RSS
Philosophy

Myers-Briggs Astrology

Leave a comment

Astrology is a set of systems used for attempting to better understand the past and present and for predicting the future based on the idea that there’s a relationship between the position of stars and planets in the sky and events in the life of a person. A system of astrology can be as basic as the newspaper horoscope, which categorizes all people into 1 of 12 categories. Across most of human history, astrology was widely considered a scholarly discipline. It was accepted as scientific fact in government and academia from early civilization up to at least the 17th century.

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a psychometric assessment based on a simple questionnaire derived from the idea that there are 4 and only 4 principal psychological functions by which people experience the world. The intent is to measure and predict how individuals perceive the world and make decisions, categorizing all people into 1 of 16 categories. The Myers-Briggs is used by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies and is very popular in businesses around the world; however, it has been criticized as having methodological weaknesses, poor statistical validity, and low reliability.

The Myers–Briggs assessment is no better than astrology, and potentially much worse.

Continue reading Myers-Briggs Astrology →

Aviation

Flying is Better than Driving

Leave a comment

If you know me (and if you’re bothering to actually read this blog, there’s a good chance that’s true), you know I’m an aviation “enthusiast,” to put it mildly. I won’t publicly admit I’m crazy about aviation because the FAA might ground me for mental health reasons, but I’m sure you can draw your own unscientific and unproven-in-a-court-of-law conclusions. I love to fly. I love to fly because you can’t beat the views. I love to fly because it takes skill and concentration but is simultaneously exciting and relaxing. I love to fly because I can take day-trips to places it would take others a weekend to make.

When I try to share my “passion” for aviation, it’s not uncommon for me to hear responses like:

That must be fun, but flying is really expensive, right? I mean, I’ve heard aviation gas is really pricey.

I worry sometimes that folks are using the assumption of avgas price as an excuse to never consider learning to fly. Becoming a pilot, of course, is not for everyone; and yes, avgas costs more per gallon than car gas; but it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.

To help illustrate, let’s look at the fuel and time costs for cars versus airplanes. The devil’s in the details, they say, so I’m going to use a whole bunch of averages and assumptions I pulled from some quick Google searches.

My Assumptions

Exact results will vary, of course; but to get things started, let’s list out my assumptions:

  • Traveling as a family of 4
    • 2 adults
    • 1 teenager
    • 1 less-than-6-year-old
  • Car
    • Driving at posted road speed limits for the route
    • Fuel burn is 23.6 miles per gallon (national average)
    • Gas is $3 per gallon (national average)
  • Airplane
    • Flying an average (and extremely common) Cessna 172
    • Cruising at 140 mph
    • Burns about 9 gallons per hour, so we’ll get about 15.5 miles per gallon at cruise speed
    • Avgas is $5.20 per gallon (national average)

Continue reading Flying is Better than Driving →

Aviation, Personal Log

Crash on Longlake

Leave a comment

The road to a dormant blog is paved with good intentions. I had all sorts of opportunity over this last year to write, but something or another more important always usurped priority. Even more so, I had no shortage of topics with which to opine. There were many aviation trips, numerous adventures with my family, and a plethora of ideas to investigate. One such family adventure involved one of the shortest aviation trips we’ve ever taken and raises to mind some ideas about natural overreaction as a standard response.

This story begins, as many of my stories seem to the last couple of years, with a flight in our airplane. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, or more specifically: Saturday, June 14. (I love flight logbooks.) We didn’t have a lot of time that day, so we decided to hop in the airplane and make a very short trip from Bremerton National to Longlake, a trip so short you hardly get into a cruise configuration before you need to setup for descent. It was just an excuse to enjoy the water on a summer afternoon.

Our airplane is a boat-plane amphibian without floats, so it sits fairly low in the water. This is me in displacement taxi on Longlake:

Lake on Long Lake

We came in for a landing toward the south end of the lake, and we were down and into idle-power displacement taxi in a few seconds, having only consumed the bottom quarter of the lake surface.

Continue reading Crash on Longlake →