite pondering the deep meaning embedded in every biker’s jacket.

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“Monsanto Has to Pay $289 Million in Damages in First Roundup Cancer Trial” (Fortune) sounds like mostly a bad day for Bayer AG shareholders (the German company acquired Monsanto just a couple of months ago and now they have their first gift from the U.S. legal system!).

But, assuming that Roundup does cause cancer, maybe this is actually a bad day for people with cancer?

Bayer is worth only about $86 billion. At $289 million per cancer-stricken person, fewer than 300 people can be compensated before all of the value in Bayer is consumed. But Roundup is one of the most widely used products in the world. So if it does cause cancer then tens or hundreds of thousands of people should be affected (anyone who hates poison ivy, for example!).

Readers: Why are folks on Facebook celebrating this? Don’t they see that at $289 million per victim the funds run out pretty quickly? The same folks are concerned about inequality and yet they don’t seemed tuned into a situation where the later litigants are on track to get nothing. If someone who has cancer today gets $289 million and someone who is not diagnosed with cancer until 2020 gets $0, how is that fair?

Related:

• “The Cost of a Human Life, Statistically Speaking” (Globalist), which notes that “As of 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a human life at $9.1 million. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration put it at $7.9 million — and the Department of Transportation figure was around $6 million.”

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Mike Busch of Savvy Aviation was at Oshkosh talking about his new 500-page book. He described replacing a functional engine at TBO (usually around 2,000 hours of flight time) as “euthanizing an engine.” He points out that old age problems are less sudden and severe than new-engine problems.

For an IO-360-powered Cirrus SR20 is there a reasonable alternative to a new-in-the-box engine from Continental? Busch said good things about John Jewell in Memphis, TN and Zephyr Aircraft Engines in Florida.

What does he think about the Cirrus? He was skeptical at first about the parachute, but now “unlike the second engine that’s out there trying to kill you all the time, the CAPS system sits there quietly until you need it.”

Busch supervises maintenance for a lot of aircraft, including my dream family airplane, the original Piper Malibu with the four-blade MT Prop STC (reduces interior noise dramatically to the point that it measures as quiet inside as a Pilatus PC-12)? Based on his experience, Busch says that it is not crazy to own one and he likes the original TSIO-520 engine better than the -550 conversion that a lot of owners have done. Busch says that Continental has fixed all of the issues with this engine (maybe I’m just not following the news carefully, but I don’t hear about Malibus suffering engine failures anymore) and a Malibu operated primarily in the mid-teens should be a reliable mule. (Operating this plane right up to its 25,000′ service ceiling deprives the engine of cooling due to the prevailing thin air.)

Can it be that Busch is right and the engine manufacturers and the FAA are wrong? I know of at least one R22 that came out of the sky and into the water with a supposedly bulletproof Lycoming four-cylinder engine that was operated a few hundred hours past TBO. A friend limped to a runway on one cylinder with a 20-year-old low-powered engine that was still within the TBO hours but beyond the 12-year recommendation. Our new-in-the-box Continental engine has run more or less perfectly for 13 years and about 1950 flight hours. Why not another new-in-the-box Continental? (only $47,000 plus removal/reinstall)

Related:

• Mike Busch on Engines (EAA sold out of hardcopies at Oshkosh)

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Quite a few friends have been asking me about the Horizon Air Q400 that was appropriated by a suicidal ground crew member. Here are some things that I’ve told them…

Piston-powered airplanes have engines that would be familiar to the mechanic of a Model A Ford and, not coincidentally, an ignition key that would be familiar to the owner of said 1927 automobile. The key for the Cessna, Cirrus, or Piper can ground magnetos or activate the starter. Turbine-powered aircraft… have no key. If you can get in and press the start button you’re good to spin. In theory the door can be locked, but it is usually not practical in charter or airline operations to keep track of a door key. So the door is unlocked and the start button is there and the security is all about keeping the unauthorized out of the airport.

The big challenge in flying turbine-powered aircraft is starting. The Q400, however, is equipped with a FADEC. Starts should therefore be computer-controlled and as simple as starting up a Toyota Camry.

What about the aerobatics? Airliners are certified for only 2.5Gs, but if you aren’t worried about some cracks in various spars the airplane won’t come apart until considerably more force is applied. Can a Q400 match the capabilites of a GB1 GameBird? No, but remember that an empty airliner has a tremendous amount of extra power. It needs to be able to climb on one engine when fully loaded. If two engines are spinning and nobody is in the back it will deliver an exciting ride.

What about an aerodynamic stall in the event of a botched maneuver? The Q400 is equipped with a stick pusher that should make it very tough to stall, especially with a lot of power in. (Unfortunately, the captain of Colgan 3407 overpowered the pusher and did manage to stall a Q400; see Public TV figures out how to fly regional airliners and Time for a robot assistant up in the dome light of the cockpit?)

What about the transfer of skills from Windows-based simulators to a real airplane? Instructors at our flight school have commented on the superior stick-and-rudder skills of sim addicts that come in to fly real aircraft.

Not a great weekend for aviation, but I thought that readers might be interested in the above.

[Very sad about the loss of life, of course, but I don’t have a more informed perspective on that than anyone else might.]

Related:

• some photos from The Sun (UK)

 

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Boston Magazine has a sidebar on page 61 of its August 2018 issue.

A nurse in metro Boston earned $11,596 in 1975, about $54,500 in today’s dollars, adjusted via the official CPI. Today the nurse’s median earnings will be $97,136. So the nurse is way better off, right? That’s $42,635 extra.

Median annual rent in boston has supposedly gone from $675 ($3,173 in 2018 money) to $36,012. The 1975 number sounds too low, but there were a lot of slum areas of Boston back then. If we do believe the numbers, nearly all of the nurse’s advance in pay has been captured by a landlord. Professional sports can perhaps capture the rest? A grandstand seat at Fenway Park has gone from $3.75 ($17.63) to $83.

Perhaps explaining why our highways are so jammed, tolls on an example section of the Mass Pike have gone from 70 cents in 1972 ($4.53 today) to $1.20. The cost of a subway ride has gone up only slightly faster than official inflation, from 50 cents in 1975 ($2.35 today) to $2.75.

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A friend’s Facebook post:

We passed by Womrath, Bronxville’s bookshop, which still manages to stay in business despite Amazon. … I said to [the owners] that I appreciated that their window display featured mostly female authors. I had decided not to say anything, but then I figured that window dressing also deserved reinforcement. “That wasn’t intentional,” the woman proprietor responded. “We had no idea,” the man proprietor echoed.

Some things are getting better.

Is it obvious that things today are better? (Let’s assume that “more female” = “better”) I pointed out Hawthorne’s 1855 complaint:

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash-and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the ‘Lamplighter,’ and other books neither better nor worse?-worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the 100,000.

If female authors were not featured by booksellers in 1855, why would Hawthorne have complained? And if bookstores are featuring certain authors, shouldn’t we assume that they are motivated by profits to feature books most likely to sell? Therefore it is really the customers who shape what goes into the window. Who are the customers? “The Most Likely Person to Read a Book? A College-Educated Black Woman” (Atlantic) says “Women read more books than men.” I said

This reminds me of a guy who complained to my friend about the gay-themed ads that he was seeing on Web pages. My friend had to gently inform him that ads were based on his browsing history…

Should we be patting ourselves on the back for being more enlightened than Americans of the dusty past? The Wikipedia page regarding The House of Mirth (1905):

Charles Scribner wrote [Edith] Wharton in November 1905 that the novel was showing “the most rapid sale of any book ever published by Scribner.”

A 1936 nytimes review of Gone with the Wind did not think the female gender ID of the author was worth highlighting. The book sold 30 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.

All of the Facebook authors’ commenting friends, most of whom are American humanities professors, agreed with the proposition that the featuring by a book merchant of female authors was an exciting new development. None expressed skepticism or asked for data.

Readers: What’s your theory about why these folks would be so interested in (a) devaluing the commercial achievements of female authors in the old days, (b) believing that commercial interest in the works of female authors is currently on the increase?

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