Why would isolated Eskimos get colds?

by philg

Welcome to cold and flu season, especially for those of you with kids in school.

The prevailing wisdom about colds is that the virus is passed from person to person, right? “Why can’t we cure the common cold?” (Guardian, 2017, about “a breakthrough”):

The only failsafe means of avoiding a cold is to live in complete isolation from the rest of humanity.

Eskimos in the pre-machine age came pretty close this “complete isolation” and yet, in The North-West Passage Roald Amundsen reported from Gjöa Haven, about as isolated as humans can be:

The return of the Eskimo again imparted a lively and variegated aspect to our little harbour. They came on board, as a rule, generally of an evening in great crowds to visit us or to introduce new friends. They were always gay and happy, and we became very good friends with them. It has always been believed that the air in the Polar regions is absolutely pure and free from bacilli; this, however, is, to say the least, doubtful, in any case as far as the regions around King William Land are concerned, for here the Eskimo nearly every winter were visited with quite an epidemic of colds. Some of them had such violent attacks that I was even afraid of inflammation of the lungs, and as nearly every one of them contracted the illness, it must in all probability have been occasioned by infection. Happily those on board the “Gjöa” escaped, but we certainly took due precautions. We had great trouble to put a stop to the spitting habit. The Eskimo are very bad in this respect, but when we had them some time under treatment they improved and paid more attention to our prohibition.

A bit later in the same book:

Summer is, one may say, rapidly succeeded by winter; the lakes freeze over, and the snow falls; but with the Eskimo there is a short period which may be described as their autumn, and as their most dismal season, just before the ice is thick enough to be used as building material. Superstition prevents them from lighting fires indoors. Their homes are, therefore, miserable in the temperature which then prevails, and they live in a raw cold, damp atmosphere, in which all, without exception, contract severe colds.

There was some travel among Eskimo communities back then, of course, but it often took so long that people would have gotten over their colds by the time they showed up at the destination settlement.

Related:

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Why we still need Microsoft

by philg

I wanted to save a PowerPoint presentation about a recent Northwest Passage cruise to a series of HD-resolution (1920×1080) JPEGs for direct display from a USB stick to a TV.

PowerPoint will let you do this, but only at 1280×720(!) resolution.

After a brief search, I found an official Microsoft document on this subject: “How to change the export resolution of a PowerPoint slide”.

Instead of adding a dialog box to prompt the user for the desired resolution, Microsoft took the trouble to advertise a method of doing this by editing the Windows registry, complete with cautions about how “serious problems might occur” if you make any mistakes while editing said registry.

It is kind of awe-inspiring.

(How does one accomplish this goal? The advertised procedure does work and a DPI resolution of 144 results in 1920×1080 pixel JPEGs. The current version of PowerPoint included with Office 365 is 16.0. See this video tutorial if you want a little more handholding.)

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Protests against Trump are really protests against non-elite voters?

by philg

“1, 2, 3, 4, Trump Can’t Rule Us Anymore: With impeachment looming, it’s time to take to the streets again.” (NYT, October 21, 2019):

All over the world right now, outraged citizens are taking to the streets. Mass protests in Hong Kong have been going on for months, at one point drawing about a quarter of the territory’s population.

So as Donald Trump’s sneering lawlessness and stupefying corruption continue to escalate, it’s confounding, at least to me, that Americans aren’t taking to the streets en masse.

“Want Trump to Go? Take to the Streets: Another moment for public protest has arrived.” (NYT, a day earlier), by David Leonhardt, “a former Washington bureau chief for the Times”:

Fortunately, some progressives understood that politics isn’t only an inside game. The outside game — of public protest and grass-roots lobbying — matters, too. … On the day after Trump’s inauguration, some four million Americans took to the streets for Women’s Marches …

Do you remember the images showing throngs of people taking to the streets for the Women’s March? The size of the crowds, especially compared with Trump’s inauguration, reinforced the fact that most Americans rejected Trumpism.

The comments to these articles are packed with complaints that 48 percent of Americans elected the object of the proposed protests and sometimes express contempt for these 48 percent, e.g., as believing Christians, racists, etc.

Since the people who voted for Trump still support him, isn’t the proposed protest best understood as by coastal elites against the non-elites whose right to vote they forgot to take away? (and the protest is against the non-elites being able to vote in what they perceive to be their own interests)

Why use Trump as a scapegoat? If people who live in New York City feel oppressed by those who live and vote in Georgia, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc., shouldn’t they be able to name their true oppressors and protest against them? Maybe demand that voting be restricted to those with a liberal arts degree! Why should people without college-level training in the humanities be choosing a government?

Related:

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Just in time for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders: a bigger Gulfstream

by philg

From NBAA… “Gulfstream Ups the Ante with New G700 Flagship”:

Gulfstream Aerospace unveiled the G700 as its newest flagship this evening at its NBAA-BACE static display at Las Vegas Henderson Executive Airport. Its latest offering combines the best features of its G650ER and recently certified G500/600, resulting in a $75 million twinjet with an NBAA IFR range of at least 7,500 nm. The G700—available for viewing in cabin mockup form this week at Henderson—has a five-living-area cabin with 20 large, G650-size windows, providing a strong competitive response that industry-watchers were widely expecting.

Though touted as an all-new airplane, the fly-by-wire G700 is actually a 10-foot stretched derivative of the G650, with which it also shares the same nose and wing.

The aft section of the mockup contains a master bedroom with a full-size bed and dresser, in addition to an en suite lavatory with a toilet and vanity opposite from a floor-to-ceiling storage closet.

According to Gulfstream, the G700 will have a maximum takeoff weight of 107,600 pounds and a maximum fuel load of 49,400. Balanced field length at mtow is 6,250 feet, while the landing distance is 2,500 feet at an as-yet-unspecified “typical landing weight.”

One issue with planes that weigh more than 100,000 lbs. (fully loaded) is the requirement that operators put passengers through TSA-style screening. What’s the point of flying private if you have to let TSA workers try on your clothes?

It seems as though the fix might be in, however. From an obscure TSA document from 2017:

Utilizing the regulatory framework allowing the Administrator in 49
CFR 1544.101(f)(2) to establish an alternative program, the TSA should allow airplanes with Maximum Take Off Weight at or below 120,150 pounds to comply with the TFSSP as a means of compliance with the PCSSP in the near term. Long term, the TSA should pursue rulemaking to update the PCSSP weight threshold to 120,150 pounds.

Now we know the weight of the Gulfstream G800!

When will the peasants riot?

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MIT nerdism is genetic

by philg

“Sibling surprise” (Technology Review, the MIT alumni magazine) is fun for people who believe in the religion of genetics. Siblings reared apart were brought together as adults by DNA testing. It turned out that they had both gone to MIT:

[the brother] I had always believed that all of my potential came from my genetic blueprint. The newfound knowledge of Freedom’s and my biological roots has reinforced this. Many of my traits and interests seemed to come out of the blue, unrelated to the farm where I grew up. All of these attributes map to Freedom or my biological family. Every question I’ve ever had about my origin story has been answered.

Also in the MIT-specific portion of the same issue….

A celebration of Margaret Hamilton for (a) inventing “software engineering,” and (b) inventing the term “software engineer.” (The earliest references that I could find in the IEEE literature to “software engineering” were from the late 1960s, but the term is used as though it had already been in widespread use and would be well-understood. In the ACM literature, an early reference is from Alan Perlis in 1969, but again he uses the term without introduction, explanation, or credit. A “NATO and Software Engineering” article from 1969 talks about a 1967 study group recommending “a working conference on Software Engineering,” but no individual is credited with coining the term.)

A two-page obituary of Patrick Winston, an AI pioneer and one of the greatest teachers ever in MIT EECS.

A book by Susan Hockfield, former president of MIT, is reviewed: “Several of her examples are projects led by female scientists.”

A sad litany of death notices beginning with the class of 1970 and going backward. Apparently, none of us should count on living past age 70.

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Demanding more refugee migrants in Arlington, Virginia

by philg

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (founded with private money to help Jews settle in the U.S.; currently running with tax dollars to bring in non-Jews) helped set up a protest at National Airport in Arlington, Virginia: “Waiting for Refugees Who Are Not Coming”. They demand at least 95,000 migrants right now.

What if the refugee-migrants did show up? Can they sign up for a taxpayer-subsidized house? From the Arlington ministry of housing:

No. The Housing Choice Voucher Program wait list is closed and we are not accepting new applications. We do not anticipate that the waitlist will be opened for several years. …. The average wait for a voucher is approximately 5 years. There are many families and individuals who have applied for housing assistance and are on the waiting list for the Housing Choice Voucher Tenant-Based program.

Maybe things are better in the semi-private sector? “Arlington’s Affordable Housing Crisis” (Arlington Magazine, February 19, 2019):

Arlington’s affordable housing shortage has grown increasingly dire in recent years. And that’s before Amazon announced plans to bring 25,000 new jobs—and more people needing places to live—to the area.

A county report issued in 2017 surmised that only about 8.2 percent of Arlington’s housing stock—9,369 units—was affordable for households earning less than 60 percent of [area median income].

What about a little farther away? Somewhere else in the Greater D.C. area? “Northern Virginia’s growing crisis in affordable housing” (The Arlington Catholic Herald, August 30, 2019):

Years ago, people with low incomes could easily find a market-rate affordable apartment, that is, a dwelling place in a privately owned complex that had relatively low monthly rent because of the age of the building, lack of amenities or a less desirable location. An apartment is considered affordable if people making 60 percent of the area median income spend 30 percent or less of their income on rent.

Now, those market-rate affordable apartments, also known as MARKs, are nearly gone. Officials in Arlington and Alexandria say they have lost approximately 29,000 MARKs in the past 19 years mostly due to rent increases.

Maybe it was better back in 2013 before Donald Trump ruined everything? “3,600 apply for 122 new Arlington apartments” (Washington Post, 2013).

So… the HIAS folks are standing in a town where, due to population growth and consequent market demand, Americans can no longer afford to live. After commuting in through a multi-hour traffic jam, they’re holding signs demanding the importation of migrants who will need to compete for the same housing supply and highway capacity.

Related:

  • What were garages for people born in the mid-20th century will be homes for their children and grandchildren (NYT on California)
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Pilatus cuts down on cabin noise in the PC-12

by philg

NBAA officially starts tomorrow, but most of the important announcements are today.

“Pilatus Unveils NGX, Its Third-Generation PC-12” is interesting:

In what Pilatus is calling a first for turboprops, the new engine will be able to operate in a low-prop-speed mode, reducing the prop speed from 1,700 rpm to 1,550 rpm and lowering cabin noise.

This is potentially an enormous improvement for the PC-12. For passengers in the cabin it is about as quiet as a turboprop can get, but a similar-size true turbojet is as much as 10 dBA quieter. As noted in my Pilatus PC-12 review, the faster PC-12 NG is actually a little bit noisier than the original comparatively sluggish PC-12/45.

What else is new and exciting?

Additionally, the new engine will have a 5,000 hour time-between-overhaul period with hot section inspections only required on-condition and be able to transmit data on more than 100 engine parameters that are continuously monitored, adjusted, and recorded. “Building on the legacy of the PT6 family, the new engine is a leap forward in engine control and data management systems,” said P&WC president Maria Della Posta.

The old engine was 3,500 hours TBO and, unlike in a piston, that was a requirement for Part 91 operators. Fleet operators often got extensions to 4,500 or 5,000 hours, but this new engine will do it without the paperwork hassles and maybe without as many borescope inspections.

Too busy punching autopilot buttons to adjust the power lever? The new PC-12 will do it for you:

An option in the NGX cockpit is a fully integrated digital autothrottle.

The 15-year-old Honeywell avionics that everyone agreed were powerful, but that nobody loved, get a user interface update with a touch screen.

Related:

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California blackouts part of a Jewish holiday?

by philg

The Jewish holiday of Sukkot ended yesterday. If the California power blackouts also end, that will add evidence to my theory that someone at PG&E wanted to help Californians celebrate Sukkot, a big part of which involves eating outdoors by candlelight. Without a power cut, how many Californians would be motivated to evacuate their comfortable air-conditioned conveniently lighted homes?

From My Jewish Learning:

Another reason may be, that it should remind us of the long wanderings of our forefathers in the depths of the desert, when at every halting-place they spent many a year in tents. And indeed it is well in wealth to remember your poverty, in distinction your insignificance, in high offices your position as a commoner, in peace your dangers in war, on land the storms on sea, in cities the life of loneliness. For there is no pleasure greater than in high prosperity to call to mind old misfortunes.

Remembering the Less Fortunate
The last reason for sitting in the sukkah is my own, although I’m sure someone has said it before. By sitting in a flimsy sukkah, exposed to sun and wind (and in some places, rain and snow!), we are reminded of those less fortunate than ourselves. Precisely at harvest time when we thank God for the bounty he has given us, we must remember to share it with the poor and the hungry.

The world is more interesting when correlation does imply causation!

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Loving the iPhone 11 Pro Max camera; struggling with the case

by philg

I finally managed to carve out 20 minutes to go over to the Verizon store and swap my iPhone X for an iPhone 11 Pro Max (20 minutes turned into more than one hour thanks to Verizon’s 9 Mbit in-store WiFi).

I’m in love with the camera so far. Here are a couple of challenging scenes with the standard camera…

(mostly backlit; note the bearded hipster behind the 3-month-old Corgi)
(tough job watching Head of the Charles)

Verizon sold me a Gear4 Battersea case. It might be tough, but it makes the already huge phone a little too big for a blue jeans pocket. The case buttons are super stiff and make it tough to turn the phone off from the top side button. An Amazon reader says “after using it for a week I noticed that it has extremely scratched up all four sides of my iPhone”. It is so rigid that I am skeptical that it would protect the screen from shock in the event of a drop. The soft silicone cases seem much more likely to be helpful for a drop on concrete. One good feature: The case is thick enough to keep the lenses of the cameras off whatever surface the phone is resting on.

Readers: Do you carry an iPhone 11 Pro Max in a front pocket? If so, what case works well? What about the Apple silicone case? The Verizon sales guy scared me off by saying that it lacked a bezel to protect the screen from a face-down drop.

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Esther Duflo: Nobel-grade evolution in thinking about women as victims

by philg

An MIT economist, Esther Duflo, was a co-winner of this year’s Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. How has her scientific thinking evolved?

From a 2016 New York Times article:

“Women aren’t particularly nice to women,” notes Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T. who has studied gender issues. She observes that in Spain, researchers found that having more women randomly assigned to a committee evaluating judiciary candidates actually hurts the prospects of female candidates. A similar study found that on Italian academic evaluation committees, women evaluate female candidates more harshly than men do.

From a 2019 CNN article:

She also said that she hoped the award would inspire other female economists to continue working, “and men to give them the respect they deserve, like every single human being.”

After three years, white women with PhDs in North America continue to be victims, but the gender identities of the victimizers have evolved!

[Duflo is also an expert on taxation. From “Should We Soak the Rich? You Bet!” (NYT, October 12, 2019):

Two M.I.T. economists, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, demolish the traditional arguments against higher taxes on the wealthy in an incisive book coming out next month, “Good Economics for Hard Times.” While major league sports teams have salary caps that limit athletes’ pay, Banerjee and Duflo note that no one argues “that players would play harder if only they were paid a little (or a lot) more. Everybody agrees that the drive to be best is sufficient.”

“High marginal income tax rates, applied only to very high incomes, are a perfectly sensible way to limit the explosion of top wealth inequality,” Banerjee and Duflo write.

Does the example of sports stars make sense when considering, e.g., a 95 percent tax rate on the highest incomes? The Nobel winner fails to consider the possibility that the average American desk job is less fun than playing sports. People, including kids, will play sports for fun; very few people will do a desk job without the expectation of a paycheck.

In addition to the fun of the game, sports stars receive some non-monetary compensation. “The Drugs, Sex, and Swagger of the 1980s Lakers” (GQ):

In his autobiography, A View From Above, Wilt Chamberlain said he slept with 20,000 women. From the sounds of it in your book Showtime, it appears the 1980’s Lakers weren’t far off from that tally.

The Lakers were superstars in a hot city at a time when HIV awareness wasn’t there yet, and groupies were at their peak of popularity. There were women in hotel lobbies, women outside the arena, women in the arena. Everywhere. And they wanted to have sex. So Lakers players did—often. But. . . it wasn’t all that unusual in the world of pro sports. The Knicks, I’m guessing, had lots of sex. And the Cavs. And even the Clippers—well, maybe not the Clippers. But most teams.

What about generic business executives and Wall Street fund managers? If their spending power, after tax, isn’t very different from what a Medicaid dentist earns in Massachusetts, why would women want to party with them? Maybe Wilt Chamberlain would have continued playing basketball, winning games while the crowd cheers and then meeting the female groupies in the hotel. But why would a mutual or hedge fund manager want to keep sitting at a desk and staring at a Bloomberg terminal to take home 5 percent of his or her pre-tax pay? Why not quit and move to a beach resort to live off the savings?]

Related:

  • https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/01/12/gender-equity-should-be-measured-by-consumption-not-income/
  • from a recent PR pitch: “Gender disparity in tech is a noted issue within the industry, and while the cannabis industry promised women an equal playing field, female leadership percentages have gone down in the past year. Would you be interested in speaking to a female coder and engineer who helped lead the development of a newly patented cannabis soil-to-shelf technology? Trace, a soil-to-shelf company utilizing block-chain technology have created a system tailor-made for the cannabis industry by experts in cannabis crop optimization and the cannabis supply chain. Current systems leave much to be desired.” (the company’s web site opens with “Speak Truth to Flower”)
  • CNN: “[Duflo] also said that she hoped the award would inspire other female economists to continue working”; yet Econ 101 says that a woman with a Ph.D. should continue working unless she can find some way of getting cash that does not require work
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