Peter Riva's Blog, page 4

Planes, Space and What's Next

Anyone who has been flying knows that planes are flying older, way past their retire-by dates. As airlines continue to make huge profits (and not repay the government a single dime of their bail-out package thanks to the House), they are turning to new aircraft to swap with old.

The most successful airplane for short haul is the Boeing 737. There are eight versions flying and after next year there will be another called 737-Max, adding another 5 rows of seats (almost back to the 1958 Boeing 707 length; which was its daddy). Airbus has a 320Neo coming out which is equally fuel efficient but not as robust many companies feel. Meanwhile, operators of the Boeing 787 report it exceeds its fuel economy, making it more profitable than thought. And still ticket prices don’t come down.

Then there is China that rolled out the Comac ARJ21 – but that is probably a few years off. Seems that building complex modern, certifiable, aircraft is harder than they thought. Just ask Sukhoi and their Superjet 100 – which has so far failed all international standards testing. Meanwhile, Airbus is faced with a fall-off in demand for the giant AB380 and may shutter that plant, spelling political and financial disaster for Airbus.

US airlines, given a free hand by the FAA and Congress, will squeeze more passengers on every plane in 2015. Remember the Wall Street Motto, issued publically for Jet Blue: “Care more about profit than passengers!”
And then there is the US military, struggling with the F35 Joint Strike Fighter (which isn’t a good compromise nor cost effective – already being replaced on the drawing board). Maybe the Marines will get theirs by December, but the AF and Navy are already looking at another 18 month delay with electronic problems. They fly, yes, but stuff doesn’t work and the plane is vulnerable. 

India is now also a plane developer with the cheap and effective (less sophisticated) Hindustan Aero Tejas Mk. 1 fighter. Development cost to date? $1.2 billion. Less than 10% of the F35 development cost (that was reported!). Russia, meanwhile, desperate for foreign currency to offset the drop in oil prices, is stepping up its sales and discounting of military jets – and very competent jets they are too. Not as electronically sophisticated, but effective, reliable.

As for space, the frosty US-Russia relations after the Ukraine has several companies scrambling in the US to get a US government contract to make US rockets again instead of relying on the Russians for space deployment. So it’ll be boom time for SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Kisler, and Boeing. Of course, the AF’s space plane is still secret for manned launch, so Boeing and SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Nasa’s Orion capsule (which flew twice around the world in orbit last month, in case you missed it) will get a good deal of publicity in tests. And if the massive Falcon rocket booster by SpaceX launches successfully, it’ll become America’s most powerful rocket since the Saturn 5 which took men to the moon: Falcon will lift a massive 22 tons to geosynchronous transfer orbit!

I Am All Races. I am American.

USA Today, “America is browning and Hollywood needs to catch up…” Gayle King on CBS This Morning on Friday 1/16 made a racial slur using the term “whites” in a pejorative context. Across the country the Oscar nominations are adding fuel to the already smoking issues of racial inequality especially amongst police tragedies.

I do have a solution. Everyone even thinking of taking public office or having the capability of speaking publically should take a DNA test. Gayle King? No way she is not also part of other races. Jerry Fallwell, Skinheads, or the LA Sheriffs or the St. Louis cops, or the NYC Police or even President Obama… all of them should take and post their genetic lineage. Me? I know I must be part Nordic, part North African, perhaps part Asian… I have recent Italians on one side and Prussian on the other, but family history shows my ancestors lived all across the globe. In fact with DNA testing, there is not one person alive who does not have genetic roots that do not span back to other races, other continents, other skin color, eye color, hair color, shape of skull, chemical make-up… the list of variations in every one of us is scientific fact. Let’s leave aside those Venusians or whatever Scientologists think they are.

Look, people have this conversation all wrong. Yes there is skin color discrimination. Yes there is facial muscle, body type, and other physiological differences. But we all came from a distinct and clearly defined group of common mothers (DNA traces the mother’s line, not the father’s). What we need to do is bring our true genetic background out of the closet, see ourselves for who we truly are. I refuse (and have refused) to tick the box “Caucasian” on Police and Immigration forms. Why? Because it tells only part of the story and therefore it is, in fact, a lie. If any police officer is frightened because of the color of someone’s skin or Italian accent, or Russian background - how much more secure would he or she feel if they knew they had ancestors in common, and not only see the differences?

Commonality, that is the American way. Integration as one country. It is time we added racial commonality to the equation. And the only way to stop people using their eyes to discriminate and mislead their psyche is to have each and every one of us to realize that, genetically, we are all the same. There is NO racial difference except in petty percentages. And really, do you see anyone pretending “You’re Asian and I’m not,” when the ratio may be 62% to 55%. Such a distinction would be, is, silly. Language, cultural, religious differences could then exist without the overtones of racial superiority playing a hand. We are not all the same in all tastes, beliefs or the words we use. But when it comes to racial background? You bet we are.

Of course, there is one other societal discrimination that DNA testing will not solve: sex. But as for men and women, I say vive la difference. For anything else, I say “I Am Human.”

1995 Kenya - feeding the Giraffe Manor animals across the...

1995 Kenya - feeding the Giraffe Manor animals across the valley.

Great Review!! Click on image.http://www.fantascize.com/

Great Review!! Click on image.

http://www.fantascize.com/

Torture is Acceptable to 51% of Americans (Wall St. Journal/NBC Poll)

Such polls always shock me because such polls are always dependent on the question being asked. After being told only that the CIA used “harsh interrogation practices on suspected terrorists,” 51% of those surveyed said the “harsh” practices were “acceptable under the circumstances.”

Harsh interrogation practices? Are they kidding? Let’s ask the question another way: “Is it acceptable to keep a nude man in a cell until he freezes to death? Is it acceptable to mash up prisoners food and anally force feed him – and then refer to it in official reports as “rectal feeding?” Feeding? Really? Or how about subjecting prisoners to near drowning 20-30 times and calling that enhanced interrogation.

Dick Cheney’s take on the report? “This is full of crap…. Yeah, we knew about it, so what?” So very erudite and fitting for the man who orchestrated this shameful American program. And let’s hear from the “torture adviser” (definitely not a qualification I would want on my bio): “The report is a load of hooey.” Any intelligence there? Or was that a fitting parallel to the man’s base, violent, behavior?

For over 10 years we have all known that the USA was undertaking “extraordinary rendition” and EIT (Enhanced Interrogation Techniques). It has been revealed that when President Bush (a moral man) found out what EIT really was in 2006 he told them to stop, immediately (by Executive Order, in case my Republican friends do not know that he issued more of them than any president before or since).

And if you think it was only the CIA doing this EIT torture, guess again. How many other security and intelligence programs are we running in the USA? Over 16 from Navy Intelligence (think SEALS’ captures), Army Intelligence, the FBI Counter-Terrorism units, the good old NSA, and on and on. What, you thought only the CIA was capturing suspects and interrogating them? And wait until our allies like the British and Italians get outed as well. It is all a mess.

The root cause of the problem here is that we, as a nation, have turned to the legal system as our absolute measure of morality. We are wrong. Legal is not necessarily moral (think choke-hold). But once Cheney got the Justice Department to issue top secret re-definitions that designated these torture methods as mere interrogation, the various agencies had the legal right to do what they did, including spending $80 million taxpayer dollars to hire two doctors (forget their Hippocratic oath) to design these torture methods. And there is nothing we can do about any of this since it was “legal” at the time.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Torture by any other name is still torture. EIT was legal but immoral by any American standard. There may be a discussion the public would like to have about retribution and acceptable torture to prevent more innocents dying. But we never had that democratic discussion.

The last Administration simply moved the moral goalposts and, in the process (no matter if they did or did not get useful information), they have tarnished every single American and American company across the globe. How can we redress that? President Bush took the first step: Stop the EITs immediately. The Senate Intelligence Committee correctly took the second step: Call it what it was and deplore the secret, sanctioned, clandestine torture as un-American.

Torture is not moral, torture is not the American way. We cannot prosthelytize freedom and democracy if we indulge in such immoral torture. The two are inconsistent with each other. The path for America has always been to do the moral and correct thing, to do that which is self-evidently moral, not undertake methods that dictators, despots and criminals employ simply because we label it as legal. Did we not learn from the Nuremberg trials?

How damaging was all this? Countries like Iran, N. Korea, and China were quick to criticize the USA’ human rights’ abuses. Pot, kettle, black comes to mind. I hate to see our country even hinted at in their company.

The Real Police Need Our Support

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad explores the “well-meaning do-gooder” and concludes that they often do more harm than good. And so it is often with civil rights proponents, politicians, and so-called experts pandering to the fears of the public and inadequacy of police forces across the nation.

Look, let’s try and be honest here. Police men and women are woefully paid for long hours, often dangerous work, and, lately, hardly given any respect for the task they undertake that no one with the ability or education to find more gainful employment would want. The police are not like the military, wanting to serve their country. These are men and women who, for 99% of them, want to protect and serve all the while they get paid a living wage and benefits. Yes, they have the right morals, mostly, but police work is not national service and all the respect that engenders. And they know it.

Squeezed into a corner apart from society, armed with heavy weapons for their own protection and not primarily for the protection of citizens, the emphasis switches from we stand together to we stand apart, alone, protecting ourselves while we do our job. And that breeds job accomplishment as expediently, and often as violently, as possible.

What used to be a strong bond to one’s community has been replaced with shifting boundaries, well-meaning civil rights laws forcing police to dis-involve themselves in local communities. How? Well, in the fifties the local policeman was well known to all us Manhattan kids on our block for years. He knew us too. If he suspected we were up to no good, he’d either turn out our pockets or shoo us on home, off the street. That policeman was not apart from society, he was part of that simpler society. He was neighborhood.

Nowadays, understaffed, under-budgeted, under-trained, and certainly disconnected to local communities as they cruise by in squad cars, the police have a tough job. But that’s it, a job. And what do the taxpayers’ representatives do about it? They “fund” support for the police by giving them hand-me-down armor, weapons, Humvees, tanks and all manner of military equipment. Yes, all that hardware goes on the books as “funding.” Hardly. It’s pandering to real fears the police have that they are under-equipped, under-manned and increasingly frightened.

Why are they frightened? Surely with heavy weaponry and almost a free hand at violent apprehension of suspects they have nothing to fear, do they? Well, yes they do. Time was when a cop went bad his blue line broke the very real code of silence and exposed his or her criminality. But today, because of feelings of pressure and being underpaid, under-respected and under-staffed, they have done what any other animals do: form a pack for self-protection.

It is the public that should be protecting them, not their fellow officers. And certainly we should not be throwing heavy armaments at them thinking it solves the problem. Heavy weaponry just reinforces their role apart from society – turns them into a pack. If I was a police commissioner and I was offered 25 Humvees as trickle down help from Congress, I would say thank you, put up a “2nd Hand Humvees For Sale” sign and plow the money back into pay, training and community outreach. And that’s the key here. We do not need a police force as an arm of government, we need an educated, smart, police force as part of the community, part of us – not apart from us.

Multitasking & Modern Stress

Multitasking has always been around. Any primitive mother could tell you while holding the baby nursing, she would still make dinner. But in the recent decades, multitasking has taken on a technological significance in everyday activities that is so pervasive, no job or vocation seems possible without that necessity. In fact, the better you are at multitasking, the more likely you are to succeed.

There are exceptions, of course. Artists are mono-focused, writers too. Film directors used to be, but increasingly they have the role of producers as well, worried about all the minutiae of that business. Pilots and spacefarers are the ultimate multitaskers, with as many as fifty separate concerns at any one moment; it is why it takes so long to train the elite few who can manage all the systems and be proficient flyers.

Ever since the end of WWII, multitasking has grown exponentially. Cars used to be complex mechanical-only activities and then they put a radio in every car so that you are driving and listening to something unrelated at the same time. Perhaps that was the advent of our modern take on multitasking – doing two unrelated tasks at the same time. Typewriting used to encompass both mechanical function and mental composition. As they automated typewriters, did the mental composition get any easier? In cars, as they automated gear shifting, power brakes, ABS braking, power steering, computer-controlled ignition did driving get any less complicated? Well, yes it may have, but then they added GPS, stereo and DVD players, not to mention texting, text-to-speech features and now semi-robotic control. Think this reduces the multitasking of the driver? Hardly, ask any commuter.

Computer systems, the ones most of us use, are divided into two camps: Apple (7%) versus Windows/UNIX-based systems (93%). Apple designs computers that only handle one task at a time, making them the preferred tool of the so-called artistic people. When you are writing or composing music that’s all the computer is doing, nothing else. Windows computers are designed to allow many programs to operate at the same time. As I write this the email program is downloading email and the web browser is sending an FTP of mega files all the while a fax is coming in on the modem. Is one system better than the other? Users of either will swear one is. Their one. But Apple users think they are not multitasking. They are wrong. If they have more than one program open, their brain is multitasking, allotting schedules of use for each program, fitting the pieces together. For Windows users or UNIX users, they multitask by allocating function to each program open and checking frequently to see how things are going – is that email in yet?

iPhones have proved a great learning lesson for Apple computer users. Multitasking on iPhones is the rule, not the exception. Now Apple users know how 93% of the world copes with day-to-day use of Windows or UNIX systems. Multitasking is becoming so normal, so much a part of every job function, than none of us think about it anymore. But it is stressful. Think of it like this: Your computer (your brain) is juggling so many different tasks it can become overloaded and go blue-screen.

Why do we feel relieved when we do something simple? Fishing is never stressful. Neither is playing tennis. Why? Your brain is busy, you are busy, but in fact you may be physically busier. So why is it restful? Because you are not multitasking as you ski down that slope. You are “in the moment” you are mono-focused. That’s like a vacation for your brain.

Recent studies in Switzerland have shown that if you have a hobby, to which you devote 30 minutes a day (running could be such a hobby) you are more likely to be a calm, less-depressed individual. 30 minutes a day doing one task, any one simple task – cooking as a passion, bike riding, reading a book, writing letters to friends, gardening, walking the dog – anything that releases the need for multitasking is a holiday for your brain which prolongs your life and increases the quality of that life.

Taxpayer Political Funding

People all over America are wondering if we can move to a system of taxpayer funded political donations. And on your IRS form there’s that box you can tick to donate directly. But the truth is that Citizens United and the Anti-Citizens United movement are wasting their time. Laws and practice already in place ensure that public taxpayer money is funneled directly into politicians’ pockets and has done so for decades.

Take this Congressional donation chart, for example, from AvWeek, Oct. 27, 2014 (above).

It clearly shows that defense corporations donate large sums of money directly to politicians. And who are the contractors for defense corporations? Yep, you got that right, Congress, spending taxpayer money. So politicians funnel taxpayer money into their election campaigns – which they spend on the major media outlets, boosting the shareholders’ profits at CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and a host of cable companies. And the money that comes into the politicians from defense industries? It comes from padding the defense appropriations’ expenses which Congress approves and then writes taxpayers’ checks for.

Cool, huh? You pay your taxes, Congress pays your tax money to the defense industries, the defense industries give your money to politicians who decide on defense contracts at inflated costs, and then the politicians give it to the media. And what’s the total for corporate defense campaign contributions for 2013-2014? Only $17,244,227, and that does not include corporate personal contributions, executive golf outings in private jets at $45,000 an hour, conferences in Tahiti, and on an on – all paid for by the taxpayer - You.

Citizens United or Anti-Citizens United – one seeks to widen the pool of money the other seeks to keep the bribery system as freely abused as it already is. Neither really speaks for the taxpayer, but the TV and radio media – into whose coffers flows all this electioneering cash – are hardly likely to want to see any real change.

And there are other industries busy spending your taxpayer money, padding their bill to compensate for their “donations” to politicians’ campaign funds. Shipping, transportation, road construction, telecommunications (estimated to outpace the defense industries!), education, the prison industry, the health industry and on and on… In the end it is all your money that’s being “donated.” Spent on bribes would be a more honest term. Did you know that in some countries if you give money to government officials in order to win lucrative contracts you can get beheaded? Not here in the good ‘ol USA, here we allow bribery on a massive scale, out in the open, painting it as “open and honest free elections.”

Dear Mr. President

I had a gracious email from the President asking me not to become cynical after last week’s elections. Putting aside the generosity of such a comforting email at a time of political disillusionment, wasted funds, wasted votes and, worst of all, an onset of dread, I wanted to point out that our President is wrong, seriously wrong. Keep your spirits up or turn the other cheek are not strategies that can prevail against the coming onslaught.

Already Congressmen and women on the right have begun using rhetoric of punishment and retribution, with one newly invigorated Congressman telling the President of the United States of America that he’ll burn. “Playing with matches” is not a subtle threat to make against the elected President of the United States regardless of party. It reminds me of historic threats by the movement called Fire-Eaters against Lincoln.

About 80% of the new Congressmen and women taking seats on the right side of the House do not believe in the science of global warming nor accept the danger of man-made pollution continuing the degradation of the environment.  But 63% of the public trust that global warming in one form or another, especially global man-made climate change, is real. But that won’t dissuade these profiteers; elected (bribed) to stave off any anti-pollution measures.

About 60% of those same Congressmen and women believe in creation as told in one or another version of the bible and discount evolution. Bah, humbug for them. And that goes for their opinions on science too.

About all of those new Representatives sitting on the right side will fall into the lock step with the anti-woman’s right to choose movement, voting to dictate women back into the home. A fair majority of the new Senate will oppose equal pay for women and minorities. Why not? If they keep women in the kitchen or earning less because they have a propensity to take these 9-month holidays, they should be second-class working citizens, no?

Almost all of the Congressmen and women taking seats on the right will oppose raising the minimum wage to reasonable levels – at least $10.50 – anytime soon. Of course, meanwhile they will make sure to bolster their own pension plans. Remember, if they serve for 2 years, they get a pension for life, unlike the military men and women who actually risk their lives. But they can cover that public relations’ issue by claiming they voted to give the VA more money.

Almost all of the Congressmen and women on the right will vote lock step to eviscerate the ACA (Obamacare) removing the rights and safeguards already 12,000,000 Americans have signed on to and 100% of Americans are currently entitled to. Oh, and all of those Congressmen and women will not reduce their own healthcare even 1%.

Almost all of the Congressmen and women on the right will vote to push through the Keystone Pipeline system (note “system” not only one pipe) forcing Americans to export money to Canada for Canadian oil, and very poor quality oil it is too. Why? Because the oil will not be refined in North Dakota. No, it needs forced eminent domain purchase of farmers’ lands across America to flow all the way to Texas, so that Texas will have more power and money to elect officials it wants in Washington.

Almost all of the Congressmen and women on the right will vote for immigration control lead by more fencing, more private contractors, more deportations and not one dime to solve the problem where it exists.

Most of the Congressmen and women on the right will vote for the “sanctity of marriage” all the while 35%-50% of them are divorced, separated or gay. But that’s not relevant to them. What’s relevant is pandering to their lowest moral base.

Congressmen and women on the right and some on the left will vote to amend the tax laws, but you can be sure that none of it will protect the lowest paid Americans. Keeping them poor is a form of purposeful disenfranchisement to ensure the poor have no voice nor, for that matter, have the energy to care. Then they can be also blamed for be indolent.

And perhaps worst of all, almost all of the Congressmen and women on the right will continue to give lip service to education all the while they ensure that education funding is stalled, reduced, or made into vouchers to privatize education. The principle here is that by keeping the poorest electorate ignorant, they can reduce them to responding to negative TV ads spouting lies.

So, Mr. President, you do not want me to feel cynical? Okay fine. How does absolutely disheartened and ready for a Lincoln moment sound? Are you up to it?

Just Let Them Die?

More than 130,000 migrants and asylum seekers are estimated to have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, compared with 80,000 last year. More than 1,800 people have died in the Mediterranean so far this year that we’ve learned of. Yes, 1,800. And the ocean can swallow people faster than can be traced.

The United Kingdom this past week announced that it will not support any future search and rescue operations from Gibraltar to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, stating that, “such operations can encourage more people to attempt the dangerous crossing to enter Europe.”

A UN Spokesman: “To bank on the rise in the number of dead migrants to act as deterrence for future migrants and asylum seekers is appalling… It’s like saying, let them die because this is a good deterrence.”

Meanwhile, in the good old USA, the Liberty Alliance and Conservativebyte.com folks are lamenting the Border Patrol erecting new rescue beacons in the desert near Tucson, bringing the number to 83. The beacons are part of the Blue Light of Life campaign  designed to warn illegal immigrants of the danger to life of crossing desert stretches and to give them aid if they try and do so. Since 1999, 2,600 people have been found dead along that stretch of the border. Since the beacons went up, the rate has dropped by 44%. But the rate of traffic through more dangerous terrain, the desert mountains, has increased and the overall death rate has not changed. Why? Because the Border Patrol thought making the dangerous mountains a more ominous deterrent would work. Nope, it just killed more people there.

These migrants aren’t trying to break the law. They don’t need deterrents. They need sanctuary, compassion, and – if we really want to solve the problem – solutions back in their homelands. The absence of regulated open migration channels for migrants drives migration further underground, increases their risks, and entrenches smuggling mafias and crooked employers, resulting in more deaths at sea, in the deserts, and more human rights’ violations.

The UN spokesman: “…governments that do not support search and rescue efforts have reduced themselves to the same level as the smugglers. They are preying on the precariousness of the migrants and asylum seekers, robbing them of their dignity and playing with their lives.”