How frequently do Catholics and other interested people pause and wonder what has become of the pope?

In the last few years or decades of his life, he’s been turned into a Hollywood-style superstar, building a classic “cult of personality”. People throng just to be near the guy; they cry at his feeble utterances; credit his helming of a morally-ambivalent organization with great things beyond his power; they count down to his death (or is that apotheosis). He has become subject of the very sort of idolatry prohibited by the bible’s first commandment.

At the same time, he is used as a statue, a parade float. Long ago, his disease rendered him effectively immobile. He is now carried in his own version of Lenin’s tomb, whether in the form of the popemobile, the wheeled standing platform, the wheelchair. I find striking the images of the poor old man being pushed to and fro by his subordinates, being told what to try to say, the microphones being pulled away from him, the curtains being drawn on him. He is treated like a puppet!

Compare him to a chief executive of some other organization, such as a corporation or a government. When was the last actual administrative act (not public appearance, not mere “holding of office”) that the pope has performed? What has he done lately, beyond surviving in his tenure? Would any other organization retain such a severely handicapped person? In what form could he have been a leader rather than just an icon or figurehead for the catholics?

I don’t get it.

When you next hear someone kiss ass in an annoyingly extended, public, humiliatingly dishonest way, yell out “You’ll get deeper if you use your tongue!“.

I apologize for the visceral image.

An “overshoot” or “go-around” maneuver is performed to abort a landing: to make an airplane climb up and away as fast as possible. It can be done well, and it can be done badly.

A recent morning flight was a case in point. On a lark, I visited Greenbank airport, a little turf strip near Port Perry and Lake Scugog. During early training in Cessna 172s, I have occasionally landed there, just for the grass experience. Soft runways as short as these require special techniques to use safely.

I am not brave enough to try to land the Aztec, weighing twice as much as the C172, on such a small spot. But I still flew over it, and performed a low approach, perhaps 100 feet above the snow-covered runway. (Sorry, I was too busy to take a picture for you.) As I approached the trees at the far end, I started a faulty overshoot procedure. Full power, flaps up, gear up … wrong! With full power, the airplane indeed started to climb as one might expect the 500 hp of engine power to do. But then I screwed up: raised the flaps entirely while I was still accelerating. I promptly lost a bunch of lift, and the airplane felt like it started sinking! (Recall that this was with me already low, and with trees approaching. Oops!) It might not have been a real sink, just an attitude change, but it felt momentarily scary. I leveled off, waited briefly for the growing speed to compensate for the loss of lift, and off I went.

On the Aztec, there is no detent in the flap controls for an intermediate setting, so to do the proper action, which is to raise flaps to a fractional setting, requires several control movements. This is when one’s already busy just switching everything else over to a climb. And yet, when performance is critical, one has to make time: raise flaps partially; wait to make sure we’re not sinking; raise the gears; wait again; then finally raise the flaps completely. It is just not safe to shortcut this full procedure.

The other memorable overshoot experience of that session was in some ways the opposite. I visited the Oshawa airport for some circuit practice, including some low approach / overshoot practice to make up for my earlier screw-up. To finish off my half hour there, I made one final low approach, but in cruise rather than landing configuration. Power was medium/high, gears and flaps were already up. The airplane was very happy! Then tower asked me to climb out and turn away, to make room for someone else behind me.

I was happy to oblige. With full power, and no source of drag to remove, the Aztec rocketed forward and up. I banked steeply to the right to turn homeward, and pitched up to get away vertically too. The result was this almost aerobatic turning climb with the airplane partly on its side, shooting up and away. I would have paid good money to see that from the ground – heck, you might have been impressed too. In a few seconds, I was clear of the area. In a few hours, I still sported a grin.

Some phrases have entered English conversation that are symptomatic of our culture of pretense.

The phrases I am referring to are “I bet …” and “I accept responsibility …”. I won’t even mention “… not to mention …”.

The former is meant to convey confidence in holding some proposition, while making a vague undertaking of risk. After all, a real bet is one that one might lose, and thus lose something of value. But the speaker usually risks absolutely nothing by saying this, especially not money, which is the traditional penalty or prize. The popularity of this type of phrase has so cheapened an attestation of confidence that not even credibility is placed at serious risk by its statement. It’s just noise.

The latter is especially popular with political and corporate leader types, after some shit has hit a fan. In order to conclude the matter, they “accept responsibility”. They perform this action by doing nothing except stating “I accept responsibility”. No resignation, no self-punishment, nothing, except those tepid words meant to impress people: “Ooh, the poor minister, she’s showing such contrition.”. And poof! she’s off the hook. Phoney noise.

I bet that’s all true, not to mention sad. I accept full responsibility if I’m wrong on this.

The mediocre aviation magazine Plane & Pilot seems to have something offensive in every issue. Not rude, or opinionated, or controversial, but simply absurd.

I am talking about a series of ads they publish, from some retailer named “Checkmate Aviation”, which amongst other legitimate materials, sells pseudoscientific garbage. Consider their “Aviation Energy Enhancer Patch” (see 3/4 down this page). I quote:

The Energizer
The Energy Enhancer Patch gives you stamina and joie de vivre, perfect for those long cross-country flights. The company claims it uses a science called nanotechnology, which communicates with the body’s electromagnetic field and signals it to produce energy from fat cells.

Can anyone with even a modicum of science awareness fail to recognize that this is an April Fools trinket like magnets for making wine taste better, crystals to heal your dog, rocks to improve CD audio quality, homeopathic concoctions, and a whole army of other charlatan products? And yet, Plane & Pilot, a magazine dealing with a technical field, continues spreading its legs, err, pages, for little scraps of money, thereby pushing expensive trash to what they hope is a stupid readership.

(By the way, the magazine was never invited into our home. It was an undesired gift subscription that better not be renewed.)

One might hope that the good people at ontario’s lottery monopoly who direct expenditures toward advertising responsible gambling would check with staff mathematicians.

… but no. A long-running local radio commercial is a sad fatherly narrator, chiding a problem gambler. This poor sod apparently believes that gambling just after midnight increases his chances of winning. The narrator informs us that this is not so. Why? I forget the exact words, but it’s something technically non-sequitorial like “the odds of winning are random”; that “one can’t predict winning”.

The mistake is in equating randomness with unpredictability and uniformity.

It is entirely possible to program a slot machine to change its probability distribution for winning, as a function of time, space, whatever, just as it is possible to load dice, or to disturb bingo balls. The effect is not the total loss of randomness, but merely a change in its distribution. And it is something like this that our hypothetical gambler sod apparently imagines with his nightly trek. To reassure him, the commercial would have to assert that the probability distribution was stationary, not merely that there was still randomness.

I don’t think the average adult is too stupid to understand the difference. I wish the OLGC had asked its own technical people to suggest a more accurate way of getting across their intent.

Those residents of this town who are dependent on public transit to get around have been led by weeks and days of media hysteria to worry about whether they’d be able to get to work tomorrow. They need not have worried.

Shockingly, an 11th-hour deal was struck between the transit union and the municipal bureaucracy that averted a strike. The announcement just happened to occur during the usual Sunday evening news time slot.

Or rather, not shockingly at all. Golden mayor boy Miller has been willing to firehose money toward any union (or other lefty cause) making noise, since they helped elect him in the first place. No wonder he could promise “no labour unrest” on his watch. But what better way to bolster his ego, er, image, than to manufacture a labour crisis, then to appear to solve it at the last minute? He’s such a hero, and that union bloke is jolly good too. Yes, it cost yet more taxpayer money, but at least the proles get to continue riding along.

I have little doubt that the whole sequence of events was orchestrated months in advance. Sue-Ann Levy might agree.

Oh no, I’m getting cosmic payback for my comments about that Schiavo woman: Eric is showing signs of bulimia. Maybe comments that he’s so chubby have put a complex into his five-month-old head. He now regularly throws up after feeding.

Flying commercially is not as bad as I remember it. But I’m still disappointed not to have used Air Frank for a recent trip.

Your correspondent travelled to the Silcon Valley area, on an Air Canada Airbus 320. The rudder did not fall off in flight, thanks for asking.

Having remembered to completely disarm myself before heading into the terminal, the security screenings are reasonably fast. Food is unsurprisingly expensive. The airplane is surprisingly full! My seat is of course by a window, about a meter behind the trailing edge of the wing. That wing … its span seems only three times larger than that of GXRP, yet carries thirty times the weight.

Something weird happened with wind or traffic at Pearson when we departed. Our gate is at the far south-east corner of the airport, from where we can see traffic using on 24L/24R, with quite a queue of jets waiting for departure. And yet ours taxies all the way to the northwest corner of the airport, and takes off in the opposite direction on runway 5, just after another airplane that departed head-on from the other end, on 23. The jet climbs very nicely eastward, then eventually turns around westward. The performance feels about as awesome as a high-performance climbout in GXRP.

In about half a hour, we are over Lake Huron, catching glimpes of the gorgeous beaches by Goderich. Another 45 minutes later, we fly over Chicago. I think I see what’s left of Meigs Field. Another half hour, and we’re over Iowa, where someday I hope to visit the Honecks’ Aviation Inn.

Over Iowa and then over Nebraska, the pilots route us around two huge isolated thunderstorm cells. The tops reach well above our cruising altitude. One can see the evil frothing within the thing from our 30-mile (?) distance. Nearby, scattered towering cumulus looking tall and thin, like vicious blades of grass, though the jet flew above these. Air Frank would have had to fly well away from the whole area.

Another hour, and we hit the Utah/Colorado/Nevada area. Here the land finally changes from flat to gently rippling, to outright roaring. The winds must rock down by the mountains today, for even at our 38000+-foot cruising altitude, we feel mountain turbulence effects. A few picture-perfect lens clouds are visible. But occasionally the sky clears below, letting me see the Rockies from well above. They look great from this angle too.

Finally, we cross the California border, and start the descent. The wing spoilers let us get down in a mere half hour, to a sky shared with many other airplanes coming and going. The extended final approach takes us close to San Jose International Airport, which is the place I likely would have parked GXRP at, if Air Frank was in service. The final approach track follows the San Francisco bay northwest to the airport, where the big jet makes a nice firm touchdown, preceded by a quite perceptible flare.

I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did, but I guess any flying is still flying, even if I’m not at the controls.

Operations at uncontrolled airports are usually that way because there is not enough traffic to justify the expense of a tower. Some uncontrolled airports can be busy enough to desparately make one wish for one.

At one recent flight to Barrie-Orillia (CNB9), the airport turned into a “Roach Motel” or “Hotel California”: it was possible to arrive but not to leave. This came about from unlucky weather, in two ways. First, the weather was lovely that day: one of the first nice days this spring. This meant that all the flight schools were buzzing with activity, buzzing all little airports. Second, the winds were blowing from the east, meaning that runways numbered 1 to 17 were being used at airports in the area.

In the case of this day at CNB9, this meant that there were three or four airplanes in the traffic circuit, all of them for runway 10, with about thirty seconds between them. That’s okay, as long as they all only land, or perform touch-and-goes, it’s nice and orderly. Consider the point of view of someone needing to depart however. The apron is located at the far east of the airport, which is the end of runway 10. There are no taxiways to roll over to the beginning of the runway, so one would have to backtaxi on the runway itself. But taxiing so far takes several minutes, at the same time as the student traffic wants to use the runway continuously in the opposite direction.

So, this particular day, GXRP and its two operators ended up waiting at the apron/runway intersection for ten minutes, for a break in the traffic. The break never came. So I announced on the radio that I gave up, and intended to depart downwind instead, so I would not have to backtaxi. Even now the students didn’t take the hint that I’ve been wasting gas: they kept going with their touch-and-goes. After another few minutes, finally, one student decided to land, thus taking the runway for a longer time. I announced that I would let the incoming person pass GXRP, and that I’d taxi onto the runway at the same time. The clue bat smacked the next person about to land, and he announced that he’d pass beside but not on the runway. Finally, freedom! GXRP’s engines roared, and despite the undesirable tailwind, we got the heck out of there on the opposite runway direction (28).

If the touch-and-go gang had a little more courtesy, they could have extended their path, or volunteered to circle, or slow down, that frustrating delay need not have grown quite so long. If there was a control tower, the controllers would have imposed etiquette on all of us. As it happened, I had to improvise an uncomfortable technique just to escape barrietraz.

Since last summer, GXRP has carried an Avidyne EX-500 MFD unit in its avionics stack. The MFD converses with the mothership across a radio data link to fetch weather and such info, and routinely transmits its position. Now Avidyne has added a new feature to the package: on-line flight tracking. People who receive a password from me can log on to a web site, and get a look at the position and planned track of the airplane, while still in the air. Soon they will be able to send/receive text messages to the flight. Cool cool cool.

When a twin-engined airplane “loses” an engine, student pilots are often under the impression that the standard emergency drill has to be rushed.

On an overpowered plane like our Aztec, this is not so. Even in the worst-case scenario (engine failure immediately after liftoff), the sucker has enough power to climb even without completing the drill.

After realizing this, a memorable discussion occurred during refresher flight with Charlie Rampulla. We were goofing around in GXRP up at a safe altitude, nowhere near the critical post-takeoff configuration. He suddenly asked: “What would you do right away if an engine quit?”. An eager beaver student may rote off the standard drill. But my response, as the owner and repair-bill-payer of this piece of hardware, was: “[I’d do] Nothing, but complain ‘crap, this is going to be expensive‘.”

Today’s Hope Air mission was my longest day of flying yet.

I flew solo from Toronto (CYTZ) to Thunder Bay (CYQT), to pick up a charming young lady and bring her back home. Each leg should take three hours in GXRP under ideal conditions, but today’s weren’t ideal.

The outbound leg was uneventful, maybe even boring, except for crossing a weak cold front, and grossing a weak bladder. The former lasted for something like an hour, and involved ice and some turbulence. Just before going out of radio communication range with air traffic controllers, I remembered to ask for a discretionary range of lateral and vertical movement, so that I could go around the worst of the spots shown on the weather radar. The latter involved two separate TravelJohn units, which were effective (whew!) and nowhere as yucky as one might think.

The return leg was broken up into two halves, with a stop-over at Sault Ste. Marie (CYAM), on suspicion that bladder issues may come up with my passenger. And sure enough, she sprinted to the bathroom and a smoking spot at the Soo once we landed. The final homebound leg was pleasant, included a brief airplane control exercise for the lady, and finished off with a gently airplane-rinsing drizzle.

I was not exhausted after these 8.1 hours of consecutive flights. Maybe I have it in me to fly across the country after all, which should take only about twice this much time.

As the scope of a political domain goes from local to global, the conflicts become harder, the stakes higher, the timescales longer, and the intellect sounder. (The same is probably true of law and economics.)

Local politics is adequately covered by the free advertisement-funded crap masquerading as a local “newspaper” or “television station”. In our immediate area, The Mirror fills this role of recycling-fodder and CityTV is a great mental laxative.

But as the issues get larger and harder, they go outside the reach of impatient citizens. At this level, complex issues are reduced to idolization or vilification of individuals (“I hate George W. Bush”) or countries (“France is heaven!”) or ideals (“Give peace a chance”). Luckily, this is within the level of mainstream media sophistication, so there is ample such content. But what if one is willing to spend some time, and wants to really understand?

Reading The Economist, and the many private intelligence-oriented reporting companies (Stratfor, Jewish World Review, Global Security and others) are good for broad coverage of world issues. Now some extraordinary weblogs are publishing deeper analysis of particular areas. For example, see this article about China. Amongst its observations (and linked supporting/contrasting material), a complicated picture emerges of long-lasting struggle, and lets one imagine hordes of diplomats and soldiers behind the scenes, occupied with necessary planning.

One particular insight I took away from this is that perhaps there is a connection between all the “offshoring” of the last few years, and Taiwan. If the US wanted to help induce/bribe India into helping contain China’s ambitions, it is likely that economic support would be part of the payment. Local-minded politicians may try to press inward-looking legislation like the the “Jobs for America Act of 2004” or its cousins, aiming to stem the offshoring trend. But global realpolitik may require a tacit approval of offshoring by the US executive, and blockage of substantial curbs.

There may be many more links like this between news events from continents. It is making more and more sense to look on the web first.

The little brat has found three different ways to move axially on the ground. Moving laterally has not been a problem for the last few months since which he learned to roll over.

The three styles of protocrawling are:

• normal crawling: moving diagonally opposing hands/feet in unison

• leapfrogging: lifting body up, hopping both hands forward, catching up by dragging butt

• inchworming: pushing with butt, squishing the front and middle sections upward, then relaxing and allowing the front end to slip forward

Yes, it’s all trivial stuff to anyone with the flexibility of a few-month-old. But don’t try it with crispy aged adult joints if you know what’s good for you.