Next time you or someone you love confuses the concepts of causation vs. correlation when relating events to each other, point them to this little illustration.
It’s a news clipping sent to me some time after my 1989 Shad Valley days, by a friend who helped me found the short-lived Canadian Carrot Club.
Statistically speaking – Garry Fairbairn
AgriMarketing magazine recently quoted this ad, produced by the (U.S.) National Institute of Statistical and Competitive Analysis:
Carrots lead to death, war, crime and disease!
FACT – More than 99% of all sick Americans have eaten carrots.
FACT – 99% of all who die from cancer have eaten carrots.
FACT – Most victims of car and plane crashes have eaten carrots.
FACT – Juvenile delinquents come from homes where carrots are eaten.
FACT – 100% of those born in 1839 and ate carrots are now dead.
The AIM, or Aeronautical Information Manual is a regularly updated textbook on US flight procedures. It covers everything from airmanship to zulu time, and has been available for free, online, for years. After years of killing many trees, Transport Canada has released our equivalent, the Aeronautical Information Publication on the net too, but only in PDF form. This link takes you to an HTML-converted version of the 2004-4 edition, as generated by pdftohtml, a nifty little tool.
I spent about three hours on several forms of public transit today, in order to pick up GXRP from maintenance in Brantford.
There are the obvious drawbacks:
- surface vehicles without an own right-of-way have to swim slowly in the turbulent sea of cars
- a significant fraction of travel time is made up of queueing delays at transfer points, while one waits for the next vehicle
- there are stopping points where anyone wants to get on/off, bringing everyone’s actual travel time up to the “least common multiple” of sorts
- being enclosed in a tube with a bunch of physically sick strangers makes one not want to touch anything, much less inhale
- and then there are all those advertisements ingeniously plastered absolutely everywhere a shy eye can try to park its gaze
But finally there is an upside: actually seeing a bunch of strange new people. In my habitual drive to work, and at home, I see strangers rather infrequently. And yet here they were, in a bountiful supply, even various handsome school folks. It reminded me of the way that an old friend (R.K.) from the 1980s met his future wife on a subway.
That made my mind wonder off to a weird hypothetical conversation between some codgy rich old guy and a pretty young lady he might be courting, realizing that there seems to be a subtle asymmetry between proclamations of appearance-irrelevance. (Got that?)
she: why should I be interested?
he: because I’m wealthy, I can provide, …
she: but I don’t find you attractive
he: everyone gets over that in time
she: not everyone: would you woo me if I weren’t attractive?
he: er … oops
she: hypocrite!
Masses of aviation people flock to the yearly Oshkosh show in Wisconsin for a week-long midsummer romp with thousands of airplanes and people. I visited last year in GXRP but I doubt I’ll go back.
It’s nearly six months before the next show, so this is the time of year when one can afford the most detached reflection. I think the comparison between Mecca and Oshkosh is more apt than it may appear at first glance.
- the journey there constitutes the boastworthy accomplishment
- both attract throngs of faithful, leading to mob euphoria
- there is not that much that can be done/learned only there
- it’s a relief to get out of there and arrive home with one’s skin and belongings intact
In a stark contrast, muslims are required to go to Mecca only once per lifetime. Oshkosh fans tend to return year after year, even though the show doesn’t change much. It’s neat that the EAA pulls off an event of such logistical nightmarity every year, but I would be surprised to return.
The tsunami disaster from a few weeks ago is of course very very bad. But in its wake, a weird sickly competition has emerged, one that is making me turn my back on the whole thing.
I’m of course talking about the stomach-pumping competition to display the most sympathy to those affected. Every news channel’s bobbing heads perform grand arias of ache; every organization of every kind feels the need to make a token statement of sorrow and support. And for what? Because (say) the City of Toronto (municipal government) has some intimate connection to Thailand? Or Dell Computers (whose web homepage features a reference) was all washed out in Sri Lanka? Of course not – but they all make noises about fundraising, ribbons, generosity, and all that, exclaiming “give!” (and by the way let each organization collect some karma for its intermediation).
Stop it already!
It’s nice and all to encourage us rich first-world folks to send some money or whatever over there. But every bloody organization hitting us up at the same time is, if you excuse a pun, an overkill. It’s like that scene from Airplane!, where wave after wave of charity beggars leech themselves onto passengers. The response of Robert Stack’s character, punching and kicking his way through the do-gooder gauntlet is becoming metaphorically apropos.
There are a few positive signs of course. The military effort has been massive (despite the UN’s interference). Doctors Without Borders announced a few days ago that they don’t need any more funding for this crisis. They are honourable and don’t wish to quietly accumulate cash for other future projects — something very likely on the slightly opportunistic minds of those other charities who crassly bemoaned D.W.B.‘s “thanks, but no more” statement.
Throughout his teenage years, your humble author’s younger brothers have teased me about my weight, earning one or two annoyingly persistent nicknames. While I don’t pay much attention to that, I have collected certain indirect evidence: that of chairs.
Chairs, chairs … are they all designed with insufficient strength, or do I just bring out their worst? You see, for the last fifteen years, I’ve damaged or broken at least one gluteus maximus resting surface per year. Crappy garden chairs sometimes last only minutes under me. Stylish wood furniture may tease me with creaks for years, then finally give out with a mighty crack under my … mighty crack.
I don’t think it’s simply because of my weight, since the loading effect is determined to some extent by the pressure: the weight divided by ass area. How does one divide two infinities? It’s probably that I don’t like to simply sit straight, Like with the airplanes, sometimes I land hard. Like a drunkard aiming for the puke bowl, I enjoy leaning over to one side. There is sometimes a folded shin or two underneath that, despite their magnificent padding, concentrate the weight. I have been even known to tilt chairs over so fewer than the entirety of legs support me.
I’m convinced I’m not that large. I just have a bad seattiude.
There are only two fundamental difficulties that we’ve encountered so far during Eric’s first eight weeks with us. One strikes at the body, and the other at the mind.
Some body damage is obvious and well-known even in non-spawning circles. They correlate with the circles under eyes of new parents, and consist of the chronic fatigue arising from the offspring’s shortened sleep/wake cycle. As the cycle thankfully extends over time, so does offspring’s peak scream volume, partially cancelling out the former’s benefit.
Other minor body damage relates to the weight of the protohuman, which unless he’s very sick, increases rapidly. Holding a mass up at one’s chest requires a biped to lean backward and/or strain those lower back muscles. That last bit leads to chronic back pain, which can start after just a few minutes of holding offspring. Bodybuilding is highly recommended.
The mind damage comes from feelings of utter frustration in trying to satisfy a little brat (and increasingly frequently over time, trying to decide when not to). At this stage, there are only five types of active things we can do for him:
- feed
- burp (make him burp; parental burping doesn’t count)
- diaper change
- holding
- playing (letting him exercise like proto-crawling, -climbing)
We refer to these alternatives with the numbers 1-5 in the family, as in “Dremin, try #4”, or “Holy cow, is that the fifth #3 this hour?”. Oddly, putting him down to sleep lacks a code number, since it’s an act of desparation (see below), and so does medical attention, since he hasn’t needed any.
The aforementioned mind problem is that the brat, having the communicative ability of a rodent, fails to hold up a number flashcard identifying his current complaint. We have to guess, and guess what, five minutes later conditions may change, and we will have to guess again.
But what to do when none of #1-5 work? There you have a crying kid, gradually turning red and rageful, with no known remedy. It turns out that many of these times, there is no real satisfiable concern at all, and like many of us, he likes to get into a self-amplified vicious moping cycle. Sometimes this cycle can be interrupted with a brief toy encounter (#5) or a quick lifted romp around upstairs (#4), but other times it cannot. And during these times, a well-meaning offspring maker can feel rather powerless, stupid, and guilty. Over time, that damage leads to depression.
I try not to let it get that far. When a good-faith bargaining effort fails (including all of #1-5 in a reasonable time period), I am willing to give up, and back down to #0 – putting him down. (No, not like putting down a rabid dog.) Little brat can then entertain himself in his little room, with his vocal virtuosity. If he’s laid on his front side, he generally gives up the moping and falls asleep in a few minutes. On the politically correct back side, it takes longer. In either orientation, sometimes he instead keeps up a good ruckus, and you know what, the cold-hearted parent that I can be, I can accept that.
Today’s Hope Air flight was special for a young pilot: it called for landing at Canada’s busiest airport: CYYZ aka Lester B. Pearson International.
A pair of east-coast ladies needed a ride over to Buffalo, NY, and I needed to be back in the air after such a long time grounded by weather. Another instructor buddy (Charlie Rampulla, who also works at NexJet) was available to help clean out those mental cobwebs. After two hours of early morning aerial exercises, we checked in with YYZ tower, who didn’t expect us but were open-minded. Once confirmed, they worked us into the rather slow Sunday-noon flow of big jet traffic, and in no time at all, we shut down at the Hope Air sponsor Shell Aerocentre. We were made welcome, and sat there in the comfy pilot lounge, ogling out the airside windows.
An hour or two later, the ladies arrived by jet, were shuttled over to our little airplane, and we got under way to Buffalo. Getting under way took some time because Pearson tower wanted us to take off from the farthest possible corner of the airport from our parking spot. So, we had to taxi as far and wait nearly as long as a big jet. Again, the controllers easily worked us into the mix, treating our little 6-seater just as seriously as the 300-passenger airplanes waiting ahead and behind us.
On the way to Buffalo, we had a picture-perfect instrument flight, as indeed our passengers realized as about nothing was visible during the flight. We passed right over Niagara Falls, but sadly no sightseeing was possible because of snow and clouds in the area. After a straightforward landing at Buffalo’s longest runway, we parked at the field’s only general aviation support company and quickly dealt with US customs. Despite not needing to purchase anything there, these fine folks let us freely borrow a “crew car” for a few hours to get something to eat: buffalo wings of course.
Our return trip to Toronto was embittered by Canadian customs. They seem to require a rock-solid two-hour advance notice of arrival. For a half-hour flight like Buffalo-Toronto, this is inconvenient. As the weather was worsening in the wider area, after some negotiation they permitted us to arrive in Toronto early, but instructed us sternly to wait until the original two-hour ETA before clearing customs. Off we went, back up into the post-nightfall dark clouds, and arrived back home at the Island around 6 o’clock. The CANPASS representatives were unrelenting, and forced us to stay in the cold dark little parked airplane for an entire hour before they were willing to talk to us on the phone and let us go. Sigh – no agent even came to visit. I’m sure there is some logic in this process, beyond a brute exercise of authority, I just wish I knew what good was accomplished by making us sit there.
In two weeks, we get to do it all over again.
Today I was to travel to Boston on business. A conspiracy of esoteric mishaps blocked my attempts.
Boston is about two hours’ flight time away in GXRP, so it was of course Plan A. Everything important was set: a customs appointment, hotel room, flight plan. The weather was awful, and made the decision to even try to fly out quite complicated. If I were to take off under a particularly heavy snow cell, there was no suitable nearby place to urgently land at (should that become necessary). If I delayed it too late, the bad weather would move from the Toronto area to the Boston area, which is bad because arriving in bad weather is more difficult than leaving it. A bunch of commercial flights were cancelled, but I was going to give it a try.
GXRP said “no” in that simple direct language that consisted of failing to let me start its right engine. Old aircraft engines are notoriously difficult to start on rare occasions, and today it took the better of me, but only after more than an hour of trying, waiting, collecting advice, trying again, hobbling off of one little snow drift onto another. A mechanic suspected some actual problem, and offered to lay on hands sometime later, and at noon that’s where I left it.
Plan A having been foiled, on to Plan B: driving there. This is about an eight drive-hour distance, which with customs and various breaks has taken me nine or twelve hours on a prior occasion. I launched with on a GPS-recommended route, taking me first through the Niagara Falls area, then along many interstate highways barreling eastward.
Barreling is the wrong word. The windy blizzard we experienced in Toronto was also making itself felt in New York state. Driving conditions along my path varied between “barely okay” and “slipping dangerously”. At a particularly nasty spot, the conditions could be described as “unsuccessfully trying to get around a snowplow intent on killing me”.
OK, so maybe it did not intend to kill me, but it sure seemed like it. Rather than lumbering nicely way off on the right lane / shoulder, this particular yellow devil tracked over into my left lane, when we both happened to arrive at a bridge section of the I190 at the same time. He kept one of its lethal instruments (plows) hung on his left side, which flopping loosely around as it did just at the wrong time, required my big yellow car to duck to avoid getting sliced open like a can. Fortunately big yellow car is driven by a manly man, and instead of getting sliced open, he/I steered the SUV just slightly onto the left shoulder.
Unfortunately, over this particular bridge, there was no left shoulder, only a hard curb, and side rails. Big yellow car bounced off the left edge of the road at least three times, giving one or two big bangs, as that snowplow was waving its blade at us. During this bouncing, the car incurred some damage, but far less than if we had made contact with that blade. It was all over in about three seconds.
I did let out one small short swear word, after having maneuvered to a safe distance ahead of the snowplow. The car was making some awful noises, so after a few dozen meters, I pulled over onto the right shoulder. I stopped the car, waited for a break in the traffic, and took a quick look at the damage. Front left tire, blown right out; rim scraped. Left rear plastic body panel: scraped. No other apparent damage. At this point, I ran back into the car as the snowplow was coming for me again — or rather, it went neatly around my crippled car, then nonchalantly resumed its plowing duties straight ahead. Its crew did not stop to talk it all over.
So you can complete the image in your head: here is little Frank, well behind schedule, going on a desparate effort to get there on time for an important meeting in Boston; having just crossed to the US side; having an immobile vehicle; wind howling, snow coming down hard again. WIth a cell phone and a CAA subscription, at least survival was not a serious concern. (That is, until I considered stepping out of the car to survey the damage closer, and as traffic was whipping past nearby.)
About that CAA subscription … it did not help. I called them, and they promptly transferred me to the american associate AAA. It took several minutes to communicate my position to the kind-sounding lady on the other end of the line. Cross-checking maps and GPS co-ordinates, the AAA chick eventually concluded that they cannot help me there. It was so close to the border that apparently only the state police had jurisdiction, or something.
By the time they transferred me to the state police, a trooper had already sneaked up in the shoulder lane behind me. He offered to block off traffic, and got me to move over as far to the right as possible (literally an inch from that side rail). Then he sat back in his car to watch me, who for the very first time ever, changed a tire in anger. Unlike the last trip, this time I did not bring along my full size spare tire, so had to put on the little “donut” compact spare. Between unpacking the trunk (to get access to the jack and the spare tire), raising the big yellow car, gawking at the multiple-square-inch hole in the old tire, replacing it, lowering big yellow car, and finally packing up all the leftovers, something like an hour went by.
Continuing the trip to Boston was of course right out, and not just because of the speed limitation of the compact spare tire (80 km/h, which would have extended the trip several more hours). The car suffered potentially other unseen damage, beyond some weird electrical control malfunction that just started, and I was not about to get any deeper into the States on a sickly horsey. So I turned around, and ran home, initially under the watch of that trooper dude.
There I go again … “ran home” gives an impression of speedy progress, which the trip home wasn’t. It took about an hour to get to the Niagara Falls area from home; it took four to get back. I stayed off highways for the most part, paralleling them on service roads. This retreat was completed safely but atrociously slowly.
Back home, I replaced the compact spare tire with our spare full sized tire; reset the electrical system to clear some gremlins, and went for a test spin. Other than a slight steering offset (will need a wheel realignment), and that bruise on the plastic side panel, the car seems fine. But now it’s 11 PM, and I’m still not where I’m supposed to be.
Can you guess my plan for tomorrow? I’ll try to fly over at the crack of dawn. Sheer folly, or dogged determination? News tomorrow at 11.
UPDATE “tomorrow” at 7: I’m in no shape to complete the flights. Staying at home safe home.
In reference to the last UPDATE of the last entry, I changed my mind. I flew over this afternoon after all. Total time from initial decision to try again, to the moment of arrival at the Red Hat Westford office was about four hours. This included making customs arrangements, preflight inspections, flight planning, the actual flight, hangaring at the destination, getting a rental car, and driving the final 20 miles. General aviation rules (when things work out).
Last Wednesday’s excitement started a story that even now is not fully concluded. It continues the roller-coaster ride.
My business in Boston was done Friday at noon, about 20 hours after I arrived there. The weather was lovely, so I should have been back in Toronto in time for dinner. Somehow, nothing says “home” like sipping the undelightful room-temperature fake beer whose carton Juimiin sometimes uses as a footrest. That is what your correspondent was finally doing at the time of this writing.
But in the case of Friday, nothing said home, period, since the aircraft mechanical problem last Wednesday had returned: the right engine would not start. Because of a misunderstanding by the aircraft service company where it parked, GXRP was left outside in the deep-freeze since its arrival, instead of being hangared. It was not possible to warm it up again enough to give it a second try, like during Thursday morning’s successful outbound flight. (I figured out later that Thursday’s success was just a fluke, and should have accepted that there is a real problem being masked by excess pre-heating.)
They were kind enough to call back to work their own aircraft mechanic, with whom I worked for a few hours looking for possible problems. We found and fixed a few, but still she didn’t go. I was stuck in Boston for an unexpected second night. Those of you watching the weather will now realize the problem. By Saturday morning, flying to Toronto would become impossible for the next day and maybe two, even if the airplane was able to start. If it wouldn’t start, I and it would be stuck in Boston for days because of the impending storm.
Come overnight in the little emergency hotel room (kindly arranged by the nexjet people again), a plan formed. If the plane started, I would aim to at least cross the Canadian border. I gave up on flying to Toronto or nearby, and aimed instead at Ottawa, which was to receive the bad weather only late in the day. Imagine my disappointment that, after arriving back in the morning to find a warm airplane, it didn’t fire up right away. Now imagine my relief that a couple of minutes’ nursing somehow made it go after all. Whew. Even the nexjet crew was relieved to see me leave.
The flight to Ottawa was shorter and more scenic than the Boston-bound one two days earlier. As before, once the airplane started, it behaved perfectly. I flew over the pretty Adirondack mountain range, the frozen-over St. Lawrence river, and only a little bit of farmland. A lovely landing was followed by a productive introduction to a local aircraft mechanic, in whose care next week GXRP will likely recover its past starting prowess.
The trip came to a close as I enjoyed a four-hour train ride to Toronto, talking altogether too much to some interesting characters. Seeing the thick frothy snow-filled air on the Lake Ontario shore made it clear that trying to land in Toronto would have been a dangerous waste of time. Still, I am home and the airplane isn’t. The trip really ends only after we are both home.
You might not think of time as having an appearance. Ordinarily, I’d agree, but this interval describes last night’s sleep, which was the longest span of time that Eric has ever slept uninterrupted. Since he’s become a separately living protohuman until before last night, the record had been five.
Now that Juimiin is resuming her flight training, I get to spend more private time with the little brat. Just to balance out some of the prior articles about the boy, this one is a bit more positive.
Being alone with Eric lets me experiment with different strategies to handle contention, without Juimiin’s eagle-eye and eagle-ear second-guessing. It is how I’ve figured out what are some likely times that the brat will be willing to go to sleep on his own, even if he starts out with some fussy crying in his crib. It is how I can have long discussions with him in English or baby babble, without inhibitions.
Being the only two humans in the house also leads to some totally charming moments. It was a belated bath time this evening, and I did it all. The brat has started to enjoy these wet minutes. He shows this with a largly constant grin, flapping limbs, and vocalizations, from his initial undressing to beyond the final redressing. He may be a good little nudist someday. Surely unrelated to that prediction, I find it real hard to put him down in the bath-time euphoria.
Eric’s transition routine from evening to night is also sometimes pleasant. If he is otherwise satisfied, and is simply being held for a few minutes, he will try to “nest” by rubbing his big head on all sorts of spots, until he finds a comfortable one. Then, he can quietly fall asleep, and turn into a big warm barely-moving lump prosthesis.
Such nice moments can be very touching, especially if experienced privately.
More than a week late, the Boston trip has finally concluded. GXRP is back home, with its starting problem diagnosed and corrected. Yey to Doug Mofford’s maintenance crew in Ottawa.
Grocery shopping is normally a lovely experience. But even the most saliva-drip-inducing proximity to raw meat and bread can be spoiled.
Our nearby Loblaws store plays real popular music tracks over its P.A. system, not the crappy instrumental muzak so popular elsewhere. Tonight they spent several minutes playing Michael Jackson’s 1983 hit “Thriller”.
It is not hard to turn my state from stolid to sentimental. My age may still be slightly tender, but I’ve had to think about time passage and mortality since the tenderer age of ten or so. That’s when I first understood that we and the universe were going to die, and it got me down for some time. Now the awareness is just a little whisper at the back of my mind, ready to be yanked into the forefront on the slightest provocation. The musical number did that for me tonight.
More than twenty years have gone by since that music was recorded. The world has changed and we have all aged. Many good people have gone, like Vincent Price who lent his voice to that tune. I don’t personally miss the man, having never met him and only seen little fragments of work, but the sense of loss is somehow palpable anyway. It’s so permanent. Ronald Reagan won’t perform another speech; Roy Orbison won’t share his angel voice. Many millions of anonymous people will be lost.
Maybe the best way of finding cheer amongst all this aging and decay is to shift one’s attention to the up-and-coming next generations. One might contribute to them directly by the careful exercise of mammalian mitosis. But new lives can’t replace old ones: they take a huge and painful investment to get to a productive level, and even then their ultimate contributions are unpredictable. We play venture capitalists under a genetic imperative, knowing that our own assets are destined to dissolve.
Maybe Ray Kurzweil or his kind will succeed in creating a copy-a-mind-into-a-machine widget before it’s too late. Other than funding new experiences which to remember, what could be a better use of money?