Air Safety Advisory

 

I've been watching a lot of air crash videos lately, so I thought I'd make one more post on the topic, as air travel begins to heat back up again after the relaxation of travel restrictions. These are likely to be re-imposed, and re-eased, multiple times, so this post should remain relevant.

I've come to the conclusion is that by far the most dangerous commercial aircraft to fly in is one that is of a new design the pilots are not familiar with. This is because today's aircraft are so computerized that as often as not, now it's the computer that crashes the plane when it disregards what it regards as nonsense input from the pilot. A pilot not familiar with how to deal with this is likely to die along with his passengers, despite his best efforts to regain control. Although the recent 737 Max debacle showed, Boeing is not immune to this problem--but it affects Airbus planes more often, and with more deadly results, because Airbus planes are totally fly-by-wire, meaning that all control signals initiated by the pilot have to be approved by the computer before being passed on to the control surfaces.

If there's any comforting thought in all of this, it's that the airline safety business is extremely heuristic: whenever people die in a plane accident, the response is always two pronged: first to determine exactly what happened, and then to take whatever steps are necessary to keep it from happening again. If only the criminal justice business worked that way: it's real good at the former, but horrible at the latter.

Voter manipulation by supercomputer

In this 2008 post, I wrote that one reason Bush won Ohio in 2004 was due to a huge turnout to vote for that state's Marriage Amendment (a now-unconstitutional part of their constitution).
It turns out that Karl Rove was behind much of that turnout.

In Ohio’s Democratic precincts in 2004, he says, “Rove went into union neighborhoods there and found the people who were concerned with gay marriage and just peeled them off."

The sine qua non of voter data crunching is Aristotle, Inc--founded by the guy who famously designed an atomic bomb his junior year at Princeton. Aristotle has a separate file on every voter, cataloging such minutiae as the contents of his library, his winecellar, and his gun cabinet--among other demographically useful details.  It's interesting to note that Aristotle--headquartered just around the corner from the Capitol--also has offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, Toronto, London, and Spanish Fork, Utah.

Spanish Fork, Utah?

What's in  Spanish Fork, Utah?

Well, that turns out to be the location of the NSA's ubercomputer data center.

Hmmm . . .

Should Elijah the Tishbite be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records?

Yes, but.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world's fastest Marathon (42,195 metres) was run by Wilson Kipsang in 2013. But according to 1 Kings 18:46, Elijah outran King Ahab's horses from Mt. Carmel to Jezreel--a distance of over 50 km by road. Does this mean that Elijah was faster than Kipsang?

In a word, no. As others have pointed out, the account doesn't specifically say that Elijah was supernaturally powered to run ahead of Ahab. And a man on foot, running carefully over somewhat uneven and rocky ground, can easily outpace a team of horses pulling a chariot. The bus route from Haifa to Jezreel takes an hour and forty-eight minutes, so we'd expect a chariot to take at least a couple of hours. Even the Pony Express, which seldom ran a horse farther than 25 km without breaking a gallop, only averaged about 16 kilometres per hour. So Ahab's horses would have had to be extraordinary even to make the full run without breaking pace.

What Elijah did is not at all out of the realm of possibility. Running downhill from Mt. Carmel, Elijah could have gained quite a lead on a horse-pulled chariot, and held it coming back out of the Valley of Esdraelon, fueled by nothing more than a desire to beat the approaching rainstorm. Then, he ran another 180 kilometers to Beersheba, fueled by an irrational terror of Jezebel. And his servant was able to keep up with him at least that far!

So, no world record for Elijah running the Mount Carmel Marathon. It was what he did afterward--going all the way to Mt. Sinai from Beersheba without eating--that would earn him an early mention in today's record books.

An Albino Race--or not.

96885 My posts on albinism fast turned out to be the most popular destinations on this website, outpacing reads about Arthur Blessitt's divorce ten to one this week. I've continued to keep my eyes out for more information on the subject, which has resulted in a couple of discoveries: One, that some of my own cousins probably carry the albinism gene; the other being possible evidence for an actual race of albinos along the southernmost Caribbean coast:

 "The Kuna have a very high incidence rate of albinism. In Kuna mythology, albinos (or sipus) were given a special place. Albinos in Kuna culture are considered a special race of people, and have the specific duty of defending the Moon against a dragon which tries to eat it during an eclipse. Only they are allowed outside on the night of an eclipse and used specially made bows and arrows to shoot down the dragon."

Well, these claims don't bear up so well under scrutiny--especially the 'special race' part. Since carriers of the albinism gene are indistinguishable in the general population, it has never been possible to isolate the albino population into a separate race. If albinos are encouraged only to marry other albinos, an albino population will immediately emerge, but this still will not serve to keep albinism out of the general population; only a controlled breeding program empowered by the modern science of genetics could succeed in that. And no one has tried it, nor is ever likely to, as albinism is a very debilitating condition. I have now received some reports of two successive generations of albinos, but not yet of three [UPDATE: there is now at least one current case of a third-generation albino, referenced in another post on this topic].

But back to the Kuna/Cunas of Panama. Despite their accepted social status, the physical limitations of their defect keeps Kuna albinos from fully engaging in Kuna society (albino men are limited occupationally to traditionally feminine or adolescent roles). Yet albinism persists, due mainly to the small tribal gene pool (compounded, it would appear, by a high rate of incest), misunderstanding of the genetic cause ('moon children' have traditionally been thought to form due to Lamarckian influence at some point in the development of the foetus), and lack of meaningful artificial selection against it (the herbal remedies against fetal albinism being totally useless, racial infanticide being traditionally frowned upon, and the miscegenation prohibition unenforceable in the face of rampant fornication).

The Kunas, despite their unusually high percentage of albinos and social acceptance thereof, generally do not allow them to marry, and take active steps (however futile) against passing on the gene through non-albino carriers. So much for a 'special race,' if such a term actually means anything.

A few cogent observations could be made on what we have learned so far:

- Environment has not appeared to be a factor in the development of a high percentage of albinos in a population. In fact, the populations with the most albinos are very close to the equator, where climactic conditions make albinism the least survivable.

- Albinos are anywhere from two to two hundred times more likely to be found in dark races than in light ones, despite the much more obvious stigma that they would carry among people who look so much different then themselves. Three concentrations of albinism have been identified so far: The Hopi/Zuni of Arizona, the Kuna of Darien, and a so-far unspecified population of Tanzania [UPDATE: The highest concentration of albinos turns out to be due to artificial selection. See articles on Ukerewe Island].

- The main common factor behind the various ethnogeographical concentrations of albinism seems to be animism, functioning in three ways: one, sexual promiscuity resulting in uncontrolled inbreeding; two, a strong resistance to a scientific approach for preventing the passing on of the trait; and three, a typical association of whiteness with heightened spiritual power or influence. This last factor could be a result of the fallacious cause-and-effect reasoning of animists: an albino shaman did something that was perceived to be a demonstration of great spiritual power, and the source of that power was then attributed to his or her whiteness.

- Animism, especially in Africa, puts a premium on body parts from albinos, which results in pressure on albinism in the general population, but also in an artificial concentration of albinos in safe havens, where they are more likely to pass on their albino genes.

There is much we are still learning about the cultural factors behind the preponderance of albinism, but one thing seems sure: No albino race has apparently ever existed, nor is one ever likely to.

AIDS as an agent of natural selection

According to recent statistics, AIDS is taking the lives of four school teachers and two police officers every day in Zambia. Statistics like these are responsible for the life expectancy in many African countries now being below 40 years. A 15-year old Botswanan boy has only a 10 per cent chance of staying AIDS-free that long.

Did you ever stop to wonder why AIDS, which was originally diagnosed exclusively in white men in North America, and was later found to disproportionately afflict black men from Haiti, is now most closely associated with black people of both sexes dying in Sub-Saharan Africa? Has any other disease in history done this sort of transmigration? If AIDS actually originated in Africa, as is commonly thought, why was it necessary for it to incubate in America and Haiti before returning to wreak such devastating damage in the continent of its birth?

It's actually a matter of Natural Selection. AIDS can only thrive in societies that nurture the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (also known as the HIV). The societies in North America that are very hostile to this virus--along with some who nurture it, but try not to let it spread--have been able to minimize the spread of the HIV. Should all societies within North America take an equally aggressive stance against its spread, it could go extinct locally within a couple decades. But important to the containment of the HIV is an understanding that it is a deadly agent that must be killed whenever possible, and whose spread must be contained, even at considerable cost (as an example, many Americans are now prohibited from donating blood through public blood banks because they haven't entered the universal tracking system that was set up to contain the spread of the HIV through blood transfusions).

In direct contrast to this approach, the societies among which AIDS runs rampant, whether they be on the African continent or in the Diaspora of Slavery, do not recognize the HIV as the true enemy. As one person recently returning from a month traveling through Southern Africa put it:

The reason why AIDS is such a killer in Southern Africa is due to the fact that people do not connect their behavior with getting AIDS. If they come down with AIDS, they are convinced that it is because someone with stronger magic than theirs has put a curse on them. The only approach they take to preventing AIDS is to wear the most powerful charm that they can buy whilst continuing to engage in behavior that is likely to bring on the disease.

There you have it, folks. AIDS is an agent of Natural Selection, removing animists from the gene pool. Africa is rapidly becoming less and less animist as a result.

2013: There is a follow-up post found here.

Another unintended consequence of overregulation

Today, Charles Roberts strode into an elementary school building brandishing an arsenal of weapons. He ordered the students against the wall and began singling out the ones he intended to kill.

What's unusual about this scenario is that it was a 1-room Amish school. What did Roberts have against the Amish? Nothing, as it turned out. He chose this particular school because, unlike the public schools across the country in the wake of Columbine, it wasn't locked or guarded.

Amish aren't likely to start locking down their school buildings just because a loony decided to make them an easy target--any more than they'll give up horses just because somebody gets killed by a runaway buggy.

But stand by for some officious meddling by those who think they can legislate away bad behavior. They'll compound their original (useless) regulations with something new targeting the Amish themselves, thus making them suffer twice from this crime.

But it won't work. Note that most of the school shootings this week were at public schools.


Posted 10/2/2006

Appendix:
I have to report that in the three days since writing this post I did in fact discover the existence of an Amish group that gave up their buggies due to a high accident rate. Too many of their members were dying in auto-buggy crashes, and they gave up this part of their heritage. But even more troubling is news of how easily small private country schools (many of which are not Amish) were affected by this event: already school entry doors are being locked for fear of this happening again.

This fear of 'copycat crimes' is logically fallacious. The odds of any one country school being targeted by a pedophilic assassin are remote. So it happened once; yeah, it may happen again. But whenever a barn is burned down by lightning, must every other barn owner in the country immediately be required to carry fire insurance? Yet the odds of an Amish boy being struck by lightning, or his barn burning down, are far greater than his sister's chances of being raped or murdered in the classroom.

IF Amish children continue to be targeted because they meet behind unlocked doors, THEN it may be time for the Amish to review their historic stance of non-resistence. Certainly the Plain People in Haiti have a level of comfort with deadbolts and padlocks. But until life in Pennsylvania becomes as precarious as life in Haiti, over-reaction is the greatest danger--as is the loss of freedom that inevitably comes with it.