too much power?

In a recent post on my friends blog he laments the use of power currently in use.

However I don't see a problem with using more power per se.

The root of the problem is the short sighted policies of global business.

In his book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan argues that in its current legal guise, the modern day corporation is legally obliged to seek a profit for shareholders regardless of the damage it causes. In fact directors have been prosecuted by shareholders for pursuing altruism in there business, and any non profitable activities have to tempered with reasons to show how it benefits future profits.

The psychopathic search for profit of these corporations are the root of the reason that we continue to use power from environmentally damaging sources, and in a way that directly damages the environment. E.G. burning fossil fuels creates pollution and "greenhouse" gases as a by product, which has been shown to contribute to global warming, which drives up the demand for extra power use in summer to power Air conditioners.

A vicious cycle if ever there was one. Unfortunately, recent wars in Oil rich regions, some would say instigated by US corporate pressure groups, and the increasing difficulty of finding and extracting more oil, only drives up it's value, which again can lead to more profits to the unscrupulous.

The sooner GM and Honda and the like, actually start to sell their hydrogen fuel-cell cars, rather than just taunt us with them, and the petro-chemical companies start to ramp up the distribution of theses fuel-cells the better.

Hydrogen is plentiful and burns with no adverse environmental side effects so clearly has benefits for the world at large, and it can be made by anyone with access to water, thus removing the stranglehold of oil cartels. This in itself is a reason that the greedy corporation, would want to limit hydrogen's practical use, until they have cornered the production and distribution of it.

There is also no reason why the production of hydrogen from water, can't in itself be environmentally friendly. All that is needed is electricity and if that electricity could be generated from renewable sources we'd all be better off.

So lets stop fighting wars for oil and spend the cash setting up an infrastructure for clean fuel that we can make ourselves.

How popular am I?

I was checking out Google recently and came across a feature that I'd never used.
Basically it lets you see who has links to your site!


All you have to do is type "link:your.domain.here" into the search bar and it comes back with all the webpages that link to yours!
kinda handy.
see this link for more details


Seems like my sites (which I've been very slack at maintaining) have as much poularity as they deserve. None! :-)
guess I'd better talk about less boring stuff!

Differentiate

I've just come back from a 2-week holiday in the USA. I'd never been there before and was looking forward to it.

I went to Nashville, Miami and the Florida Keys. America is a very nice place, with loads of space for people to be people. There is a lot of wealth and the people are nice.

However they are nice but dumb! What I mean is they aren't stupid (well obviously some are very stupid) but narrow-minded.

London has just been bombed so as a token Brit I was frequently asked about what I thought about those terrorists. I said that they should be stopped, obviously, and that a few nutters shouldn't ruin life for everyone. And if that meant that some were shot by the police because they ran or resisted when being arrested then tough luck!

I was shocked then by the views of normal intelligent people (teachers, businessmen, students and pensioners) in response.

"Damn right! We should kill or lock-up all those Muslims!" seemed to be a common response. When I pointed out that not all Muslims were terrorists heated arguments ensued.

In the end I gave up because the crux of problem was that they didn't seem to understand the difference between the two statements:

"All Muslims are Al Quaida terrorists" and "All Al Quaida terrorists are Muslims"!

I pointed out that the argument was ridiculous and if you believed that argument then it would be the same as "All IRA terrorists are Catholics Christians therefore all Catholic Christians are terrorists" and therefore "All Catholics are Christians therefore all Christians are Catholic and as all Catholic Christians are terrorists, as prooved earlier then all Christians are terrorists!". My argument brought slurs that I was being anti-religious!

The failing to differentiate the meaning between sentences that contain the same words but in crucially different order seemed to be endemic. For instance, Nashville is in the "Bible Belt" and to use expletives (cuss words) like "Jesus Christ!" or worse "God Damn!" brings reprimands from strangers who overhear you. It seems that they don't understand the difference between "God Damn!" (a request that God damns something) and "Damn God" (an ecclesiastical conundrum)

Weirder still is that is OK to substitute "G.D." for "God Damn" as in, "I think we should shoot all those G.D. Muslims!" So either the person who'd say that is stupid or a hypocrite, or that person's god is illiterate and too stupid to spot the substitution.

In the Beginning was the Word!

Thank you Parliament

On the 6th July, just before I went on Holiday the EU Parliament rejected the recent bill for Software patents.

Sanity is resored for now, but we must stay vigilant for further attacks on our freedoms by the pressure groups of the big corporations!

for the full details read the "Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure" story

I'll now remove my Banana republic banners from my forum signatures! Well done everyone!
:-)

Semantics

I was checking in for a commercial flight over the bank holiday.
I approached the counter and handed over my passport and flight details.

The Check-in girl started her "before-you-get-a-boarding-card" spiel.

"Did you pack you bags yourself?", the check-in girl asked.
  "Yes", I replied
"Have you got anything sharp in your hand luggage?"
  "No", says I
"Could anyone have tampered with your bags without you knowing?", she asked

What was this??!

A trick question, especially designed by the "Bottom Inspectors"?

How was I supposed to answer that?

  "Of course they could have. But I wouldn't know!".

At which point I'd get frog-marched off to the "Rubber-Glove Brigade's" torture and humiliation den, or should I answer, "No".

At which point when I get a random search at X-ray the aforementioned unknown Tamperer's tamperings are discovered, and because I've already agreed that it couldn't be his fault I'm again frog-marched off to the "Bottom Inspectors' grotto"!

I decided to just shake my head and cross my fingers (and legs) at X-ray

:-)

FA Cup Flying Adventure: Departure

With everyone strapped in, Northy in the Co-pilot seat, as he was the
heaviest, I ran through the pre-flight checks, briefed the guys on what to
do if we had to force land, and called the tower for my departure clearance.


Almost immeadiatley, unusual for Newcastle Airport, we were cleared to back
track on Runway 25 and given departure instruction to route south via the
Tyne Bridges. Perfect, I'd get to do the scenic departure over Newcastle's
St. James's Park Stadium on route to The Millennium Stadium.

We were soon heading over the Tyne and all my passengers were talking
excitedly and taking pictures.

For this Flight I was going to fly straight down the country over-flying
Leeds-Bradford then onto the Trent VOR (TNT) then onto the Brecon VOR (BCN)
via a slight dog-leg to miss Birmingham Internationale's airspace, and then
to Cardiff. I decided not to fly direct to Cardiff As I'd be forced through
the low-level corridor under the Manchester CTR, and I could do without the
stress!

I'd bought some helpful navigation aids,
VORTrack
plotters, that you clip onto your chart and they allow you to generate a
visual fix on the chart very quickly. I explained to Northy how to set them
if I gave him a bearing from a VOR or a distance from a DME, so I could ask
him to do it for me so that I could concentrate on flying when we got to the
clouds over Wales. They are such a simple device that he picked it up in no
time. I've never used VORTrack Plotters before and had spent the previous
evening sticking the press-studs to all the VOR's on my charts. For those
pilots reading this, I thoughly recommend them. The "picture" you get of
your position is instant and accurate, and you don't have to Fly the plane
whilst drawing on your map!

We overflew Leeds-Bradford at Fight Level 40 (4000 feet on pressure
setting 1013 m Bar)and the Air traffic controller said,
"Golf-Blah-Blah-Blah-Blah, are you going to the match?". "Affirm", I
replied. "I hope you win!", he said.
Presumably he was a Leeds fan and like most other football clubs in Britain was a certified ManU hater, who assumed that because I was flying from Newcastle that I was a Newcastle
fan. Unlike my Geordie passengers, I'm a ManU fan.
"Me too", I answered, smiling to myself

As we flew south, We had to drop down to 2000ft to cross the main
air corridor into Manchester Airport the Category A L975. It just so happened that this was
above the Pennine hills, and so we were whizzing through fantastic scenery at
500ft above the moors. The look on the faces of some of the hill walkers as
we flew overhead was priceless!

This for me was the best bit of the whole
flight, as it was so low that you could see all the details on the ground
and also get a feeling of speed and flying. I felt a bit Top Gun! :-)

The trouble started as we regained our cruising altitude after the
corridor and set course for Wales. We could see the weather ahead was very
cloudy, so I decided to climb to FL60 to fly above it. After 10 minutes of
holding my heading I looked down and was aware that a particular reservoir I'd spotted over my left wing hadn't moved very far. Now I know what you're thinking, reservoirs are large
bodies of water and don't tend to move around the country side, but you know
what I mean.

The Problem was the wind speed. It was clearly a lot higher
than forecast, and it was right on the nose of our little plane. I had to
drop down into slower air. I descended to FL40 and right into the clouds.

I wasn't particularly troubled by this as I hold the UK IMC rating
that allows me to travel IMC within the UK (with higher minima than the full
Instrument flying rating), and the DME to Brecon started counting down
nicely. However, it wasn't counting down as fast as I'd like and I my
workload went up. Not only were we flying towards Wales, a particularly
hilly country, in cloud but I started to re-do my Speed/Time/Distance
calculations.

We were behind schedule. By half an hour! In clouds and rain, with
the nearest suitable airport to land in bad weather the same distance behind
us as our destination was in front. At this rate I'd be able to land with 15
minutes of fuel remaining. just enough to divert to Swansea or Bristol if
necessary. I checked the ATIS for Cardiff and it was still above my
minimum's, so I decided to go for it.

In hind sight I should have turned
round and used the tail wind to help me back to Birmingham.

I continued on towards the Brecon VOR, all the time watching my fuel
gauges and re-doing S/T/D calculations. The wind had picked up again and we
were traveling slower again! By this point I didn't have the option to turn
back to Birmingham, it was going to be tight! I reckoned that our flight time
was going to be 3 and a half hours.... The same amount of time as the fuel
we had on board. Talk about stress! I had already leaned the mixture as much
as possible and adopted a slight nose-up attitude to increase my distance
per gallon ratio. My passengers were oblivious to the drama taking place in
the front left seat.

I called Cardiff early and asked for a vectored ILS approach. I
wanted to shave off the distance that going to the Brecon VOR then south
would add. Thankfully Cardiff put me on a heading straight to them. I was a
bit worried that there would be loads of traffic into Cardiff and I would
then have to request that I jumped the queue, thus announcing to the world
and my passengers the situation I was in. As it turned out we were straight
in and I reported that I was established on the ILS. At 700 feet the we
became visual with the runway and I made a perfect crosswind landing, just
touching down as the stall warner sounded.

Phew!

In the confusion of landing at an airfield that I've never been to
before in heavy rain and what with my brain desperately trying to shut down now that we
were back on the ground I missed my runway exit point and had to taxi all
round the airport to get back to the GA(General Aviation) side of the field, whilst simultaneously taking abuse from the Tower. I didn't mind though. The Cardiff radar had helped get us down safely

Outside it was pissing down! As forecast! The lads were still applauding me
and wanting to get out of the plane for a piss themselves, but I stopped
them until they had taken a picture of the fuel gauges (both reading zero), for posterity! :-)

We jumped out and the ground controllers had thoughtfully sent a
minibus to pick us up, however we all had to line up behind the bus for a 3
and a half hour power piss on the taxi way before we could depart! ;-)

A 5.30am start, a three and ahalf hour flight in bad weather with not enough fuel.

I was knackered!

Now, on to the Match!

FA Cup Flying Adventure: Pre-flight

5.30 am 17th December 2005. My alarm clock went off and I was out of bed like a shot.

Today was the day of the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester United (my team) and Newcastle United at the Cardiff Millennium Stadium.
The reason I was up so early, I was due to fly myself and three Geordie mates to the match. Kick off was at 3pm and we had an arrival slot for 11.08 BST.
We didn't have a backup plan to get to the game if the flying was out as that would have meant leaving Newcastle before 5.30am in order to make the long journey by car.

I was exceptionally nervous.

I'd been watching the weather reports for a week and they had consistently predicted bad weather on Sunday, Today.
I looked out of the window to be greeted with a perfect clear blue sky! I logged onto The Met Office to check the TAF's.

TAF
CARDIFF EGFF 170310Z 170413 150 11KT 9999 SCT025 BECMG 1012 700 RA BKN014
NEWCASTLE EGNT 170309Z 170413 17003KT 9999 FEW020 TEMPO 0410 4000 BR

METAR
CARDIFF EGFF 170450Z 12009KT CAVOK 03/01 Q1006
NEWCASTLE ENGT 170450Z 00000KT 9999 FEW035 01/00 Q1006

My fears were realised. The weather in Cardiff was due to rain, but that wasn't due to start until sometime between 10am and 12pm, the report for the return leg looked better with Newcastle having just broken clouds at 2000ft and 4000ft.

As I really wanted to go to the game and didn't want to let my mates down, I concluded that the weather would be above my minimum's and so it was all systems go! (note to self, this is very bad practice for pilots, and I should be just as happy not to go if the weather looks bad!)

It was 6.15 a.m. I was up dressed and had had some porridge and bananas for breakfast, I figured I needed the energy for the flight ahead, and I was half way through updating my flight plan and vectoring in the current forecast high-level winds, when my phone rang.
It was my mate Jonny, too exited to sleep ringing up to check if the weather was OK and tell me he was coming round to meet me.

I told him the weather was OK but it'd be close and we had a headwind all the way there, so that would add half an hour onto our flight time. We'd best get going so that we could take off at 8.30 sharp in order to make our arrival slot.

I'd faxed through my flight-plan the previous evening, with flight time estimated at 100 knot airspeed and no wind. At that speed we should be taking 2 hours and 15 minutes. With the current wind added we'd be taking 2 hours 45 mins. With 4 blokes on board we couldn't have full tanks due to weight and balance and I'd been at the airport the night before making sure that we had enough fuel on and were within limits.

We actually had 3 and a half hours of fuel on board, (which was slightly overweight but still in balance) and I figured that with both Newcastle (EGNT) and Cardiff (EGFF) having such long runways we'd be OK for takeoff and with two airports (Bristol and Swansea) within 15-20 minutes flying time from Cardiff we had enough endurance.

After picking up the other two passengers, Northy and Stuz, we were off to the Airport.

Everyone was in high spirits, and Stuz who was nervous of flying was even exited. I was trying to shut out the chatter and get my head into pilot mode. I wasn't having much luck and kept doing the time/speed/distance sums over and over, worried that I'd miscalculated.

We arrived at the GA terminal of Newcastle. It was a lovely day!

I pushed the Piper out of the hanger and began my walk-around checks. Stuz took one look at the size of the PA28 and went for a cigarette! :-)

The walk-around ritual had the usual meditative effect, and by the time I called the guys over to get in the plane, I was fully focused for the task ahead.

Is a spade a spade?

I just went to the toilet at work to be greeted with the sign,

"Restroom closed. Cleaning in progress".

"Restroom"!? The only things I'd rest in there are my sphincters!

It is a toilet.

The trend we see to use "non offensive language", for example "restroom" instead of toilet, or "vertically challenged" instead of short, is a form of control that should be fought at all times.

By limiting the adjectives or nouns in a language we limit the precision of meaning that can be conveyed. If you are unable to convey a specific meaning then conceptually that specification doesn't exist!

The classic example of this is that of the number of words in a language for snow. In Britain we have very few, Snow. A skier will be forced to use adjectives to make his meaning clearer for example "powder snow"

So, for the average Briton there are only two kinds of snow. Snow and powder snow.

An Eskimo will tell you that there are many more types of snow. He is able to be sure of this because in his language there are many more nouns for snow, distinguishing completely different types of snow. He probably has many more adjectives to refine the meaning yet further.
(for further study why not start here http://www.princeton.edu/~browning/snow.html )

A similar refining of language happens in all areas of specialisation. For instance, to a lay-person a hammer is a hammer. But to a craftsman there are many types of hammer, claw-hammer, ball-peen-hammer, sledge-hammer, mallet etc.

If you limit the vocabulary you limit the precision of meaning that can convey and hence you also limit the complexity of ideas that can be discussed and hence perception itself. Are you still sure there are only two kinds of snow in the world?

It is for this reason you should fight to use your language as you want and not succumb to "political correctness".

The powers that be like to use politically correct language because if they can remove "bad" words from the language then the "bad" things vanish with them. It is a semantic trick!

If the word "black" vanishes from the language then conceptually "white vs. black" racism has also disappeared! If there are no toilets and only restrooms then presumable there is no more shit in the world?

Power brokers of all kinds love this trick, because by doing nothing but removing your words they are able to fix all societies problems without doing anything! It also limits your ability to resist their tricks because if you stick to their limited language you will be unable to frame a powerful argument against them!

Take back your language!

Call a spade a spade! (or a shovel or a trowel .... ;-)