Month: September 2018

B2 Bomber pilots

During the refueling and afterward, the B-2 pilots spoke with European air traffic control. The skies cleared. 400km north of the Libyan coastline, the pilots turned south, switched off their transponders, and disappeared from air-traffic-control radar. They had now been flying for 15 hours. Still offshore, they went into a holding pattern that had been planned as a cushion to allow them to get the timing just right. It was nearly midnight Zulu Time—2 in the morning local time. They heard the mission controller order the drones to clear out to the south, and authorize them to return immediately after the strike to kill anyone who survived. The drones were MQ-9 Reapers armed with laser-guided supersonic Hellfire missiles. Their pilots were sitting in front of control panels back in the United States. Scatter was surprised by the blanket authorization to fire. He had never heard that one before.

Health Data Scale

Fitbit has 150B hours of anonymized health data

Fitbit’s data confirms a lot of what cardiologists already know. But because the Fitbit data set is ridiculously huge, it unearthed some surprises, too. … The first observation from Fitbit’s data: Women tend to have higher resting heart rates than men.

Manhattan Secrets

In his latest book, Manhattan’s Little Secrets, author John Tauranac leads readers on a fascinating hunt for the overlooked and under-seen around every corner of New York City. Some of the Manhattan secrets that Tauranac reveals in his book include where to find actual stones from the dungeon where Joan of Arc was held, where to find an ancient symbol of Christianity on an apartment house and how to spot an architect’s likeness worked into the statuary of a building he designed.

3D Printing Skills

3D printers are preparing students for life after high school

I had the opportunity to sit in one of the design classes offered to upperclassmen. The teacher divided the students into small groups and asked them to create a holder for their headphones. Using modeling software and a 3D printer, they had to design a project that considered function, durability, and user friendliness.

Each team had a different approach. Some were working on a clamp that attached their headphones to the edge of the table, and others opted for a stand that would sit on the desk. I was blown away by how well thought out each design was. (You can see several of their projects in the video above.)

The school’s unique curriculum is particularly beneficial to some students who may have struggled in middle school. English language learners and students with disabilities seem to thrive at AFSE, since computer science focuses more on numbers and less on language skills. These students benefit from the way even non-specialized classes weave in computer science concepts—for example, a history teacher might ask a student to design a webpage about the War of 1812 instead of preparing an oral presentation.

Kenny Shopsin

Kenny Shopsin, the chef-proprietor of Shopsin’s, the defiantly idiosyncratic general-store-cum-restaurant in the West Village and, later, the Lower East Side, was not the sort of person for whom death ever seemed a possibility. Cranky, nonconformist, uninhibited, seemingly driven by an internal engine of profane irascibility, he was a New York legend, part of the social architecture of the city, a wild-haired totem of a lower Manhattan that once was, before the degradation of Greenwich Village into a place of vacant luxury storefronts waiting to be reanimated by businesses able to pay 5- or 6-figure monthly rents. The news of Shopsin’s death, which spread like a rumor over Labor Day weekend, and was confirmed on Tuesday by his daughter Tamara, was like one of the legs being yanked off a chair. We’re still upright, but things are very wobbly.