Stupid is as stupid does.

I remember when I first heard about the supposed Mayan prediction that the world was going to end in 2012. Not only did I think it was nonsense then, but shortly after I heard from a Mayan researcher that a more accurate translation is “rebirth” and it was simply the start of a new cycle. What I got from that was basically the Mayan’s way of saying ‘ok, time to re-start the calendar.’

But looking at what’s been happening in around me recently and around the world, I’m starting to think maybe I was wrong. Maybe simply because people believe that the world is going to end, their actions lead to the world ending. It is like being able to look into the future, and doing something to avoid that outcome, but what you do attempting to prevent it is what ends up causing it. I call that a time-loop because it probably wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t seen into the future. But anyway, I digress.

The unfortunate earthquake in Japan that crippled the near ancient Fukushima plant set back nuclear power at least a decade. Nuclear power is an excellent source of energy and people’s unease and lack of understanding about it has held back progress in it for decades. It has the potential to provide us with the more stable supply of electricity during the periods when volatile sources of renewable energy aren’t able to keep up. Nuclear power is a future we should have embraced a long time ago, and if it hadn’t been held back, and Fukushima was retired as it should have been, a nuclear disaster could have been averted.

But the world is also changing fast politically. The Middle East rose up and demanded attention, and this time we were fully supportive of it. People took to the streets to throw out decade-old regimes and demand fair and open elections. We saw a lot of pain, and a lot of suffering, but also some great triumphs. I think this is likely to spread more across the Middle East, as it is in fact doing. And the regimes that have seen what happened in North Africa and fearing the same are attempting to quell any rebellion quickly, will soon be over powered by the people and progress will be made.

What’s I think is interesting to note is that in the West we’re seeing what I consider to be an opposite trend. People seem to want to revert to more nationalist and conservative movements. Canada a country famous for it’s liberalism has just elected a majority conservative government. The US, not known for it’s liberalism in general and having a very closed two party system has a liberal as President, yet its legislative branch is controlled by conservatives. The UK who after over a decade of a Left-wing Labour government threw them out because of their poor handling of the financial crisis and lack of strong leadership, elected a curious coalition. The Conservative-Lib-Dem coalition, a necessary and unavoidable result of the elections went in with a lot to lose and not much to gain. The coalition was the only way to prevent a Hung-Parliament led by the Conservative Party, and the Lib-Dems went in with the aim of minimising the effect of having a Conservative government. I think the Lib-Dems did an excellent job with what they had. Yet the country has turned against them, they have become the evil ones in government, the scapegoat of all of the UKs problems. I believe I recall reading that this has happened to the Lib-Dems before, and it killed the party much like it’s going to do now. I’m confident that it will resurface, but will it be in ten or twenty years? I don’t know. The Scottish Nationalist Party has just won a majority in Scotland, further highlighting the trend towards the conservative and nationalist views in the West.

I know it won’t be that bad, but I do worry about the future, particularly in Europe and the West, because this trend towards conservative, nationalist and federalist governments will foster division and dislike between peoples and it will push everyone apart in a world of globalisation where everyone is meant to be getting closer.

I worry.

Crosswinds

I've now had a good two months worth of experiencing the well oiled machine that is Flight Operations. After a good six months of living with Ground-school five days a week and seeing it's relatively sleek and dynamic operation hopes were high for what flying would be like.


Turns out that Ops leaves a lot to be desired. It's difficult to coordinate so many students and instructors, each capable of different things and at varying stages of training, with the ever changing and forever unpredictable weather. Recently we've been suffering from the effects of a local weather phenomenon called the Levanter which happens every year around this time of year. It's a very strong easterly wind that tends to put a dampener on our operations as it blows about 90° to our runway. Last week someone decided it was time to put us into full time flying. It just so happened that this was the week that the Levanter settled in and I managed very little flying. But such is the way. However the weather is starting to get on my nerves, but I guess that's the price we pay for entering an industry that's so weather dependant.


I've been trying to knock off some solo flights which is made difficult by the strict restraints on when I'm allowed to fly solo. This weather is totally unsuitable for it, and the incompetence of Spanish ATC doesn't alleviate the situation.




This post was originally titled "Communication" as I was to rant about the lack of communication between anyone these days. In our supposedly 'superconnected' society everything seems amazingly disconnected. It's entirely possible that this is just the result of suddenly being so well connected that seeing anything that isn't perfectly in sync seems weird and alien, but I think we're just getting lazy. Ops has a tough time scheduling everyone, but they coordinate surprisingly little with Ground-school, there is plenty of potential to become more flexible in the times allocated and get more people flying and putting them in Ground-school on bad-weather days.
This lack of communication isn't just prevalent in that case, there's also management and how they communicate with the students and the other departments. It can also be scaled up to problems within government and local councils coordinating with each other, departments helping one another out. Yet all we get is the mess left over from the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.
That was going to be a rant, heh, but I'm too tired and not thinking very clearly at all, yet I wanted to post *something*, so we'll leave it at that.

Met-Roulette

Met-Roulette is a little game we like to play here occasionally. Often times we find ourselves with a relatively or particularly early flight the next day, yet all you really want to do is relax and socialise – usually all night.

Now flights have this terrible habit of being cancelled due to various weather phenomena common in these parts, ranging from too strong a cross-wind to early morning radiation fog and the rare thunderstorm. This is where the game comes in. Well it’s a game as much as Russian Roulette is a game i.e. the risks are quite high. The gist of it is that we look at the forecast for the next morning, stare at all the charts, and decide what are the chances of the flight being cancelled. The idea is that if the weather is going to be bad, you can afford to go out, simply get up, your instructor cancels the flight, and you can sleep in. However, the forecasts are often wrong, or not accurate enough to predict so specifically what the weather will be at a particular time.

The reason I bring this up is because I now find myself in this exact situation. The weather is forecast to be unsuitable tomorrow morning, and it’s a friend’s graduation tonight so I really want to go out. Sadly I’m not brave enough to play this game, so it looks like an alcohol free night ahead of me tonight. But the temptation is very strong, very very strong!

Baaaaaaaaa

I think people judge sheep to much, they don't follow blindly. I think they just try and stick together, to keep everyone safe. Safety in numbers! But anyway, culturally it's the image we use for people that follow 'blindly' and that's what this is about: Following.

Facebook has always (to me) been about keeping in touch with friends from school, Uni, work, wherever. So the idea of exposing yourself to meet new people through it seems a bit silly in my opinion. However, we have other services for that. I use Twitter, and DailyBooth, and YouTube, and more recently tumblr. All these services are based on the idea of having "followers" and "following" others. I follow lots of people, some I find more interesting than others but all in all I enjoy seeing their thoughts and what they get up to. I also have many followers. A not insignificant number of them are spam-bots, which I dislike but as long as they don't tweet at me, who cares.

What has been recently brought to my attention is a new "follow me" culture that seems to be developing on these services. When I come across a new person/profile I look at what they've posted, what they're like, and if there's something about them I like, I follow them. Following means I'm interested in what you have to say, and I'd like to be kept in the loop if you don't mind (some people mind, and put their profiles to private). Unfortunately the number of followers we have seems to have become the yard-stick with which we measure our success as a person, how amazing and incredible we appear to others. This is a preposterous attitude. Saying "I'll follow you if you follow me" is completely stupid. I want a follower who's interested in what I say, who wants to know what I do (without being creepy), who finds me funny and engaging. I don't want a follower that will bump my numbers in exchange for bumping theirs.

I look at the profiles of some of the people I follow and am amazed at all they talk about and say. I have no idea where to begin to be that interesting! And sure, there are some that aren't that interesting, but happen to be pretty good looking so I won't lie, I might follow them just for that. But whilst it's not the most satisfying thing to see that my Booths don't get many replies, or that I'm hardly ever retweeted, I know it's not because the world hates me, or that I'm such a victim of society. Simply: I'm just not that interesting. It may be that I haven't quite managed to find the right way to convey myself, but until I do things are unlikely to change much.

I saw so many people on DailyBooth's Live Feed post a "last post" swearing at the users, saying how lame we all were because they weren't getting replies any more. I found that quite often, and I didn't think "oh god, this place is lame, screw these people!" I thought, 'what can I do to make myself more interesting?'. I looked at other people's profiles, tried to determine what made them interesting to me, and see if I could pass that along somehow.

I was looking at who of the people I follow don't follow me back using some Twitter add-on. I was not surprised to see that some of the most interesting people I follow, don't follow me back, because I'm not interesting enough! Sure I reply to some of their tweets, and they kindly reply back sometimes. That's the point! I follow them because I like them. I have no right to force myself upon them. You can't meet someone and really like them and say "OY! LIKE ME BACK!!!" Life doesn't work like that.

I think to a certain extent this is perpetuated a bit by celebrities. Usually "C-List" celebrities. These people chase the ever increasing number of followers, wanting more and more. I find that with stardom the followers will come anyway, I think it's a bit tacky at times to self promote yourself so directly! If a celebrity came up to me and said: "Please follow me on twitter! If I get to 200,000 I'll give something away" I'd be less inclined to follow them than if I just met them and WANTED to follow them. The word of mouth has so much more power when it's spontaneous rather than prompted. Also why I think advertising companies that design adverts to "go viral" are retarded because they're missing the point entirely.

So to all the people who are obsessed with getting followers: Stop it. Please.

Follow people you like, get to know them, and become friends with the people that like you. Drive this social experience, don't let it drive you!

Fail Safe, Fly Safe

I read an interesting article about electronic devices on aircraft today.

I guess I should recommend it so you can have an additional appreciation of what I'm talking about Here.

Basically it talks about the risk that mobile phones, PDAs, iPads, iPods and the various array of devices we tend to carry with us day to day, especially if we're travelling! A quick read of the comments after reading the article instils the inevitable desperation with humanity that neither the deniers nor the advocators quite understood what was being said. So I'd like to clarify and expand for anyone who cares to read this.

One of the first things that article said, that while the chances of it affecting the aircraft detrimentally are small, that doesn't mean they don't exist! Do you want to be on the plane that had that fault that lead to the thing that caused the blackout which lead to the crash? I don't.

Aviation tries its darnedest to rather be safe than sorry. I'll say it right now, a single mobile phone won't bring a plane down on it's own. But that's not to say there won't be five other things that won't bring a plane down on their own, that just happen to all occur at the same time.

But I don't want to bring this message across based on scaring you into submission, because I don't think that works. I'm going to explain to you why you should switch off all your electrical devices until the seatbelt sign goes off. It breaks down to two basic parts, the technical, and the psychological. I'm going to explain the technical first, and then the psychological, the latter of which will help to explain why the seat-belt sign is so important in this case.

I wish the mobile or cell phone thing was obvious. Ever left your phone next to some speakers? You know you sometimes hear that interference? Well mobile phones send signals and interfere with communications with the ground and navigation. Usually it'll never amount to anything more than a distraction and nuisance for the pilots, but this is where society is against you. We always thing of "me, me, me, me, me"; "I can't possible cause any trouble with my tiny phone!" and that's true.

• But here's fun fact one: one phone is fine, but try imagining all 540 passengers on an A380 leaving their phones on! And what of all those business people who have a work phone and a personal phone? Easily 550 phones, if not more!
• Now, fun fact number two: your phone regulates how much power goes to the antenna. If you're standing next to a cell-phone mast, you have full signal with very little power! However the further you get away from it, the more power your phone has to use. Ever notice when you're down to one-bar of signal or no signal your battery runs out faster (say when you're in a rural area)? That's your phone using all the power it can! And that's what happens as your aircraft climbs.
• Linked to fun fact number two is number three: the reason you're hearing about some companies allowing mobile phone calls on-board, even Ryanair, is because they've basically installed a cell-phone tower inside the plane, which means all the cell phones are using very little power to talk to the cell, as described above. They also have a lot more shielding, that all the large modern planes have, so using a phone is a bit more risky on the older or smaller aircraft!

This effect is much more drastic with GPS receivers, and they should definitely be avoided! They try and talk to as many satellites as they can, and since they're a lot further away than phone-cells, they use more power!

Now you're thinking, "OK, so I get why phones are bad, and that it's all about lots of people doing it, not just me, but why my iPod?!" What a good question! First of all, some basic physics: run a current (electricity) through a wire and you get an electro-magnetic field. Radio waves are electro-magnetic waves, and can be generated by varying the electro-magnetic field. Some music players take advantage of this and have built in radios that use the headphones as an antenna! Genius! Unfortunately it's this effect, of simply having headphones, that generates magnetic disturbances that can cause interference. But I have to be honest with you, it's just so damn small, it's practically insignificant, and decent headphones (no, not the basic Apple ones, and not the crappy in-flight entertainment ones either) can have shielding to drastically reduce this. However, close to the ground you have loads of things interfering with each-other and the plane. This may be a teeny-tiny contribution, but it adds up. And with aviation, if we're not sure, just be on the safe side and don't allow it.

But to me, the most important reason not to use any electrical device until the seatbelt signs are off are for psychological reasons. Or at least, that's the best way it occurred to me to describe them! In my opinion not even reading should be allowed, but I know that's a bit extreme.

Have you ever taken a flight during night? When it's dark outside? Did you notice they turn off the lights to dim the cabin? The reason they do that is so your eyes are more accustomed to the light conditions outside, because in case of an evacuation, it'll be handy if you can see outside! If it's bright in the cabin, when you go out in the dark, you won't be able to see anything for a while until your eyes adjust! The take-off and landing stages are the most dangerous, so it's when we have to be extra safe. In this vain, you're not allowed to use electronic devices so that you can hear properly the Cabin Crew's instructions (so, no headphones!) and that your aware of your surroundings, so that when an emergency happens, you're not suddenly trying to remember where you are!! This is why I spend the whole climb looking around and out of the window, to entertain myself whilst keeping aware of what's going on, even if most of the time it's nothing. So as you can imagine this applies to iPads, iPods, laptops, and especially phones! You don't want to be in the middle of the call when you're told to take the brace position! (Which BTW can save your life, not just preserve your teeth as some myths have it). And that's also why your tray table has to be up! So you can bend down! And why your seat has to be forward, so the person behind you can bend down!!

If you're honest, the climb happens quite quickly, and while what I said to do to be safe may seem a little daunting, you know it's actually only for a short period of time, and yes it's a mild inconvenience, but if you're on that unlucky flight, and you survive because you could get out of the plane fast enough as you were aware and paying attention, then you'll be glad you were!

The reason the seat-belt sign going off is so important, and why the cabin crew might be caught moving about before it's gone off, is because it signals the end of the climb, or the first bit anyway. You may notice that the plane goes from a pretty steep climb (it feels like it), to a slightly shallower climb, and shortly after, the seatbelt signs go off. At that point, the plane is in no rush to climb quickly because it's nice and far from the ground, so when something goes wrong, there's time to do something about it (unlike when you're close to the ground!). So when it goes off, it's your signal that everything's fine, and you're now in the cruise, the safest part of the flight! I highly recommend you keep your seat-belt on at all times, as turbulence isn't always predictable, and you could be flung up very suddenly. It's been known to happen on occasion! With several people injured unfortunately. So yeah, just be safe, it doesn't matter if it's a bit loose, as long as it's buckled it'll give you a little protection.

I hope you can see why this makes it safer, (and why I'd discourage reading too)... and so next time you fly, be safe!