"...I think a big part of it relates to the fact that many Americans aren't feeling the benefit, because they are clearly better off as a result of a strong economic growth and job creation. They're much better off than they would be if the economy were growing slower or weren't growing. But many of the Americans aren't feeling it in terms of their own economic situation..."

_____

So, Americans are "better off" -- clearly -- but it's just not CLEAR to them, so they're not feeling better in terms of their own economic situation...

Perfectly, well, CLEAR.

WTF?

"McMartin Preschool," or "Wenatchee" in Farsi?

clamorem et euthesium

Sunday morning August 27th I arrived at the airport in Melbourne FL to the CNN breaking news coverage of the Comair CRJ plane crash in Lexington, KY. It was on all day, even on the little seat-back TV screens Delta now has installed in their larger aircraft (e.g., my ATL to LAS leg on a 757). I fly on those same little Canada Regional Air jets a lot. Well, it got my attention.

It is breathtakingly beyond criminally negligent that we don’t have simple technology in place to prevent a pilot from taking off on the wrong runway. And, the lawyers are gonna run with this point to great and expensive effect. Runway numbers are simply the compass direction divided by 10. Yesterday, for example, I flew out of MLB taking off on runway 9R, meaning 90 degrees, or due east, heading to the right off the end of the taxiway (its nomenclature reciprocal is 27L, or 270 degrees due west, same — or a parallel — runway).

Planes all have compasses in their avionics, uh, heLLO (”heading indicator”)? Simple ground control/preflight check programming should immediately and loudly alert a pilot in the event of a rollout on the wrong runway. The cost of doing this en masse would be vanishingly TRIVIAL relative to what this tragedy is now gonna cost once the FAA and NTSB investigations and the tort and class-action lawyers are finished.

Unbelievable. The crudest, $5 Radio Shack electronic technology could immediately tell a 40 degree differential (i.e., runway 22 vs 26).

If they don’t do this kind of idiot-proofing forthwith, it will be CRIMINAL.

Ma'am, I once worked with a FBO in Tennessee, flew with many flight instructors in their flight school. It was a place where, among other things, they bought wrecks from insurors and rebuilt aircraft from the parts. Know a little bit about avionics. And, a lot of my current work involves human factors analysis for process improvement.

Relative to other automated or tech-assisted aviation control tasks, this one would be easy and cheap. There's simply no technological excuse for a pilot being allowed to roll out on the wrong runway.

Maybe if I posted in large all-caps crayola for you, you'd be able to stay on point?

My "$5 Radio Shack" jibe referred simply to the incontrovertible fact that the most mundane of electronic technology COULD in fact discriminate between 220 and 260 degrees as a general proposition. Nowhere did I imply that you could outfit aircaft with a $5 fix for runway screwup prevention. C'mon, dude, get serious.

Morever, spare me the "Perfectionism Fallacy" crap, i.e., that, because people will find a way to screw up no matter what protective barriers you erect, no "solution" is possible. Aircraft and ground control systems could and SHOULD be provided with technologically feasible -- and relatively inexpensive -- warning systems to prevent things like the KY tragedy. Or, maybe pilots should just "fly by the seats of their pants" totally? All these other instrument systems are unnecessary, really, given a properly trained and vigilant pilot?

Gimme a break.

Listening to these clowns -- particularly the incoherent President Gomer -- I have the recurrent feeling that I'm stuck in an endless quaalude-enhanced bad dream. I cannot believe that this speech-slurring dilettante fool is the U.S. President. The Brian Williams interview was rhetorical chalk screeching on the blackboard, utterly painful to listen to.

And, right, Rumsfeld, my highest honors undergrad and graduate GPAs and grad degree in Ethics and 20 years of quantitative risk analysis notwithstanding, I'm "intellectually and morally confused" for not seeing the IslamoFascistNazi threat that you and George W. Churchill are so clearly determined to create.

Somebody, shake me, wake me.

Yep.

Here's MY least favorite Bush Photo Op:

http://www.bgladd.com/The_Disgracer_in_Chief.jpg

Dude is SO in love with himself.

Yes, exactly. Kudos. I've said that all along. Why, if this is SO "30's-Nazi/Fascist-parallel" dire, do we not put the entire nation on full war footing mobilization?

Put a half-million troops (we'd have to draft 'em) on the ground in both Afghanistan AND Iraq shoulder-to-shoulder, backed by full armor and air support, and march border to border through each country and utterly eliminate any threats. What's what my Dad was part of in WWII Europe.

Instead we get endless tax cutting, underfunding of our military, etc. Bush al et are simply full of shit here. They screwed up royally at the outset, misunderestimating the enemies (recall "cakewalk" "shock & awe" projected ease), and are now boxed in by their own incompetence.

The.Worst.President.Ever

Criminally incompetent.