Is $1,000 the new $500 for airfare?

by philg

Friends and family trying to visit us here in the Florida Free State are finding that airfares are usually over $1,000 if the luxury of lugging a bag on board and picking a seat is desired. Before coronapanic, the standard price was around $500. Is $1,000 the new $500? Or is Florida a special case of high airfares? (Unclear why it should be; there are a tremendous number of airports capable of handling commercial flights and it is reasonably easy to drive to an alternate airport.)

A discount airline on final approach in Juno Beach:

Related:

  • “Are EU Markets More Competitive than Those in the US?” (NBER): Industries that experienced significant increases in concentration in the United States, such as telecom and airlines, did not experience parallel changes in the EU.
  • “Why Airfares in Europe Are Lower Than in the U.S.” (The Globalist; 2010): The total average fare per mile in the United States for the above five flights was 23 cents per mile, while in Europe it was 11 cents. Remove the taxes and fees and Europe’s cut-rate airfare advantage is even clearer: The base fare per mile in the United States for the five return flights is 19 cents, while in Europe it is just six cents per mile — one-third of the U.S. cost.
  • “Europe Shows Us Real Airline Competition” (2015): The largest European carrier has only 13% of the market, and the top four airlines have 39% of the market. But in the US, the largest carrier – newly merged AA/US – has a 25% market share, and the top four airlines have taken 83% of the market. Another clue to the vibrancy of the two regions is that in the EU, after the top nine airlines share 64% of the market, that still leaves a huge 36% chunk for all the many other carriers. But in the US, the top nine airlines leave only 3.4% for the few remaining US airlines. Indeed, the very idea of ‘top nine’ airlines in the US is sadly a rather ridiculous concept. As you can see in the chart, by the time you start to get past the top six, the remaining airlines are struggling to get as much as 2% market shares.
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Innovations in shaving gear since 2019?

by philg

It has been more than three years since Gillette paid huge TV ad dollars to teach Americans that masculinity was generally toxic. This prompted the following posts here:

It certainly seems fair to say that in 2020, SARS-CoV-2 showed Gillette what something that was truly toxic to humans looked like.

What have ingenious humans developed in the three years since this flurry of posts and the research behind them?

Gillette seems to be stuck on the same “Fusion 5 ProShield with Flexball” that I tested against Dorco in early 2019. They have a “GilletteLabs” heated razor, but it doesn’t seem to have made it into the mainstream (Wirecutter did not like it back in 2019). Dorco has a new-ish “Pace 6 Pro 3D Motion” that seems like a copy of Gillette’s FlexBall (this can be used with the 7-blade cartridges or the 6-blade ones that include a trimmer on the back, just like Gillette’s top-of-the-line).

Is it fair to say that there is no room for improvement?

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Limiting political protests in the Cradle of Liberty (TM)

by philg

“Boston Mayor Michelle Wu Proposes Limits On Protests At Private Homes” (CBS):

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has been targeted in early mornings by people outside her home protesting her city employee coronavirus vaccine mandate, filed an ordinance Monday that would limit when protesters can picket.

“Boston has a strong legacy of activism, and it’s important to uphold and protect the ability to speak out and advocate fiercely to keep our democracy strong,” Wu said in a statement. “But in a moment of divided national politics, we can’t normalize the harassment and hate spilling over into our communities.”

Protests will be allowed when national politics are unified, i.e., when every American agrees with the ruling party. Also, oftentimes the best way to uphold and protect the ability to speak out is by arresting and fining those who speak out.

An attorney friend in Maskachusetts:

She had no qualms about supporting protesters outside Gov. Baker’s house, when it was for some climate change cause. No problem with shutting down I-93, proudly showing pictures of herself doing it on social media, when it was for a cause [Black Lives Matter] she supported. But now, when protesters are outside her house, she wants an ordinance making it illegal.

Isn’t it interesting that these “leaders” all seem to find their inner censor when protests are against their pet causes and pet decisions? (Looking at you, Justin Trudeau).

It is possible that the above quote contains a misstatement. What I was able to find was an employee of Michelle Wu proudly posting about shutting down Interstate 93:

Related:

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Maskachusetts trying to ferret out the young people using essential and healing marijuana

by philg

Recent email from a school in the Land of Closed Schools and Open Marijuana Shops…. (not in quote style for superior readability)

Massachusetts law mandates school districts to screen students for possible substance use. To address this mandate we will be conducting a screening program to take place for all 7th grade students attending the Lincoln Public Schools (for more information about the law, please visit http://www.masbirt.org/schools). The screening will take place during the day on March 15, 2022 at the Hanscom Middle School and the Lincoln 5-8 School. The goal of this program is to let students know that we are available to support healthy decisions and to assist them in obtaining support if needed for substance use related problems.

In order to help prevent students from starting to use substances, or to intervene with early use, the Lincoln Public School nurses and the middle school counselors will be providing an interview-based screening for all 7th grade students regarding the use of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. This screening utilizes the most commonly used substance use screening tool for adolescents in Massachusetts, the CRAFFT II. Student screening sessions will be brief (approximately 5 minutes). These screenings are conducted confidentially and in private, one-on-one sessions conducted by our school nurses and social workers.

Students who are not using substances will have their healthy choices reinforced by the screener. The screener will provide brief feedback to any student who reports using substances, or is at risk for future substance use. If needed, we will refer students to our counselors for further evaluation. Results of the screening will not be included in your child’s school record, nor will results be shared with any staff other than the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) Team. The SBIRT Team is composed of the school nurse and middle school counselors. All students will receive some educational material and a resource list at the time of the screening.

The governor says that marijuana is “essential” and people in Maskachusetts generally agree that marijuana can heal most medical problems (which is why, even before there was a profitable legal recreational marijuana industry, there was a thriving “medical marijuana” industry). Yet a separate collection of state bureaucrats wants to tell 12- and 13-year-olds that marijuana is somehow bad. (Same argument on alcohol, which was “essential”.)

I would love to meet the 7th grader with the temerity to point out to the screeners that nearly every billboard on the Mass Pike promotes marijuana use and wondering how it is possible that something that is great for adults is terrible for 13-year-olds. Also that adults couldn’t wait to stick 13-year-olds with a vaccine designed for older people.

Separately, it is interesting how Colorado and Maskachusetts set up their respective marijuana industries. In Colorado, there are numerous marijuana shops, each fairly small. As far as I observed, none of them has become rich enough to outbid Apple, Verizon, McDonald’s, et al. for billboard space. In Maskachusetts, by contrast, the number of cronies authorized by the government to sell marijuana is much smaller and, therefore, the profits are apparently staggering.

Here’s a photo from January 2022 of Mountain Medicinals, a “family-owned dispensary” in Idaho Springs, Colorado (contrary to the name, this is recreational and they can sell even to those who do not need to be healed):

As you can see, there are only three cars in the parking lot and the sign is modest. (In MA, the marijuana shops are so busy that they need to pay off-duty police officers to direct traffic.) Also, speaking of maximizing health, note the masked pedestrian in the crisp mountain air (it was below freezing outside and he and I were the only people outside within a 500′ radius).

Related:

  • Department of Blessings of Lockdown…. “Marijuana Sales Increased In Multiple States During COVID, Study Finds” (Marijuana Moment, 8/9/2021): Legal marijuana sales in multiple states reached record highs in mid-2020 as coronavirus spread across the nation, according a new study. To date, sales in the four states examined in the analysis—Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington—”have increased more during the COVID-19 pandemic than in the previous two years.” (Tough to understand how labor force participation rate has fallen so much when so many more Americans are starting each day with a motivational bong hit)
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Adult unvaccinated New Yorkers can go unmasked to the strip club; 3-year-olds must be masked in pre-K

by philg

“‘It’s time to reopen our city’: N.Y.C. mayor lifts a school mask mandate and indoor vaccination rules.” (New York Times, 3/4/2022):

Mayor Eric Adams said on Friday that he was officially ending New York City’s mask mandate for public schools and a proof-of-vaccination requirement for indoor dining, gyms and entertainment venues, a significant moment for a city that was once an epicenter of the pandemic.

Mr. Adams made the announcement in Times Square in Manhattan and said it was part of his efforts to reopen New York after a steep drop in coronavirus cases.

In other words, Science says that if you know that an intervention (mask orders and vaccine coercion) works the smartest thing to do is terminate that intervention to let the virus grow exponentially again. Thanks to Science, an adult New Yorker who has refused to accept the Sacrament of Fauci can mingle unmasked in strip clubs (watch for unexpected costs, though!), pack unmasked and unvaccinated into Madison Square Garden with 20,000+ potentially unvaccinated spectators, etc.

How about 3-year-olds? Can they now breathe freely during their DUPLO time? No:

Starting on Monday, students will no longer have to wear masks indoors at public schools. Children under 5 must continue to wear masks because they are not yet eligible for vaccination.

Related:

  • “The best strip clubs in NYC” (TimeOut, with 2016 prices): This 10,000-square-foot club took over the old Scores space, but it’s a much classier affair: … ($400 gets you 30 minutes of alone time) … Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club empire aims to be classy and approachable … Lap dance prices are equivalent to other clubs in the city; massages will run you about $100. … All-you-can-eat sushi served on a naked woman in its private Kabuki room ($250 per person).
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Does it make sense to have a “Climate Pledge” stadium hosting regular gatherings of 19,000 people?

by philg

Despite my passion for Climate Science, I hadn’t noticed that Seattle is now the home of the “Climate Pledge Arena,” a sports stadium seating over 18,000 people (so, including workers, that would be a gathering of up to 19,000 for every sold-out game). Amazon bought the naming rights, but decided that it should be called “Climate Pledge” rather than “Amazon Prime” or “EC2 and S3”.

I’m wondering if this name makes sense given that it is tough to think of anything more destructive to our beloved Mother Earth than a sports stadium. $1.15 billion was spent on renovating the stadium, which means $1.15 billion that wasn’t spent on planting climate-healing trees. A huge quantity of concrete was no doubt used and the cement industry emits roughly 8 percent of world’s CO2 pollution (BBC). Every time an event occurs at this stadium, thousands of people drive their gas-guzzling, CO2-spewing vehicles to and from the Climate Pledge Arena, a practice that is explicitly encouraged by the Climate Pledgers: “Parking is available at every price point for every budget.” says https://climatepledgearena.com/transportation/ .

Fans from the “away” team will often fly in from hundreds or thousands of miles away, generating additional CO2 in the process. (But also “live music” according to Google Maps; see below.)

Americans were willing to #StayHomeSaveLives for two years. Shouldn’t Americans be willing to #StayHomeSaveMotherEarth and watch sporting events on TV, thus reducing by at least 90 percent the number of car trips for each event?

Note that climate pledging is not the only important cause in Seattle. Here are some photos from an August 2019 trip:

The above photos were included in Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money?

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Taxpayer-funded East Hampton airport reopens as a private facility for the richest

by philg

Today was supposedly the day that the East Hampton airport (KHTO) reopened as a private-only facility. More or less everything there was paid for with federal funds (raised by taxes on aviation fuel, not from the general treasury), but enough years ago that the town was free to wall it off from the public. (See “‘MEMBERS ONLY’: EAST HAMPTON AIRPORT MOVES TO PRIVATE USE” (AOPA))

It isn’t cheap to pave runways, so presumably the airport will be business-as-usual for Wall Streeters’ Gulfstreams (subject to big fees even when it was an ordinary public use airport). For peasants renting Cessnas and Pipers from regional flight schools, however, it may be another story…

From September 2020:

The FBO’s Web page suggests that the scheme is going forward, but with closure on May 17 and reopening on May 19.

Related:

  • “FAA ‘furious’ over East Hampton Airport’s privatization scheme” (New York Post): “East Hampton politicians’ scheme to close and then immediately reopen the town airport — and collect $10 million in surplus funds in the process — hit turbulence Wednesday” (i.e., it may be that enough Gulfstreams had landed over the years for the airport to accumulate $10 million in profit on the federally funded runways)
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I picked up our free N95 masks

by philg

These events occurred on February 24, but I didn’t want to post then because it is a trivial story compared to what was happening in Ukraine.

Our local CVS had a sign on the door promising “free” (taxpayer-funded) masks from the central planners:

The clerk tried to give me 10. “Don’t you have a large family?” she asked, hopefully. I asked for 3, explaining that I just wanted to brag to friends about having gotten them, and settled for 5. “We have 35 boxes of these in the back,” she added, and then pointed out that the anti-SARS-CoV-2 masks are “not evaluated for antiviral protection.”

Should I feel bad about writing on a non-Ukrainian topic? Here’s today’s email from McKinsey, the world’s leading business consultancy:

How to fix the broken rung on the career ladder for women in tech

Women are promoted at a slower rate than men across all industries and roles. But in technical roles‚ including in engineering and product management‚ the gender gap is even more pronounced: just 52 women for every 100 men are promoted to manager. Diversity is crucial in technical roles because it helps debias the technologies that are an intrinsic part of modern life. Early‐career promotions are critical to success‚ so this broken rung on the leadership ladder means that companies end up preparing fewer women for senior roles. What can leaders do? Don’t miss our article on repairing what’s broken.

The email includes a photo of a person, gender ID unspecified, doing Ph.D.-level soldering (Ph.D. level because his/her/zir/their other hand is not introducing any solder near the iron’s tip):

Ukrainians are suffering right now, but an American still has mental space, apparently, for all of his/her/zir/their pre-war concerns.

Loosely related… Shutterstock shows us another world in which soldering happens without solder:

Note bare fingers on the hot part of the iron. Could this be an example of what Joe Biden was talking about in the State of the Union speech?

We’re the only nation on Earth that has always turned every crisis we’ve faced into an opportunity, the only nation that can be defined by a single word: possibilities.

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GPS history from Joe Biden

by philg

From the State of the Union speech yesterday:

And fourth and last, let’s end cancer as we know it.

Cancer is the number-two cause of death in America, second only to heart disease.

Our goal is to cut cancer death rates by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years. And I think we can do better than that: turn cancers from death sentences into treatable diseases, more support for patients and families.

To get there, I call on Congress to fund what I called ARPA-H — (applause): Advanced — Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Patterned after DARPA in the Defense Department, projects that led — in DARPA — to the Internet, GPS, and so much more that make our forces more safer and be able to wage war more — with more clarity.

Thanks to Facebook, we know that Gladys West, Ph.D. in Public Administration, invented GPS:

But did DARPA fund Dr. West, as Dr. Biden’s spouse told the American people last night? “GPS History, Chronology, and Budgets” says that it was the mainstream Department of Defense, lead by the U.S. Air Force:

Finally, in April 1973, the Deputy Secretary of Defense designated the Air Force as the lead agency to consolidate the various satellite navigation concepts into a single comprehensive DoD system to be known as the Defense Navigation Satellite System (DNSS). The new system was to be developed by a Joint Program Office (JPO) located at the Air Force’s Space and Missile Organization, with participation by all military services. Colonel Brad Parkinson, program director of the JPO, was directed to negotiate between the services to develop a DNSS concept that embraced the views and needs of all services.

(Let’s not forget Gee from World War II, a British predecessor to LORAN, which was itself the predecessor to satellite-based navigation systems. See “The Origins of GPS, and the Pioneers Who Launched the System” (GPS World) for some photos of the early developers (below) and confirmation that it was not DARPA that funded GPS.)

The audience is thrilled to imagine a new federal agency (ARPA-H). But we already have the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with an annual budget of $52 billion. If NIH is doing its job, why would a new agency be needed to fund medical research? After all, the ordinary Department of Defense, merely doing its job in the 1960s and 1970s, managed to get GPS off the ground (so to speak).

Readers who watched the speech (I merely skimmed the transcript): What was your impression of our 79-year-old Commander in Chief? (and was Uncle Joe merely reading from a teleprompter or did he have to think on his feet?)

An additional point that I noticed: the speech did not begin with a land acknowledgment and, indeed, there is nothing in the transcript about Native Americans. LGBTQ+ (but not 2SLGBTQQIA+?) Americans are mentioned. Transgender Americans are mentioned twice. Asian Americans will be protected. “Women” (an undefined category) are mentioned three times as victims requiring government assistance. “Veterans are the backbone and the spine of this country. They’re the best of us,” is just a portion of the attention devoted to veterans. But nothing about Native Americans, who are apparently at best second-rate (unless a Native American becomes a veteran).

Finally, Biden said “we must prepare for new [SARS-CoV-2] variants.” For those who believe that ordering the general public to wear masks is effective at stopping the spread of an aerosol respiratory virus, how is this statement consistent with what Biden’s fellow Democrats are doing, i.e., dropping their mask orders? And with Biden’s own statement in the same speech: “Under the new guidelines, most Americans in most of the country can now go mask free.” Wouldn’t the best way to prepare for new viral variants be keeping mask orders in place until there is a simple cure for COVID-19?

Loosely related… pictures of Americans who were involved in the early years of satellite-based radio navigation (from GPS World):

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Can Ukrainians identify as female and leave the country?

by philg

“Ukraine men ordered to stay and fight Russia as others flee” (New York Post, 2/25/2022):

Ukraine announced late Thursday that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were forbidden from leaving the nation, which has been under martial law since the start of the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian authorities “were nice, not rude, but they said that men have a duty to defend the country,” said Erzsebet Kovacs, 50, at a train station.

I asked a Ukrainian-American friend whether this was a practical obstacle. “Why can’t anyone who wants to leave say ‘I identify as a woman’?” He responded, “It’s another example of male privilege. The border agents would probably shoot you in the balls.”

He speaks and reads Russian and travels regularly to Ukraine, yet in early January 2022 he estimated the chance of an invasion at only 10 percent, upping his risk assessment somewhat after Joe Biden hinted that a “minor incursion” would be tolerated (NBC). His U.S.-educated child: “This war makes me realize how trivial are the concerns that we’re taught to worry about in [public] school. The microaggressions, the gender pay gap, and Covid. What’s really important is where to hide money and how to get food.”

Related:

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