Israeli hostage rescue mission was exactly what Igor Sikorsky wanted

by philg

CNN shows some video of Israelis who’d been unwilling guests of the Palestinians getting into a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. Sikorsky first flew this machine in 1964.

This is exactly what Igor Sikorsky talked about: “If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that’s just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life.” (Noa Argamani did not identify as a “man”, of course, but the Sikorsky quote predates our world of verbose explicit gender inclusions.)

The big mystery is why there were any deaths or injuries on either side of this event. We are informed that Palestinians are unarmed and entirely peaceful. Picking up these four guests of the Gazans, therefore, shouldn’t have involved more violence than an Uber pickup from the Apple Store in Newport Beach, California. If Palestinians weren’t shooting at the IDF with weapons that they don’t have, why was there shooting? Were IDF soldiers shooting at each other?

From the Guardian:

We are told that the Gazans, as well as many of the righteous in Europe and the U.S., object to the events surrounding the departure of their hostages. Maybe the Palestinians should have taken only Americans hostage because the U.S. certainly hasn’t threatened to use military force to get back the U.S. citizens held hostage by the Gazans (supposedly 5 living and 3 dead bodies currently). In fact, Joe Biden has done more to bolster the Hamas/UNRWA/Palestinian Islamic Jihad war effort than anyone. A continued supply of US-funded aid keeps Palestinian fighters funded (since the “aid” is immediately confiscated by the legitimate elected government of Gaza (i.e., Hamas) and then sold in the marketplace). Joe Biden has also been instrumental in hamstringing the Israeli military operation.

A smaller mystery is why Noa Argamani wasn’t released in November 2023 when Hamas agreed to release women and children civilian hostages in exchange for Israel releasing captured and convicted Palestinian fighters. Noa Argamani wasn’t serving in the Israel military. She seems to have identified as a woman. Is the answer that Hamas wasn’t actually holding her hostage, but some other group of Palestinians was?

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Target this Pride

by philg

How is everyone’s Pride Month going?

I visited Target near the Raleigh-Durham (North Carolina) airport last month. What are they offering this Pride? My favorite item was this doormat, eminently suitable for a hangar door or for an FBO to place at the bottom of airstairs:

Who could possibly argue against the interior of an aircraft or hangar being a “space space”?

Compared to last year in Montana, Target was not promoting Pride wear in kid/toddler sizes. Adult XS was the smallest that I saw.

I noticed quite a few shoppers who appeared to be observant Muslims, e.g., women who were completely covered in accordance with Islamic law and tradition. If Target wants to be respectful to migrants and Muslims, which I am sure that they do, is a big celebration of 2SLBTQQIA+ lifestyle the way to make observant Muslims feel comfortable bringing their children into the store?

Returning to the merchandise… my favorite shirt was the Love is Love shirt, but I don’t see that on the front page of Target’s LGBTQIA+ Shop (not 2SLGBTQQIA+?):

If we dig deeper, though, I think this might be it:

Perfect for walking the golden retriever!

Meanwhile, across the pond Marks and Spencer may be welcoming observant Muslims with the LGBT sandwich (seems to have been introduced in 2019 and it is unclear whether they’ll still selling it in 2024):

I would love to see a 2SLGBTQQIA+ sandwich. What would we need to add?

  • 2S = two slices of bread
  • QQ = Quinoa and Quark (the German cheese/yogurt/whatever)
  • I = Iberico (Spanish ham)
  • A = Arugula (always good to have more greens)
  • + = Black Pepper

Related:

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Only rich young people are caring

by philg

Which young Americans care enough about their fellow humans (or at least those oppressed by Jews) to camp out in support of Hamas? The rich. From “Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” (Washington Monthly):

Using data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium and news reports of encampments, we matched information on every institution of higher education that has had pro-Palestinian protest activity (starting when the war broke out in October until early May) to the colleges in our 2023 college rankings. Of the 1,421 public and private nonprofit colleges that we ranked, 318 have had protests and 123 have had encampments.

By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.

Whatever the cause, the pattern is clear: Pro-Palestinian protests are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon.

A couple of charts from the article:

(Why would it be accurate to characterize these as “pro-Hamas” protests? See Talking with a pro-Hamas college student for how the expectation among the protesters is that their success will enable Hamas to rule Gaza for the foreseeable future.)

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Don’t expect a car to last more than 10 years or 150,000 miles

by philg

I was chatting with a senior engineer at a Detroit automaker. “We design the car to last 10 years or 150,000 miles,” he said. He explained that component manufacturers try to torture-test the components so as to meet the same standard and then the entire car is given an accelerated aging beating on a test track, e.g., with a road so bumpy that the car needs to be driven by a robot to avoid employees developing back problems. What about other car companies? “As far as I know, all of us use the same standard.”

So… don’t pay real money for an old or high mileage used car! Here’s an example of a car that is about ready for the boneyard and that will cost over $15,000 including taxes and fees:

The price for this 2012 Toyota with 204,000+ miles seems insane, but it aligns with KBB estimates in our inflation-free completely-affordable-for-the-working-class economy:

“Low Mileage”?!?

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Meet in Lisbon this coming week?

by philg

As part of quest for Portuguese (EU) citizenship and because public school ended last week here in Florida, we’re all headed to Lisbon tomorrow and should be there through June 13 (after that we head to the north for a couple of weeks of exploration). Would anyone like to meet? If so, please email philg@mit.edu.

What are we escaping? Here’s life this morning at the Juno Beach Pier (adjacent to Jupiter):

Air and water temp both about 80 degrees (reaches what the New York Times says is a lethal heat index in the afternoon, though, at 91 degrees).

Related:

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Starship use cases?

by philg

Today was another tech triumph for Elon Musk, but I have a question: if there aren’t a lot of fat humans who want to go to the Moon or Mars, what will we be lifting into space via the (apparently almost ready for real use) Starship? Aren’t most of the things that we want to send into space getting lighter, e.g., communication satellites? “Average Commercial Communications Satellite Launch Mass Declines, Again” (2015):

The average size, or launch mass, of commercial communications satellites is declining. After the average launch mass reached a peak of 4,424 kilograms in 2012, it declined to 3,578 kilograms in 2013 and 2,755 kilograms in 2014. Even the launch mass of geosynchronous satellites, which are typically heavier than LEO spacecraft, declined in 2014. The launch mass of GEO satellites peaked in 2013, when it reached 5,288 kilograms. The average launch mass of geosynchronous satellites declined to 4,276 kilograms in 2014.

Could we get more scientific information about the other planets in the Solar System if we sent heavier robots to them? The Curiosity rover weighs 2000 lbs while Perseverance is 2,260 lbs. Sojourner was only 25 lbs.

How about space-based telescopes? Optics and mirrors are heavy. Maybe Starship will make launches so cheap that every astronomer can have as much space telescope time as he/she/ze/they wants.

From space.com:

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Men struggling to find abortion care in Florida

by philg

From the Party of Science… “His Pregnancy Came as a Shock. Florida’s Abortion Law Made It Harder” (TIME):

Jasper never considered he might be pregnant. Despite the nausea, the stomach pain, the fatigue, the possibility never crossed his mind. He was about six months into testosterone therapy, a form of gender-affirming care.

It had taken ages to get his father and stepmother on board—though 18 years old at the time, Jasper lived with and relied on them for support.

Family structure blown up by American family law and customs: check. “gender-affirming care” in first paragraph; check.

(“The USA has the highest proportion [among 16 countries] of children, as much as 50 percent, with any experience of living outside a two-parent family when they turn 15. … in many Western and Eastern European countries it is more common to find that around a fourth or a third of all children have an experience of that kind, at some time during childhood. … The USA stands out as an extreme case… “; journal paper reference in Real World Divorce)

In June 2022, Jasper caught COVID-19 while traveling with his boyfriend’s family, and between the viral symptoms and newfound back soreness, it became, through no fault of his hosts, one of the most miserable vacations he’d ever taken. When he returned to Orlando, Jasper kept waiting for the pain to get better. When it persisted a month later, he visited a doctor who still couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Nobody thought to check for pregnancy.

American medical geniuses can turn a girl into a boy (with a “boyfriend”), but they can’t figure out whether a patient has become a pregnant person.

The right to an abortion was supposed to be sacrosanct in Florida—in 1989, the state’s Supreme Court found that it was protected in their constitution. Until the 15-week ban, which went into effect in July 2022 after the Dobbs decision left abortion restriction to the states, abortions for people up to 24 weeks of pregnancy had been allowed.

It’s a “ban” on abortion care if the limit is 3 weeks longer than in the typical European nation, e.g., Germany. Florida bad and nobody should move there: check.

Jasper didn’t want to tell his family. He’d begun rebuilding his relationship with them, but things felt fragile. And his stepmother, raised Catholic, deeply opposed abortion. If Jasper had to leave Florida, his boyfriend had family in Las Vegas, where abortion was legal up to 24 weeks. They’d have a place to stay, and an excuse for why they were leaving. Running the numbers mentally, he could probably find round-trip tickets for $200.

If the limit is 24 weeks, however, that’s not a “ban”. (Maskachusetts has no limit on abortion care, as long as one doctor thinks it might be helpful to a pregnant person’s mental health. Abortion care is “on-demand” through 24 weeks of a pregnant person’s pregnancy.)

The clinic was still quiet when Jasper arrived for his abortion, but it filled with patients over the course of the morning. Some looked like they were there for birth control, others he deduced were in a similar situation to him. One girl clutched pictures from her ultrasound. Seeing the fear and confusion on her face was like looking in a mirror.

We are informed that transmen are men and also that a man sees a “girl” and it is “like looking in a mirror”?

The abortion was simple: he received a mild sedative, medication to open up his cervix, and a straightforward surgery to remove the fetus. It was a safe, easy procedure—and immensely painful. And then it was over.

Was the fetus interviewed regarding the safety of this procedure?

Over seven days, Jasper had learned he was pregnant, processed the news, scheduled an abortion, and after two visits to a clinic, terminated his pregnancy.

Where can the rest of us get healthcare this quickly? (We are informed that abortion care is healthcare.) That’s my big question.

TIME includes a photo from Fort Pierce, one of my favorite places in Florida. It was there that we went to a barbecue place whose TV was tuned to Duck Dynasty. The kids asked what the show was. I said “It’s about rednecks who sell duck calls to hunters.” Senior Management admonished me for using the term “rednecks” in front of our precious innocents. Everyone else in the restaurant was Black, including the chef and the cashier. The cashier overheard this conversation and chimed in. “Oh, they rednecks,” she said. “They call they-selves rednecks.” This might have been the quickest resolution of a domestic dispute in the history of humanity.

Related: a recent photo of St. Petersburg, Florida in which, hatefully, only one intersection is painted in the sacred rainbow symbols (the 2SLGBTQQIA+ aren’t welcome on other blocks/streets around town?)…

(source: a tweet from the (proud) mayor)

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30 years of Republican cuts to the food stamp (SNAP/EBT) program

by philg

From the member of the U.S. Congress who called for “river to the sea” liberation of Palestine after the October 7 Hamas/UNRWA/Palestinian Islamic Jihad victory:

There have been previous cuts. The program has been gutted. A yet larger cut is forthcoming unless everyone votes for Democrats.

After 30 years of “cuts” to this program that is part of what used to be called “welfare”, how has the number of beneficiaries changed?

USDA publishes data from 1969 through 2023 regarding the number of Americans who are dependent on their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters who pay taxes. Based on the table below, the number of dependents has grown from 2.9 million in 1969 to 42 million in 2023:

How does it work in practice? Here’s a tutorial video:

Note that this post is not an argument against taxpayers being forced to provide for those who wisely elect to refrain from work. It is about the subtlety of the American progressive mind, in which people can believe and say that a government program has been “cut” or “gutted” while spending on that program grows.

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Blue Angels movie streaming on Amazon Prime

by philg

We took our family to elite entertainment last month (movie theater) and then a Michelin-starred restaurant (Cheesecake Factory). Total cost after the inflation that the government says doesn’t exist: $300, which includes AAA-estimated mileage rate for the 12-minute drive in an exclusive luxury vehicle (three-year-old Honda Odyssey EX-L).

What movie was worth $300? The Blue Angels documentary, now streaming for free on Amazon Prime.

The movie showed that the Blues go to the desert in El Centro, California for three months of pre-season “winter training”. That’s three months away from family who are back at the home base in Pensacola, Florida. There is no explanation for this move, though presumably it has to do with potential rain or low ceilings in Pensacola washing out training days and perhaps also more airspace being available in this forgotten corner of California.

Nerds will be cheered to learn that the Blues like to use multi-color BIC pens during briefing sessions. Medical nerds will be surprised to learn that the flight surgeon also plays the role of critic/judge during training. In other words, a person with no significant flying experience watches with binoculars and writes down everything that the pilots are doing wrong.

Perhaps reflecting Americans’ lack of interest in anything technical, the movie doesn’t bother explaining the weight at which the F/A-18 is operated, the airspeeds for the various maneuvers, or the flight control inputs that are required. We don’t get a tour of the cockpit and an explanation of the controls and instruments. We don’t see the maintenance people at work or learn what the need to do to keep the planes airworthy. Nor do we learn if they bring a spare plane! We’re told that there are 6 performers, but “Blue Angel #8” is shown with no explanation of what her role might be (the Navy says
“Events Coordinator”). We don’t find out what the demonstration pilots use for ground reference, especially important in the converging head-on maneuvers. We can guess that it is “keep right of the runway” for land-based air shows, but how do they do it when performing off a beach? (The Blue Angels web site has the explanation in a Support Manual; boats in fixed positions are used to create a “show line”.)

The movie failed to inspire our kids to want to become naval aviators. In fact, they were put off by the description of the hard work that was required, the blackouts in the centrifuge, the entire year mostly away from family, etc. Speaking of blackouts, the Blues don’t use the g-suits that Navy fighter pilots normally wear. They are bracing their arms on their legs and don’t want to risk suit inflation moving an aircraft out of formation enough to hit another aircraft. So they need to use muscles to push blood back up into their heads for demo maneuvers that are up to 7.5g. (No Auto GCAS on the F/A-18.) Speaking of muscles, the movie is a good reminder that everyone should take a job where he/she/ze/they is paid to work out at the gym. The Navy pilots look great compared to the same-age civilians in the movie!

Related (what the movie could have been in an ideal MIT Course 16 world; the F/A-18 is also a fly-by-wire aircraft):

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Return on investment for a society’s spending on math professors

by philg

I listened to a COVID-safe Zoom talk from an MIT math professor. He talked primarily about a geometric optimization problem. My question:

Maybe this will be covered during the talk, but being an engineer I would like to hear what the practical applications could be if Larry solves all of the problems that he’s talked about and/or others that he’s working on. Would ChatGPT get smarter? Would Elon Musk get to Mars sooner? Would renewable energy become cheaper?

He responded that he’d never worked on any problem that he thought had a practical application, but that maybe tools developed to solve a seemingly pointless optimization problem might end up being used to solve a practical problem. He added the question was “Above [his] pay grade.”

What about the graduates? “Half of my Ph.D. students go into academia and the other half go into finance,” responded the professor. “I think it might be because the finance industry has a well-developed path for bringing in people with quantitative skills and no other knowledge.” (i.e., half the students decided that numbers were more interesting if prefixed by a dollar sign)

There are supposedly about 35,000 math professors nationwide. Maybe 10,000 are paid primarily to do research? Taxpayer-investors will need to have nerves of steel to keep paying these folks! (Figure about $350,000

I wonder if we can date the last innovation from the math researchers that is used in ChatGPT. The guys who are credited with developing “deep learning” don’t have math Ph.Ds. (Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton) The speaker on Zoom event said that, as far as he knew, all of the math being used in LLMs was “old”.

Separately, the Boston Globe reports that there is a narrow majority of haters within the MIT faculty:

At MIT, about 20 students, according to student organizers and professors, have been placed on interim suspension, which means they can no longer access campus buildings, participate in graduation, receive wages for student jobs, or finish their final exams and projects. Most have also been told they need to vacate their university housing. MIT declined to confirm the number of students suspended.

A handful of the suspended students were expecting to graduate this semester, and now their diplomas, post-graduation jobs, research projects, and internships hang in limbo, according to interviews with more than half a dozen students and MIT professors. The MIT encampment ended on May 10 when police cleared out the demonstration in the early-morning hours; 10 students were arrested.

Hannah Didehbani, a senior at MIT studying physics who was suspended, said she does not know when she will receive her degree, and that the university has provided little detail about how she should proceed.

“MIT is only taking these unjust, repressive actions such as suspending us, arresting us, evicting us because they are afraid of the power we have,” Didehbani said.

A majority of the MIT faculty appear to be in favor of disciplining the student protesters, however. At a faculty meeting Friday, a motion to remove punitive actions from the suspensions lost, said philosophy professor Sally Haslanger. About 190 faculty opposed removing disciplinary actions, while roughly 150 favored the idea.

Related:

  • official Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion web site for the MIT math department: Members of our community come from a variety of racial, ethnic, indigenous, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. We are LGBTQIA+. We are women and men and non-binary. We have families and pets. We are veterans. We are immigrants. We possess a range of physical abilities. We are first-generation students. We are young and we are experienced. We are MIT Math. [Mindy the Crippler makes our household diverse, according to the geniuses at MIT, due to her Canine-American and Scottish-American background (golden retrievers hail from Scotland).]
  • Out of the 74 gender IDs recognized by Science, just one is highlighted:
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