Red Bull Air Race!

First, a life update: I had my first brush with palinka (Hungary's liquor of choice) this evening. As was said at the time, now I have been officially welcomed to the nation. Also, today I was served french toast with sour cream. When in Rome?

Moving on:
Conveniently co-located with St. Stephen's day (a national holiday, Wednesday), the Red Bull Air Race is going on in Budapest. The first of two days was Tuesday, with 12 pilots duking it out on an obstacle course on the Danube to determine which eight would battle it out Wednesday for the top prize.

Step #1 (above): Fly really, really close over the Chain Bridge. (They were originally supposed to fly underneath, but rains in Austria caused the Danube to swell too high.)

Step #2 (below): Go through pylons that are very close together either parallel or perpendicular to the water (based on the color on the pylons). Do a few loop-de-loops as required. And do them quickly, as this entire race is timed.

Step #3: After you go through the last pylon, do some sweet pilot celebration. If you are the Hungarian pilot, you must do something exceptionally awesome because this is your home turf. Perhaps you should cause your plane to flip end-over-end front-to-back from a dizzying height until it looks like you are going to plummet into the Danube, but then pull yourself out of it at the last second. The crowd will go wild.

Random facts:

• So, you know the Senate's seniority system encourages incumbents to be re-elected (you want your state's senator to have a good position on a committee, abundant institutional knowledge, etc.). But how much might this skew the composition of the Senate? Let's use a proxy. Of our US senators, 26 are over 70 years old. You have to be 30 to be elected as a senator. So, 26% of the Senate-electable population of the Senate (i.e. the entire Senate) is over 70. In the general US population, 16% of Senate-electable people (>30 year olds) are over 70. So, there is a 10% gap in age distribution between the Senate and the general population. Furthermore, this does not take into account that there are only 16 women currently in the Senate. While 18% of Senate-electable women in the general population are over 70 years old, only 13% of Senate-electable men in the general population are over 70 (compare these numbers vs. the 16%). The disproportionate number of men in the Senate mean that this 10% gap is actually even wider. Granted, one exception/limitation to using age as a proxy for seniority is that you could win a first-term Senate position as a 71-year-old. While I couldn't find a good source to validate this quickly, this has certainly happened rarely at most. Also, a 55-year-old senator could certainly be more senior than a 75-year-old senator, depending on how many terms he/she served. Regardless, a >10% gap between the Senate's and the general population's age distribution is a sizable one, and something I found kind of interesting.
• Nuclear energy provides ~75% of France's energy, and ~20% of America's.
• The US pays Cuba $4,085/month for the land at Guantanamo Bay, based on a 1934 agreement (not indexed to inflation). Cuba's Castro-led government has refused to cash all but the first check.