Wokipedia says that the Gulf of Mexico/America was referred to at some point by at least some people as the Golfo de Florida. Here’s the cited source with, in turn, some of its citations:
Here’s the section that seems to be the basis for Wikipedia’s “other explorers”:
This seems like a good bachelor’s thesis topic a history major! Separately, if the Gulf of Mexico v. Gulf of America dispute can’t be settled amicably, my vote is for Golfo de Florida!
Our mole inside Queers-for-Palestine Brown University signed up for Linear Algebra and was sentenced to read “Mathematical Microaggressions” by a past president of the Mathematical Association of America, Francis Edward Su. He/she/ze/they starts off by relating his/her/zir/their own personal trauma:
Here are some example microaggressions in the math world:
Turning tricks is somehow bad:
Math will be improved with more diversity:
Here’s the organization’s current “Executive Director” (“president” wasn’t a sufficiently august title?):
They’re so certain that diversity improves mathematics that they hired one of the world’s whitest white guys to be their leader?
On March 16, 2021 a man killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, and injured one man in a shooting spree in Atlanta, Georgia. This violence has renewed broader calls to support our Asian and Asian American communities. The specifics of this tragic incident remind us that there are multiple layers of identity-based marginalization and hate related to gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality. One solidarity movement with the victims of the hate crime is #StopAsianHate. This is not a response to last Tuesday’s events, but to a broader arc of increased hate crime since the COVID-19 pandemic started.
In 2019, MAA launched the Inclusivity Award in recognition of the importance of its core value of Inclusivity and building a healthy, vibrant mathematical community where all are welcome and encouraged to flourish. The 2021 award winner is William (Bill) Hawkins, Jr.
UnderDr. Hawkins’s leadership, the SUMMA Office created an archival record of American PhDs in mathematics and mathematics education who are members of minority groups, initiated the Minority Chairs Breakfast annually, established the Tensor-SUMMA projects “to encourage the pursuit and enjoyment of mathematics by students who are members of groups historically underrepresented in the field of mathematics,” organized panels at JMM on issues that affected minority institutions or populations, published a poster on African and African-American Pioneers in Mathematics, and provided guidance to those who wanted to establish an intervention project.
“I am delighted to be able to recognize my friend and colleague, Bill Hawkins, with the 2021 Inclusivity Award,” said MAA Executive Director, Michael Pearson. “It has been my privilege to work with, and learn from, Bill during my tenure at MAA.”
Circling back to Clouseau, let’s hope that he can learn some linear algebra from YouTube while the Brown faculty teaches him about microaggressions (a $91,676/year experience for 2024-5).
My mother died on January 6, 2025 (obit). She’s still eligible to vote in New Jersey and some other states, I think, so it makes sense that a new Proud Democrat card arrived in the mail this month:
I can’t figure out why the righteous are limited to 3 outrage choices in each category. If my mom had lived to pick
Attacking the fundamental rights of LGBTQ+ Americans
Gutting abortion access
Enacting mass deportations
she would be precluded from picking “Severely limiting voting access” (e.g., to those who are alive).
A longer letter was attached. Your kindergarten education will serve you well because 100 percent of those who participate can be a “leader”:
Every Democrat — each and every one of us — will be a leader in the fight to stop the Trump administration’s dangerous agenda.
Could this be a reference to the War of Northern Aggression (“Civil War”)?
But we, the Democratic Party, have fought through major inflection points in history before.
The overall package seems inconsistent. America is going down the “path of darkness, chaos, and hate”. At the same time, there is a concern about “mass deportations”. Why wouldn’t a noble undocumented migrant be far better off after being deported? He/she/ze/they would get a U.S. taxpayer-funded flight far away from the darkness, chaos, and hate.
The Villages is very likely the world’s most active “active retirement” community in the world. A friend retired in his 50s (the magic of a U.S. military pension supplemented by work for and retirement package from a U.S. military contractor) to The Villages and showed me around recently. He says that it is home to about 150,000 people and that a percentage of units can be sold to those under 55 so long as they don’t bring under-19 kids with them who need to be educated in local schools. (In addition, the same enterprise is building an adjacent family-oriented community that is intended to house workers.) The Villages are northwest of Orlando (the mouse elite) and southeast of Ocala (the horse elite). It’s just over a one-hour drive to MCO or Disney World.
If you’re a student of New Urbanism you’ll find The Villages to be a twist on the concept. My friend lives in an almost-new house in an almost-new neighborhood. There are no sidewalks. The front of the house is dominated by a 2-car garage door. In these senses, it is the opposite of our New Urbanism neighborhood of Abacoa, despite the density being similar. All of the Abacoa neighborhoods have sidewalks and nearly all emphasize “meeting the street” with something other than a garage door (every house has a garage, of course, but they’re hidden behind the houses and accessed via alleys).
Realistically, though, how far is an American going to walk? Especially an American who is at least 55 years old? A $200/month HOA fee (“amenities fee”) gives every resident of The Villages access to recreation centers, neighborhood pools, “sports pools” (25-50 meters), golf courses (70, though some of them are “championship” courses that require an extra fee), pickleball, tennis, etc., etc. These are spread out over at least 32 square miles. Bicycling is fairly popular among residents and it is possible to drive a regular car to all of the points within the development, but golf carts seem to be the overwhelmingly popular means of transportation to any destination within The Villages. The local dealer (owned by the founding family) says “the average resident will drive 3,500 – 5,000 miles in their golf car per year” (a married couple will have two golf carts, so this is a per-person number). My friend says that it would be perfectly reasonable to go more than 50 miles in a single day within The Villages (he and his wife therefore bought gas-powered carts because the EVs didn’t have sufficient range at the time).
The Villages is designed with separated golf cart roads and car roads. Some of the latest communities have additional dedicated biking/walking paths. I am not aware of any place else in the world with a similarly extensive network of golf cart roads. (A fair number of people cruise around gated communities in golf carts, but they’re using roads designed for and shared with cars.) I’m not sure why, but the golf cart roads seem to move more people per square foot of pavement. Maybe because the vehicle size is a better match to the human driver/passenger size? Maybe because the golf cart roads have tunnels under and bridges over busy car roads so there isn’t time wasted at 4-way intersections?
A lot of places in the U.S. where new communities are being built have similar golf cart-friendly weather to The Villages. I’m wondering if golf cart roads should be built as part of standard urban planning even when there isn’t one giant HOA. If nothing else, Greta Thunberg should be happy. If people can get safely to the supermarket in a lightweight vehicle (about 700 lbs. for a lithium-ion machine) that’s a lot less impact on our beloved planet than if they run daily errands in a typical 4,000+ lb. highway-speed car. (Our kids go to a school that is 1.3 miles away. The supermarkets are 0.7 to 1.2 miles away. Home Depot is 1.7 miles away. All of these trips could be done almost as fast in a golf cart as in our Honda Odyssey and the weather would be reasonable for golf cart travel at least 90 percent of the time (people in The Villages have fabric on the sides that they can pull down if it is raining or chilly).)
If golf cart roads could become a standard part of the municipal vocabulary along with bike paths, sidewalks, and car roads, we could have Golf Cart Urbanism as a national movement!
What does a golf cart cost? During the Obama administration, the answer was “nothing”. Working class chumps were tapped to give rich people $5,500 for each electric “vehicle” where a golf cart could qualify if it had sufficient lights, etc. to be street legal (Cato):
The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart. Even in states that don’t have their own tax rebate plans, the federal credit is generous enough to pay for half or even two-thirds of the average sticker price of a cart, which is typically in the range of $8,000 to $10,000. “The purchase of some models could be absolutely free,” Roger Gaddis of Ada Electric Cars in Oklahoma said earlier this year. “Is that about the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?” … “The Golf Cart Man” in the Villages of Lady Lake, Florida is running a banner online ad that declares: “GET A FREE GOLF CART. Or make $2,000 doing absolutely nothing!”
(Some people made huge $$ by buying fleets of golf carts, harvesting the tax credits, and then leasing the carts to golf courses.)
Back in 2020 my friend paid $19,000 for each of his Yamaha golf carts, which struck me as basic (just two seats, for example). He said that the long-range electric carts today were selling for about $21,000. For a household with two adults, therefore the total cost of transportation equipment is about the same as in a place where cars are king because the household needs two carts, each of which is half the cost of car, and a car.
Maybe this could rejuvenate the EV industry, which seems to be dead except for Tesla. Instead of making huge cars and trucks that, apparently, few people want, the car companies could make street-legal golf cart-width EVs. Put in AWD and climate control, for example. Shouldn’t Ford and Honda be able to make better golf cart-width EVs than the small companies currently making them?
My visit was brief and I spent so much time in my friend’s golf cart that I couldn’t take a lot of photos. This video, though, shows some travel around via dedicated cart roads within The Villages:
Loosely related, an all-Islamic city being built just north of Dallas:
One of the casualties of our move to Florida was a knob that locks down the quick-release plate on my old Arca-Swiss B1 ball head ($350 in pre-Biden dollars! Adjusted for inflation back to 1995, that’s equivalent to 740 Bidies today).
To my delight, I learned that Arca Swiss still exists and a lot of the good old film stuff can still be repaired by Precision Camera Works, the legendary Chicago-based shop that moved to the Austin, Texas area during coronapanic (2021). They can fix the Fuji G617, which might be my favorite film camera (a 4-shot point and shoot on 120 film. Here’s the full set of stuff PCW works on, mostly names that will bring tears to the eyes of older photographers:
One worrisome page on the site advertises an apprenticeship. I wonder if the shop is really just the one guy, Bob Watkins, who has been doing this since 1976. It is tough to imagine a young American with a sufficiently high IQ to do the work who’d be interested in doing this kind of work. Our nation’s average IQ is falling (probably also conscientiousness, which is heritable) and smarter Americans aren’t usually interested in working with their hands.
So if you have a beloved old film camera don’t delay on sending it in for an overhaul (“CLA” for “clean, lubricate, and adjust”).
What if you want to go in the opposite direction entirely? You’d think that a good full-height tripod that holds a phone and can’t hold a traditional camera would exist, but I haven’t found one. As a consumer, you’re supposed to cobble together and tighten down the following items:
legset
ball head
phone clamp
A Hong Kong company called Ulanzi seems to be the solution. The winning combo seems to be their ST-27 phone clamp, which has an Arca Swiss base, and their U-80L ball head, which is rated to a ridiculous 22 lbs. Just over 50 Bidies right now. What about the legset? Maybe the Slik CF-634 4-section carbon fiber tripod is ideal because it extends almost to eye level (factoring in the ball head) and folds down to 19 inches, which means it will have a chance of fitting in a roll-aboard suitcase. This is a straight copy of the Gitzo, I think, at less than half the price. (Gitzo has a rich French heritage, but they were acquired by the same company that owns Manfrotto and now the tripods are made either in Italy or China. Slik started in Japan, but maybe everything is now made in Thailand while still designed in Japan?)
Note that the replacement for the ball head that kicked off this thread seems to be the Z1+, which is only $422 and can purportedly hold 60 kg! Maybe the good old days weren’t so great…
Arca Swiss still makes 8×10 film view cameras! Imagine someone from Gen Z having the patience to deal with 8×10 sheet film!
The approach angle and descent rate doesn’t seem alarming, though maybe there is some vertical acceleration at the very end. If viewed next to a video of an ordinary nothing-bent CRJ-900 landing, though, the abnormality jumps out. A normal landing has a dramatically longer flare and float, with corresponding much lower vertical speed on touching the runway.
Pilots transitioning from little pistons to airliners are admonished to “fly it on” and not try to hold the plane off the runway for as long as they did in their Cessna/Piper/Cirrus days. The ground spoilers on a jet don’t pop up until “weight on wheels” sensors on both main legs are positive. Therefore, a long float and butter-smooth landing chews up a lot more runway than an, um, “positive” landing in which the ground spoilers pop up right at the 1000′ markers. The DEI-enriched Endeavor crew apparently took the “fly it on” mantra too literally.
One other aspect of landing a jet of this size that might not be familiar to pilots with piston experience: the always-present-in-a-piston option to go around by adding power and climbing out doesn’t exist below about 50′. Once the thrust levers are pulled back, there is no procedure for adding power back in and trying to take off again. It might be doable, despite the long spool-up time for the heavy engines, but there is no training in this method. Maybe an airline crew would try this if a fire truck or another aircraft suddenly began to block the runway. Other than that, thrust levers back means a commitment to the landing and it might not be obvious how to fix a co-pilot’s mistakes (though a failure to flare, on the other hand, could be obvious and could be fixed with aft pressure on the yoke while saying “I have the controls”).
Other than riling up Democrats into fits of hysteria, has the Trump-Vance administration accomplished anything so far? Or have all of their initiatives been thwarted by judges?
Here’s one where a judge forced the CDC to stick with its old web site (NYT):
A federal judge has ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to temporarily restore the pages it has taken down from its website to comply with President Trump’s executive order barring any references to race, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Judge John D. Bates of the D.C. Federal District Court issued the temporary restraining order at the request of a left-leaning advocacy group, Doctors for America, saying the deletions put “everyday Americans and most acutely, underprivileged Americans” in jeopardy.
what’s happening at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a very big deal, and has not been previously reported.
NED, a key U.S. instrument for supporting grassroots freedom movements around the world, is under siege from Elon Musk’s DOGE. An order from DOGE to the U.S. Treasury that blocked disbursement of NED funds has crippled the organization—which received $315 million for fiscal year 2025—and its affiliates, The Free Press has learned.
The third-of-a-$billion/year enterprise is all about “democracy”, right? What if we check its web site?
LGBTIQ+ communities in Africa are often on the frontlines of the struggle for human rights in the region,” says Dave Peterson, Senior Director of the Africa program at the National Endowment for Democracy(NED). “As one of the most marginalized groups in many countries, respect for the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons is a key indicator for the overall respect for human rights and democracy in a society. Attitudes towards the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons is gradually shifting throughout the continent, which bodes well for the prospects of greater tolerance and inclusion.
It actually is about gender identity and sexual orientation because there is no “democracy” unless Rainbow Flagism is the official state religion. Without this $315 million/year spend there will be no democracy in Africa.
How much is $315 million/year? Compared to the wired-in federal deficit, almost nothing. Compared to what is needed to start a Silicon Valley company, enormous. Let’s look instead, though, at what kind of work by private sector Americans is required to keep the NED desk workers and their NGO pals comfy. We start by assuming a male working class peasant earning $50,000/year. No female is going to want to marry him due to his low wages (she can gain more spending power by having sex with an already-married higher-income guy in Massachusetts or California) and, therefore, he is going to be a single filer. He’ll pay about $6,000/year in federal income tax (nerdwallet). More than 52,000 peasants, then, have 100 percent of their federal income tax spirited away by NED to proselytize for the 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle. For those 52,000 peasants, not a penny of their tax money will be available to spend on roads, airports, border patrol, scientific research, etc.
How about the only American enterprises that make our government look efficient? The gravy train for university administrators cannot legally be slowed down (NYT):
(The NYT article headline says there are “Cuts to Medical Research” and only readers who dig into the article learn that “research” itself is not being cut, but only fees that universities tack on to keep a full slate of deans in central administration. As much of what universities do is promote DEI and 2SLGBTQQIA+, it seems fair to say that government paying overhead fees on research contract is another way that the government promotes Rainbow Flagism. See, for example, University of Michigan’s $250 million in spending on DEI (NYT) or MIT’s “Assistant Dean of LBGTQ+, Women and Gender Services”.)
Fair to say that those with entrenched interests in getting money from federal taxpayers are winning so far?
Loosely related… one area of success seems to be in changing minds at the New York Times. “Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship” (Feb 15, 2025) is unthinkable heresy. Two constitutional law professors:
In Wong Kim Ark, the leading case on birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court explained that “jurisdiction” referred to being born “within the allegiance” of the sovereign. The court held that a child born of parents with a “permanent domicile and residence in the United States” was a birthright citizen. Wong Kim Ark’s parents, as persons who came in amity, had entered into the social compact and were entitled to all the benefits of that compact, including not only the protection of the laws but also the benefits of citizenship for their children. Under the common law, the court observed, “such allegiance and protection were mutual.”
This is also why, as prominent editions of Blackstone’s commentaries explained, invading armies were excluded. “It is not cœlum nec solum” — it is neither the climate nor the soil — that makes a natural-born subject, “but their being born within the allegiance and under the protection of the king.”
For Trump to prevail, all that a modern court needs to do, in other words, is find that undocumented migrants are “an invading army.”
Kanye West was dumped into a memory hole due to his unwise exercise of First Amendment rights. Before he was purged I saved some favorites from Ye’s X account? (Below are screen shots for preservation.)
Ye agrees with Cicero (“The cash that comes from selling your labour is vulgar and unacceptable for a gentleman … for wages are effectively the bonds of slavery.”):
(Young Marty Mendel tells his mother Miriam he’s been given a part in the school play. She asks which part. Marty’s chest swells with pride as he says, “I play the Jewish husband.” Miriam responds, “You go back to school tomorrow and tell the teacher that you want a speaking role!”)
(If Ye broadened his search a bit he could find “The Jewish Vote in 2024” (Commentary, January 2025): “This past year, in a truly astounding statistic, Forbes revealed that the top 15 donors to the Kamala Harris campaign were all people who identified as Jewish. … Fox News and the Associated Press … found that 66 percent of Jews voted for Harris and 32 percent voted for Trump. … While the recent election showed an improvement in the Jewish vote for Trump, it was not a dramatic move.”)
Ye is under attack for some late-night all-uppercase opinions regarding Jews. I don’t support excluding him from X on that basis. Progressives in the Ivy League and in European politics who say “I’m not anti-Jewish, but only anti-Zionist” are far more dangerous to Jewish and Israeli interests. Ye will never do as much harm to Jews as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did, for example, with their financial support (via UNRWA) for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their interference with Israel’s counterattack after the October 7, 2023 invasion by Palestinians.
Readers: What are your favorite recent Ye tweets? Did you save any?
From the front page of the New York Times, February 5, 2025:
The path to “the best sex” starts at the local family court, promises the front page. Does the article deliver?
In 2019, I divorced, at age 46, and went on to have more and better sex than I ever would have thought possible.
I had not imagined that the end of a 20-year relationship would mean a new era of high eroticism; I’d have needed to be delusional to think that. I was middle-aged, with two young children, a bunch of chronic illness and a bank account that was essentially handed over to divorce lawyers. My career was on life support, and after years away in bigger cities, I was back in my hometown, Montreal, enduring the kind of isolation that comes from exiting a relationship that has defined nearly half your life. Then the pandemic hit.
And yet.
…
Two of my friends ended marriages because of their own sexual dissatisfaction. Another divorced and became a card-carrying polyamorist. Two of my friends in their 50s are seriously dating people in their 30s, and a few others are, like me, divorced and engaging in sex practices they’d never tried before.
(Maybe the NYT story is based on some unpublished material from Bob Guccione‘s (RIP) Penthouse?)
I wrote about my experience landing a Canadair Regional Jet in Toronto (July 2013):
On week after I completed IOE I was assigned to fly with a young recently upgraded captain to Toronto. I had about 75 hours of experience at this point during one month of flying the CRJ. The Tower cleared us to land on runway 33R. I had the plane set up perfectly. We were 3-4 miles from the runway and descending in a stable configuration. Then the Tower controller changed his mind: “Cancel landing clearance. You’re now cleared to land Runway 33L.” This is a shorter runway that starts about 2000′ farther away than 33R and also requires a horizontal sidestep of about 3500′. I would have to add some power and maneuver the airplane to line up with the other runway.
A good CRJ pilot would have added exactly the right amount of thrust so that it wouldn’t be necessary to touch the levers again until 50′ above the ground when it was time to pull them back to idle. How did I handle the situation? I added too much power. Then I took some back out. Then I had to add some back in. Then I finally got us stabilized close to the 500′ above-the-ground minimum altitude that our company rules called for (if not stable at 500′ in visual conditions, go around; if not stable at 1000′ in instrument conditions, go around). After we’d pulled off the runway and cleaned up the plane I said “That was so embarrassing. I feel like I should mail my ATP certificate back to the FAA.” The captain replied with one of the wisest and kindest things that anyone has ever said to me: “Nobody was born knowing how to fly a 53,000 lb. jet.”
Conditions were more challenging today, I’m sure, and the results were worse than even my weak effort (ABC):
Friends have been asking me how this could have happened. flightradar24 has some good info, especially the weather report (METAR):
The same article says that the plane was landing on runway 23 (magnetic heading 237, which is about 227 degrees true heading in that part of the world). The METAR says that the wind was from 270 (true), a 40-degree cross-wind (works out to nearly 20 knots of crosswind). The wind was blowing at 28 knots gusting 35 knots, which is a recipe for bumps. The visibility is said to be 6 statute miles, which is inconsistent with the “runway visual range” (RVR) of only 3000-6000 ft (1/2-1 mile) in blowing snow (BLSN). Maybe the explanation is that the visibility was quite good except near the surface where the strong wind was blowing accumulated snow around. Temperature was -9C. The clouds didn’t begin until 3400′ above the runway and, therefore, instrument flying didn’t play a role in this unfortunate event.
Various American media outlets have been highlighted on X for blaming Donald Trump, which seems far-fetched given that it was a Canadian-built airplane landing at a Canadian airport.
How could the plane flip over? It can’t be wake turbulence from another aircraft because a strong wind will blow the wake turbulence clear of the final approach course and runways.
Based on the detachment of both wings, my guess at this point is that the plane began to slide sideways on the runway, caught on a pavement imperfection, and flipped over as a car might. Maintaining directional control on the runway at higher speeds is done primarily with the rudder (operated by the same pedals that operate the nosewheel steering). In other words, steering is accomplished via an aerodynamic mechanism even if the wheels are rolling on the runway. Beginner pilots are prone to forgot to keep steering with rudder after the wheels touch. They think that the flight is over and now it is time to relax, even though their Cessna or Cirrus is still going more than 60 knots, possibly with a strong tendency to head for a side edge of the runway. Airline crews, of course, will be much less prone to this human frailty, but the CRJ900 lands at around 130 knots and that makes directional control more challenging. Poor visibility from blowing snow certainly wouldn’t help. The only thing that the CRJ has going for it compared to the trainer aircraft in this situation is that a 20-knot crosswind (see above) is a smaller percentage of a 130-knot forward speed than it is of a 60-knot forward speed.
[Update: video has emerged of a hard landing, maybe hard enough to snap off one of the main (under-wing) landing gears, which would certainly start the plane in a sideways direction. Why would the plane come down rapidly? Gusty winds could be a factor. If a strong headwind suddenly shifts to a tailwind, for example, the plane loses a lot of airspeed instantly and, below a certain speed, the aircraft becomes less efficient as it gets slower. (Below the stall speed, the aircraft mostly stops flying and, therefore, will sink like a rock.) Given a long runway, pilots can usually deal with this possibility by choosing to fly at a higher-than-standard approach speed (add half the gust factor is the conventional formula) and, also, the standard approach speed provides a significant margin over stall.]
The flight attendants are today’s heroes, certainly, for getting everyone out!
Our wind limitations from a smaller earlier version of the CRJ:
(It would have been a 27-knot crosswind limitation, I think, given the runway conditions being reported by the control tower. Below the chart there is a note saying that reported gusts are to be ignored in determining whether a limitation will be exceeded.)
Technically, this may have been a “dry” runway and, therefore, the reported crosswind was less than the 32-knot limit. On the other hand, reports might not have matched the reality for directional control.
(One confusing element of our life with the CRJ was that wet runways were actually considered “dry” so long as the runway was grooved.)
