Movie recommendation: Official Competition

by philg

It is rare for me to recommend a movie without helicopter scenes, but on the Paris-JFK leg of our recent trip, I enjoyed Official Competition, a movie about a rich old guy (comically characterized as a “millionaire” and therefore rich enough to buy a tract house in South Florida?) who funds an enfant terrible director (Penélope Cruz, with spectacular hair) to make a movie from a novel by a Nobel literature winner. The director chooses a popular star (Antonio Banderas) and a brooding acting nerd (Oscar Martínez) to play brothers. The nerd actor lives in an apartment surrounded by books and plays vinyl LPs of avant garde music. He condemns the mass audience for not appreciating great art. Memorable line from an angry actor: “I’ll turn your face into a Picasso.”

All in Spanish with subtitles.

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Taxes and productivity lessons from Pablo Picasso

by philg

The Picasso museum in Paris is built on inheritance tax, according to a sign there. Pablo Picasso died in 1973 and his children had to give paintings to the French government or pay estate taxes that would certainly have exceeded their ability to pay (since the paintings that they had in their houses, gifts from their dad, were valuable but hadn’t been sold voluntarily).

For those who are concerned about Joe Biden’s ability to handle the demanding job of president more than 60 years after his defeat of Corn Pop, here’s some comfort: Picasso (born 1881) was cranking out as many as 2 paintings per week at 90 years old:

Maybe the wife, 46 years younger, assisted?

Speaking of Picasso and younger humans who identified as female, here are some photos from October 2022 taken in the National Gallery (London):

The curators tell us the married 45-year-old artist was having sex with a 17-year-old and, perhaps after consultation with Kentaji’s panel of biologists, that this 17-year-old can be characterized as a “woman”. Yet when something sexual happens with a 17-year-old today, he/she/ze/they is typically characterized as a “child” (example regarding a 36-year-old who supposedly had sex with a 17-year-old; from Australia: a teacher in his 30s having sex with a 17-year-old “young girl” and “child”). Why hasn’t Picasso been canceled or at least devalued? Is it worth paying $100 million to have a work by a child molester on your wall? Why not invest in a Hunter Biden instead, at a $99.5 million savings? Why would a collector want to be reminded of Picasso’s reprehensible actions every time that he/she/ze/they looks at his/her/zir/their living room wall?

Circling back to the productivity-in-old-age topic, if Joe Biden is the “Picasso of Government Spending”, should the “Picasso of the Art World”‘s staggering late-life productivity give us confidence in President Biden as a hands-on leader?

Finally, let me say that I loved the museum. Below we can see two guys who decided to improve their primitive masks’ seals against an aerosol virus by not shaving their beards (this is after deciding to head into crowded indoor art museums as part of the COVID-free lifestyle):

And here’s a patron on the rooftop deck who shows how exciting 100-year-old paintings can be:

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Too elite to fail at NYU

by philg

Some years ago I spoke with a mathematician who earned a Ph.D. at Florida State University and went on to become a professor at Vanderbilt. “At FSU,” she said, “I taught calculus and about a third of the students didn’t do the homework, didn’t learn any calculus, expected to fail the class, and did fail the class.” No surprise considering the football obsession of FSU! (And when are they going to change the name of the team to something other than “Seminoles”? The only way to show that one is not prejudiced against Native Americans is to erase all references to Native Americans while keeping what used to be their land.)

How was Vanderbilt different? “The students behaved exactly the same as at FSU,” she responded. “About one third of them did nothing and learned nothing. So I failed them.” What happened next? “Every dean at the university descended on my office to explain that Vanderbilt students were not failures and that it was not possible to fail one third of the class, even if they had learned no calculus.”

NYU has an elite price, at least. Let’s check out “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?” (NYT):

In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors.

But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.

Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

Good news for those who say that an 80-year-old is not sharp enough to be president of the USA:

Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving.

What did the ex-professor notice about kids today?

“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.

The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”

After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.

MIT and Harvard Medical Students are still amazingly gifted, in my experience, but they definitely did not learn as much during coronapanic. In our ground school class we use the FAA knowledge test to verify mastery of the subject and students who go through the YouTube+Zoom version score about 10 points lower (out of 100) compared to students who sit in a classroom for three days straight.

(Don’t read this as a defense of Professor Jones at NYU and the low grades that he gave on exams. I am against the entire system that prevails in the U.S. under which professors grade their own students. In my view, professors should teach and a neutral evaluator should grade, as is done with the Microsoft and Cisco certifications as well as with the granting of FAA certificates. There is an unavoidable bias when a teacher grades his/her/zir/their own students: “This student appears to have learned nothing, but I am the smartest person in the world and the student sat through my lectures, which means he/she/ze/they must have learned a lot even if the exam does not reflect that. B+”)

Related:

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Math for Democrats: 30 is less than 19

by philg

“Young Aviation Record-Setters Share Secrets to Success at 2022 NBAA-BACE” (NBAA.org, today):

Barrington Irving, founder and CEO of Flying Classroom, moved with his family from Jamaica to the U.S. and grew up in a rough neighborhood in Miami. In 2010, at age 23, he became the youngest and first African-American to fly solo around the world.

Shaesta Waiz, founder and president of Dreams Soar, came to the United States from Afghanistan with her family and quickly became fascinated with aviation. In 2017 that drove her, at age 30, to become the youngest single-engine pilot at the time to circumnavigate the globe solo.

Unless Mr. Irving had a multi-engine airplane, which a Google search reveals is false (he flew a Columbia/Cessna 400), we are forced to conclude that 30 is less than 23. Folks who remember Matt Guthmiller’s 2014 flight are forced to conclude that 30 is less than 19. (The current record-holder was just 17 years old at the time (August 2022).)

Here’s a problematic paragraph:

“To be honest, I did not resonate with Amelia Earhart,” Waiz said. “Yes, she’s a woman. But she had such a different background than me. When I read Barrington’s story and how he kind of grew up in the ghetto of Miami – a similar background to how I grew up – and I saw that he did it, that was my proof that I could do it, too.”

I hope that she was not saying “I figured that if a Black person could do it then it must be pretty easy”!

In case the article is memory-holed:

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Trust the Science: CNN and Hurricane Ian

by philg

“Ian’s 5-day forecast predicted landfall only 5 miles from actual location” (CNN):

The National Hurricane Center worked around the clock to get the best forecasts out and they did it with incredible accuracy.

Looking back at the forecast, the landfall location, Cayo Costa, was in the forecast cone for all the forecasts given, according to CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

Miller also noted that the forecast pegged Ian’s landfall (as a major hurricane also) within 5 miles of its eventual landfall location a full 120 hours in advance – that’s pretty remarkable given how unreliable forecasts can be at the five-day mark and beyond.

So folks on the barrier islands in Lee County, e.g., Sanibel, Captiva, and Fort Myers Beach, had five days of warning regarding precisely where the hurricane would hit? They must be even dumber than we thought.

Thanks to Amygator, we can see that the forecast on Friday at 11 am did show the hurricane hitting Lee County at 8 am on Wednesday (somewhat sooner than it actually did hit).

What CNN leaves out is that on Saturday the NHC forecast that Tampa would hit. On Sunday, the forecast was that Hurricane Ian would strike Ron DeSantis in Tallahassee:

By Monday, it was back to Tampa (and officials there reasonably ordered an evacuation of low-lying houses). By Tuesday, the predicted track was closer to Fort Myers and its barrier islands (and the Lee County officials reasonably ordered an evacuation of those barrier islands).

So, CNN tells us that Science predicted Ian’s landfall five days in advance, but omits to mention that Science also predicted landfall in a variety of other locations, some of the hundreds of miles away.

Perhaps we think that the fearless purveyors of truth have superior access to Science. From What to Know About Ian and Climate Change – The New York Times (nytimes.com):

What if you studied atmospheric physics in college instead of journalism and don’t pick 1980 as your starting point? “Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century” (nature.com, 2021):

To evaluate past changes in frequency, we have here developed a homogenization method for Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency over 1851–2019. We find that recorded century-scale increases in Atlantic hurricane and major hurricane frequency, and associated decrease in USA hurricanes strike fraction, are consistent with changes in observing practices and not likely a true climate trend. After homogenization, increases in basin-wide hurricane and major hurricane activity since the 1970s are not part of a century-scale increase, but a recovery from a deep minimum in the 1960s–1980s.

One of the most consistent expectations from projected future global warming is that there should be an increase in TC intensity, such that the fraction of [major hurricanes] MH to [Atlantic hurricanes] HU increases … there are no significant increases in either basin-wide HU or MH frequency, or in the MH/HU ratio for the Atlantic basin between 1878 and 2019 (when the U.S. Signal Corps started tracking NA HUs … The homogenized basin-wide HU and MH record does not show strong evidence of a century-scale increase in either MH frequency or MH/HU ratio associated with the century-scale, greenhouse-gas-induced warming of the planet. …Caution should be taken in connecting recent changes in Atlantic hurricane activity to the century-scale warming of our planet.

The Science is settled, according to nytimes.com: “strong storms are becoming more common in the Atlantic Ocean, as its surface water has warmed. … Climate change has already contributed to a rise in destructive hurricanes like Ian, and its effects are still growing.” This is a Scientific true fact that has been established beyond any doubt. The nature.com article, on the other hand, says that this is not true and that the data do not show major hurricanes becoming more common.

Let’s look at the crackpots behind the nature.com article:

It is possible that nytimes.com is correct and nature.com is wrong, of course. But the nature.com folks, with their file cabinet full of PhDs (… in Science), don’t say that they are presenting facts that cannot be and will not be falsified.

Related:

  • “Tropical Cyclone Frequency” (Vecchi and others in Earth’s Future; Wiley 2021): “There is no accepted theory that explains the average number of TCs that occur each year on the Earth, nor how that number will change with global warming.” (full text)
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NYT highlights the bright side of being poorer

by philg

This is kind of beautiful… “Inflation Adjustments Mean Lower Tax Rates for Some in 2023” (NYT):

The rapidly rising cost of food, energy and other daily staples could allow many Americans to reduce their tax bills next year, the I.R.S. confirmed on Tuesday.

Tax rates are adjusted for inflation, which in typical times means incremental movements in the thresholds for what income is taxed at what rate. But after a year that brought America’s fastest price growth in four decades, the shift in rates is far more notable: an increase of about 7 percent.

The implication of the article is that a peasant will enjoy more spending power than in 2022 because his/her/zir/their tax bill goes down (why only peasants? successful Americans are already in the top tax bracket and will stay there). But, of course, this happens only for those peasants whose real earnings went down, eroded by Bidenflation. So the peasant earns less in real terms and also pays a bit less tax, but overall should still have a lower spending power in 2023 than he/she/ze/they had in 2022.

Speaking of spending, at NBAA this week I learned that one can cut costs by renting that mid-engine sports car instead of buying:

Just don’t try to take luggage larger than a 1st grader’s backpack on your weekend getaway. An airline roll-on is at least 3X too large for the frunk (there is no trunk), making this Audio R8 useless as a transportation machine compared to a C8 Corvette.

The seat was also uncomfortable for my 6′ frame. I would be driving with knees on chest. I wouldn’t recommend anyone over 5’6″ in height spending his/her/zir/their massive 2023 tax savings on renting an Audi R8.

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Why don’t Facebook profile picture frames offer “I got my 5th COVID-19 vaccine shot”?

by philg

Here’s a Facebook profile photo of a person in the San Francisco Bay Area software industry (UC Berkeley grad and former academic!) whom Facebook thinks would want to be friends with me:

Of course, it is good that he/she/ze/they got his/her/zir/their first COVID-19 vaccine shot. That’s something we can bond over. But if the purpose of these profile photos is to encourage people to comply with CDC instructions, no matter how absurd or in conflict with what the Science-following European technocrats have decided (e.g., no vaccines or boosters if you’re under 50 in Denmark), shouldn’t there be a frame for those who’ve gotten what is, I think, their 5th shot?

What’s in this person’s feed? Rage against “Judge Qannon” who is being too friendly to Donald Trump. A note about a female identifying Italian Prime Minister: “Sudden realization: Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy in 1922.” More about the aftermath of Joe Biden’s raid on Donald Trump’s house. Rage against the illegitimate Supreme Court: “For the record, four of the current court Justices (including the Chief) were nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote. At least three were confirmed by a Senate majority that represented a minority of the US population. And it was THAT Court that decided that, hey, we don’t like a half-century of American jurisprudence.” Praise for the Inflation Reduction Act (timely, considering that my friends in Berkeley say they’re paying $7 per gallon for gasoline). More rage against Trump. Something about Matt Gaetz going to prison for having sex with “children” (age of consent in Science-following Maskachusetts is 16; were there cash-oriented ladies younger than 16 hanging around Matt Gaetz and getting paid to work?). Rage against the Supreme Court for allowing a state to impose a 15-week limit on abortion care for pregnant people. Excitement that a person identifying as a “woman” has an important job in the U.S. Navy. (answering the question Are women the new children?) COVID-19 statistics and how the vaccinated are impervious to death via SARS-CoV-2. Rage against “Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for her unilateral decision to overturn the mask mandate.” (It is not always glorious when those who identify as female hold important jobs.)

How about a frame that says “I got my 5th booster and I’m as healthy as the Pfizer CEO“?

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California’s new law against “lewd” pictures and Islamic tradition

by philg

“Bill to Ban Sending Unsolicited Lewd Pictures and Videos Signed Into Law”:

After receiving strong bipartisan support in the Legislature, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation earlier today authored by Senator Connie M. Leyva (D-Chino) to establish legal protections for technology users when they receive unsolicited sexually explicit images and videos, also known as ‘cyberflashing.’

Also known as the FLASH (Forbid Lewd Activity and Sexual Harassment) Act and sponsored by Bumble—the women-first dating and social networking app—SB 53 would create a private right of action against any person over 18 years of age who knows or reasonably should know that the lewd image transmitted is unsolicited.

During its legislative journey, legislators in both the Senate and Assembly signed on in support of the FLASH Act, including Senator Lena A. Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) and Assemblymember Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) as principal coauthors and Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), Senator Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara), Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), Assemblymember Luz Rivas (D-San Fernando Valley), Senator Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park) and Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) as coauthors.

The article includes a photo of the bill’s author:

The image is a good example of “lewd” by Islamic standards. The woman shows part of her chest, all of her hair, all of her face. Maybe a prostitute would do that in Kabul, but who else? There are a ton of immigrants from Afghanistan to California. Can they now sue if they receive images like the above? If not, why not? I hope that nobody will say that non-Islamic standards of modesty are somehow superior to Islamic standards.

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Climate Change and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Aviation

by philg

Starting right now at NBAA in Orlando… “Climate Risks & Business Aviation” taught by a friend from Maskachusetts (an aviation lender):

Join us for an introduction, categorization and explanation of the climate risks facing business aviation. We’ll also include predictions and estimations of the impact climate has on the industry. Participants will walk away from this session with a better understanding of why this is so relevant for our industry, and how climate risks could impact the industry’s future survival.

The first casualty of climate change is diversity, apparently, because “DE&I in Business Aviation – Practical Implementation” is scheduled to conflict with the above:

How can a variety of business aviation organizations, like aircraft operators, FBOs and other service providers, successfully introduce diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) principles into their daily operations? Attend this session to get guidance and practical tips to building your organization’s DE&I strategy.

Hope to see everyone there!

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Tax Day for procrastinators: big increases due to inflation

by philg

Happy Tax Day if you filed for an extension.

What’s different this year? Inflation means that ordinary schlubs can pay tax rates that were sold as applying only to the elite. The Obamacare “Net Investment Income Tax” of 3.8 percent on top of ordinary income and capital gains taxes, for example, wasn’t supposed to hit Joe Average. But what if Joe Average tried to escape the lockdowns and school closures in California by selling a house and moving to Texas? Adjusted for inflation in the real estate market, his house might not have gone up in value at all. In other words, his purchasing power from selling the house to buy a different house wouldn’t have changed (probably reduced, actually, in terms of how big a house in Austin can be purchased with the proceeds from selling a house in California). But almost surely he will have more than $250,000 in nominal gains. This is all an illusory inflation-driven “gain” and the tax code recognizes that to a small extent by excluding the first $250,000 of house price inflation. But on the rest of it, Joe will have to pay California capital gains tax, Federal capital gains tax, and an additional 3.8 percent for Obamacare. From the IRS:

The Net Investment Income Tax does not apply to any amount of gain that is excluded from gross income for regular income tax purposes. The pre-existing statutory exclusion in section 121 exempts the first $250,000 ($500,000 in the case of a married couple) of gain recognized on the sale of a principal residence from gross income for regular income tax purposes and, thus, from the NIIT.

How about a wage slave? If he/she/ze/they was earning $170,000 in 2019 and got bumped to $210,000 in 2021, his/her/zir/their spending power is actually lower due to raging inflation. Yet now he/she/ze/they is subject to the 0.9 percent Obamacare “Additional Medicare Tax” due to having income over a fixed threshold of $200,000 (soon to be the price of a Diet Coke?).

From Delray Beach, Levy and Associates:

What kind of people are paying the bill for all of the great work done by Congress and Joe Biden? From the haters at Heritage Foundation:

In 2018, due to the cruel policies of the dictator Donald Trump, the rich Americans who earned 21 percent of all income paid only 40 percent of income taxes. Separately, keep in mind that the above chart relates to cash income. A person could be in the “Bottom 50%” with $0 in W-2 income and still have a spending power and lifestyle better than someone earning $50,000 per year (in the “25%-50%” column) due to means-tested public housing, health care, SNAP/EBT, smartphone, and broadband. See “The Work versus Welfare Trade‐​Off: 2013” (CATO) for the states where being on welfare leads to a larger spending power than working at the median wage. Maskachusetts is #3 in Table 4, with welfare being worth 118% of median salary.

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