COVID for the rich at Super Bowl LV?

by philg

The Super Bowl promises to be as jammed as ever. I recently received an email offering tickets starting at $5,500 per seat. (I explained this concept to the kids, noting that it would cost as much for our family to attend than to purchase a nice new car. The 5-year-old almost never is exposed to broadcast television, but still managed to respond “We could watch it on TV for free.”)

Isn’t there a risk of COVID spreading in the stadium, which holds between 65,618 and 75,000?

Looks as though climate change activist Bill Gates’s investment in Signature Flight Support (supplier of jet fuel for the world’s Gulfstream owners) will be secure. Even this year, the expectation is for half of the world’s private jets to converge on a few airports. Email from the FAA…

A reservation program to facilitate ground services at the following Tampa Bay area airports will be in effect Feb. 3 – 9, 2021. Pilots should contact the Fixed Base Operator (FBO) at their airport to obtain reservations and additional information.

  • Tampa International Airport (TPA)
  • Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport (SRQ)
  • Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
  • St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE)

Special air traffic procedures to minimize air traffic delays and enhance safety will be in effect for the following airports:

  • Tampa International Airport (TPA)
  • St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport (PIE)
  • Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
  • Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport (SRQ)
  • Brooksville-Tampa Bay Regional Airport (BKV)
  • Tampa Executive Airport (VDF)
  • Clearwater Airpark (CLW)
  • Pilot Country Airport (X05)
  • Albert Whitted Airport (SPG)
  • Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH)
  • Peter O. Knight Airport (TPF)
  • Tampa North Aero Park (X39)
  • Plant City Airport (PCM)
  • Bartow Executive Airport (BOW)
  • Winter Haven Regional Airport (GIF)
  • South Lakeland Airport (X49)
  • Venice Municipal Airport (VNC)

Related:

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Do all of the Biden grandchildren get to come to the White House?

by philg

Canceled biologist James Watson‘s DNA discoveries enabled the Arkansas Family Court (unlimited child support available; a better place to sue than D.C.) to determine that President Biden has a grandchild yielding substantial cash for a retired stripper plaintiff (Daily Mail).

The plaintiff mom is getting cash from the Biden family purportedly for the child’s benefit. Will the cash cow child get some direct benefit by going to visit Grandpa Biden in the White House? That would be some awesome TV: the President of the U.S., his grandchild, the former stripper, maybe Hunter Biden (the child should also get to see the father, right?), and Hunter Biden’s wife.

Snapshot from 2013, before the $64 million fence was built.

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Has educational TV (Sesame Street) been discredited?

by philg

My friend is fully recovered from COVID-19 (previous post). As part of his twin passions for minimum effort parenting and ensuring that his children go to an elite university (just like mom and dad!), he has been parking the 3-year-old in front of Sesame Street. I said that I admired his dedication to making sure that the child got to see Dr. Bill Cosby, but that the kid would be bored catatonic by anything from PBS:

Educational PBS TV was a creation of marijuana-fogged urban elites of the 1960s and 70s. I would think that it has been totally discredited by now. Learning the alphabet over and over again? How does that help a child who can learn it in 20 minutes once old enough? Shaun the Sheep is good for kids 3+ in my opinion and there is plenty of mental challenge in following a narrative story.

So… that’s the question for today. Has the idea that children can learn useful stuff about arithmetic, reading, etc. from a TV show such as Sesame Street been discredited or not? “It may be educational, but what is that TV show really teaching your preschooler?” implies that there might be some education, but that children learn to be aggressive as well. “Why TV toddlers are lost for words: Educational programmes do not help young children develop language” (Daily Mail, 2014)

(Our kids watch about 20 minutes of TV per day, on average, and content is selected purely for entertainment value, e.g., the movie Soul on which their cousin worked as an animator. What can be learned from Soul? Not history! A character refers to Charles Drew as the inventor of blood transfusions when, in fact, successful human blood transfusions were developed 100+ years prior to Dr. Charles Drew’s work in blood banking. (There is no mention of Dr. Charles Drew’s colleague, Dr. Jill Biden, MD.))

From SeaWorld Orlando, February 2020:

(The park is open right now, but warns visitors:

Exposure to COVID-19 is an inherent risk in any public location where people are present; we cannot guarantee you will not be exposed during your visit.

“inherent risk”? Even with “protective masks”? Those are fighting words here in Massachusetts!)

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All-Trump format for NYT continues even without Trump

by philg

If you’d been wondering what the New Yorker magazine and the New York Times were going to do with their “All Trump-Hatred All the Time” formats once the hated dictator was gone, here’s today’s NYT front page:

How much longer can they keep selling Donald Trump as the main topic that Americans need to learn more about?

(What else was going on in the world today? A coup in Myanmar. Climate change that is an existential threat to humanity. Chinese purportedly inflicting a “genocide” on a group that contains some separatists and jihadis. Insane volatility in GME stock (a friend sold a bunch of call options with a strike price of $800; when the stock was trading at $340 people were willing to pay $130 for the option, meaning that the buyers expect GME stock to hit $930). Variant coronavirus preparing to attack the masked-and-vaccinated. Lower income BIPOC school-age children across the U.S. are coming up on a full calendar year without any school (private and public schools for rich white kids are generally open, of course). Russians are in the streets to protest the arrest of Alexei Navalny. Fiji is being destroyed by cyclones. Migrant caravans are trying to reach President Biden’s promised land, but having trouble redeeming that promise.)

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Late to the party: Why doesn’t GameStop (GME) come back down now?

by philg

This has been a tough month for fans of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. GameStop (GME) started out the month at less than $20/share and is now “worth” over $300/share. The market cap for this bricks-and-mortar retailer is over $22 billion:

Why doesn’t it come back down now? Mall-based retail isn’t a lot better than it was a month ago. The Wall Street shorts who got squeezed have presumably had to close out their positions by now. Unless the company can use its current high share price to issue more shares and invest them in some super profitable business, don’t the shares have to come back down to $20?

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Dr. Andrew Yang, PhD in Mansplaining?

by philg

From a male-identifying friend on Facebook:

Being a progressive does not mean simply giving people more money and stuff. It also means thinking in critical and integrative ways, connecting the social, economic and cultural. In fact, thinking this way can both save money and improve lives through providing meaning.
Here is Andrew Yang on maternal health: “One way I think we can help combat maternal and infant mortality in NYC–both of which are unconscionably high in much of the city–dramatically expand the use of doulas and midwives. Doulas are the truth. Women help women.”
Just one more reason why I support Andrew Yang, a deep, integral thinker, for Mayor of NYC.

Can this be true? Twitter says yes:

This is like a PhD thesis in mansplaining. Perhaps Dr. Yang also said “We’re pregnant” before his children were born.

(Director of Baby Production in our household corporation rated her doula “useless” and elected to fly solo (except for the full hospital team that was present) the next time we were pregnant.)

Related:

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Why you can’t get vaccinated by your local dentist

by philg

A dentist friend (yes, even dentists need friends!) looked into becoming a COVID-19 vaccination center. She’s amply qualified to inject people (“so is a janitor,” says a med school professor friend). She earns her high income by serving a low-income high-risk population so it would make perfect sense for the parents of her patients to come in and get stuck.

What’s stopping her? “It costs $12,000 for the fridge and I don’t think I’d be able to get reimbursed for giving shots. I’m set up to bill for dental services and being able to bill for medical is a whole different procedure.”

(How is it possible to prosper when the patients are poor? Medicaid doesn’t pay quite as much as private dental insurance for any given procedure, but it is common for children on Medicaid to need $10,000+ in dental surgery due to candy+lack of brushing. An upper middle class child might yield a slightly higher payment for a cleaning, but that is the only revenue that can be obtained from treating the upper middle class child.)

Marketing to MassHealth (Medicaid) customers in Worcester, Maskachusetts, a city whose entire economy consists of mining poor people (medical, dental, criminal prosecution and divorce/custody/child support litigation in a magnificent brand new courthouse).

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Portsmouth, New Hampshire and home (coastal aerial photos)

by philg

Readers will be relieved to learn that this is the last in the series of New Hampshire and Maine coastal aerial photos. This batch goes from Portsmouth, New Hampshire over the rich kids’ Phillips Academy Andover and to our home base, East Coast Aero Club at Hanscom Field.

From our Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine trip in a Robinson R44 helicopter. Tony Cammarata was in back with a door removed and a Nikon D850. Instrument student Vince Dorow and I were flying.

Also available as a streaming 8K video.

Thanks to Rob Brigham and the ECAC maintenance crew for a squawk-free helicopter trip!

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