Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

What would it look like if a cosmologist tested theories about the universe instead of writing a bestselling non-fiction book of randomly assembled scientific-sounding sentence fragments? (Free title for the next tenured academic who wants to write one: The Elegantly Hidden Massively Parallel Enigmatic Universe, introduction and cautionary scolding about global warming by Neil deGrasse Tyson.)

Join me at MIT tomorrow to find out! Brian Keating (tagline: “that other UC astronomer who is not in the news”) is talking about experimental results. Coffee at 3:30 pm in 4-349 and the actual talk in 10-250 at 4 pm. Details on the Physics Colloquium page. After the talk we can get together and anyone who actually understood it can explain it to the rest of us.

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“Despite Vow, Mayor de Blasio Struggles to Curb Homelessness” is a New York Times story in which some of the nation’s leading experts on housing are interviewed. It seems that the great American minds featured can’t comprehend why it would be challenging to provide unlimited free housing in one of the world’s most expensive cities (and one that is expensive because it is a desirable and interesting place to live).

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I decided to try to entertain a child with an episode (12) of the new Cosmos TV show about the planet Venus, my personal favorite planet (other than Earth) due to the fact that my first job was writing software to manage data received from the Pioneer Venus orbiter.

The show tossed up some good history on scientific papers positing a link between the burning of fossil fuels and increasing global temperatures (we’ve know about this issue for more than 100 years). It also has some interesting stuff about early solar-thermal energy projects. What was most interesting to me, however, was how the show terrifies viewers by selectively presenting climate science. The positive feedback mechanism of polar ice melting and therefore the Earth reflecting less solar energy back into space (water is darker than ice) was presented, for example, but not the negative feedback mechanism of CO2 mixing with rain as the Earth gets warmer. It isn’t hard to present this succinctly yet completely. See these notes for Ohio State Astronomy students, for example.

Readers: is this typical of how the media presents Climate and CO2 cycle 101? Highlight the stuff that could take us straight into a Venusian situation but downplay or omit the negative feedback mechanisms?

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American media tends to have a persistently anti-Mexican bias. Life south of the border is plagued by corrupt government, drug gangs, poverty, etc. “Wal-Mart Bribery Probe Finds Few Signs of Major Misconduct in Mexico” (WSJ, October 19, 2015) calls into question the idea that Mexico is more corrupt than the U.S. (where getting a real estate project approved often requires political connections/financial contributions). Mexicans get a lot more for their health care dollar than do we (some data) and they’re happier than we are (chart). Mexicans offer a superior environment for building cars (it is not just about the wages: WSJ). Now Hurricane Patricia, one of the strongest storms ever, has come through and via a combination of preparedness, engineering, and organization to evacuate citizens and tourists, the damage to life and property was minimized (contrast to Katrina or Andrew).

Readers: What would it take for Americans to stop belittling the accomplishments of our neighbors to the south?

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I was interviewed by WCVB, Boston’s ABC station, about a commercial airline flight on which one of the pilots died en route. Here’s the clip from October 5, 11 o’clock news. (Of course they captured about 30 minutes of tape in which I coherently explained the roles of the captain and first officer in normal operations, the crew concept of flying, the practice of trading “pilot flying” and “pilot monitoring” roles after each leg. Nearly all of that was left on the cutting room floor in favor of a passenger reviewing the remaining pilot’s performance.)

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that, before benefits, the median wage for an American worker is $17/hour. The WSJ says that, before a recently negotiated pay raise, General Motors was paying $58/hour including benefits. As the benefits at GM are much better than typical benefits, perhaps the correct numbers for comparison are $20/hour ($17/hour plus the average benefits available to a median worker) and $58/hour (soon to rise to an as-yet-unknown number). The Journal article is interesting for a chart showing “profit/loss per vehicle built.” There was a quick change from loss in 2009 to profit in 2010, presumably due to the company being showered with tens of billions of tax dollars that didn’t have to appear in the accounting records in a standard fashion.

What’s interesting about this to me is that everyone seems comfortable with the idea of imposing taxes on median-wage Americans in order to support the continuing paychecks of Americans who earn about 200 percent more. If we model GM workers as government workers, perhaps this makes sense. Federal workers are paid about 78 percent more than the private sector workers whose taxes fund their paychecks (Cato). But on the other hand, it is theoretically possible that the federal workers are doing a better job than private sector workers and are therefore worth more. By contrast the job of a GM worker is easily compared to other manufacturing jobs in the U.S. BLS says that the median wage in “Production Operations” nationwide is only $15.25/hour.

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“Meet Venture Capital’s Teenage Analyst” is a Wall Street Journal story about an industry where an 18-year-old girl with no college degree was able to get a job as “an analyst and an associate.” What’s the journalist’s comment on this industry overall? It is “very much an old boys’ club.”

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The Sony A7R II has in-camera sensor stabilization. The Sony 24-70/4 FE lens has in-lens optical stabilization. Would the two working together be enough to allow us to capture stable footage from a Robinson R44? The answer seems to be “no”:

• circling a Tuscan-style villa with horses just south of Hanscom Field (don’t show this one to Bernie Sanders or anyone else who doesn’t think that envy is a sin!)
• Phillips Andover Academy (where King Bush II spent his formative years)

We went back to the ramp to cry and wait for our DJI Osmo.

[Related: In September we flew with a videographer from Neoscape  who used a RED camera and mass gyro (not a gimbal) as we circled a real estate project. The result is visible at 0:47 in this video. (We circled the site for about 20 minutes at different altitudes, speeds, and lateral positions… all for 8 seconds of final footage.)]

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As Hillary Clinton finalizes her stroll back to the White House it is worth remembering that her election in 2016 would prove Richard Nixon correct: “.. certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman President–maybe sooner than you think.” (speech from 1969 to the League of Women Voters)

[How else have things changed? Peggy Noonan, one of the idea-generators in Ronald Reagan’s White House, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “[Democrats during her childhood] did not spend their time endlessly accusing people of being sexist-racist-homophobic-gender-biased persons of unchecked privilege. They would have thought that impolite.”]

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It looks as though Garmin is dragging the field of aviation very slowly into the 20th century. This caught my eye in a review of the latest version of the Piper Malibu/Mirage: Automatic Descent Mode. From the article:

the M350 also has a Hypoxia Recognition System, active whenever the autopilot is engaged and the cabin altitude climbs above 14,900 feet, as would happen in the event of depressurization. (Cockpit oxygen masks are stowed beneath the copilot’s seat.) If no pilot interactions are detected in these conditions, the system engages Automatic Descent Mode, bringing the aircraft to an altitude allowing recovery from hypoxia.

The system also exists on the Cirrus SR20/22 aircraft equipped with the latest Garmin avionics. (Those airplanes are not pressurized and the pilot brave enough to take them up high is relying on supplemental oxygen delivered to the nose.)

Compared to Siri/Cortana/Tesla this is pretty weak stuff, but it is nice to know that a 20-line Python script is now something that can be approved to protect light aircraft occupants.

[Separately, to see what one driven programmer can accomplish, free of FAA regulation, look at this video about Xavion. The runway length adequacy analysis function could have saved 49 lives and a $28 million aircraft (Comair 5191). The “fly me down to a runway after an engine failure” feature would be a great safety feature if it could be built into a certified panel.]

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