October 2019 Archives
Boeing wrongly assumed pilots would quickly trim out MCAS - Flight Global
"Boeing incorrectly predicted the manner in which 737 Max pilots would respond to the activation of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, by assuming they would initially pull back on the control column and then trim out the force to maintain level flight....
"Failure to re-trim the aircraft during a series of repeated MCAS activations would result in the stabiliser gradually shifting to its maximum deflection, with the crew attempting to keep the nose up with increasing force on the control column.
"When the 737 Max was being developed, simulator testing during functional hazard assessment 'never considered' the scenario of repetitive MCAS activation incrementally driving the stabiliser to its maximum limit.
"Boeing had believed repetitive MCAS activations to be 'no worse' than a single activation, because of its assumption that the pilots would trim out the forces each time, says the inquiry. It had also assumed that the crew would respond correctly, and within 3s."
Boeing's MCAS test did not simulate other cockpit effects - Flight Global
"Indonesian investigation authority KNTK says Boeing's preliminary hazard assessment of MCAS, carried out on a full-flight simulator in 2012, examined crew responses to uncommanded MCAS activation 'regardless of underlying cause'.
"This focus on the pilots' response to MCAS - rather than the reason MCAS might be triggered - meant that specific failure modes 'were not simulated', says the inquiry, and therefore neither were the cockpit effects of those failure modes.
"KNKT says a failure such as erroneous angle-of-attack sensor data, leading to unreliable airspeed alerts, stick-shaker activation, and other alarms in the cockpit were not part of the simulation....
"[A post-crash simulator] exercise [recreating cockpit conditions] found that crews could not maintain altitude with control column force alone if short activation of electric trim resulted in an accumulating mis-trim from the MCAS nose-down commands.
"'Repeated MCAS activations increased the flight crew workload and required more attention to counter it,' says the inquiry. Communicating with air traffic control was 'distracting', it adds, and crews found the non-normal checklist 'hard to get through'."
Ancient Greek typefaces from the Greek Font Society
The Greek Font Society offers a collection of freely available digital typefaces that can handle all the combinations of accents and other diacritical marks. My favorite: GFS Porson, the standard for publication of ancient Greek texts.
Typing in ancient Greek in Windows requires the Greek Polytonic Keyboard. Here's a description of how to set up the Greek Polytonic Keyboard for Windows 7
Microsoft provides an interactive tool for exploring key mappings for the Greek Polytonic Keyboard.
Oxford university Bate Collection | 3D Printing of an 18th century French serpent
Among the many delights of our brief time in Oxford -- the special Tolkien exhibit, a walking tour of the city, dinner at The Eagle and Child -- the most unexpected was a visit to the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments where, in addition to viewing an impressive array of historical instruments both familiar and exotic, you may play a sampling of instruments, including the theremin, shawm, and serpent. And if you fancy a DIY serpent, here are the instructions for making one with a 3-D printer.
Blazing Saddles and Its Horrors - Bethany Hegener - Medium
Prim and proper "woke" millennial reviews irreverent comedy classic. (For pete's sake, don't let her watch The Producers.)
"Blazing Saddles is a classic western comedy that makes fun and jokes about literally almost everyone from members of the KKK, African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, the Irish, women, the LGBTQ community, the Nazi party, Jews, and government officials. It wasn't okay during 1974 and it definitely still isn't okay now. My main question was 'How can people even like this? How is this funny?' I do not know the answer to those questions still, but I do know that many people do in fact still LOVE the classic western comedy. Many claim, including Mel Brooks, that a movie like this could never be made today.
"Mel Brooks is quoted saying 'But never Blazing Saddles, because we have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy. It's okay not to hurt feelings of various tribes and groups. However, it's not good for comedy. Comedy has to walk a thin line, take risks. Comedy is the lecherous little elf whispering into the king's ear, always telling the truth about human behavior.' (brb throwing up)...
"Three minutes in the movie and the racist jokes begin. The entire time I was like 'I can't believe he just said that'.
She then proceeds to share "a few out of the many cringy remarks," summing up with, "As you can clearly see through these quotes, this movie was scarring. "
MORE: Bethany reviews The Princess Diaries ("Once again the 'She Cleans Up Nicely' trope swoops in with some rewarding new opportunities for the character."), Grease ("This song occurs right before she sings a horrible virgin shaming song directed at Sandy."), and Friends ("it struck me early on in the series how privileged these characters are. The all white cast indulge in this lifestyle of privilege.").
Is the Church Abandoning Its People in Their Toughest Dilemmas? - Tom Gilson - Thinking Christian
"Three ethical dilemmas, each of them a true story. What do they have in common, other than the obvious?
"An analyst working at a major corporate headquarters says, 'If I eat lunch at Chick-fil-A, I don't dare mention it when I return to work. Chick-fil-A is 'homophobic,' they say, and they'll report me to HR for creating a hostile work environment.'
"All the managers in one corporate department have placed LGBT 'Ally' stickers on their office doors. All but one, that is: the one Christian there, who feels caught. By not putting a sticker on his own door, he's making an unpopular statement -- one that could earn him disciplinary action.
"A manager at another corporation sees his company throwing great public support behind last June's LGBT "Pride" month. He feels an ethical urgency to talk to his boss about the Christian view being overlooked -- if not outright steamrolled -- in the process. His boss is homosexual, by the way.
"I didn't make up these stories. These are friends of mine. At first, when the one friend mentioned the Chick-fil-A issue, I thought he was exaggerating for effect, but he assured me he was deadly serious.
"Obviously all three of these are about dilemmas these friends have faced at work. But they've got one more thing in common: Not one of them has ever heard any clear advice from the pulpit on how to handle tough situations like these."
Found via The Stream
The Gospel Coalition's Drift Toward Identity Politics - Sovereign Nations
"[Colin Hansen] writes, 'If millennials and Gen Y don't learn from [Young, Restless, and Reformed] leaders how the gospel equips them to fight the injustice they see as they scroll through their Twitter timelines, will they choose to look elsewhere for leadership, purpose, and belonging?'
"The big worry is that the older generations will fail to understand our cultural moment and, as a result, fail to address the younger generations' most pressing concerns. Without equipping them with ways to fight injustice, they will look elsewhere. They will leave the Church.
"In the much-discussed Q&A at the 2019 Shepherd's Conference, Ligon Duncan affirms a similar view. He says, 'I don't want to drive our grandchildren into the arms of the LGBT issue....who are already wavering on a whole host of cultural issues.' This abandonment of Christianity would happen, he argues, if the church fails to get serious about what energizes the younger generations, namely, matters of social justice, particularly racial injustice.
"So we have an important council member and the lead editor of The Gospel Coalition affirming that the purpose of the shift to social justice in the last few years is to keep Millennials (Gen Y) and Generation Z in the faith....
"In a recent article in The Gospel Coalition, Rebecca McLaughlin, who seems to be enjoying an ascendancy in TGC circles, calls for Christians to 'go on the offensive.' But the nature of this offence is quite startling. She claims that we must take 'our lead from those with the credibility to speak' and she's clear on what constitutes 'credibility.'...
"Only certain voices are 'credible' and can 'be heard.' Absent from the A-team in the public square is the straight white man--the identity that represents homophobia, racism, and misogyny. McLaughlin is not seeking to elevate marginalized voices so that all can equally speak truth in Christ to the world. Rather she is calling for a sort of reverse marginalization. McLaughlin's strategy involves nothing less than the marginalization of the straight white man. And if this interpretation of her words seems extreme, she confirms it in an interview with Colin Hansen for The Gospel Coalition: "'But in an age where who you are determines what you have the right to say, we also need to stop fielding straight white men.'"
The Amazon Synod Is a Sign of the Times | Douglas Farrow | First Things
"The Synod of the Amazon is a sign of the times. So its Instrumentum laboris says. Who could disagree? And what times these are! Some are saying hopefully that the Synod of the Amazon will change the Church forever, that the Church will never be the same again. Others are saying that the Synod is an instrument of apostasy. In the grim humor of Dom Giulio Meiattini, 'if there is still something Christian in this Instrumentum laboris, that is, a few words and expressions here and there, there is no need to worry: it is undoubtedly biodegradable!'
"Biodegradable Christianity--now there is a sign of the times, a sign of our times. For our times are times in which even the faith of the Catholic Church threatens to disappear into the wetlands of our own confused and decaying cultures. Our times are times when eco-theology in the Amazon basin and sexual theologies in the bowels of Europe can, with a 'liberationist' flourish, flush the gospel of Jesus Christ down Leonardo Boff's drain."
Portugal Mayor Supports Recriminalizing Public Drug Use - Filter
Reality intrudes upon ideological fantasy:
"On September 30, Rui Moreira, the mayor of Porto, contradicted his past pro-harm reduction positions, like the ones made at the 2019 Harm Reduction International conference in his own city, when he endorsed reintroducing criminal penalties for drug use in public spaces during a municipal assembly meeting.
"Drug decriminalization 'is not possible,' he said in the meeting, adding that such policies have "consented" to illegal drug trafficking. The mayor expressed he is 'a little tired of hearing just about the dignity' of people who use drugs, adding that the policy of decriminalization 'simply does not protect the overwhelming majority of the population.' To address this problem that he says is 'everywhere,' Rureira is advocating for the installation of over 100 new video surveillance cameras to monitor public streets in an attempt to clamp down on drug use."
A Paper Church by Julia Yost | Articles | First Things
"But the appetite for papal pronouncements is perennial, and it reveals the ultramontane clerisy as a distinct class with its own ideology and interests. In the Francis pontificate, ultramontane discourse declares that capital punishment must be abolished; that climate change is un-Catholic; that plastics in the ocean are worse than sex abuse; that national borders are worse still; that mercy entails never excluding the stably married from communion, even to save their souls.
"From the start of his pontificate, Francis has posed a hermeneutic Âchallenge. Conservative papalists struggle to regularize his verbal output with their notions of the privileges of infallibility. ('What did he say? Peter can't say that. Ergo, he meant something other than what he said.') A few years in, one commentator was reduced to presenting the Holy Father as a practitioner of Straussian esoteric writing who sneaks subversive conservative messages into apparently progressive texts.
"...papalism pursued too far dictates piety to the person of the pope at the expense of the tradition he nominally secures."
The James Herriot centenary: a vet who changed his profession - Telegraph
"...there's a phenomenon known as "the Herriot effect" that's blamed for the huge increase in popularity of the career as a vet which started in the mid-Seventies. Back in the sixties, a typical vet student was son of a vet or a farmer, and there was no need for academic prowess to get a place at vet school. By the time I was a student in the early eighties, most of us had no rural background and straight "A"s were needed in school exams. The gender balance changed too, with females now making up 80 per cent of new veterinary graduates. The glamorisation of the job by Herriot has played a role in these changes. Budding vet students soon learned that it didn't help their chances of success to mention the books in selection interviews....
"When I took up my first job as a mixed practice vet, in the Scottish borders, I experienced many parallels with his books: I even gleaned useful practical tips from them (such as pouring sugar onto a cow's prolapsed uterus to shrink it down before stuffing it back in). I had the same types of experiences with farmers, both good (hearty breakfasts in the farmhouse after a successful calving) and bad (I used Herriot's trick of reversing the car into the farmyard to allow for a rapid exit in an uncomfortable situation).
"I ended up leaving farm practice, disheartened by the trend away from smallholdings towards large scale production, ending up attending to pets as my full time job. Herriot's tales ring equally true in this line of veterinary work: every small animal vet has clients reminiscent of 'Mrs Pumphrey' and her beloved Pekes, and we've all had occasions when we have difficulty understanding what a client is saying because of a local brogue (in Herriot's case it was a strong Yorkshire dialect, but there are variations on this theme across the world)."
World of James Herriot, Thirsk, Yorkshire, England
If you're ever in Yorkshire, the James Herriot Museum in Thirsk, in Alf Wight's home and veterinary surgery, is well worth a visit. It's about a half-hour north of York. It's a combination museum: The life and career of Alf Wight, domestic life in 1930s Yorkshire, the history of veterinary practice, and the history of the TV series. We spent a fascinating morning there.
How China is building financial leverage over all Americans - Josh Rogin
"But did you know that millions of Americans are currently - often unwittingly - betting their financial futures on the future success of the Chinese government's strategy? Without much oversight or consideration of the risks, Wall Street institutions are steering trillions of American investors' dollars toward Chinese companies that are complicit in China's military expansion and gross human rights abuses.
"Congress is now making an effort to force these Wall Street firms to stop exposing American investors' financial futures to Chinese companies that are not only beholden to the Chinese Communist Party but also in many cases directly involved in repression. The Chinese government is hoping Americans don't realize what's going on until it's too late.
"In August, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., wrote to Michael Kennedy, the chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB), which administers the pensions of more than 5 million federal employees and military service members. They demanded he reverse the board's decision to steer over $50 billion in the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) toward China. "
World's First DIY Collimated Display
Three Epson projectors, a projection screen, a mirror made of Mylar with a ShopVac holding it taut, copper tinsel to detect overstretch, and an IR LED / detector pair to provide feedback for the vacuum system -- all to provide a collimated 220 degree horizontal by 40 degree vertical out-the-window display for a home-built flight simulator. Photos and videos show how it was all put together.
Mirror collimation: Mike's Flight Deck
Diagrams and discussion of how collimation works and why it's used in commercial flight simulation, with notes on the practical problems of creating the right shape frame for a Mylar mirror, and pointers to more technical discussions of the optics involved and to related patents. Elsewhere on the same site, there are explanations of the challenges involved in tricking a human's visual processing system into thinking objects are much farther than the projected image.
British Arctic Territory Flag Hoax - Flags of the World
Flags and fake news: A story from April Fools Day 1995 of the fabrication of a British territory by a flag-fancier from Mississippi.
"...inspiration for making up a British territory and its flags came to me in early 1995 while I was looking at a rather sizable map of Ellesmere Island, Canada. The north part of the island was basically a territorial park except for a stumpy thumb shaped peninsula sticking out on the north east end of the island. When I saw this peninsula, I knew I had found my territory....Based on what little knowledge I had, I fabricated a story about native desires to rejoin the British empire because the empire had given them more freedom. I went on to say the Canadian Government was tired of the whole issue and was glad to let the 'BAT' rejoin the empire. And then of course, I proceeded to create a set of British flags and ensigns....
" I suspected our info firm was doing a poor job verifying information before sending it out. In a nutshell, I wanted to send the article and newsletter to other vexi-publications as an April Fools joke, and our info firm to see if they would circulate the BAT story without getting verification. Everyone agreed to go to print provided I made it obvious the article was a joke.
"This is where I made a mistake. I believed the story in and of itself was so absurd, that no one would fall for it. Thus, I gave very little indication of a hoax except for the date and an archaic British reference to April Fools....
"...for 4 days after being asked if my story were true, the British Government would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the territory. The Canadian government contacted me as well, not to tell me I was mistaken, but for verification of the story. The US government also briefly added the BAT to its "official" list of nations and territories. It took quite a bit of effort to convince them the territory didn't really exist. I never dreamed the hoax would have this kind of affect. The only explanation I have for the US government's action is the information firm I referred to earlier. Sure enough, said info firm sent out word that the BAT had in fact been created. I suspect Uncle Sam picked up on it. Our organization soon dropped its subscription."
