Spam from Joe Biden

by philg

I am an advocate for progressive causes on Facebook, e.g.., posting “Every month is Pride Month for Nantucket canines” over these photos from a dog boutique:

Perhaps for this reason, I am on Joe Biden’s email lists. Yet I hadn’t seen messages from Team Joe, Joe Biden HQ, Joe Biden, or Biden for President until recently.

Why not?

Gmail pushed them into the Spam bin!

What did I miss?

  • Four years of Donald Trump will be a dark, divisive time for our country. But to give him four more years — that would fundamentally change the fabric of our nation for decades to come.
  • Women’s rights and women’s health care are under assault in a way that seeks to roll back every step of progress we’ve made over the last 50 years. Providers like Planned Parenthood are under attack. … As President, Joe Biden will continue to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own personal decisions about her health care.
  • Now that Donald Trump is back on the campaign trail, he’s going to spend even more time launching dishonest attacks against us.
  • I’m proud to be representing you, and millions of other Americans [but not all 330 million?], and our shared vision for the country. I hope I make you proud, too.
  • Right now we are seeing incredible abuses of power from this White House. I know it makes some of you feel like America’s best days are behind us. [With Obama gone, aren’t our best days, in fact, behind us?]
  • Two hundred and forty-three years ago, our founding fathers lit a torch. [no mention of the fact that some may have identified as “founding mothers”] In this country, we’re all bound together in this great experiment of equality and opportunity and decency. [The great experiment of equality entailed slavery for millions of people for multiple generations? What would an experiment in inequality have looked like?] Everyone, and I mean everyone, is in on the deal. … Happy Fourth of July. God Bless America, and may God protect our troops.
  • [promise to] unite the country to move beyond our current divisive, broken politics.

I.e., Biden accuses a popular-with-millions politician from the opposing party of “incredible abuses of power” and then says he will unite the country and not be “divisive”!

How could these righteous messages of Trump hatred, advocacy for victim groups, and promises of healing be blocked as spam?

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How many of the folks who say Trump is a racist would be willing to move into a free house in Baltimore?

by philg

Donald J. Trump, racist, is back in the news for some unkind comments about Baltimore (a city roughly as dangerous as the countries from which caravan members are coming and receiving asylum due to the high murder rate, e.g., in Guatemala).

Here’s a suggestion for readers: When a righteous person on Facebook denounces Trump the Racist over this, offer to pay for a house or apartment in a median Baltimore neighborhood and see if he or she is willing to move in. (Baltimore itself may not have great jobs for the coastal elites who display maximum virtue on Facebook, but it is within practical commuting distance of high-paying work in the D.C. suburbs and therefore an inability to work is a not an excuse).

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Should state taxpayers subsidize state-run universities?

by philg

Federal taxpayers provide massive subsidies to all universities via the guaranteed student loan scam.

In addition to this river of cash, state taxpayers have traditionally paid to subsidize state-run universities via free land, tax exemptions, and direct cash from the general budget.

Alaska is trying to cut off the second stream of subsidy: “University Of Alaska Readies For Budget Slash: ‘We May Likely Never Recover'” (NPR).

A Facebook friend who gets a guaranteed (tenured) paycheck from a private university posted the following:

This is mind-boggling, almost inconceivable: the Alaska state government is essentially trying to shutter the state’s premier university by defunding it. Please sign the petition! It seems to be putting the pressure on! If this goes forward, 2,500 faculty and staff will be laid off, over 20,000 students will have their educational paths derailed, public libraries will be closed, ESL teachers let go, etc. etc. etc. And all this carnage to help a rightwing ideologue fulfill his campaign pledge to his base to raise the annual dividend by $1200.

She was seeking people to visit change.org and sign a petition (always safe for someone who lives in Manhattan or Boston to demand that folks in Alaska pay higher taxes!):

Shouldn’t folks who are against income inequality also be against taxpayer-subsidized university education (and therefore support this governor’s initiative)? A university graduate will earn more than the median taxpayer. From the perspective of someone passionate about equality, why does it make sense to tax median earners to subsidize people who are primarily above-median earners (either because they work for the university or will be getting a degree and getting the higher wages that college graduates earn)?

She responded with the kind of winning argument that keeps American academics at the forefront of worldwide intellectual debate:

You’re a troll Philip. It’s never worth engaging with you.

But now I am curious. If people are against inequality, how can they be in favor of this traditional welfare program for high earners? Since college students tend to be disproportionately children of college graduates, isn’t a university a means of perpetuating privilege?

Of course they could simply say “We have PhDs and want market-clearing salaries for PhD employees to be higher. We’d like to see above-median earners trimmed back, but not above-median earners who have PhDs.” But that is not typically the argument.

[Separately, folks who work for universities often say that they are “underpaid”. If so, why the hysteria over being potentially laid off? Why would it be bad to get a new job at a market-clearing wage if the university has been paying below market considering all of the pluses and minuses of the job?]

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Ryanair: airline that is not a hotel customer

by philg

Oshkosh is winding up today and that means a bunch of young people have been inspired to pursue aviation careers, which generally means airline flying. Americans generally assume that anyone who wants to fly airliners must sacrifice home life to become a hotel-based nomad for 10-22 days per month.

[And, like military personnel stationed overseas, be guaranteed losers in any state that comes a winner-take-all custody and child support system and awarding winner status to the parent who can claim to be the “historical primary caregiver.” See Real World Divorce for how this works.]

This is not how it works for everyone!

While in Ireland, I met a Ryanair captain who’d been with the airline for 8 years. He had spent only 2 nights in hotels during that time period. How is that possible? “All trips return to the home base in the evening,” he said. “You might have two out-and-backs or one long flight and a long return.” This is not to say that one can stay in one’s original city. There are Ryanair bases all over Europe and it is the pilot’s responsibility to move to the new base city, rent an apartment, pay for the apartment, etc. This guy had been moved to Rome at one point.

How does maintenance work if the planes are this dispersed? “They have three Learjets and if there is a tech problem the mechanics rush in to wherever the plane is.”

Related:

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Top of wishlist: integrated cameras in new aircraft

by philg

AirVenture is almost over and one thing that I haven’t seen is one of my old wishlist items; integrated cameras in new aircraft, e.g., built-in mounts for GoPro cameras (a long-lived mechanical standard, right?) with power supply from the ship. The buyer of a $1 million Cirrus should be able to share the scenic/fun/cool parts of his or her experience with the plane with minimal effort. Maybe this would draw more people into flying light aircraft too, e.g., if there were a “press a button to share an auto-generated video of this flight to Facebook” option.

(It shouldn’t be tough to make a watchable flying video automatically. Speed up taxi by 10X. Cut any portions where the aircraft is on the ground and not moving for more than 5 seconds. Do takeoff at 1X, gradually increasing to 10X as the aircraft climbs to cruising altitude, then slowing back down to 1X for landing. A one-hour start-to-shutdown trip to the beach thus turns into a 7-minute video.)

Related:

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38 hours nonstop from Guam to Florida…

by philg

… and that was just a test flight for a trip over both the South and North Poles in a four-seat piston-engine airplane.

One of the most interesting talks at Oshkosh this year was by Bill Harrelson, who flew around the world in Dec 2014/Jan 2015. The 28.3-day trip was in a Lancair IV, loaded to 1.5X its design gross weight. An AOPA story about the trip notes that he was 64 years old at the time. (Best story about the trip seems to be in Harrelson’s hometown paper.)

Harrelson noted that any airplane can carry more fuel. The problem is typically that the center of gravity (CG) will go too far aft and too high, both of which are bad for stability. Regulators such as the FAA typically limit transoceanic flights to 30 percent over the max gross weight. “The manufacturer sets max gross and max aft CG,” noted Harrelson. “Since I was the manufacturer, I could never be illegal, only stupid.”

The best that could be hoped for was five hours of hand flying at the start of each full fuel leg. After that, the autopilot was generally powerful enough to take over the still-somewhat-unstable airplane. However, during the flight to the South Pole, an autopilot servo suffered a mechanical failure right at the Pole, necessitating 12 hours of hand flying back to South America.

After learning about these epic trips in a four-seat plane that had been turned into a one-seater with 8 extra bladder tanks occupying three seats, can we reasonably complain about a 7-hour trip back from Europe in economy? Where we can get up, walk around, and use the restroom at any time?

At the other end of the pilot age spectrum here at Oshkosh is Riley Speidel, a 14-year-old from Maine trained to fly gliders and motor gliders by her airline pilot/CFI father. She made it across the U.S. as pilot in command of a Pipistrel Sinus (story in Oshkosh Northwestern). It is something of a loophole that 14-year-olds can get certificates to solo gliders at 14 whereas 16 is the age minimum for soloing a single-engine land airplane (e.g., Piper, Cessna, or Cirrus) that has a similar configuration to a motor glider. Ms. Speidel will have to wait until her 16th birthday to get a Private certificate and carry passengers, 17th birthday for adding a single-engine land or helicopter rating.

The Speidels did not violate what might be described as the spirit of the regulation. Gliders are ordinarily flown locally so the FAA presumably did not expect soloing 14-year-olds to make weather-related decisions as a plane progressed across multiple states. Riley’s father Jake flew behind her and was thus able to monitor his soloing student/daughter continuously. It was a 9-day trip for Riley Speidel, with no weather delays (compare to a typical 4.5-day journey coast-to-coast in a Robinson R44 helicopter).

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Garmin rescuing owners of older aircraft

by philg

Since there has been so little progress in piston and turboprop engines, the latest aircraft off the assembly lines are often not very different from those of 15 or 30 years ago. However, the manufacturers of aircraft aren’t passionate about helping owners upgrade older airplanes to the latest avionics. Why sell someone a $50,000 avionics replacement when you can sell them a $1 million airplane replacement?

Garmin to the rescue!

The company recently announced the availability of Pratt & Whitney PT6A (first run: 1960) engine data on their modern retrofit glass cockpit equipment.

How about the 4,000 Cirrus SR20 and SR22 aircraft out there with now-long-in-the-tooth Avidyne Entegra PFD/MFDs? Garmin is not-so-secretly working on a retrofit G500 TXi panel for these planes (current stumbling block: certifying a 10.6″ display as an MFD). The software for the TXi panels is from the old UPS/Apollo group in Oregon that Garmin acquired, i.e., not from the deep-menu-loving folks in Kansas who built the 430/530 and then G1000 systems that no ordinary humans ever become proficient with.

Between the above systems, the Garmin G5, and the new autopilots (that could make unforgiving airplanes safe), I think it is fair to say that Garmin is doing more to keep personal flying safe and affordable than any other company.

Now if they would only build a drop-in replacement panel for the Robinson R44, complete with GFC 600H autopilot…

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Notable women in aviation featured tonight at AirVenture

by philg

If you’re here in Oshkosh, a press release from June, “Theater in the Woods to Celebrate Female Pilots”:

Notable women in aviation will be featured in a special program at Theater in the Woods on Wednesday, July 24, during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019. The theme is Celebrating Powerful Pilots, and it will cap off a day centered around EAA WomenVenture activities. … Wednesday’s Theater in the Woods programming will celebrate powerful female pilots from all walks of life, including military, airline, and civilian backgrounds, and continues a long EAA tradition of highlighting women in aviation.

The event will be moderated by retired Lt. Col. Olga Custodio, a former T-38 instructor who was the first female Hispanic military pilot in the U.S. Air Force and is now retired from American Airlines. Custodio is back for her second year as the moderator of the event.

Gen. Maryanne Miller, commander of Air Mobility Command and the first four-star general in the Air Force Reserve, will be a speaker during the evening’s programming. Miller, who also spoke at Theater in the Woods last summer, is the first reservist to lead Air Mobility Command.

Also speaking during Wednesday evening’s programming will be:

  • Dr. Eileen Bjorkman, the U.S. Air Force deputy director of Test and Evaluation and author of Propeller Under the Bed.
  • Col. Kim Campbell, a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and former A-10 pilot who survived an incident over Iraq in 2003 and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
  • Capt. Bebe O’Neil, a USAF Academy grad and United Airlines system chief pilot.
  • Capt. Lorraine Morris, a United Airlines check airman, captain on EAA’s B-17 Aluminum Overcast, and avid aircraft restorer.

[In other words, two of the folks on stage at the event “to celebrate female pilots” are actually working as pilots!]

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Helicopter talk at Oshkosh (AirVenture) tomorrow morning

by philg

Slides for my talk on helicopters tomorrow at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture, officially): https://tinyurl.com/AirVenture2019Helicopters

If you want to come, set your alarm! The talk is at 0830 in Forum Stage 6. Given that the venue seats hundreds, it will be a Spinal Tap-style situation of audience-to-seat ratio.

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