Meet at Din Tai Fung in Seattle, 5:15 pm on Wednesday

by philg

Seattle readers: in case you’re not following the comments on a previous thread, we will meet at Din Tai Fung, 600 Pine St (Pacific Place), at the unfashionable hour of 5:15 pm (latest reservation available; alternative is to wait for an hour) on Wednesday, August 7. We all have to be there to be seated, so please show up on time!

Looking forward to discussing the big issues and the small dumplings.

(For anyone who can’t make the above, I am also happy to meet at Top Pot Doughnuts on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mornings! Staying at the Hyatt Regency.)

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Eisenhower was a moon landing denier…

by philg

… at least when it came to the value of the Apollo project. Here’s a June 18, 1965 letter in the EAA Aviation Museum, from former President Eisenhower to astronaut Frank Borman:

He describes JFK’s pledge to race to the moon as “a stunt” and points out that the timing of the announcement was calculated to distract the public from the “Bay of Pigs fiasco” (JFK and his team discarded militarily superior plans left over from the Eisenhower Administration).

Eisenhower points out that it would have made sense to spend $2 billion per year on stuff that might have “definite benefits to the peoples of the earth.” But the river of tax dollars dumped into Apollo did not make sense to him.

The other big learning from the museum visit was how Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne was able to work without the exotic materials of the Space Shuttle. The museum explains that the spacecraft/aircraft essentially pancakes or belly flops into the atmosphere, thus slowing down quickly and not building up high speed and high heat like the Shuttle does.

[Update after seeing comments from readers and talking to a friend who is an actual rocket scientist at NASA: the main reason that SpaceShipOne does not need the elaborate heat shielding is that it is suborbital and going much slower than the Space Shuttle. There is no new technology better than the Shuttle’s old tiles, but the old technology of ablative heat shielding is what most current space ship designs are using. One good feature of ablative shielding is that as it flakes off it carries away built up heat. The one promising innovation is establishing a boundary layer of gas on top of the surface exposed to re-entry heat, much as jet engine components are cooled by a layer of flowing fresh air.]

A portion of the museum concentrates on machines of war, which inevitably produce death. What is sufficiently upsetting as to require a trigger warning?

How about a double secret trigger warning and substantial drapery?

This is why God gave us always-with-us camera phones: (the “Fat Man” atomic bomb model directly across from a patron)

Eisenhower’s Air Force One for shorter hops, a twin-engine piston:

(Today a Boeing 757 would be used instead of this six-seater.)

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Americans can’t afford to live in America: heartland edition

by philg

“America’s Housing Affordability Crisis Spreads to the Heartland” (Bloomberg) says that Americans with ordinary jobs can’t afford to buy houses or apartments all across the U.S.

“Financial Crisis Yields a Generation of Renters” (WSJ) notes that the median age of a home buyer is 46, the oldest ever recorded and homeownership rates for younger Americans “have fallen sharply.” The article notes “Home prices have outpaced wage gains.” Costs are up by 21 percent (after adjusting for the inflation that the government tells us does not exist) while income is up only 2 percent (2000-2017).

Related, from https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/03/25/city-rebuilding-costs-from-the-halifax-explosion/ :

I talked with a guy recently who is involved in a $1.5 billion project to create 2,700 “affordable” apartments here in the Charlestown section of Boston (story). That’s $555,555 per apartment (less than 1,000 square feet on average) on land provided for free (city already has a housing project on the same footprint). Presumably these will be higher quality than whatever was built in Halifax in 1918.

[Note: poor people who are selected by the housing ministry to move into one of these apartments would actually be rich almost anywhere else in the world if they could only get their hands on the $555,555 capital cost as a direct grant instead of as an in-kind service! If they could also get their hands on the monthly operating cost and combine that with interest on the $555,555 they would be able to enjoy, without working, a middle class or better lifestyle in many of the world’s beach destinations.

How about folks who work at the median wage? That’s about $23/hour in Massachusetts (BLS) or $46,000 per year. NerdWallet says that someone earning this much in MA can afford a $258,500 house if he or she has saved $60,000 for a down payment, has a top credit score, and spends $0/month on food and other non-housing expenses. Zillow says $274,416 on a nationwide basis. So a dual-income couple in which both partners earn the median wage wouldn’t be able to afford one of these units without a taxpayer subsidy, even if landed were free and the unit were sold at zero-profit construction cost. The U.S. has apparently become a society in which Americans can’t afford to live like Americans!

But the caravans of folks streaming over the southern border and claiming asylum will surely be able to do better?

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American regulations meet smart immigrants: free college tuition with guardianship

by philg

Sadly paywalled, but one of my favorite recent news articles: “The College Financial-Aid Guardianship Loophole and the Woman Who Thought It Up” (WSJ).

A smart immigrant from Bulgaria read the rules for college financial aid written by comparatively dumb Americans and figured out how any child can get a free college education, as long as the parents are smart enough to waltz down to the local probate or family court and transfer guardianship.

Of course, under the “almost everything is a federal crime” system, the government is now planning to make an example of her.

Related:

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Taxpayer-funded favoritism for one gender

by philg

There are approximately 58 gender IDs (NBC News story on Facebook). Yet government officials apparently feel comfortable saying that 1 out of these 58 is more important than the other 57.

Convicted (by NYT and Facebook) rapist and Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh: “I am proud that a majority of my law clerks have been women.” (NYT)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Justice Kavanaugh made history by bringing on board an all-female law clerk crew. Thanks to his selections, the Court has this Term, for the first time ever, more women than men serving as law clerks.” (Washington Examiner)

Here are the items that were featured in July 2019 at the front of the American Art Museum (Smithsonian, which receives $1 billion/year in taxpayer funds) gift shop:

What else did they have at the museum, you might ask? A 19th century sculpture of sleeping children embracing:

… and they also have another sculpture of two humans embracing. Before you look, see if you can guess to which of the 58 above-referenced gender IDs they might belong…


Louise Nevelson, famous for (a) being a great artist, and (b) explicitly saying “I am not a feminist” (she refused alimony, for example, and one pillar of modern feminism is getting regular paychecks from male former sex partners), is parked in the “Feminism in American Art” section:

And some works that don’t relate to gender ID at all, e.g., Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway.

Circling back to the main topic… why is it okay to use taxpayer funds to promote one gender ID above the other 50+ gender IDs?

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Harvard Economics professor beats the sexual harassment rap

by philg

“Star Economist at Harvard Faces Sexual Harassment Complaints” (NYT, Dec 14, 2018):

Before he turned 40, Roland G. Fryer Jr. had earned tenure at Harvard, received a MacArthur “genius” grant and won the most prestigious award for young American economists. He stoked a national debate by concluding that police officers show no bias in the shootings of black men.

But his rapid ascent has taken a troubling turn as Harvard officials review a university investigator’s conclusion that Dr. Fryer fostered a work environment hostile to women, one filled with sexual talk and bullying.

The findings, reviewed by The New York Times, found that Dr. Fryer had engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” toward four women who worked in the Harvard-affiliated research lab he created. In one case, his “persistent and pervasive” conduct contributed to stress that resulted in the accuser’s taking disability leave, the investigator found.

I.e., things were so bad that someone had to be paid for not working.

Cash and sex go together in economics research…

Now 41, he is one of Harvard’s best-paid faculty members, earning more than $600,000, the university’s 2016 tax filing shows. He has brought at least $33.6 million in grants to the university, according to a résumé on his Harvard web page.

Dr. Fryer told a Harvard investigator that any sexual banter in his office was related to his research and “in the spirit of academic freedom.”

Seven months have gone by. Has the guy disappeared? The Harvard web site suggests he is still on the payroll. How is that possible? Nobel Prize winners have been disappeared for far less (e.g., Tim Hunt).

“Complainant Withdrew Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination Complaint Against Harvard Prof. Roland Fryer” (Harvard Crimson, April 23, 2019):

A Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination investigation into whether Economics Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. sexually harassed and retaliated against a former female employee concluded in February by agreement of the parties, according to documents obtained by The Crimson. … The MCAD closed its investigation after the complainant’s lawyer, Monica R. Shah, signed the withdrawal form on Feb. 4. On the form, Shah indicated that the complainant had reached a “satisfactory settlement” with Harvard, Fryer, and Allan.

I.e., cash was the magic solution for the professor in a discipline that says most problems can be fixed with cash…

Related:

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Bose Eyeglasses?

by philg

“That’s how you show that you’re a douchebag if you can’t afford a Tesla,” said a friend regarding Apple’s AirPods.

At Oshkosh, Bose was demonstrating its old aviation headsets and its new eyeglass frames, which can supposedly play Bluetooth music (or a lecture on tape) for “up to 3.5 hours”. One annoying issue is that they require a custom charging adapter, so it is one more thing to lose when traveling.

Comment from a customer on the Bose site:

Yesterday I was on a long conversation outside of the office tower I work at. I joked with who I was talking to, “I wonder if someone is going to think I’m just talking to myself.”

Well, 45 minutes later a police car pulls up and an officer approaches me. Very nicely he explains that someone called reporting that someone had been pacing around the building talking to themselves for a while. I showed him my glasses and we both got a good laugh. He tried them on and liked them too! He then went on his way.

Do they work for those of us who need prescription lenses? The company says yes and that Costco can put in custom lenses.

Has anyone tried these? We played around with them for a few minutes and were favorably impressed. They seem good for walking the dog while listening to Audible and simultaneously being able to hear important sounds in the ambient environment. Main concern: I hate the idea of being tasked with something additional to charge daily.

Reviewers on Amazon are lukewarm (4 stars). Here’s a cruel, but presumably honest, one:

it looks like no effort was put into making them capable as a pair of sunglasses – the glare reflected on the inside makes them almost unusable. I’ve had $20 walmart fishing sunglasses outperform these.
But seriously, if you’re buying Bose sunglasses, you don’t care about the sunglasses part right? The styling alone is enough to drive away anyone who actually wants them as sunglasses. You want overpriced audio products that have poor bass, overdriven mids, and a logo that you can point out to all the lesser beings you meet. And these deliver on almost every one of those points.

But maybe still good enough for spoken word content from Audible? It seems that they’re not loud enough to be used in loud environments (like the coding pens of Silicon Valley?). And they’re not very high quality, but what would we expect for $200?

I love the idea of enhancing something that many of us are already required to wear, rather than adding more clutter to put on when leaving the house. I wonder if this is yet another example of something that would be awesome if battery technology were 10X better. Imagine if the entire frame were a 98 percent efficient solar cell charging a battery with gasoline-like power density.

Related:

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A tale of two T-shirts

by philg

What price virtue? An Obama t-shirt available at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for $45:

Across the street in a gift shop run by a Chinese woman with an accent… a $7 Trump T-shirt. Made in Honduras:

Separately, an attorney with whom I work (as a software expert witness, fortunately, not on legal questions!) silently protests the political groupthink at his big firm with a Donald J. Trump Signature Collection tie:

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Meet in Seattle next week?

by philg

I’m coming into Seattle for work on Monday, but starting Tuesday, August 6 I will be free. My only firm plan right now is a late morning Tuesday seaplane refresher flight at Kenmore Air. I depart for Boston on a Thursday night redeye and am staying at the Hyatt Regency near the convention center.

Update: we have picked Din Tai Fung, 600 Pine St (Pacific Place) at the unfashionable hour of 5:15 pm on Wednesday, August 7. (alternative is to wait in a long line)

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