A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…
Taking a break from my Tiger Woods vigil, I spent an afternoon taking photos at Epcot (background). These are available three ways:
Upon returning to Massachusetts, I discovered that Al Gore has not been spending enough time in private jets or burning electricity in his mansion. Temperatures are between 10 and 20F and more than a foot of snow has fallen: thumbnails | slide show.
Full post, including commentsThis seems to have been the year for Chinese-manufactured aircraft to reach the world stage. Here are a few news items from just the last couple of days:
This represents a huge change from just a few years ago. An aircraft exported from China prior to 2009 would very likely have been a Chinese-made version of an old Russian design.
Speaking of aerospace and China, I had dinner in Orlando at the house of a friend who works for a jet manufacturer. The other day, his 7-year-old daughter read some boxes and labels then asked him “Daddy, why are all of my toys made in China?”
[Separately, this week’s New Yorker carries a story about the Chinese renewable energy industry.]
Full post, including commentsHere are my best Christmas gift ideas. Most can be ordered from Amazon with one- or two-day shipping, so they are suitable for procrastinators. Nearly everything here is something that I own or have read.
For anyone born in New York City, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City
For science-oriented middle school kids, The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
For a young kid, Samoyed stuffed toy
Now that global warming has been discredited as a hoax, for anyone living in the northeast… Yaktrax Pro Traction Cleats
For anyone planning to vacation in Florida, any book by Carl Hiaasen, e.g., Skinny Dip
For anyone who hasn’t learned anything new for a while, an introductory flight lesson. Your local airport probably has a flight school that offers gift certificates for $100 or $150 that will cover the first 30-60 minutes of instruction.
A friend asked me about a camera to give to her teenage daughter. She wanted something that the girl could use for creative purposes all the way through college. I like the professional full-frame Canon and Nikon bodies and lenses, but the weight and cost aren’t bearable for a typical consumer. I recommended the Olympus Evolt E620
For a music, photo, or video-lover: load up all of your favorites onto a Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB
If you want that music lover to be able to play his or her collection throughout the house, Sonos BU250 Multiroom Music System
For a football lover, Panasonic TC-P50G10 50-Inch Plasma HDTV
If you think that giving to charity would be more in keeping with Jesus’s philosophy, let me suggest Partners in Health, whose financials are discussed at the bottom of my posting on Mountains Beyond Mountains. If you’d rather do something more personal and direct, along the lines of the 2006 water buffalo donation (the video is great), let me put in a plug for my cousin Jennifer’s Enriching Education in Rural Ecuador (EERE). Jennifer is an American who grew up in Ecuador and currently lives in the countryside with her family. She sends her son to the local school where she volunteers as an English teacher. She takes no salary from her non-profit and 100 percent of donations are used directly for the benefit of students, e.g., to buy textbooks. Is she going to change the whole country and then the world like Greg Mortenson describes himself doing in Three Cups of Tea? No. And neither are your donations to EERE. But a donation will end up making a concrete difference to an identifiable child.
As Jennifer spends most of the year in Ecuador, the best thing to do is send a check to EERE’s bank:
Alexis Vives, Asst. Branch Manager
SunTrust Bank
11700 North Kendall Drive
Miami, FL 33186
Account # 1000099874991 (Enriching Education in Rural Ecuador, Inc.)
Questions about how to send money: call (305) 274-5722 or email alexis.vives@suntrust.com
Note that this guy doesn’t know anything about EERE or Jennifer’s work; he just works in a bank in Florida. If you have questions about what she is doing in Ecuador, contact her directly at jengittes@aol.com. EERE is an IRS-approved 501c3 organization, which makes your donation tax-deductible and your canceled check should be sufficient to verify your donation (though certainly Jennifer can send you a letter if you need it). Ecuador is a beautiful colorful country with a mild climate. Volunteering there at the school for a few weeks would not be a hardship.
Full post, including commentsMy two-week vigil at the Tiger Woods residence is over and I have returned from Orlando to Boston. I believe that I have provided all of the counseling and assistance that the Woods family might want from a computer programmer. Living so close to Mr. Woods prompted reflection on his achievements. Practicing constantly and becoming #1 in the world at anything is extremely impressive. Even more impressive is someone able to remain the world’s best golfer while simultaneously responding to the demands of a wife and two children. Now it seems that his abilities as a golfer are so far above anyone else’s that he was able to stay at #1 while devoting nearly all of his non-competition time to non-golf activities. Gauss was a great mathematician, but had only one female companion at a time (source). Balzac wrote nearly 100 novels, but as soon as he got married dropped dead (presumably from fatigue; source).
The trip to Orlando was not entirely occupied with the unfolding Tiger Woods story. I photographed an obese man eating a turkey leg at Epcot and came home with a new pilot’s certificate. This one has a CE-510S code on it, enabling me to be the single pilot of a Cessna Mustang business jet (any turbojet-powered aircraft requires a “type rating”, indicating specific training and a proficiency checkride to Airline Transport Pilot standards). Don, Gary, and Steve at FlightSafety never lost faith in or patience with me and for that I am grateful.
The experience at FlightSafety made me realize how important a pilot’s emotional state is to the safety to flight. On the first day of simulator training I was completely relaxed. Despite having had hardly any sleep and not knowing how to manage emergencies in this airplane, I flew reasonably well. A typical challenge is an engine failing and catching on fire as the plane reaches 100 miles per hour rolling down the runway for takeoff. Due to the thrust all coming from one side of the airplane, the plane will start wandering off the runway. The pilot first has to recognize that a problem has occurred and that the tendency of the plane to wander is not due to a gust of wind or sloppy flying. Then there are two choices: (1) pull back the thrust on the good engine and stand on the brakes, stopping before the end of the runway, or (2) wait patiently for the aircraft to reach flying speed and then lift off to climb slowly on the good engine. All of the relevant numbers have been precomputed, so the pilot knows that above “V1” it is better to go and below V1 it is better to stop. The pilot also knows that, at that altitude, temperature, and weight, the plane will actually climb on one engine (assuming good technique, the bad engine windmilling rather than stuck, and a few other optimistic conditions). Figuring all of this on a piece of paper at a desk is a lot easier than doing it with the ground rushing by.
Over a 12-day period, I got more and more practice in the simulator. I should have been flying vastly better than on the first day, but as the expectations on me grew higher and the checkride loomed, my improvement wasn’t as dramatic as I expected. It did not help that I learned that 33 percent of applicants for this rating fail their checkride. The day of the checkride I was so nervous that I woke up at 4:30 am and could not fall back to sleep. I wasn’t tired for the 10 am test, and I felt fairly relaxed despite the presence of an FAA inspector in the back of the sim (the FAA periodically audits checkrides). But the subconcious fear of failing the checkride and having a black mark in my pilot record was apparently affecting my abilities because I flew every maneuver worse than in a practice session the day before. I didn’t crash or do anything remarkably foolish during the 2.5-hour flight, which involves multiple takeoffs, landings, approaches, and systems failures, and therefore walked away with a passing grade.
Being the single pilot is at least 4 times more difficult than being one of a two-pilot crew. An airliner is more complex than a Cessna Mustang, but when something goes wrong one pilot can concentrate on basic flying of the airplane while the other pilot finds the appropriate checklist and begins to follow it. A single pilot must keep the aircraft’s attitude, airspeed, and rudder coordination under control, possibly without any help from the autopilot, while simultaneously finding, reading, and running a checklist.
My friend Suzanne offered to pick me up at Logan Airport at 11:00 pm, despite the fact that she had to drive her daughter to an event at 6 the next morning. She asked if I was satisfied with my life. I responded “Anyone who has a friend to pick him up at the airport and drive him home around midnight should not complain.”
Full post, including commentsIn colonial North America there were two currencies: coins of precious metal and wampum. I would have guessed that a more advanced society would have simpler and more efficient payment and exchange systems, but it doesn’t seem to have worked that way. Let’s look at a person who travels for business up and down the East Coast. He or she will need the following:
Can anyone think of some more? Is this proliferation of currency hurting U.S. economic efficiency?
[The New York Times yesterday ran a story about running nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer money around in circles through AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and GMAC. I wonder if we’re doing the same thing on an individual basis, i.e., running our money around in circles through various cash-like payment schemes, each time losing about 5 percent.]
Full post, including commentsFifty years from now the Collapse of 2008-? might be looked at as primarily a fight between the old and the young. The New York Times yesterday carried a story about the city of Pittsburgh taxing college tuition to pay pensions:
“a 1 percent tuition tax on students attending college in Pittsburgh, which he says will raise $16.2 million in annual revenue that is needed to pay pensions for retired city employees.”
This is the most direct example I’ve seen of a tax on the young (the tax will be collected from universities but substantially paid by customers, as with most taxes on business) to benefit the old. An 18-year-old will pay more for college so that a 50-year-old can enjoy his retirement as though the Collapse of 2008 had not occurred. In California the pensions of those over age 50 are preserved while students at the University of California will pay 32 percent more (source).
The young start out with a lot of advantages. They have tremendous energy and physical health. But one wonders how much can be loaded onto their backs. Let’s look at what the U.S. government and state/local governments are doing to hobble young people:
As a 46-year-old who has the right to vote, when I look at teenagers these days sometimes I wonder “What did they do to us that was so bad that we’ve decided to do all of this to them?”
Full post, including commentsWith new instrument flying students, we sit down together at a computer and obtain a weather briefing from DUATS. This is a 15-page document and one of the most important skills for an IFR pilot is to be able to pick out the important stuff and make decisions based upon that most critical information. The student sees a Web page on the screen. He or she sees a mouse cursor moving occasionally or some text being highlighted. He or she sees the Web page being scrolled down. He or she hears my voice explaining why a particular line or section is irrelevant or relevant. I went through this exercise with a group of pilots the other day and one suggested that it would be good training material to share on the Web. Now the question becomes how to do it. Here are my criteria:
My initial thought was that this is essentially what various Web-mediated meeting programs (WebEx; Live Meeting) do. They let a bunch of people scattered around the Internet see some computer screen interaction and hear a voice. If such a program had a “record” button and a means of distributing historical meetings, that would be ideal, especially if the program could compile into Flash or something similar.
If not all of the criteria can be met, I would be willing to accept a situation in which we distribute a somewhat fuzzy YouTube video and then offer a much higher quality version to those who are willing to download and install a free Web collaboration client program.
Ideas? Suggestions?
[A totally different way to go would be annotated text. Distribute the original DUATS briefing as an HTML document tarted up with some JavaScript. When the reader moves a mouse over a particular line, a text annotation pops up. I’m not sure if there is a convenient way to author that kind of text. I’m willing to do it all in Emacs, I guess, typing tags, as long as all of it can be done with CLASS= modifiers on P and LI tags and the code remains up at the top or in a style sheet.]
Full post, including commentsDuring a break in flight training I chanced upon a television showing Barack Obama speaking in Oslo, accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. One phrase struck me as unusual, i.e., “no Holy War can ever be a just war”. This is a little bit like telling a hysterical person to “calm down”; it seems very unlikely to be effective.
Suppose that a religious person has read a text that he or she believes to be the word of God. God has written that every believer must wage a holy war against infidels. Barack Obama, despite his many godlike characteristics (see this posting for an exploration of his kinglike characteristics), is not a god in the eyes of our believer. If the holy book says “kill infidels” and Barack Obama says “it is not just to kill infidels”, why should the religiously observant person be swayed?
Full post, including commentsI’d like to get some pictures of fat people eating (example1; example2). I’m in Orlando and it seems like an ideal opportunity to combine two quintessentially American themes: obesity and theme parks. Also, a theme park is a great place to walk around with a big camera and lens without attracting attention. I would like to find a theme park where there are a lot of restaurants, a lot of fat people (aside from myself), and most of the restaurants have outdoor seating.
Recommendations?
[You might ask why I am embarking upon this project. Part of it is that my editor at Hearst Magazines back in the 1990s was ecstatic about any photo that included a fat person. Most of it is that I think that better diet pills will be developed some time within the next 100 years. Also theme parks may lose their appeal for Americans (for one thing we might become too poor/heavily taxed to afford to travel frivolously). The photos will then become a curiosity for people in the year 2100.]
Update: http://philip.greenspun.com/images/20091213-epcot/fat-people-eating has the photos from a few hours spent at Epcot. Also available as a slide show (medium-sized photos or big photos).
Full post, including commentsMy friend David and I are sharing a timeshare “villa” in Orlando at the Marriott Cypress Harbour. We have three televisions for the two of us. Every day we go over to FlightSafety to take jet-flying classes designed by guys who were inspired by the American public school system of instruction. I.e., we sit passively in lectures, bored out of our skulls, rather than being actively challenged to solve problems and think through scenarios (the teachers are experienced and dedicated, but they are constrained and crippled by the PowerPoints). If I were training myself, I would ask questions such as “What if you rotate at your calculated Vr of 94 knots and the aircraft settles back into ground effect? Assuming that there is nothing mechanically wrong with the aircraft, what are some likely causes for its reluctance to fly?” (a couple of possible answers: flaps set to UP and Vr calculated for flaps T/O; estimated weights of passengers and baggage were wrong and you’re heavier than you thought). Then I would ask “Given that you’re beyond V1, what would you do?” (a much tougher question to answer than the typical engine failure at V1 that you get in the sim; there will be no red EICAS message saying “engine failure R”; you have to make a decision almost instantly but you don’t have obvious information with which to make that decision.) Instead we get taught that trend vectors on the primary flight display for airspeed, altitude, and heading show where the airplane will be after 6 seconds. A few minutes later, a quiz slide pops up in the PowerPoint deck. “How many seconds forward do the trend vectors look?” Four choices, including “6”, are below. (Eighty percent of this material could have been taught by giving students materials and online exams prior to them showing up in person.)
After dealing with the hazards of falling asleep in the classroom or falling off the hydraulics in the sim, we come back to our timeshare. The management leaves nothing to chance. The “Vacation Experience Guide” notebook is thicker than the books that come with a twin-engine turbojet-powered airplane. The notebook cautions walkers to “stay on the sidewalk or the outer edge of the road” and, within this gated community, “please keep the doors and windows locked when you are sleeping or away from your villa”. You would not want a child to be consumed by the 4-inch-long lizards that run around the sidewalks, so there is a caution about approaching or feeding “wildlife” in this 100-percent concretized complex.
After the publication of the big notebook, a serious problem developed that required a laminated supplement to be issued to all rooms. Titled “Pizza Alert!!”, the supplement says that “the team here at Cypress Harbour are working closely with local and state law enforcement against the distribution of pizza flyers”.
What is the one hazard so small and unlikely that it need not be dealt with by the resort management? Drowning in one of the three swimming pools or an adjacent hot tub, all of which are deeper than a young child’s height. Despite the fact that the target audience for this resort is families with small children, there are no lifeguards. Instead of lifeguards, the management has helpfully put up signs that say “no lifeguard on duty.” The resort has literally hundreds of staff members for perhaps 1000 rooms (with an occupancy rate of 30 percent(?), the younger staff members are often seen congregating around televisions in the activity center). Would it have cost too much to employ a few teenagers to fish the toddlers out of the deep end? A little bit of Web surfing reveals that there are substantial liability protections under state law for hotels that post “no lifeguard on duty” signs. But if a hotel hires a lifeguard, they assume some liability for that lifeguard’s performance. As no sane parent would consider staying here without a substantial supply of the alcohol that is sold at the resort’s various bars and shops, that leaves Darwin in charge of whether the kids survive their week in Orlando.
One might ask where we would be without government regulation to protect us? Imagine a lawyer questioning a Marriott executive in front of a jury after a child drowned: “Let me get this straight… you built a 1000-room hotel, built three moderately deep swimming pools, asked families with young children to stay for a week at a time, and did not hire any lifeguards?”
[I suggested to David that we buy a week and come back here ever year for recurrent training. A quick Google search revealed that the annual maintenance fees are more than $800 per year, i.e., even if you got the timeshare for free it would cost almost as much as renting just for maintenance. Then the question came up of what happens when owners abandon their timeshares and stop paying fees. If the complex reverts to swamp, can the share owners get their money back from Marriott?]
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