Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Today is the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Our newspapers are filled with articles proposing that the U.S. take in refugees from various conflicts around the world. Yet our track record in handling newcomers from the places that generate most modern-day refugees seems to be poor. The 9/11 hijackers were all here in the U.S. legally, their visa applications having been scrutinized and approved by federal employees. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, recently sentenced to death for his role in the Boston Marathon bombings, had been granted fast-track U.S. citizenship. Our economy has probably shrunk by 5-10 percent due to fear of terrorism (money spent on TSA, time wasted in security lines at airports, public events, office buildings, etc.).

How would it ever be possible for Americans to take in refugees from a part of the world where (a) we don’t speak the language or understand the culture, (b) at least a portion of those refugees have a goal of killing Americans, and (c) we have a demonstrated track record of being unable to sort out those who want to kill Americans from those who do not?

Related:

• New York Times article on the Justice Department and FBI going after a Chinese professor for emailing schematics that they didn’t understand

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The killjoys at the Cato Institute have released a new summary of the effects of U.S. borrowing: “Washington’s Largest Monument: Government Debt.” If we assume that there won’t be any political change in the U.S., i.e., that taxing, borrowing, and spending will remain the path to reelection, this serves as a good reminder to keep one’s portfolio balanced with investments in countries that spend and borrow less (e.g., Switzerland). Here are some choice passages:

Economists estimate that the deadweight
losses from each one dollar increase in federal income
taxes is roughly 50 cents, including about 10 cents for
the added compliance or paperwork costs.

Suppose that the government spends $10 billion on a
new subsidy program financed by income taxes. The
program will cost the private economy about $15 billion
when the deadweight losses of the higher taxes are
included. If this new program creates distortions, or is
poorly executed, it may produce benefits of perhaps just $5
billion. That would create an overall ratio of costs to
benefits of 3-to-1.

It is true that the future net burden of federal debt
would be reduced if government borrowing was used for
high-value capital investments. But that is usually not the
case: federal investments are often mismanaged by the
bureaucracy and misallocated by the politicians. In June,
for example, the Government Accountability Office
reported on the government’s $80 billion annual
investment in information technology (IT), and found that
“investments frequently fail, incur cost overruns and
schedule slippages, or contribute little to mission-related
outcomes.”

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Engadget has a table comparing the latest iPhone 6s Plus with the previous generation iPhone 6 Plus. It looks at first glance as though the new camera is actually worse for most practical purposes.

• Old: 8MP iSight, f/2.2, 1.5µm pixel size, Optical Image Stabilization [OIS]
• New: 12MP iSight, f/2.2, 1.22µm pixel size

For low-light photography, the lack of OIS is crippling (an important reason for anyone serious about photography to get the Plus rather than the Zoolander-sized iPhone).

The official Apple page, however, makes it clear that this important feature has not been removed in the latest generation of the big phones.

I do wonder about the low-light performance of this latest-and-greatest device. The pixel size of 1.22µm compares unfavorably to 6.25µm in the Canon 5D Mark III, sort of a standard for good low-light performance. A Sony A7R II has a pixel size of about4.5µm. Apple seems to have better camera software than anyone else but they can’t rewrite the laws of physics/CMOS.

The new phones will do 4K video, but should still photographers be camping out in line for this latest Apple device?

[Gratuitous Golden Retriever image from what is now my legacy iPhone 6 Plus:

]

 

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We recently visited a large avionics shop at an exurban Midwest airport. In business for many decades, they now employ 12 full-time technicians, for whom starting salary is $20/hour (median home price in the area is about $150,000; a brand-new 4BR house biking distance from the airport can be purchased for $250,000; so a person earning $20/hour could afford the median house and a two-income couple could afford the new 4BR house (source)). “It is getting harder every year to hire people who can do this work,” said the manager. What does a beginner avionics technician need to be able to do? Read a wiring diagram, cut wires to the correct length, crimp connectors onto wires, etc. The work must be done diligently and with attention to detail, but no college or engineering education is necessary.

Separately, painting aircraft is very labor-intensive (prepping/sanding) and also requires attention to detail. It can easily cost $50,000 to $100,000 to paint a light jet. One would think that there would be a thriving industry in Mexico to paint U.S.-based planes, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. The Wall Street Journal in 2010 described airlines getting some paint work done in Monterey, Mexico by Saltillo Jet Center, but most of the shops in the article were in the U.S. With labor costs rising in the U.S. could this be a business opportunity for an entrepreneur down there? The typical U.S. paint shop seems to have one or two real experts supervising a bunch of junior folks.

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I’m back from Burning Man and I learned some new terms, e.g., the following:

• darktard/darkwad: person who walks around at night without wearing LEDs
• Sunday watermelon: a gift that is more about the giver wanting to get rid of something heavy/bulky (the Man burns on Saturday evening so a “Sunday watermelon” would typically have been purchased at least one week earlier)

(See BRC Weekly for additional)

I noted some conversations unlikely to be heard elsewhere…

“It’s so cold you need to be dressed like it is fucking Siberia.”

Male Burner 1: “What should I wear tonight? I have got these tights.”; Burner 2: “If that isn’t gay, tell me what is.”

• Burner 1 (looking at some photos): “These are great!”
• Burner 2: “Thanks. I also took some good ones on the Playa this morning.”
• Burner 1: “How do I find them?”
• Burner 2: “Just keep scrolling until you see shaved pussy and you’ll be in the right area.”

“I don’t know why they make Viagra in 100 mg pills.  You would have to be a fucking elephant to take 100 mg. Chop it into eighths and it gives you a nice tailwind.”

Burner eating cashews: “It says they are salted. Where the hell is the salt? Fucking health food.”

Burner eating breakfast: “This is almost as good as what they’re serving in Camp Superdouche.”

Medical professional burner: “He really should not do so many drugs.”

“Do these boots go with this bikini?”

Burner noticing tent-mate about to step into tent from camp shower: “Aaaargh! You have Playa Foot!” (paste of dust and water stuck to foot)

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A fun Washington Post story for students of the American zeitgeist: “A white guy named Michael couldn’t get his poem published. Then he became Yi-Fen Chou.”

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Serious cyclists: What is a good source of curated bike routes? In the print world there a lot of books with suggested bike rides. But why lug a book around if you have a mobile phone in a handlebar phone mount? Is there a good source for scenic bike rides, organized by distance and geography, for some of the biking apps? For the fancy Garmin bike computers? Simply to download into Google or Apple Maps?

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At East Coast Aero Club if we posted prices for our aircraft and then charged customers an additional 21 percent “service fee” or “administrative fee” they would presumably be upset. In fact I wonder if it would violate some sort of regulation either federal or state. Yet restaurants are supposedly trending in this direction. This New York Times article says that, in our new Obamawage era, tips are being eliminated in favor of mandatory-for-all-customers 18-21-percent fees added onto the menu prices. U.S. merchants have gotten away with this practice with respect to sales tax, unlike their European and Asian counterparts. But can they actually do this for a fee that is charged to every customer and that they always collect?

Could I run a restaurant and advertise that pizza is $2, the cost of the ingredients, but then have some fine print at the bottom of the menu saying that customers must also pay a 500 percent “prep and service fee”? If not, how is it legal to do the same thing with a smaller fee percentage?

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The Wall Street Journal top headlines are mostly about money, but “How Serena Williams Produced Her Second Act” (August 26, 2015) is worth reading if you’re interested in seeing the breadth of the paper’s capabilities. It is comprehensive look at the strategies of this 33-year-old athlete, complete with six illustrative videos (try that in the supposed glory days of print journalism!). Here’s some stuff that I didn’t know about this great achiever:

After Williams won Wimbledon in 2010, she lacerated her foot on broken glass in a restaurant in Germany and needed surgery to repair a tendon. The next year she suffered blood clots in both her lungs, which can be a life-threatening condition.

“I didn’t think I would play tennis again and I didn’t care, I just wanted to get out and live and start a life,” Williams said.

She said the blood clots left her with permanently reduced lung capacity. “When you get one, it goes into your lung and it kills it, and that’s why you die, because it just kills your lungs, it slowly starts to turn black,” she said. “It’s for life.”

Related:

• Why doesn’t economic inequality bother us within a field?

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Let’s hear it for the Chinese and Germans. Continental, now Chinese-owned, acquired the bones of bankrupt German aircraft diesel engine manufacturer Thielert. The actual engines are based on a Mercedes car diesel engine, which is much heavier than the traditional aluminum air-cooled airplane piston engine, but is capable of burning jet fuel (much cheaper than Avgas in Europe and much more available at airports worldwide). Continental has been tracking the reliability of the engines they have produced. It turns out to be 3.3 inflight shut downs per 100,000 flight hours. Note that this would include, in a twin-engine plane, an intentional shutdown by a pilot who noticed a problem and decided to proceed with just one engine spinning.

Continental misleading cites some FAA statistics that older design engines experience 10 shutdowns per 100,000 hours. This could be true but those statistics include high-power engines and old engines. The proper comparison would be to relatively new engines with similar horsepower to the diesels. It is unfair to look at a 310-horsepower engine from 1990 that is past its 12-year recommended overhaul period and compare that to a two-year-old 135 hp diesel engine.

If these low-power piston engines can run for 30,000 hours before shutting down, what’s better? Supposedly the Pratt & Whitney PT6 has an in-flight shutdown rate of between 1 in 200,000 hours and 1 in 500,000 hours. The Honeywell turboprops (formerly Garrett) are somewhere in between.

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