Trump and the aircraft carrier aesthetic

When my dad was a Naval officer in the 1950s, he was part of the team that designed the USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier. I remember him explaining to me in excited detail about the arresting gear, the device that stopped a landing jet. He spent most of his career as a chemical engineer, so this was a bit of an excursion. Regardless, I’m confident that he possessed more engineering expertise about aircraft carrier design than failed real estate businessman Donald Trump.

“President Trump has decided that he prefers the look of the World War II era battleships where the tower is in the middle of the ship. And he is pushing the Navy (and considering ordering the Navy) to move the tower forward on the Ford class ships. This comes after Trump just a few days ago ordered the Navy to go back to steam-powered catapults (the thing that hurls the planes forward off the ship for takeoff) from the new electromagnetic catapults. He apparently wants to do this because he once talked to a catapult operator who told him the old kind was better.”

Trump’s changes to aircraft carrier design will cost billions of dollars of taxpayer money and solve no discernable problem. Remember this when the GOP insists we have to cut social programs because of the national debt.

We are ruled by idiots. My dad would be appalled.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-to-order-redesign-of-aircraft-carriers-because-they-dont-look-right?fbclid=IwY2xjawTtwPFwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR6E2t0G1JKb-trHqPk_9U5dJYQXxutAkI-27u4MDJskOwwG8rEfsFYCeyE-hA_aem_GaIpCaoR45HjztSlYTcduw

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tesla robotaxis aren’t coming any time soon

The idea of a robotaxi appeals to me. The day is not far off when someone—my wife, my daughter—will tell me I’m no longer safe behind the wheel. It would certainly be handy to call or text a robotaxi to drive to the grocery store, a show or a dentist appointment. So is that happening? “It turns out not even the people building Tesla’s self-driving tech trust Elon Musk’s extravagant claims about the company’s autonomous vehicles. “New reporting by Reuters interviewed nine former data labelers and a former self-driving engineer about their take on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode. The results were overwhelmingly negative, with seven of the data specialists admitting they wouldn’t ride in a Tesla in FSD.” *snip* “ In recent months, Tesla operating on FSD move have driven riders   into lakes ,   off bridges , and even into the path of   oncoming trains   — and those are just the incidents that get media exposure. Given these insiders’ direct access to terabytes’ worth of p...
Read more

Yes, the CDC can change its mind

The Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson famously acknowledged in a Meet the Press interview: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” This observation applies to the advice from medical authorities such as the CDC and WHO during the COVID pandemic. Some members of the public are fond of pillorying these agencies for having published different guidelines at different times, as though health officials are in the business of issuing ex cathedra dogma rather than responding to incomplete and ambiguous information. Science doesn’t deal in proof, it deals with the weight of evidence. A scientific hypothesis is one that is capable of being tested and falsified by experiment. I get it. I used to teach problem-based learning to first year medical students, and they often struggled with what to do with incomplete and ambiguous information, which is what physicians in clinics do every day. Sometimes, one cannot wait for all the tests to be completed and all the data analyz...
Read more

The economics of deportation

The Trump administration is threatening to deport >10 million people. These are people who, regardless of their immigration status, are contributing to the economy and jobs by purchasing goods and service (“job creators”) and contributing to social programs like Social Security and Medicare. Indeed, if they are undocumented, they will never see benefits to the programs they subsidize, since they use fake SS numbers. How will Trump’s deportation hurt working class Americans? From the link: “Higher prices “Deporting millions of undocumented workers would mean that businesses will need to replace those laborers. With historically low unemployment, finding people willing to work for low pay could be difficult, and companies may need to advertise higher wages to attract workers to replace deported laborers. “Job growth will slow “If huge populations of migrants are deported — or at the very least population growth slows as a result of tighter immigration policies — there will be less con...
Read more