Posts by Berck

If I were political scientist, perhaps I could have titled this post, “Why our Democracy (Republic) Sucks”, but I don’t know why. There are complaints about the two-party system which are well-founded, but I don’t think that’s it. The biggest problem is probably more closely related to television news than anything. In any case, it looks like I won’t be voting for a presidential candidate in 2008. I spent awhile trying to find one I could vote for.

Clinton voted for the Patriot Act, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, No Child Left Behind Act, the Secure Fence Act, favors censorship, favors the US bombing other nations. While I’m all for socialized health care, what the hell is it she wants to do to health care again? I still don’t understand. She displays little respect for our Constitution. In addition to ignoring the second amendment, she “supports making flag burning illegal, but without adopting the constitutional Flag Desecration Amendment to do so.” What the hell? The supreme court says that laws banning flag burning are unconstitutional–that means you can amend the constitution or give it up, not pass another unconstitutional law. She thinks we should just hand out tax dollars as birthday presents (WTF?). Clearly I can’t vote for her.

What about Obama? It’s hard to say– he’s been trying hard not to have a position on anything. He co-sponsored the BioFuels Security Act–you don’t have to be a genius to realize that ethanol-based fuels are a bad idea, but at least he’s in favor of at least considering renewed interest in nuclear power. He’s sensible about health care, realizing that an out-and-out socialized health care is the way to go, we’re already spending enough mismanaged health care tax dollars to pay for it. Unfortunately, it looks like he too is all for pointlessly bombing other countries. He makes good noises about immigration saying that he “will not support any bill that does not provide [an] earned path to citizenship for the undocumented population,” but then he votes for the Secure Fences Act. Other than the fact that he won’t say a whole lot, so I don’t have enough to complain about, my biggest complaint is that he voted for the 2006 Patriot Re-Act.

My best bet was probably Ron Paul. This is a guy who has (mostly) a deep respect for the US Constitution. In response to the 2001 attacks, rather than declaring war on an ideal, or unconstitutionally using US troops abroad, he proposed the Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001 which would use a little-known power of congress to issue a Letter of Marque and Reprisal in response to an act of air piracy. Which is brilliant. While he votes against almost all legislation, he did vote for the Secure Fence Act, which is a blatant waste of funds if I’ve ever seen one. He wants to round up and deport illegal immigrants. Furthermore, he would like to amend the US Constitution to abolish birthright citizenship–the one thing that made this country what it is today. I can’t vote for someone who doesn’t appreciate that we’re all (aside from the Native Americans) immigrants. Finally, his anti-abortion stance wouldn’t be a problem because he believes that, “the federal government has no authority whatsoever to involve itself in the abortion issue,” which I can understand. But then he hypocritically votes for the partial-birth abortion ban! I can only support a candidate’s principles if he sticks by them.

Jonah’s a fan of Mike Huckabee. Aside from the fact that he doesn’t appear to have but maybe one or two more brain cells than our current president, I’ve got a lot of problems with him. We’ll start with his one similarity to Ron Paul: In a 2006 interview, Huckabee said that the legality of abortion “should be left to the states”. Okay, great. Then, in November 2007, he told Fox News that the federal government should outlaw abortion, stating, “For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you can’t simply have 50 different versions of what’s right.” Umm, yeah. He clearly has no respect for the Constitution, hoping to amend it to include a definition of marriage, because clearly that’s what it’s for. He’s demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the separation of church and state. His record in Arkansas proves that he’s fiscally irresponsible. He’s all for the clearly-not-working plan of sending more troops into Iraq, and in general seems to be in favor of blowing up other countries. And there’s reasonable evidence that he’s as unconcerned with civil liberties as our current president, and plenty of evidence that he’s an idiot. In 1992, he actually suggested that we quarantine AIDS victims: “If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague. It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.” And simultaneously opposed federal funding of AIDS research, suggesting that Hollywood pay for it. Finally, he seems to think that we need tougher penalties for drug crimes, because, “they work,” and that we need to build more prisons to house the druggies. Course, he pardoned over 1,000 criminals in Arkansas because they found Jesus. Yup, a real winner. I’m actually pulling for him in the Republican primaries, because I suspect he’s totally unelectable. But then I thought that about Dubya, too…

I’ve spent a long while trying to make sense of the data NASA’s National Aviation Operational Monitoring Service Information Release. Making sense of the data is difficult at best. There’s been a lot of fuss made about this, statements that the findings were “so scary” that NASA tried to bury the data.

From my quick glance at it, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think this study, while a great idea, is rather flawed in its execution. I think NASA realized this, and that’s why they’ve tried to bury it–mostly because it ended up being a waste of $11 million. The information was obtained in telephone interviews, but the people interviewing the pilots and recording the data didn’t speak the same language as the pilots. NASA basically contracted with a bunch of social scientists to conduct the survey, and reading some of the summaries makes it obvious that the folks asking the questions didn’t really understand the answers, particularly to the free-form sections. Furthermore, I think that it’s easy for the public to be a bit alarmist about the whole thing since they tend to be quite skittish about airplanes in general, and here are a bunch of pilots talking about their biggest safety concerns.

If we look at the safety record of the airline industry, we see the flying is safer than hurtling through the air at 500mph in an aluminum tube has any right to be. Are there still problems? You betcha, and a look at the pilot’s free-form responses to the question, “Was there anything not addressed in this survey that you think should be addressed in future surveys?” really reveals what pilots think are the biggest problems in airline safety: Radio frequency congestion and pilot fatigue. This isn’t news, and little is being done to combat either problem. Radio discipline among airline pilots sucks (and is only somewhat better among Air Force pilots I’ve flown with) and significantly contributes to the basic problem which is too many planes, too few controllers and too few frequencies. Pilot fatigue is the bigger issue. The current regulations on duty rest are stupidly complicated and don’t do anything to address the biggest problem: airlines failing to take into account circadian rhythm and/or actual sleep when calculating rest requirements. For instance, if you’re scheduled to fly 8 hours in a 24 hour period there must be a rest period of at least 9 hours in that 24 hour period (could be reduced to 8 hours if you get 11 hours compensatory rest in the next 24 hours). Now, that doesn’t mean that you get 8 hours of SLEEP, just rest. Rest starts 15 minutes after the engines are shut down at the gate, and ends when you show up at the airport for your next flight. So, 8 hours of rest is going to be 6 hours of sleep if you’re lucky and the hotel is close. But, there’s also nothing that says that rest can’t be from, say, 6am-2pm. That would obviously not result in a well-rested pilot if he’s used to sleeping normal hours. It’s entirely possible that a pilot could be asked to work nights 4 days in a week, then switch and work days. Pilots call it “flip-flopping” and it’s dangerous, but it’s legal and the airlines do schedule it. Pilots responses in Block D3 of the NAOMS survey reveals pretty plainly that they’re worried about it without having to do crazy machinations on the data.

Just too good.