Domestic violence hotline for the polyamorous

by philg

Back of a city bus in Harvard Square:

I posted this to Facebook with “Helpful phone number in case identifying as polyamorous leads to a domestic dispute”.

From the sponsor organization’s history page:

the wording of our mission was changed to explicitly name and acknowledge our ongoing work with gay, queer, polyamorous and SM communities.

Who wants to test the theory that “Love means my partner respects my identities” by walking in the front door and saying to one’s partner “Starting tonight, I identify as polyamorous”?

(Also, are people who engage in sadomasochism a “community”? See “Partner Abuse In SM Communities” from the same org.)

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Taxpayer-funded aviation in the 1950s

by philg

From the Udvar-Hazy Center, taxpayer-funded aviation in the 1950s: $2,500 Piper Super Cubs.

I texted these to a friend. His reply: “Today that would be 50 Blackhawks with $20 million sensor packages.”

Also from the museum, the “San Francisco” is a biplane so that twice as many people can pitch tents under the wings.

1940s and 50s seem to have been the high point for aircraft design cuteness. Note the cartoon-like Bell helicopters:

The Discovery Space Shuttle and its firsts in the gender and racial identity departments:

Don’t let your seaplane near the salt water:

A 1960s German toy for the nostalgic:

(A friend commented “You had to see old guy down the road for the decals.”)

Elizabeth Warren’s test pilot closet:

Some fun overviews…

At AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) 2019, Burt Rutan said that the National Air and Space Museum was “a great place to park a used airplane.” He’s certainly right about that, but it would be nice if the museum could step up its educational effort, which is weak compared to the Museum of Flight in Seattle (previous post).

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Visit to the National Museum of the American Indian

by philg

From September, some photos of an awesome exhibit of commercial exploitation of Native American culture at the National Museum of the American Indian. The building itself is as beautiful as ever.

Hundreds of products are featured, including a Tomahawk missile:

Elvis played Indian characters twice in films. Also depicted is Justin Trudeau’s cousin:

Let’s not forget South Park:

Sorry for the poor image quality, but this Post Toasties ad is essential:

Adjacent to this exhibit is one that claims Pocahontas “saved America.” As much of a Pocahontas fan as I am, to the extent that she helped European invaders, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that she helped destroy America?

It is interesting to compare this museum with the nearby National Museum of African American History and Culture, also run by the Smithsonian. More than 95 percent of Native Americans were killed by European immigrants, either through violence or the diseases that Europeans brought (which then spread via mosquito). Their land was stolen. Yet their museum is mostly positive and celebrates Indian achievements in art and culture. The African American museum, on the other hand, is at least 2/3rds negative, focusing on African Americans as victims. A railroad car with identical (but separate) seating for blacks and whites, for example, gets a sign explaining how the black passengers were deprived of “oversized luggage bins” and a chair inside the restroom:

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Boeing’s attack on the Bombardier fly-by-wire regional jet

by philg

“How Boeing Tried to Kill a Great Airplane—and Got Outplayed” (Daily Beast) has a lot of good background on the Bombardier CSeries (Airbus A220), an evolution of the Canadair Regional Jet that I used to fly. I knew that the airplane had a geared turbofan engine for fuel efficiency, but I hadn’t realized that it was fully fly-by-wire (as long as the software works, impossible to have a Boeing 737 MAX-style catastrophe).

The article shows that critical importance of political connections in the U.S. business world:

Boeing’s formidable Washington lobbying machine swung into action. Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO, had already cozied up to President Trump by agreeing to cut the costs of the future Air Force One jets. In September 2017, the Commerce Department announced a killing blow to Bombardier, imposing a 300 percent duty on every C Series sold in the U.S.

The story of how Airbus outfoxed the high-paid Boeing executives is interesting.

One thing that the article does not explain is why Boeing executives moved the HQ from Seattle to Chicago. Why would high-paid workers want to be in Illinois with a 5 percent income tax rather than in Washington State with no income tax? (the family law is radically different in the two states as well; Illinois offers plaintiffs unlimited child support profits while Washington caps revenue at about $400,000 (tax-free) for one child)

I’m not sure that I agree with the conclusion:

Boeing provides no end of a lesson in how a great company can lose its moxie because of an indecent lust for short-term gain. It used to be the classic American can-do company. Now it can’t do anything right.

How do we know that Boeing is imploding due to a decision to seek short-term profits? Since the company’s problems are primarily engineering failures, why couldn’t it be that the quality of engineers the company is able to hire is not as high as in the 1960s? Americans with excellent quantitative skills have a lot more career choices today, most of which pay better than working at Boeing.

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Visit to the Hirshhorn Museum

by philg

From a late September visit to the Hirshhorn Museum…

Walk past the Smithsonian Castle:

In front is a crushed car sculpture by Jimmie Durham, who identifies as a Native American (see “Why It Matters That Jimmie Durham Is Not a Cherokee”):

He has long claimed to be Cherokee but that claim has been denied by tribal representatives: “Durham is neither enrolled nor eligible for citizenship in any of the three federally-recognized and historical Cherokee Tribes: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation.” He has “no known ties to any Cherokee community”

A sculpture by a white cisgender heterosexual man:

Viewers of this Andy Warhol might have imagined that we were never experience a worse president than Richard Nixon (who created the Environmental Protection Agency):

Artists who identify as “women” and call themselves the “conscience of the art world” establish a 10 percent quota for an art gallery not to be shamed:

Then they discuss how to identify “an art world token” (“8. Everyone knows your race, gender and sexual preference even when they don’t know your work.”):

Some more from this group…

(If art by people who identify as “women” costs only one third as much as art produced by those who identify as “men,” wouldn’t all real estate developers and hotel owners purchase art exclusively from “women”? Why pay 3X the cost for the same quality?)

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Nobel-winning physicists discourage young people from physics as a career

by philg

From a CNN article on the latest Nobel Prize in Physics:

Peebles, who is Albert Einstein Professor of Science at Princeton University, had a message for budding scientists.

“My advice to young people entering science: you should do it for the love of science,” he said at a press conference following the announcement.

“You should enter science because you are fascinated by it.”

In other words, “Don’t do it for the paycheck or the working conditions, as you might for most other career choices.” (Nobody says “You should train to be a dental hygienist because you are fascinated by teeth”; the stress will be on the $75k/year median wage following a two-year degree and on the flexibility to work anywhere in the U.S. and any number of days per week.)

[Apropos of nothing, CNN goes on to note

In 2018 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a woman for the first time in 55 years, and for only the third time in its history. Donna Strickland, a Canadian physicist, was awarded last year’s prize jointly with Gérard Mourou, from France, for their work on generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses. They shared the award with an American, Arthur Ashkin, who at 96 becomes the oldest Nobel Laureate, for developing “optical tweezers.”

The preceding year’s Nobel had nothing to do with astrophysics, but it continues to be newsworthy because of the gender ID of one of the winners? (If, indeed Dr. Strickland identified as a woman at the time of the research or award, is there any evidence that Dr. Strickland continues to identify as a woman?)]

Related:

  • In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions. https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/06/14/losing-the-nobel-prize-on-careers-in-science/ : “There is a fierce competition that begins the day you declare yourself a physics major. First, among your fellow undergraduates, you spar for top ranking in your class. This leads to the next battle: becoming a graduate student at a top school. Then, you toil for six to eight years to earn a postdoc job at another top school. And finally, you hope, comes a coveted faculty job, which can become permanent if you are privileged enough to get tenure. Along the way, the number of peers in your group diminishes by a factor of ten at each stage, from hundreds of undergraduates to just one faculty job becoming available every few years in your field. Then the competition really begins, for you compete against fellow gladiators honed in battle just as you are. You compete for the scarcest resource in science: money.”
  • https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/09/20/75-percent-chance-of-career-failure-considered-in-a-positive-light/
  • “Women in Science” (compare to medicine, for example)
  • “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic): “In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.”
  • An academic career need not be entirely bleak: “College professor spends nearly $190K in federal grants on strip clubs, sports bars” (USA Today), regarding an Electrical and Computer Engineering professor who spent tens of thousands of dollars of grant money in strip clubs and then wasted the rest….; Philadelphia Inquirer story on the same guy says “Once confronted, Nwankpa decided to bare all” and noted that his colleagues had selected him to be department chair

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Au Pair Infatuation

by philg

From a group instant messaging chat among some guys who have employed au pairs:

  • Father 1: I think one of our former Au Pair is infatuated with me. She has been tagging me on Facebook and sending me wishes and all sorts of stuff.
  • Father 2: we need a picture of this au pair!
  • Father 1: [includes photograph of slender long-haired woman with high cheekbones]
  • Father 2: where does she live now?
  • Father 1: Mexico.
  • Father 2: That sounds bad.
  • Father 2: You might have to go to Cancun to meet with her in a hotel room and sort this out.

Related:

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Evidence for theory explaining LGBTQIA promotion popularity

by philg

Back in August, I asked “Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money?”

Here’s some evidence for the theory, from downtown Washington, D.C.:

The church is surrounded by begging homeless people and a McLaren automobile that costs roughly $150,000 per seat (perfect for sitting in D.C. gridlock!). Are the church and its parishioners concerned about poverty or inequality? Apparently not, since the only cause promoted with a sign regards LGBTQIA.

(In this cause, the church is competing with the D.C. government. City building a few blocks away:

“The District has a higher level of income inequality than any state in the country” and yet the “Mayor’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Affairs” has its programs featured in the taxpayer-funded building rather than anything to do with poverty.)

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