pgreenspun

Here are some groups using the "learn to code" meme:

https://girlswhocode.com/about-us/

http://www.blackgirlscode.com/

Would you say that they are "alt-right"?

We can translate this to physics quite easily. How many of the folks posting on Facebook to celebrate this person's achievement would be willing to do even one homework assignment for a freshman physics class at the local community college?

philg here...

A reader pointed me to this response to my Weblog article.

To answer Jellicle's question about "how much would it cost to take the three-day course?" ... $0. The course was free, open to the public (no unemployed people chose to attend), and all of the teachers volunteered their time over a three-day holiday weekend. We did use an MIT classroom and wireless network, but no capital equipment other than a video projector.

Let's look at the rest of Jellicle's assertions...

Wanker? Perhaps.

Libertarian? I voted for King Obama, though it might have been simply to make my December 2007 prediction come true... http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2007/12/12/election-2008-...

Rich? Since I don't work on Wall Street, by definition I am not rich. I have some money saved up, but the total is about what a successful hedge fund manager earns in a week.

Home mortgage subsidy? I've never had a mortgage. I worked from 1978 until 1996 as a programmer, saving money each year, until I could afford to buy a two-bedroom condo with cash. I certainly do not advocate a continued tax deduction for home mortgages. I think the events of the last decade should have proven the folly of the government subsidizing an oversized housing sector. Prior to the Collapse of 2008, I wrote http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/04/05/why-do-we-want... on the question of whether high housing prices are good for our economy overall.

My article did not assert that a pilot became captain at a foreign carrier after 270 hours. The article asserted that a person became captain at a foreign carrier after thousands of hours... nearly all as second in command. That is a very different background than someone who becomes captain at a major U.S. airline (who would have to have been pilot in command at a regional airline for 1000+ hours or pilot in command of a USAF airplane).

It depends on what you mean by PIC time. The pilot going through a professional flight training program will log all of the time after he gets his or her Private as PIC time, e.g., during instrument rating training. However, logging de jure PIC time while an instructor is in the aircraft is not the same as being the de facto PIC.

In a country that doesn't have a regional airline system, there is really no other way than to create captains out of people who have spent nearly all of their flying hours as first officer (second in command).

Gladwell does not explicitly say that American pilots are the best. However, he does use the U.S. major airline safety record as the standard (to which the cited foreign carriers fail to rise). U.S. major airlines conduct most of their operations with U.S. and Canadian pilots at U.S. and Canadian airports.

The error chain leading up to an accident is an old concept. The key to preventing accidents is to break the chain, which is typically best done by a pilot who has a lot of extra situational awareness. Sadly, situational awareness mostly comes with experience, so educating a 150-hour pilot about the error chain is not going to enable him or her to deal with a challenging situation as well as a 5000-hour pilot.

One of my readers pointed me to this discussion. The Martha's Vineyard reference was just a typical destination for folks at our flight school. There is no point in renting an airplane to go to Providence; it is quicker to drive! There is no point in renting an airplane to go to New York City; the car service from Teterboro costs more than the Amtrak ticket from Boston. Block Island, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Montauk, on the other hand, are destinations that are actually much easier to reach by private airplane than by car or train. KMVY has a good on-airport restaurant. KMVY has an ILS and GPS/LPV approaches, plus an approach lighting system on Runway 24, which makes it a relatively easy place to land in actual instrument conditions. And the island is home to three of my favorite girls (one of whom has four legs).

KMVY averages 141 operations per day, so the JFK, Jr. crash in 1999 has been followed by approximately 500,000 less eventful takeoffs and landings.

-- Philip