51 Years Later, the FAA is Still Incompetent

 In the summer of 1974 I was asked to take a group of minority students, from Boston, and develop a plan for airport surface traffic control. The group became the MIT MITES program for minority High School students. We had a bright yellow van with equipment and my helpers. The system was to enhance DABS, the Discrete Address Beacon System, and improved version for traffic control.

My first day out to go to Logan Airport, there was this gigantic canary yellow van with Discreet Address Beacon System on the side, NOT Discrete! For a moment I thought I was in the business of solicitation! But off we went for two months of testing and design. I had developed and tested an airport surface contorl system employing transponders and multiple beam antennas. 

We even had software. Unfortunately we were thereat Logan the day a plane slammed into the end of a runway from Portland. All dies, a lesson for how important the work was for students!

But the lesson was that the FAA had options to improve airport traffic then, and now fifty years later they still mess up.The NY Times notes: 

American Airlines Flight 2246, arriving at National Airport from Boston was making its final descent around 8:20 a.m. when it suddenly canceled its landing, climbed toward the skies and accelerated away from the airport. The last-minute move allowed it to avoid colliding with another plane that was ready to take off from the same runway, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The airplane’s pilots were told to scrap the landing by an air traffic controller to “ensure separation was maintained between this aircraft and a preceding departure from the same runway,” the F.A.A. said in a statement. Around 8:50 a.m. Central time, the pilots of Southwest Airlines Flight 2504, traveling from Omaha, canceled the plane’s landing at Chicago Midway after “a business jet entered the runway without authorization,” the F.A.A. said in a statement.

 The FAA lacks systems that would assist ATC. The unauthorized private jet pilot should receive the severest of punishment. But alas all goes by the wayside. As they seem to say today, where is Musk when you need him? We just lost 700 forest rangers! Try the FAA folks. Its technology seems to be in the 19th century.

 

Lonely Turkey

 And then there was one. At one time we had almost two dozen marching. Despite global warming we have had record cold and lots of snow. A climate nightmare for turkeys.

The Idiots who design Apps

 I do not like apps. First is the security issue. Second and most importantly is they try to fit what would take a 3" 4L screen just enough to fit onto you small smart phone. Then they use language which is incomprehensible. 

Apps designers are both arrogant and stupid, a deadly mix The arrogance come when they assume they have designed the best app in the world, and only you the stupid users fails to see that. Second, the stupidity comes when the app just does not work!

Take my latest journey. My Honda keeps popping up demanding a software update. After six months I think I discovered how to do it. Get an app. Nowhere does Honda ever say this. Yet the app fails again and again. Then you read it is a Honda defect.  

This is just the latest example. I truly hate apps. I just use the smart phone for calls and text. No other apps!

Mens et Manus

 Mind and Hands, not it is not sexist just because "men" or "man" are in the Latin word. That is MIT's motto. For a century it was a technical school, science and engineering. Yes some liberal arts stuff like English, some history, and languages. Engineers had to have some facility in German and French, and in my time Russian. Not much, but enough with a dictionary you could translate an abstract to get the gist. 

They they also had a Department on Management of Businesses, and that was related to engineers managing this stuff they produced.

Then came the 90s and new management and left wing ideas. Up sprang the Media Lab, the world of demos never getting any farther, then Philosophy  where there is a Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies at MIT.  She has published in metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and critical race theory.  Broadly speaking, her work links issues of social justice with contemporary work in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.

 Now the NY Times writes:

 I’ve written about Donald Trump’s plan to crush the academic left, but it increasingly looks as though he and his allies are targeting academia more broadly, including the hard sciences that have long enjoyed bipartisan support. “I think the extremely strong desire is to just punish universities however possible,” Kevin Carey, the director of the education policy program at New America, a public policy think tank, told me. “It’s not based on any kind of coherent policy agenda. It’s just a desire to inflict pain.”This is the context for the Trump administration’s attempt, currently being challenged in court, to slash research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The details sound technical and very boring: The new policy would limit reimbursements for schools’ overhead expenses to 15 percent of grants’ value, instead of the 50 to 70 percent that universities often receive now. But if this goes into effect, the damage will be tremendous.

 The writer alleges that Trump wants to destroy Universities. Well in my opinion and in my experience it is already a done deed. If one looks at the size and focus of Philosophy, DEI, Political Science, even Economics and Management, the seeds of destruction are already not only sown but blooming!

No longer is the focus on pure technology or science, it is everything but! The 15% number is just a bell that rings out saying, we will pay for all the research but the cost for the other stuff you get to pay out of your own pocket, that means Alumni donations. I suspect that there will be a revolt there as well. 

The Evils of Microsoft

 Over the years I have spent many days trying to get Microsoft updates to work if not having to totally reboot my system and taking almost a week to rearrange, not to mention the costs of getting replacement software.

Every update is a twenty four hour process. 

The latest 24H2 update was a massive mess. My system crashed two days ago, then I thought it may need a total reboot, a real mess, but I saw MS had sent out an update to the 24H2 that would eliminate some of the messes MS created. 

Now it seems I have a workable system but for how long.

Sooner or later MS will be hit with a massive class action suit for reckless endangerment. 

Perhaps DOGE could help here as well!

Ferroptosis and Cancer

 Ferroptosis is a form of cell death. It is driven by two factors; iron overload and reactive oxygen species, generally lipids. Recent work has focused on its use in therapeutics for various cancers. We have written a Technical Note discussing the current status and issues.

More Inflation

 New Jersey regulators today approved a 20% price increase on electricity. Why? Simple, see what the Daily Signal reports:

 New Jersey’s energy master plan is more of the same. The goals of New Jersey “are entirely driven by the objective of reducing the state’s contribution to global CO2 emissions,” writes Mark Mills, an energy analyst and director of the National Center for Energy Analytics. “[B]oth recent history and the underlying technology realities make it clear that the goals aren’t achievable; and even if they could be achieved, would lead to a minuscule reduction in global CO2 emissions.”  Mills suggests nuclear power as a better option for New Jersey’s environmental objectives. The Garden State’s plan offers dubious environmental benefits and devastating economic consequences. Mills says wind and solar “cause overall systems costs to rise, due to practical reasons relating to operating reliable grids while using unreliable and episodic wind and solar sources.” A major factor is the need to back up weather-dependent technologies with reliable and abundant fossil fuels and nuclear energy, requiring a duplication of effort and expense.

 The current Governor, the one who sent old age folks to homes to die of COVID and who just announced the harboring of illegals in his home, by referral, will be gone in less than a year. But we all are suffering from his work. 25-45% insurance rate increases, 20% electric increases, and the list goes on. His bundle from Goldman buffers his world but not that of the citizens bearing these costs.

Penmanship

 

I have noticed that penmanship has died. I see people holding a writing instrument as if they were to butcher a pig. Their writing is good at best to filling in dots. Students no longer have note books or take notes. Thus the hand, eye,brain axis is being destroyed. Thumbs work on smart phones but sooner or later cartilage will wear out.

Yes the Overhead is High

 The Harvard Crimson attests to the fact that they get 69% overhead, al;most as much as MIT. They note:

 Under the new order, Harvard will be able to charge the National Institute of Health at most 15 cents in overhead costs for every dollar spent on research — a significant decrease from the 69 cents the University currently charges. The average NIH indirect cost rate has historically been between 27 to 28 percent.Trump’s directive will take effect Monday and apply to both current and future grants.

This is Quite Smart

 The NY Times discusses one of the recent Trump Orders, namely forcing Universities to reduce the R&D overhead to 15%. They note:

The change is aimed at reducing the amount of tax dollars that universities spend on overhead costs. The National Institutes of Health, which announced the move Friday evening, said $9 billion of $35 billion — or about 26 percent — of grant dollars distributed last year had gone to overhead. The new policy, which takes effect on Monday, will cap “indirect funds” for costs like buildings, utilities and support staff at 15 percent and is aimed at saving $4 billion.

 Back when I was at MIT, the overhead often reached 70%! Now it depends on how you count of course. If you can include salaries and benefits, materials, rent, etc, the 15% is then for anything above and beyond what the research costs. Namely the research is paid for but the "goodies" above that are not. Thus DEI Divisions such as that at MIT would take a massive cut. So should all the other indirect overhead. Sports teams are typically covered by tuition but as they explode in breath it gets pushed into overhead. In 1971 MIT had no varsity teams. The intramural football team played local High Schools. Now however they have tons and they are costly. Have these improved MIT research? Hardly.

The solution is simple. Namely line item costs are included such as maintenance and upkeep. DEI etc costs get pushed to the 15% number. The devil is in the details. Take a breath and think of what you are doing. Change can be upsetting but sometimes it helps.

 

 

Cry Babies

 In the private sector jobs are fluid. Some are lost due to changes in the business, some as a result of economic demands. People move from one location to another due to the demands of the business. Take the USDA. It deals with farms. There are few farms in DC but lots in Kansas. Remember the yellow brick road. So it would be logical to be proximate to what your job demands. 

Now Science discusses the cry babies at USDA whose job was moved. They note:

On an unseasonably cold day in March 2019, hundreds of agricultural economists were herded into a conference room in Washington, D.C., to learn their fate.The previous August, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS), a small but well-regarded statistical agency, would be relocating somewhere outside of the nation’s capital to allow USDA “to provide more streamlined and efficient services.” One by one, a USDA official read the job descriptions of the 76 of 329 ERS positions that would remain in town. The rest would move.“It was awful the way they told us,” recalls one of several economists who requested anonymity because they still work at ERS. “People not on the list started crying.”That day was part of a seismic upheaval at an agency that essentially serves as USDA’s in-house think tank, analyzing and anticipating trends in agriculture, food and nutrition, natural resources, and the rural economy. Nearly one-half of its employees jumped ship between when Perdue announced the move and October 2019, when ERS opened its new office in Kansas City, Missouri, barely 3 months after the city won a nationwide competition to host the agency. (Kansas City also snared USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture [NIFA], which distributes some $1.5 billion in grants and contracts.) “I calculated that more than 2000 years of ERS experience vanished in 3 months,” says agricultural economist Marca Weinberg, a senior manager who took early retirement and then was rehired as acting head of the agency for the first year in its new location. “We lost the vast majority of our institutional knowledge and expertise, and it decimated the ranks of middle management.” Only a dozen or so ERS economists actually moved from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City.

 The typical Government employee is demonstrated by this attitude. They feel they have rights to do what they want and where they want. In fact all of USDA should be moved to Kansas. As Interior to Montana, and many other translocation. The employees are NOT entitled. The work for the taxpayer and if costs can be reduced then the taxpayer benefits.

This is a truly classic example of how badly DC is managed. Hopefully downsizing can continue.

 

 

Technology and Intellect

 

 In early Greece, Homer was a writer that one memorized and orally transmitted. One learned how to remember, Homer wrote to facilitate that process. Thus the intellect was challenged by memory. Any important Athenian, Spartan, Corinthian, would be able to quote Homer in ringing tones. It was like songs in the early 60s, one knew every word of a Dylan song, or the like. The words were the words of a song but also the words of a culture.

Also back in the 60s students learned penmanship. Namely how to hold a pen and how to write. Today we see students holding some writing instrument as if they were about to chip away at a stone block. Hand writing and note taking are no longer practiced. I look back on college note books from the 60s and see neat well written pages, just as a 144th century student at Oxford may have done. Enter computers, laptops, iPads and smart phones and at best one has scratch ephemera.  

Next I think of maps. For years I had paper maps. I still do. They lay out the entire scope of what I am entering upon. I can see alternatives. Unlike say Google maps which lays out what it thinks is the way to go, I never really follow that. In NYC, before its collapse, I could take side streets, alleys, and a multiple set of paths because I had learned the neural net of NYCs pathways. I knew the least time rout at any time of day. I had studied maps and thus had alternative paths. I made the decision, not Google.

 Nature has an interesting article on these topics:

Adrian Ward had been driving confidently around Austin, Texas, for nine years — until last November, when he started getting lost. Ward’s phone had been acting up, and Apple maps had stopped working. Suddenly, Ward couldn’t even find his way to the home of a good friend, making him realize how much he’d relied on the technology in the past. “I just instinctively put on the map and do what it says,” he says Ward’s experience echoes a common complaint: that the Internet is undermining our memory. This fear has shown up in several surveys over the past few years, and even led one software firm to coin the term ‘digital amnesia’ for the experience of forgetting information because you know a digital device has stored it instead. Last year, Oxford University Press announced that its word of the year was ‘brain rot’ — the deterioration of someone’s mental state caused by consuming trivial online content. What you’ll see out there is all kinds of dire predictions about digital amnesia, and ‘we’re gonna lose our memory because we don’t use it anymore’,” says Daniel Schacter, who studies memory at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 The use of any computer system to learn something always has failure modes. Take anatomy. In First Year Med School there is a semester of anatomy. A team gets a cadaver and then dissembles it manually to understand where what is. I saw the cranial nerves. All of them from start to finish. In the process I saw the muscles they were attached to, the tissues they passed through. The network became ingrained in my head so even today I can lay out the network. I accomplished this by doing the work at hand. One could not accomplish this in some computer simulation. 

Bury the Dead

 This is what happens when the Government takes over everything. The BBC notes:

A woman still waiting for her father's funeral seven weeks after his death says the new certification system is "awful". Gemma Whysall, 42, whose father Christopher Wyles died unexpectedly in his sleep on 17 December, says she was left in limbo while the cause of his death was determined. The death certification reforms for England and Wales came into effect on 9 September, and mean all deaths are now reviewed independently, either by a medical examiner or a coroner, before a certificate is issued. Gemma said: "By the time we are able to have a funeral, it will be seven weeks since he passed, and the process, for a family who's grieving, has been terrible.""In the absence of any real communication about the new process, we've just been sat waiting," Gemma added.

They continue:

Under the new system, which was brought about partly in response to Harold Shipman's murders, GPs no longer issue death certificates independently. After a GP completes a medical certificate of cause of death (MCCD), an independent medical examiner reviews it. Once approved, the certificate is sent to the registrar, who officially records the death. The process means GPs have to give access to a patient's records in order for the medical examiner to decide if they agree with the MCCD.

 There are now piles of bodies awaiting a coroner to decide. In the US an MD can sign a death certificate. Imagine what would happen if we need a Government Official to over-ride the MDs. It would make a mess worse than the early days of COVID.

 

 

Council of Nicaea

 In 325 Constantine was the sole Roman Emperor. He had just defeated his adversary Licinius and now ruled over a massive territory. He had become a Christian, in assertion if not in fact. But he now faced his greatest challenge. Not the swords of enemies, but the mouths of bishops. It seemed that each bishop in the East, not the West, had his own view of what a Christian was to believe. In an attempt to deal with this crisis, unlike his many wars, he decided to hold a Council and get agreement. This was the Council of Nicaea in 325.

It was a classic herding of cats. Constantine had just come back from defeating Licinius, greatly wounded, and having to deal with hundreds of interpretation of Scripture, fundamentally were there three Gods or just one, and if one how to rationalize this with Scripture. 

Constantine's solution, unlike his predecessors who sent them to the lions, he decided to write his own Creed and "let them eat cake"!

It worked. He inserted a Greek phrase, never really used, which allowed anyone to interpret it in their own way. He also had a thousand guards with swords drawn, "welcoming" the bishops. Needless to say the acrimony of the East was quieted and we had a Creed! His backers in the West rejoiced, and henceforth the Church used Latin and not Greek! 

Oh yes, he changed the name of the capitol city to Constantinople. (See current mouths)