Glacial pace of innovation in non-electric aviation slows due to coronapanic

by philg

Certified fossil fuel-powered aviation has been notable for the slow pace of innovation. As the world of the consumer has been transformed, the typical aircraft flying is a refined version of what pilots operated during World War II. Through 2019, it would not have been unfair to characterize the pace of innovation as glacial. Coronapanic, however, has slowed the pace to geologic. Garmin, the 500 lb. gorilla of general aviation avionics, had nothing new to show. “All of our engineers have been working on getting certification to use substitute parts in existing designs,” explained a senior sales exec. “Even with the substitutions, we had a 9-month backlog that is now down to 90 days.” Three months to get an 11-year-old nav/com doesn’t seem like a great situation for consumers, but the sales guy said, “It takes 4-6 months to get a slot at any avionics shop, so our lead time doesn’t slow anyone down.” (This does not seem to be true for autopilot installations; Garmin has been shipping partial kits and, if the shop starts work based on Garmin’s forecast delivery dates for the lagging items, the result is that airplanes are grounded for months waiting for the full kit to arrive.)

(The good news is that Garmin bought a container full of displays for the ancient 430/530 nav/coms, so if you like 25-year-old technology they will keep supporting it!)

Small competitors such as Avidyne and Dynon did not have anything new at Oshkosh either.

The electric “super drone” companies don’t have certified products and they do not seem to have been slowed down as much by coronapanic, at least if we measure by hype. Back in 2018, Uber said that customers in Los Angeles would be fleeing the traffic-clogged streets in electric aircraft by 2023 (post). Maybe the electric super drone is always 5 years in the future? Joby came to AirVenture with a sim and no aircraft. They predict Uber using their 5-seater the day after certification in 2024.

The experimental aircraft folks seem to have maintained their work efforts while everyone else pretended to work from home. The RV-15 was conceived in 2019 and flew in 2022:

(There are more than 10,000 Van’s Aircraft kit planes flying today, which exceeds the number that Cirrus has built.)

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Maskachusetts rejects Science (90 percent refuse vaccines for children under 5)

by philg

Despite being nearly 100 percent Deplorable-free (as commenter Angry Australian notes, the handful of “rightwing nutjobs” who did not appreciate the healing powers of essential marijuana, lockdown orders, forced masking, and vaccination papers checks have likely moved away from the State of Science into the famously Republican strongholds of Miami Beach and Palm Beach County), Massachusetts is apparently rejecting the Sacrament of Fauci for its most vulnerable residents. “11% of Children Under 5 Have Received COVID-19 Vaccine in Mass.” (NECN, today):

Before COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out for children under the age of 5 back in June, many parents had been calling for those shots to become available for young kids.

But new data looks like some parents’ stance may have changed.

Massachusetts ranks third nationwide, with 11% of those kids getting at least one dose, according to The Boston Globe. Washington D.C. took the top spot, with nearly 18% and Vermont came in at second place.

Pediatricians say they did expect some hesitancy, and according to the Globe, surveys predicted that only around one in five parents would actually plan on getting children in that age bracket vaccinated. The numbers so far are lower, though, than many pediatricians expected by this point. The vaccination rates for these young children are lower than any other age group in the state.

As a result, some doctors say they’ve actually had to throw some of these vaccines out because they’re not being used.

How can this be? The COVID-19 vaccine for young children was Emergency Use Authorized by the FDA. Therefore, young children are facing a health emergency. Yet the smartest people in the United States are not Following the Science and applying proven-by-Science emergency remedies to ameliorate the emergency.

Loosely related, I found Dr. Fauci’s most recent book for kids at a toy store in Amana, Iowa:

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Team USA’s new airplane at Oshkosh

by philg

Delta Airlines brought its “Team USA” airplane to Oshkosh this year. Our elite athletes will travel in style to the next few Olympics. Where do the proud Americans who built this machine live? Toulouse, France. It’s an Airbus A330.

Delta even flew it during an afternoon airshow (there is an airshow every afternoon at Oshkosh, plus two evening airshows).

Separately, on the way to Oshkosh we visited the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum and learned that no American-made car has won the Indy 500 for 40 years:

On the way back from Oshkosh, I stopped in Amana, Iowa, a center of All-American quilting. Where is the fabric made and printed for this All-American craft? Korea and Japan.

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Progressives in Maine want U.S. to admit more low-skill migrants…

by philg

…. who will live somewhere other than in Maine. “Maine’s open door for refugees meets a housing shortage” (Christian Science Monitor):

Yet the city [Portland, Maine] that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they are not allowed to work for a living as their appeals for asylum slowly crawl through the system.

Its shelter filled, the city has put them up in motels while COVID-19 and winter created vacancies. But now the innkeepers want their rooms back for tourists, and Portland has no place to put them.

And still they keep coming.

Portland’s city health director took the extraordinary step in May of emailing agencies working on the southern U.S. border, telling them that immigrants “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival” in the city. The adjoining municipality of South Portland sent a similar message, and 79 local aid organizations followed with letters to the state of Maine and the federal government saying they were stretched too thin.

Judging by real estate prices, Portland has never been wealthier. Apartments and single-family houses have been bid up to a median price of over $500,000 (Zillow). What stops people rich enough to pay $500,000 for an apartment from paying up to house their refugee brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters?

… most pushback is framed in terms of the cost of services to newcomers at a time of inflation and rising expenses, says Ms. West, the city manager. “When you increase taxes, that’s really difficult for a lot of people in Portland to handle,” she says.

Aha! As with California Progressives, housing is a human right, but so is a Progressive’s right to save Mother Earth by buying a new Tesla rather than funding housing for the unhoused (whose right to housing remains undiminished by their lack of housing).

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Americans still prefer not to work, but that preference varies from state to state

by philg

While celebrating the fact that the U.S. economy has added back some jobs to pre-coronapanic levels, not bothering to adjust for the millions of additional folks who now occupy the United States, e.g., via immigration, the New York Times is forced to add the following:

In a substantial asterisk for the report’s broad strength, however, high demand has done little to expand the ranks of available workers by bringing people off the sidelines of the labor market.

And an accompanying chart shows that the trend of Americans sitting at home playing Xbox (back in stock!) is actually accelerating:

Does it make sense to look at these statistics on a nationwide basis? The level of coronapanic varied widely from state to state. The attractiveness of relaxing at home on welfare, compared to the spending power afforded by working full time at the median wage, also varies widely from state to state (CATO; see Table 4).

Let’s have a look at New York, where CATO found (2013) that the welfare lifestyle yielded 110 percent of the spending power of a median worker (St. Louis Fed):

Still down a full percentage point compared to pre-coronapanic. With perhaps some exceptions for young attractive women, Science-following Governor Andrew Cuomo made it illegal for New Yorkers to work and they followed his instructions. What about in Florida, where relaxing on welfare was worth only 41 percent of the spending power of a median worker and where the tyrant Ron DeSantis allowed people to continue working? (source)

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Is the CDC running a bathhouse?

by philg

Everything that the CDC says or does is, by definition, scientific. Science requires that hypotheses be tested and data gathered. The CDC is now offering scientific advice on how to have sex in group settings without contracting monkeypox. Ergo, the CDC must either be running its own bathhouse or gathering data in a bathhouse run by others. Let’s look at “Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox” (CDC, August 5):

Spaces like back rooms, saunas, sex clubs, or private and public sex parties where intimate, often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners occurs—are more likely to spread monkeypox.

Unless the CDC is running a bathhouse, how has it determined, scientifically, that the bathhouse lifestyle is more likely to spread monkeypox than some other lifestyle?

Condoms (latex or polyurethane) may protect your anus (butthole), mouth, penis, or vagina from exposure to monkeypox. However, condoms alone may not prevent all exposures to monkeypox, since the rash can occur on other parts of the body.

Where is the CDC doing its scientific testing with condoms?

Consider having sex with your clothes on or covering areas where rash is present, reducing as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. Leather or latex gear also provides a barrier to skin-to-skin contact; just be sure to change or clean clothes/gear between partners and after use.

Has the CDC tested washed versus unwashed leather and latex gear to determine, scientifically, if the suggested cleaning makes a difference? Where has the CDC done the experiments of a leather party versus a non-leather party and a clothes-on versus a clothes-off party in order to have a scientific basis for the above statements?

A rave, party, or club where there is minimal clothing and where there is direct, personal, often skin-to-skin contact has some risk. Avoid any rash you see on others and consider minimizing skin-to-skin contact.

The CDC has done experiments with laypeople and discovered that they are able to recognize rashes in dimly lit clubs? If it doesn’t run its own bathhouse, how can the CDC know that “see and avoid” is an effective means of avoiding monkeypox?

Separately, what would the CDC’s bathhouse be called? All of the people on the “Meet the Staff” page appear to identify as “women”. Would it make sense to have a bathhouse for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ named after a woman?

I already suggested that “Karen’s” be the name of a restaurant chain in which masks and vaccine papers are required. So the CDC bathhouse can’t be named after those who would seek to keep others on the path of righteousness. The CDC is headquartered in Atlanta and is run by the Feds. Combining that fact fact with the above text, how about “Sherman‘s House of Latex”?

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Current prices at CVS and Walgreens

by philg

Our AirBnB didn’t come with shampoo or soap, so we hit the Walgreens in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. All of the travel items that I expected to cost $0.99 were $2.99 or more. Inflation? It then occurred to me that I had seen these prices back around 2018. The current Walgreens/CVS prices for stuff are the same as one would have paid in a resort hotel’s lobby boutique in 2018.

Given that nearly every drugstore seems to be either a Walgreens or a CVS, and there has also been a fair amount of consolidation among manufacturers/brands, could lack of competition also be a factor in why toothpaste, shampoo, and other basics are costly? (Walmart’s store brand equivalents are only about half the price compared to the name brands at CVS/Walgreens, right? That tells us it isn’t about the materials cost or the dreaded “supply chain”.)

Loosely related, a Rite Aid in downtown San Diego (June 2022). The precious deodorant is locked down and alarmed.

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Welcoming migrants in our nation’s capital

by philg

“G.O.P. Governors Cause Havoc by Busing Migrants to East Coast” (New York Times, yesterday):

Lever Alejos arrived in the nation’s capital last week on a bus with dozens of fellow Venezuelans who had journeyed more than 1,300 miles from their broken country to the United States. Most had braved poisonous plants and thugs as they trudged through dense jungle on the Colombian border and waded in water up to their chins to cross the Rio Grande into Texas, some clutching babies.

After being processed by U.S. border authorities, the undocumented migrants were released into South Texas, free to go where they wanted. Mr. Alejos, 28, said he was offered two options: a $50 bus ride to San Antonio or a free bus ride to Washington, D.C., paid for by the State of Texas. “I wanted San Antonio, but I had run out of money,” said Mr. Alejos, who has no family in the United States. “I boarded the bus to Washington.”

With no money and no family to receive them, the migrants are overwhelming immigrant nonprofits and other volunteer groups, with many ending up in homeless shelters or on park benches. Five buses arrived on a recent day, spilling young men and families with nowhere to go into the streets near the Capitol.

Since April, Texas has delivered more than 6,200 migrants to the nation’s capital, with Arizona dispatching an additional 1,000 since May. The influx has prompted Muriel E. Bowser, Washington’s Democratic mayor, to ask the Defense Department to send the National Guard in. The request has infuriated organizations that have been assisting the migrants without any city support.

“The infrastructure in New York is not built for this,” she said. “We are not on the border.”

The situation has become acute in recent weeks with the arrival of so many Venezuelans, who cannot be expelled under Title 42 because Mexico will not take them and their own government does not have an agreement with the United States to accept deportation flights. And unlike most migrants from Mexico and Central America who have family and friends in the United States, Venezuelans often arrive with no money and nowhere to go.

The “migrants welcome” lawn signs all over Northwest D.C. were not sufficient, apparently, to handle even 1 percent of the undocumented migrants who come to the U.S. (compare the 7,200 migrants mentioned above to the roughly 22 million who lived in the U.S. as of 2018 (Yale)).

From April 2022 in D.C., No Human Being is Illegal:

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Cost of luxury high-rise construction in Florida

by philg

A neighbor is a refugee from the Land of Lockdown (Illinois) and is a partner in a real estate development company. “We decided to stop doing projects in Chicago because so many people were leaving,” he explained. He’s finishing a sold-out project of $4 million Florida beachfront condos that will be ready for occupancy early in 2023. It is on the site of a former hotel. What does construction cost right now for a luxury concrete high-rise? “It is $450 per square foot,” he responded. Three years ago? “Mid-$200s.”

Here’s a new one near us, which was planned starting at $4 million per unit, announced at $6-10 million, and has apparently been selling for up to $18 million for a 5,000-square-foot unit ($3,600 per square foot): SeaGlass, Jupiter Island (it is not in Jupiter, but in the next town up: Tequesta).

Some friends in northeast Florida will be moving into their new 3BR house soon. They bought it 18 months ago, which is when the developer began work on design and construction (theirs is a tweak to a standard design within the development). It will cost just under $1 million and is a 20-minute drive to the beach. The developer complains that, due to inflation, this particular house will actually be unprofitable.

Related:

  • City rebuilding costs from the Halifax explosion, from 2019, in which I describe an affordable apartment construction project in Boston. Even with free real estate, the construction cost of each unit ($555,555 per) rendered them unaffordable, without taxpayer subsidies, to a dual-income couple in which both of the partners (who will, one hopes, come in a rainbow of gender IDs) worked full time at the median Maskachusetts wage. Presumably that construction cost has now also doubled, but the median wage won’t have followed.
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Should we not pay rent due to the COVID-19 public health emergency…

by philg

… or should we instead not pay rent due to “Biden administration declares the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency” (CNN):

The declaration follows the World Health Organization announcement last month that monkeypox is a public health emergency of international concern. WHO defines a public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC, as “an extraordinary event” that constitutes a “public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease” and “to potentially require a coordinated international response.”

Some cities and states, including New York City, San Francisco, California, Illinois and New York, have already declared monkeypox an emergency, allowing them to free up funding and resources for their responses to the outbreak.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden named Robert Fenton as the White House’s national monkeypox response coordinator. Fenton — a regional Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator who oversees Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada — will coordinate the federal government’s response to the outbreak.

Monkeypox can infect anyone, but the majority of cases in the US outbreak have been among men who have sex with men, including gay and bisexual men and people who identify as transgender. Close contact with an infected individual is required for the spread of the monkeypox virus, experts say.

Concentrating on that last paragraph, now that Science has declared an emergency, should we start wearing protective cloth masks on visits to the local bathhouse?

Separately, one of my most COVID-concerned Facebook friends has been posting images of himself and his wife, fully masked, at a 70,000-person indoor board game convention. Apparently, there was a one-hour process for scrutinizing vaccine papers (Science says that there is no way to transmit a SARS-CoV-2 infection if a person has been injected with proven-by-Science COVID-19 “vaccines”). The same guy posted some rage against convention attendees who did not Follow Science by attending a 70,000-person indoor event while wearing a mask of some sort:

This guy and similar are endlessly fascinating to me. He is concerned enough about COVID-19 to wear a mask and post about others’ mask-wearing. But he is not concerned enough about an aerosol respiratory virus to refrain from attending a 70,000-person indoor event that attracts diseased individuals from all around the world.

Finally, when will the CDC announce a hangar rent moratorium? That’s the kind of COVID-19/monkeypox relief that I feel would be most beneficial.

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