Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

So, authorities now believe that the Germanwings crash was the result of pilot suicide. As my wife pointed out, they can’t actually prove that. As far as we know, there was no suicide note anywhere, and we don’t actually know what happened inside the cockpit – except that he locked the regular pilot out when he went to the bathroom.
Lots of suggestions are being made about how to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. That a stewardess should stay in the cockpit if the pilot has to go out, stuff like that (hey, pilot! It’s a 2 hour flight, can’t you hold it? Why didn’t you go in Barcelona?)
The ultimate safety feature is just around the technological corner. We have driverless cars; can driverless planes be far behind?
The technology will probably be the easy part. There is a natural human reluctance to completely trust machines. Although I’m convinced we’ll eventually get there – we got used to elevators without elevator boys and gas stations without attendants, eventually – there may well be a significant lag between technological capability and actual implementation.
I know I find it reassuring to realize there is a well-trained, professional pilot flying the plane. I always figure he (or she) wants to get through the flight alive as much as I do, and I’ll make it as long as they do. Now, I’m a little bit less certain of that.
In other news, the good folks at the Large Hadron Collider are going to attempt to create a miniature black hole. On the one hand, I’m excited about that and it’s cool; the march of science is a stirring parade. On the other hand, I saw Flash Forward. Actually, the TV series was set in L.A., and it devolved pretty quickly into a stupid cop show, but the book was set in Geneva, and it was the LHC that caused the problem.
Back on the first hand again, I take solace in the fact that people who work at the LHC are very smart, and don’t necessarily want to destoy the universe.
At least I hope so.
So, authorities now believe that the Germanwings crash was the result of pilot suicide. As my wife pointed out, they can’t actually prove that. As far as we know, there was no suicide note anywhere, and we don’t actually know what happened inside the cockpit – except that he locked the regular pilot out when he went to the bathroom.
Lots of suggestions are being made about how to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. That a stewardess should stay in the cockpit if the pilot has to go out, stuff like that (hey, pilot! It’s a 2 hour flight, can’t you hold it? Why didn’t you go in Barcelona?)
The ultimate safety feature is just around the technological corner. We have driverless cars; can driverless planes be far behind?
The technology will probably be the easy part. There is a natural human reluctance to completely trust machines. Although I’m convinced we’ll eventually get there – we got used to elevators without elevator boys and gas stations without attendants, eventually – there may well be a significant lag between technological capability and actual implementation.
I know I find it reassuring to realize there is a well-trained, professional pilot flying the plane. I always figure he (or she) wants to get through the flight alive as much as I do, and I’ll make it as long as they do. Now, I’m a little bit less certain of that.
In other news, the good folks at the Large Hadron Collider are going to attempt to create a miniature black hole. On the one hand, I’m excited about that and it’s cool; the march of science is a stirring parade. On the other hand, I saw Flash Forward. Actually, the TV series was set in L.A., and it devolved pretty quickly into a stupid cop show, but the book was set in Geneva, and it was the LHC that caused the problem.
Back on the first hand again, I take solace in the fact that people who work at the LHC are very smart, and don’t necessarily want to destoy the universe.
At least I hope so.

Of course, the American presidential election won’t begin in earnest for almost another year. Nonetheless, I’m going to make a prediction now. Why not? The professional pundits have been at it for over 3 years already. Presidential election season is stretched out worse than NBA basketball.

I predict that the Republican nominee will be Jeb Bush. (There’s an advantage to making a prediction this early. If I turn out to be right, I get to claim to be a political genius. If I’m wrong, there will be plenty of time to make another prediction.)
The reason I believe it will be Jeb, the somewhat-less-retarded-but-probably-just-as evil-Bush brother, is that Huffington post has a big, blaring headline (the only kind they know how to do) that says: “Christian Right: Anybody but Jeb”
Shades of 2012. They came to the front one by one, grabbed their little bit of fame, and burned out. Michelle Bachmann not knowing the difference between Johyn Wayne and John Wayne Gacy cost her Iowa and she was out. John Huntsman spoke a bit of Chinese, which would have actually been a plus if he was running as a Democrat, but that was just way too high falutin’. Then Rick Perry with the famous maple syrup incident, Herman Cain with that dumb You-Becky-Becky-Beckystan comment, and Santorum did or said something Santorumish. Meanwhile, the Christian Right was saying “Anybody but Romney.”
It’s deja vu, all over again.

Ityway.

Rumor has it that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is actuallyquite an intelligent guy. I have two things to say about that.

First, after George W. Bush, the idea that an Ivy League education implies actual intelligenceshouldbe thoroughly debunked. Second, if he actually is smart and says the stupid stuff he says, such as threatening to repeal laws which don’t actually exist (common core), that is seriously bizarre, and twisted.
Ditto for Ben Carson and Tom Cotton.
Why would they do that? Why would intelligent people continue to promote unintelligent ideas? (Denying science is most definitely a stupid idea. Science does not stop working just because people say it doesn’t.) One possibility is that, quite simply, they are paid to. Another could be that, like Cruz, they’ve got some wackadoodle idea that bringing about the apocalypse (i.e. WWIII) is fulfilling Biblical prophecy.
Personally, I think the extinction of the human race is a bad idea. I think most normally intelligent people would agree, realizing that the extinction of the human race includes them.
What is needed is a Smart Party. That doesn’t just mean that its candidates would be smart (see Cruz, Cotton, Carson), it means a party dedicated to the idea that intelligence (and by that I mean reason, logic, and objective calculation, not just clandestinely gathered information as in ‘military intelligence) is an important part of good governance. Economics? Do the math. Whether or not to wage war? Study history. Study the region. Find intelligent alternatives. Solar power, Global Warming, Legalization of Marijuana – what do the scientists say?
It would be a formidable political force.

Just got the news that a friend of mine died in a scuba diving accident in Egypt – about a week ago.

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It’s a funny thing, death. It comes for us all eventually. When it happens at the end of a long, fulfilled life we still feel sad, but we are not surprised by it.
But death is not always so patient. Some times it just reaches out and grabs someone who is right in the middle of life, who is busy living, who still has dreams for the future and many expected years in which to enjoy the many pleasures of life; someone who is still alive and healthy and fit. My reaction to that is disbelief.
It just doesn’t seem natural that Nick is dead.
I first met him at a poetry reading. It must have been in 2000 or 2001, because we were still holding them at Radost. He’d studied Russian literature and could recite Russian poetry by heart. I was quite impressed. I soon found out that he was knowledgeable on a wide range of subjects.
He had strong opinions, that’s for sure, and was very idealistic. He tried to set up a utopian community in the east of the Czech Republic, and he had a lot of brilliant ideas for it, but somehow it never took off.
Then he went to Denmark and I know he loved it there. He’d stop by sometimes when he was back in Prague, we’d smoke a few joints and he’d tell me of his travels. He was a great traveler.
He was an animal lover, and left behind a super cool dog, a huge, black, totally mellow creature named D.O.G. My kids love D.O.G. I understand he’s been taken in by some Czech friends, and I’m happy to hear that.
I’m sorry to hear you’re gone, Nick. I still don’t quite believe it. You will always be remembered.