What happens when you’re a sailor, your boat has been detained by port authorities, and the owners aren’t paying, letting you stay stuck for the better part of a year, running out of food and supplies? Why, you wait for a revolution to break out, of course. That’s what happened to a Georgian boat that has been stuck in the Libyan port of Misurata for 11 months.
So you’re flying your airplane late at night and approach an obscure airport. You try to radio the tower, but there’s no response. The tower is unmanned. Not altogether unusual… pilots are able to land at uncontrolled airports, using the radio to inform one another of their progress if there’s more than one airplane about.
Oh, did I say obscure airport? Well, there’s the problem. The airport where this happened last night wasn’t some municipal airfield in Wyoming or the Yukon. It was Reagan National Airport, in Washington, D. C.
Reportedly, the lone controller in the airport’s control tower either managed to lock himself out or fell asleep.
Here’s a useful unit of measure that I just found out about, thanks to Bruce Schneier’s security blog: it’s called a micromort, a one-in-a-million probability of death. Curiously, according to the Wikipedia, your chances of dying on a train due to an accident are the same as your chances of dying due to cosmic radiation received while flying on a jet: 1 micromort every six thousand miles.
I’ve been driving in Ottawa for 23 years, and I’ve been annoyed for these 23 years by what used to be until recently the city’s only roundabout: a roundabout with the wrong traffic rules.
Well, apparently if you wish for something long enough, your wish sometimes does come true. According the a news report I just heard on CBC Ottawa, this odd roundabout will be fixed in the spring and will conform to the rules for traffic circles.
Wow.
Just like after 9/11, the airspace of an entire region is closed today, grounding thousands of flights in the UK and Northern Europe.
Unlike on 9/11, this time around the closure is not the result of the panicked, knee-jerk reaction of clueless politicians and officials. It is the result of a volcanic eruption in Iceland:
The plume, clearly visible in this Eumetsat image, is a grave threat to aviation. 28 years ago, volcanic ash almost brought down a British Airways 747 full of passengers, and since then, numerous airliners have been damaged as they flew through similar plumes. Grounding all flights in the affected areas seems like a dramatic, but justified response to a very real threat.
Now the question is this: how long? According to news reports, the eruption shows no signs of abating. Will they keep flights grounded for days, even weeks if necessary?
I drove coast-to-coast and back across the North American continent twice already, and doubtless I’ll do it again. I love long road trips. In another life, I might have become a trucker.
Here’s a road trip that I’d really enjoy, were it not for the severe lack of security in places (especially if you’re driving a vehicle with a North American license plate):
I needed Microsoft Bing to build this trip, and I had to do it in three segments [1, 2, 3]. Anyhow, it’s about 17,500 kilometers, and might require 188 hours of driving. There-and-back… sounds like a two-month vacation.
Hmmm. Perhaps one day.
Imagine… a person leaves behind a politically charged manifesto, and then flies an airplane into a crowded office building with the intent of killing himself along with many other people. A terrorist?
Not according to the United States government, who promptly assured us that the incident that occurred today in Austin, Texas, is not terrorism-related.
So what exactly defines terrorism? Does the perpetrator have to be, in addition to a politically motivated suicidal murderer, also brown-skinned and of the Muslim persuasion?
No, I’m not referring to the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight carrying that hapless Nigerian youth with the not-so-exploding underwear. I’m talking about another flight, this one from Slovakia to Ireland, on which a passenger carried some 90 grams of high explosive… courtesy of the Slovak government, whose agents were using real explosives, hidden in real passengers’ luggage, to train dogs, but then forgot to take the explosive out.
And it’s these people who ask us to give up all expectations of privacy, because ostensibly they are here to “protect” us.
The terrorists have won. We might as well all change religion right now, pledge our faith in Allah and His Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him), denounce reason, clad our women in burkas, and start learning all the Suras of the Koran.
All it takes is one disruptive passenger to keep a planeload of people stuffed in an airplane for hours, while idiotic security officers lay out all their luggage on the tarmac and do whatever else it is that they do, all the while treating free citizens as potential enemies. Meanwhile, 24-hour news channels provide uninterrupted coverage of the poor airplane sitting at a remote corner of an airfield as if this was the most important event happening on this planet.
The terrorists wanted to frighten me and they succeeded… I am terrified, actually. But no, I’m not terrified of madmen trying to blow up my plane (it might happen, but the probability remains extremely low), what I am terrified of is uniformed guardians of our collective safety and security taking away my rights and my liberty, a threat I have to face every time I go near an airplane.
Twenty-three years ago, I escaped from Communism. I thought I was seeking political asylum. I didn’t realize that I’d end up in an insane asylum. What can I say… the Commies tried to warn me, I just didn’t listen.
A friend of mine visited this weekend from the US, and bought some Hungarian salami. It was confiscated at the border upon his return. They couldn’t fine him, because he wasn’t hiding anything, but two nice, yummy (not to mention pricey) sticks of world class salami are now in the garbage somewhere, probably marked with biohazard stickers.
He was given extra scrutiny because last year, when he brought back some salami from Hungary, it, too, was confiscated. After all, Protecting the Homeland cannot be accomplished without preventing Americans from eating foreign meats on home soil. (Curiously, before Hungary joined the EU in 2004, the same salami was widely available in the US but not in Canada. It is the same salami, made using the same hundred-year-old recipe.)
My friend’s misfortune reminded me of one of my encounters with Canada’s fearless protectors of the border many years ago: I drove to Ogdensburg to pick up a parcel (value: approximately 20 dollars) but on the way back, I also visited a Radio Shack where I found some high capacity NiCd batteries (value: approximately 20 dollars). At the border, it didn’t even occur to me to mention the batteries, I did mention that I went to pick up a package. They decided to search my car. They found the batteries. They kept me at the border post for a whole hour, while they did the paperwork necessary in order for me to pay about 5 dollars in sales tax on the imported items. They also warned me that my name will be on some list for a year or more, and that I should anticipate increased scrutiny in the future. Apart from the fact that this experience was both annoying and intimidating, I was also wondering: is this really the best use of taxpayer money?
Then there’s the Sunday last year when I was driving to the US to attend a conference, only to be drilled by a US border agent extensively about why I am going and who’s paying me. I kept telling him that the only paying that’s being done is payment of a hefty conference fee by me, and eventually, managed to convince him to look up the conference Web pages (on a NASA Web site, no less) that, fortunately, contained a list of all attendees. Thus I was able to enter the great United States of America without being further accused of trying to steal a job from an illegal Mexican immigrant.
Or here’s another experience: I was flying back from Europe, and at Ottawa airport, I was asked if I had a laptop. Yes, I answered. I was asked if I use it for personal purposes. Yes, I answered. So I was directed to the examination room. Ahead of me, a person had two laptops, a Mac and a PC, and Canada Customs’ well trained experts had real trouble examining the Mac. For this reason, they kept me waiting. And waiting. Meanwhile, they were going through the family photos of my fellow passenger. The time I spent waiting kept me thinking. I decided that under no circumstances will I give these goons my passwords, or give them control of my machine. I would tell them that the machine’s data are encrypted (they are) and that they are free to confiscate the computer, which would only cost me some money and some inconvenience, as I’d have to set up a new laptop with all the software I use. But I did not escape from a one-party dictatorship only to give up basic, fundamental rights to privacy just because these goons look at me, in my mid forties, and conclude that I must be dumb enough to traffic in kiddie porn, carrying it on a physical laptop across the border. Fortunately, I did not have to test my resolve: to their credit, they first apologized to me a couple of times because of the extra wait, and eventually (after some 20 minutes or more), they let me go without inspecting the laptop. But, my policy stands… indeed, I am ready to follow one of security expert Bruce Schneier’s recommendations and encrypt the laptop prior to crossing a border using a one-time, unrecoverable password that I first communicate to a third party in a safe third country. That way, I could tell them truthfully that nobody, neither they nor I, can recover the contents of the laptop for inspection.
Anyhow, here is my question, to the citizens of the US and Canada. Clearly, these people do not serve our collective interests. Even when they (rather rarely) catch the occasional kiddie porn or drug trafficker, the price we pay, I submit, is way too high. In any case, it seems that most of the time they’re just harassing law-abiding citizens for the fun of it, because they can. Supposedly, our great countries are true democracies. So… exactly why do we keep these bullies, these goons, in lawful employment, costing taxpayers billions of dollars every year, why don’t we kick them in the butt so hard that they wouldn’t even be able to sit for weeks, and get rid of this stupid, anachronistic border control system?
Meanwhile, in Europe, you can land at the airport in Lisbon, Portugal, rent a car, and drive all the way to Vilnius, Lithuania, without ever being stopped for a customs inspection. The example set by Europe is not always something we should follow, but perhaps in this case, we should make an exception and get rid of this ridiculousness. And the goons.
Sir Nicholas Winton celebrated his 100th birthday earlier this year. This British gentleman arranged the rescue of many hundreds of predominantly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in 1939. In recognition of this event, a commemorative train ride was organized this year; what became known as the Winton Train, carrying many of the survivors and their descendants, arrived at Liverpool Street station in London earlier today, to be greeted there by Nicholas Winton himself, among others.
During the last leg of its trip across Europe, the Winton Train was pulled by 60163 Tornado, a brand new mainline steam locomotive, the first one built in the United Kingdom in nearly half a century.
I’ve been reading about the Budapest subway and I found out that it is available as a package for the BVE train simulator. With a moderate amount of effort, I downloaded the software and put it to work, and presto… I was driving M2 through Budapest, from the Southern Railway Station all the way to the eastern part of the city.
Then I drove for a second time, but this time around I didn’t stop at any of the stations and ignored all the signals. I’m allowed to… it is just a game. Yet I felt terribly guilty all along, as if afraid that I might get caught or something. Inhibitions are a strange thing.
We have a genuine no-kidding UFO mystery in Ottawa today: in what sounds like a Doctor Who plot (just replace London with Ottawa), according to many eyewitnesses on both sides of the Ottawa river, a flying object fell into the river around 10 PM last night. Yet no small planes are missing from any airports in the vicinity, and no pilot is known to be missing either. Now police have found an object underwater, and it’s reported to be about 9 meters long… but it turned out to be a bunch of rocks or logs, not an airplane. Hence, the FO that fell into the river last night remains firmly U for the time being. Curious.
When I heard yesterday that the government of Canada was about to impose visa requirements for Czech and Mexican citizens visiting Canada, my first thought was to wonder just how inept Harper’s government really is: imposing a visa requirement smack in the middle of the summer tourist season, with no warning and no preparation, is just plain stupid, it will inconvenience tens of thousands of legitimate visitors, and will cost the Canadian tourism industry millions of dollars.
But today, there are comments from the immigration minister that the Canadian immigration system is in need of a serious revision. What a wonderful country we live in, with all those rocket scientists working for the government who figured this out. But if this ever so clever minister of ours actually knows this, then why the visa requirements? Why not spend his efforts instead on these supposedly much needed revisions of the immigration system itself?
Ah, I got it. Now that the whole thing is on the national news, which wouldn’t have happened without seriously pissing off the Czechs and the Mexicans, he can claim urgency, and perhaps even get credit in the end for a decisive solution. That the urgency is a result of his own ineptness, I guess he hopes it will be quickly forgotten.
I was watching the noon local newscast and learned that the Wakefield steam train, a popular tourist attraction nearby, is back in service, after it has been shut down in the middle of its track Saturday due to an electrical fault in its engine that could not be repaired right away.
Wait a minute. Steam train? Electric fault?
My bet was on lightning, but perhaps I was wrong: it appears that there is good reason to believe that the in-flight breakup of Air France 447 was due to the pilots’ struggle to stay in control of an airplane with a faulty speed sensor.
AF447 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris has not arrived this morning; contact was lost some four hours into the flight, after the airplane flew through what was described by French officials as stormy weather. The last signal from the airplane, if news reports can be believed, was an indication of some electrical fault. A journalist mentioned lightning. At cruising altitude? Yet if it was lightning, I cannot help but be reminded of the fact that the Airbus 330 uses composite materials, carbon composites in particular, extensively; these have a higher electrical resistance than metal, and thus would be heated greatly by a lightning strike; and that experts I heard interviewed over the years said it’s just a matter of time before this will cause a major accident.
I have no idea what Tamil protesters in downtown Ottawa want. Nor do I care.
But if they think that blocking traffic and effectively shutting down public transportation on a busy weekday afternoon in the middle of a spring snowstorm is a way to garner sympathy… well, perhaps it’s time to think again. Whatever their demonstration is for, I am against it.
Yes, they do teach this in flight school. But even professionals make mistakes… and when those professionals happen to be pilots, they often pay with their lives:
Fortunately (?) in this case only the pilots had to pay, as the airplane in question was a FedEx cargo plane.
In 2002, a tragic accident occurred over the skies of Europe, as a Russian passenger liner and a DHL cargo plane collided, causing the deaths of some 70 people, including the family of a certain Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect working in Barcelona at the time.
Two years later Kaloyev killed Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller that he believed was responsible for the death of his daughter. He was duly convicted and spent some time in prison. He was eventually released in late 2007 after winning an appeal on the grounds that his mental state at the time of the killing was not taken properly into account. He returned to Russia where many greeted him as a hero.
This is where things turn bizarre. Not long after Kaloyev’s return, Russia went to war with Georgia. One outcome of this war was the declaration of independence by the state of South Ossetia. Nationalists feelings were high on both sides of the intra-Ossetian border. And Vitaly Kaloyev was named deputy minister of housing in North Ossetia.
I can understand Kaloyev’s feelings. I can even understand why he killed Nielsen, even though Nielsen was himself a victim of incompetent management and bad organization. What I don’t understand is how a convicted killer can be named to such a high-profile public position. I think it speaks volumes about the politics of the region.