THE ABDICATION OF KING DONALD

If there is one thing all of us should be able to agree on, it is that the COVID-19 pandemic showed us the world is much smaller than we previously imagined. In the past few decades global travel has increased in efficiency and decreased in cost. It is now possible for anyone with average means to transport themselves from almost any point on the planet to any other in time periods measured in hours. Increasingly, record numbers of individuals are taking advantage of this and are traveling outside their country of residence. As hosts to our own viral passengers, the human body becomes a hyper-effective vector which can spread our microscopic stowaways at speeds evolutionary processes could not previously achieve. We live trapped in an ecosystem where viruses, like hurricanes and greenhouse gasses, know no geographical, or geopolitical borders.

Recent events also highlight our global economic interdependence. The term “Supply Chain” now extends beyond the lexicon of transportation logistics professionals and can be heard spoken around middle America’s dinner table as parents explain to children why they must wipe themselves with pages from Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. An oil producing country like Norway, which has a relatively low infection rate, is powerless to stem the trend towards a previously unimaginable negative value of crude oil. These are examples of an interconnected world, both in the physical and the abstract. Such interdependence means that, like it or not, we are all impacted by pandemic response decisions made by people we don’t know, living halfway around the planet.

In this new world without frontiers we can either adapt to the reality of globalism or continue to naively erect fantastical barriers, porous walls that are only effective in creating a false sense of security. For societies to weather the storms of pandemics, adaptation will be required in the form of global cooperation, not imaginary isolation. This cooperation can only be achieved by leaders who understand that the power to control a viral crisis resides not in the power of a nation’s military, or the size of her GDP, but in the simple understanding that we are all in this together, equally, and non-politically.

The concept of a globe without boundaries applies equally, if not more so, to the states within our union. The belief that individual states can stop the spread of pollutants, firearms, or a virus between them is as absurd as a country trying to keep control of a fishery. Fish will blindly swim across territorial boundaries into the nets of a competing country’s trawler just as a virus can and will transit invisible lines of state demarcation. Short of the impossible task of completely stopping the flow of goods and materials between states at the borders, a practice that would be as ineffective as it is draconian, people will freely cross state lines. For this reason, a pandemic should be treated as interstate commerce, and be managed by the Federal government. Conversely, by forcing each state to set its own standards for containment, testing, and mitigation, Trump, by his lack of leadership, will have abdicated his responsibility for our national security. The patchwork of disjointed and conflicting policies created by individual states generates inefficiencies and hinders a united response that such a crisis requires to effectively bring it to a rapid end. We can only hope that the lessons we are learning today highlight the importance of decisive, science-based, non-partisan decision making in the future because it is presently not happening within this administration.

The college visit - playing the hard sell, then making you beg to be accepted.

The Most Important Life Decision You'll Ever Make (or so they tell you)

It's Spring Break of the high school junior year, and as sure as the daffodils are opening their blooms to the sun, seventeen year-olds are opening their minds to the possibility of attending college.

This week we took Sara to visit various halls of higher education around New England. Fortunately, New England is geographically small, but chock-a-block full of colleges and universities that cater to every possible academic discipline. Since Sara hasn't even determined if she's going to prom, the expectation she'll start college with a defined major is a stretch. This narrows the criteria for schools to those with pretty campuses and cute boys.

Armed with a list of schools showing websites plastered with photos of groups of smiling students, all in the exact proportion of two blacks, one Asian, and three whites (one being slightly obese), equally split between male and female, and not one photo taken in the bleak northeast mid-winter, we set up a week's worth of campus tours.

Rather than a chronological detailed list of our experiences I have decided to distill all the tour scripts into one, and the tour guide into a senior coed in the home stretch to graduation who took this Admissions Department job for beer money.

"Welcome to Huxley college, actually home of the unoffensive sea cucumber mascot. My name is Tipheny and I'm majoring in neurophysiology with a minor in masking tape."

"Let's begin by traipsing across campus to where we'll see an actual hall." (not a lecture hall, or a dining hall, but hall-WAY)  "This is where actual students actually walk between classes. Behind you is an actual classroom where we learn stuff. If you are an engineering major you'll learn actual engineering stuff, and if you're a science major you'll learn overly complicated stuff." There were no philosophy majors to be seen as they were probably debating the merits of attending classes at all.

Walking outside between buildings our guide made us aware of the tall, blue poles along the walking paths spaced five feet apart, with blue lights atop them.

"These are actually our 'Emergency Safety and Emotional Support' poles. Notice actually how the buttons are covered in felt to feel actually soothing when pushed during an actual heightened state of anxiety. If a student feels unsafe, insecure, or just  needs to confirm that their socks don't clash with their pants, they can push the button and help will instantly appear"

"Next is an actual dorm room. It's comfy (cramped) and you'll be sharing it with an actual roommate". This room was for show only, and was obviously professionally dressed by someone in the real estate business, as it was permeated by the scent of freshly baked cookies and not the smell of teenage sweat.

To take any campus tour today you would think that the most popular major was a degree in eating. Fully half of the tour time was dedicated to visiting the various eateries. It seemed that each building was constructed around a smorgasbord of world cuisine. Students are never more than a few steps from food when that first pang of hunger hits, any time of day or night. As with the rest of our "Supersize Me" society, the Freshman 5# has turned into the Freshman 15# because of this. If the colleges of yesteryear were judged on the number of athletic fields, today's schools are ranked by their number of Starbucks, which even here in the land of Dunkin Donuts, has become as ubiquitous on campuses as the school monogrammed hoodie.

Each tour ends in a lecture hall with our tour guide saying how "actually fun it was to meet all of you". This is the time where our group is handed over to the professionals, those young men and women from the admissions office who, if they hadn't taken this job, would be selling used cars. The analogy is quite apt as their goal is to convince your child to see themselves walking the hollowed halls of Huxley, and not the reality of paying for it.

This is about the time where every presentation culminates in the ultimate magic of misdirection - Study Abroad. The last two hours have been a deluge of sales pitches on why YOU need to be HERE or your life will end in Shakespearean style tragedy when suddenly gears are shifted and the message becomes why you DON'T want to be here. Enter "Study Abroad". Get away, see the world, free up our classrooms for more revenue generating students. The race is on to see which University can send you to the most obscure corner of the planet. If Study Abroad were an option when I was a student I would have made it my major because none of the presented photographs showed students doing any real work.

I wish I could day that our interaction with these schools ended with the car ride home, but it didn't. Colleges and universities are the most sophisticated marketers on the planet. Within weeks of starting the school search process our postman told us we needed a larger mailbox. The volume of literature and school swag arriving to our house began to exceed our ability to open it all and we resorted to placing a recycling bin on the porch to streamline the process of disposal. It was at this point that I learned I would happily take the equivalent cost of whatever a school spends on printing and mailing in lieu of financial aid.

My attempt at spreading the gospel of soaring. The outside temperature was in the single digits and the air in the studio was as dry as the desert. They should have provided a hydration backpack instead of that tiny mug of water. I felt like I was talking with cotton in my mouth.

For a local TV station they were very professional from start to finish and did a great job with the whole production.

Our Greatest Right

There seems to be an endless list of political hot buttons that automatically drive us into one camp or the other. Most of these divisive issues leave no space anymore for common ground. There is however, one subject that we as Americans should ALL be able to agree on. It is the the cornerstone upon which our republic is built and for which so much blood has been spilled.

I'm speaking of our right to vote. I would defy anyone, Democrat, or Republican, to argue that there was anything else more fundamental to the establishment of our country than the right to a representative government. The original Tea Party members knew this. Their demonstrations and protestations of "No taxation without representation" set the stage for what was to follow, and their rally cry became the spark for a revolution and the birth of a new nation. In those formative times the very act of voting was looked upon as more than a right. It was also a duty, an obligation to participate in the development of a fledgling nation based upon the idea that people could self-govern even when the government was made up of a diverse collection of independent colonies.

Over the years we have stumbled in the maintenance of our Republic. Slavery brought with it, not only an immoral period of darkness which tarnished the very words of the Constitution, but exposed the hypocrisy of country born of representative government. Redemption came in the form of another, internal, revolution. A civil war that was in large part a desire for a people to have a say in their own destiny. A war that ultimately, again affirmed the right of every citizen's voice to be heard.

At this point I would find it hard to believe that any patriotic American would disagree with these words, for these are the truths which make us who we are. I would also speculate that all of us believe that when we exercise our right to vote we become a stronger nation, and conversely, by sitting idle and  not casting our ballot, we are shirking our responsibility as citizens.

So how is it that the very tool which built our nation is being dulled through initiatives designed to reduce voter turn-out? Under the guise of budget cuts, voter fraud, purging of voter records, and other insidious means millions of people are becoming disenfranchised across America. Unsubstantiated accusations of voter fraud top the list of justification for laws that have been effective in limiting voter turn-out despite repeated research proving fraud in U.S. elections is so insignificant that it is all but immeasurable. What can be measured with high accuracy is the number of citizens who have had their most important right taken away. How can anyone who claims to love this country, and the foundation from which it is based, sit idle and allow this mockery of our Constitution to continue.

Whenever the people of this nation have felt their ability to self-govern was threatened they fought back. The inevitable fight we face may not be a bloody one, but will result in a pendulous swing to the opposite ideological pole. A place which can be just as destructive when ruled by people motivated by revenge.

The Semi-automatic Cessna

The Semi-Automatic Cessna

A friend of mine who has recently been parroting the NRA illusion of “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, tried to deflect my criticism of the NRA by reminding me that I’m a pilot. As a pilot, he said, I should know that flying is risky for both people in planes as well as those on the ground who may unexpectedly find themselves with a small aircraft plummeting through their roof. “Even with this risk we wouldn’t think of taking away your planes” he says.

On the surface it would seem that this argument has some merit. Giving even the slightest thought to the analogy however shows how full of holes his position really is. Just as gun owners have the NRA, pilots have associations that perform a similar function. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) for example, advocates, organizes, supports, and lobbies for General Aviation (GA) pilots. There are also federal aviation agencies that parallel those responsible for gun control (The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) such as the FAA and the NTSB. So far, the opportunity for comparison seems ripe.

Here is where the comparison between guns and aircraft (or just about anything else on the planet with the potential to kill you) breaks down in a big way. Every side of the aviation triangle – federal agencies, advocacy groups, and pilots are constantly working together to improve aviation safety. Federal funds are used to study and learn from aviation accidents. Detailed, scientifically supported reports are issued, and proposals for new training requirements and aircraft regulations are put forth. Groups like AOPA spend a significant portion of their resources to facilitate improvements in aviation safety. Through their magazines and member network they write about safety, provide access to safety information, and sponsor local safety seminars, all in an effort to reach as many pilots as possible. Pilots themselves take responsibility for their own lives and the lives of others very seriously. The entire pilot training process instills a never-ending focus for continuous improvement in piloting skills.

The end result of this cooperative triangle of safety is that GA flying is safer today than it has ever been since aviation began. This could only be achieved though the shared goal of everyone involved to push the accident rate towards zero and with the acceptance of ALL involved that safety in the air cannot be achieved without some level of cost and personal sacrifice. There are a minority of pilots who chafe at anything that regulates their freedom of flight, but the reality is, pass the pilot test and the sky you get to play in is almost limitless.

The aviation safety example I have given can easily be used to describe automobiles, medicine, boats, or even lethal fuzzy slippers. We take for granted that government agencies, manufacturers, and end users share a common goal of reducing accidents and injury. This holds true in every industry but firearms, where even to suggest a discussion of gun violence is met with rabid derision. History has proven that it is possible for continuous safety improvement, but only if we are willing to work for it.

Imagine a world where the auto industry was represented by an organization like the NRA. It would be a world filled with cars devoid of anti-lock brakes, ignition keys, airbags, and crumple zones. These cars however would travel at 180 MPH, and you wouldn’t need a license to drive one.

David Fisichella

Feb 2018

The Downfall of American Civility

Recently I was scrolling through posts made by friends on Facebook. There's the usual mix of cats and dogs participating in their secret conspiracy to suck human bandwidth dry,  photos of unattractive food, puzzles with the tag line "99% of people will get this wrong" (but everyone gets it right), and posts with captions ending in "you won't believe what happens next" and we do believe it because it wasn't that unbelievable. All innocuous time wasters, but harmless unless you should be doing real work instead of reading meaningless pap.

More and more however, I'm seeing posts (Lets be clear, they are re-posts. Very few people on Facebook are inclined to take the time to share an original thought) that serve only to misinform the reader, and create a sense of revulsion towards another group of people. Typically these are conservative creations that denigrate a particular religion, sexual orientation, political party, or race. Liberals are not immune from creating, or falling victim to this deceit, but anyone with a mouse and and an internet connection can see the right leaning imbalance.

Here is a an example of the length conservative web sites will go to advance their agenda. This post come to us from Tellmenow.com/ which from what I can tell makes the National Enquirer look like the New York Times.

Obama Admin Changes 4th of July So Muslims ‘Aren’t Offended’

"According to Conservative Tribune, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia held their July 4 celebration one month early, on June 4. Robert O. Blake, the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, told the press that this was done out of respect for the Muslim holiday Ramadan, which runs from June 17-July 17.
The festivities at the embassy included singing both the American national anthem AND the Indonesian national anthem, just in case any local Muslims felt uncomfortable!
Embassies in foreign nations should of course be respectful of local culture, but this is just ridiculous. Americans who are at the Indonesian embassy should be allowed to celebrate July 4 on the same date as everyone else does, and they should be allowed to celebrate however they please.
This is yet another example of Obama submitting to the Muslim agenda. If July 4 conflicted with Christmas, you can be sure that Obama would not change anything to make Christians feel more comfortable.
Sheesh, 2016 can’t come quick enough!"

 That's it. That's the whole story as reported by Tellmenow.com. What follows is what you would expect. Thousands of red-blooded Americans ready to rally behind the flag, post this on their timeline with comments pretty much divided between their hatred of Muslims and hatred of the president.

Not one of these people bother to think beyond the few sentences they've just distributed or even find the comment "...included singing both the American national anthem AND the Indonesian national anthem" ironic since as I last checked, every time an American hockey team plays one from Canada we sing both anthems. The same is true during the Olympics and whenever the U.S. government hosts a head of state. Imagine Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush playing the anthem of a foreign government in the White House? Wait, they did.

The bigger irony is that the changing of the celebratory party (Not the 4th of July itself) was done to allow Indonesians to celebrate our independence WITH us. As Ramadan begins in July, all the Muslim dignitaries and the Muslim employees of the embassy would be fasting and not able to participate (Given the number of Muslims in Indonesia it would have been a small party indeed if held on July 4th).

The end result of people falling victim to this type of over-hyped, misinformation campaign is exactly the opposite of what the bible-thumping, gun-wielding, Jingoists are trying to achieve. America is marginalizing itself around the world, and like the Romans, Greeks, and British empires, will collapse under her own bigoted weight.

Panama Cruise

Oceanography has always been undertaken in harsh environments. To say accommodations aboard research vessels are Spartan gives the ancient Greeks too much credit for comfortable living. In years past even gentlemen oceanographers (read, those with both excess money and even more excess time) would typically subject themselves to the same shipboard living standards as the rest of the crew. The owner of the research vessel I found myself on last week decided he wanted the capabilities of a working boat without sacrificing the luxury of a yacht. Compromise always makes for poor design, and r/v Sentinel (I've changed her name since I value my job, and I suspect the owner has access to Google)  is no exception, but having now sailed with amenities such as stewards to clean my room and make my bunk, a ship’s laundry that picks up and delivers, and meals prepared by two French trained chefs, transitioning back to the average research vessel will be tough. To paraphrase Tennyson; Better to have traveled First Class and lost upgrade privileges then to have never been upgraded at all.

 The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was selected by the yacht’s owner to oversee Sentinel’s operation and science support. My role on this ship, as on WHOI’s other vessels, is to assure that the ship and her crew have the ability to meet her science mission requirements. One of these requirements and the most unique capability of Sentinel is her two manned submersibles. I suspect WHOI’s experience operating the manned deep submersible Alvin is one of the reasons we got the job, and why I’m off the coast of Panama with four of Woods Hole’s best Alvin pilots. Our goal is to characterize the ship’s SONARs and get one of the subs inspected by a representative from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS). Since we only need the ABS inspector here for one day we will fly him on a chartered plane to a remote airstrip near our dive site. Nobody ever said ocean science was cheap.

The cruise didn’t start well. Flight delays, missed connections, and logistical problems at the port of Balboa, Panama plagued us even before we got off the dock. A 12 foot low tide precluded the use of a gangway onto the ship, so we each had to be craned aboard in a boson’s chair. Being transferred to the deck like a pallet of provisions is an inauspicious way to start a cruise.

Departing Balboa to the South by ship means steaming past hundreds of anchored ships waiting for passage through the canal. Many are bulk carriers waiting for orders that will take them to the Pacific or Atlantic oceans, so hanging out by the canal entrance is a good place to wait while swatting malaria infected mosquitoes. Our objective was to find an area well away from shipping lanes that afforded a variety of depths close to an anchorage. This will allow a series of sub dives from 50 meters, to their maximum operating depth of 1000 meters (3300 ft) while not having to transit the ship very far. 

We found such a place at Puerto Piňa a remote village southeast of Panama City. At this point our luck wasn’t getting any better. Everything we touched turned to shit. Really, everything. The subs both had ground faults, bad thrusters, and poor underwater communications. Three of the four science instruments produced the digital equivalent of vomit all over the screen whenever we tried to run them, and Sentinel herself seemed determined to undermine any possibility of a successful cruise by losing steerage, or propulsion at the least opportune time. It got to the point that I was afraid to turn on a faucet for fear of sinking the ship.

 Things didn’t improve much after three days at sea, and the looming arrival of the ABS inspector only made for more lost sleep, frayed nerves, and a desire to be anyplace else but on this boat. If there is one quality that distinguishes someone capable of working under stress at sea from the rest of the masses, it is a biting sense of humor when things are at their worst. Fortunately this crew had humor in spades. If any of this team were lined up before a firing squad their last words would probably involve crude remarks about the shooter’s sister, or a request to purchase a life insurance annuity. This ability to see beyond the shit you’ve gotten yourself into is what separates good shipmates from dead shipmates and why these guys are the best in the world at what they do.

The ABS surveyor finally arrived just as the last bolt on the submersible Nadir was being tightened. The problems on the previous shallow dives seemed resolved and the surveyor climbed into the sphere with a gallon-size ziplock bag full of Jolly Ranchers. I can only guess that the rationale for his package is that if today was his time to die, it would be with a fist full of his favorite candy. Fortunately for him, and for us, he surfaced intact after three hours, with sweets to spare and pen in hand to sign the class certification. It wasn’t all without drama, as they experienced a cooling line leak at depth which sprayed sea water into the compartment. Surprisingly this was not sufficient to warrant a test failure, though I’m sure the surveyor was wishing he brought a change of underwear instead of the candy.

The following day I had the opportunity to participate in a pilot training dive. Sentinel has her own sub operations group and they needed to get in as much training of two new pilots as possible before a real science mission next week. The instructing pilot warned me that he would be putting the student though some scenario based training, so I should be prepared for anything. 

It didn’t take long, immediately following the pre-dive checks we had commenced lowering on sub into the water when the instructor took on the persona of a claustrophobic passenger, leaping up for the hatch wheel and trying to get out. The pilot did his best to offer a quick Transcendental Meditation fix with calming words and, had it been quickly available, a little Enya music, but it turns out TM and soft tunes are not the preferred solution. Stop the deployment. Get the sub on deck. Let the passenger out of the sub before you’re out of a job.

While all of this commotion had the desired training result the delay was unfortunate, for just as we swung back over the transom the largest pod of dolphins I have ever seen was roiling the water off Sentinel’s stern. The sea erupted as both the dolphin and tuna they chased leaped from the surface in an eat or be eaten dance. I wanted to slap my over-acting sub mate. If it wasn’t for the delay we could have been submerged in the middle of it all instead of watching the show from the deck.

Finally back in the water, both the hysterics and fish were absent. Our dive plan was to be on the bottom at a depth of almost 2000 feet. The trip down was slow and methodical. It’s peacefully calm as the wave action of the surface disappears within the first 10 meters. Schools of small fish circled the acrylic sphere. The refractive index of the plastic is identical to that of water, making it seem to disappear as soon as the surface gets wet. This creates an odd sensation, as if there is nothing between you and the sea.

Visibility sucks as we descended through a storm of fluffy marine snow, a mélange of oddly shaped ocean detritus composed of everything from inorganic dust and dead phytoplankton to whale poop. The snow is part of a food chain created in the light-rich photic zone where we were, that ultimately drifts down into the darkness of the aphotic region where we would soon end up.

As we pass 100 meter there is a noticeable change in the light. An eerie blue glow above transitions to blackness below. With no artificial light on in the sub and no red spectrum light filtering this deep, the three of us take on a grey, ghoulish pallor. The pilot switches on the exterior light and the snow that now appears to fall upward can be seen for what it is; stringy masses of clumping matter interspersed with a wide variety of tiny jellies of all shapes.

At 300 meters all natural light has disappeared. Our world exists only to the extent of illumination from the one spotlight. Turning the light off and covering the instrument panel creates total blackness. The pilot pushes the thruster lever forward and suddenly the void is broken up by flashes of blue bio-luminescence erupting on the front of the sphere and traveling around the sides. It reminds me of the Starship Enterprise entering warp speed as the stars fly by. The thrusters leave a blue exhaust as luminescent organisms react to the compression of their passage past the spinning blades.

After an hour we near our anticipated maximum depth and the instructor cautions the pilot to begin neutralizing trim to slow the descent, but before the words come out of his mouth mud seafloor fills our view and the sub noses into the soft bottom. Reversing thrusters raises a cloud of silt obscuring what little we could previously see. This little faux pas would be the equivalent of hitting the curb during the three-point turn portion of your driving test. Once a few feet off the bottom, moving forward clears the silt and we can see the sea floor sloping up before us. Worms protrude up from the mud and silver fish lay in small depressions seemingly ignorant of our presence. I can’t imagine the reaction of the fish we set down upon, a glowing alien craft falling from above into sediments undisturbed for millennia.

It was now that the instructor wanted to review various emergency plans. One of which, for reasons I still don’t comprehend, involved him spinning open the hatch dogs. Now intellectually I understand that being almost half a mile underwater, at pressures approaching 800 pounds per square inch, there are literally tons of water pushing the seal down tightly on that opening, but something inside me still wants to scream “Are you f*%#ing nuts?”, and punch him in the head. Of course, the sea doesn’t rush in. After a half hour reviewing contingencies for a number of unlikely, but potential emergencies we run the pumps that will force just enough water from the ballast tanks to make the sub positively buoyant. The marine snow which had seemed suspended only a few seconds before, now appeared to sink relative to the sphere indicating our initial ascent. 

Three hours later and eighty meters from the surface comes the final drill. “Fire in the sub! Fire in the sub!” I would like to say our reactions were like the movements of a Swiss clock, but a more realistic analogy would be to the timekeeping ability of Stonehenge. Slow, methodical, imprecise. We switched to alternate air masks and went through the checklist for shutting down the electrical system and then the oxygen. This was followed by blowing ballast for an express ride to the top floor which we punched through with a fair bit of inertia into sunshine and a cascade of water flowing off the sphere.

In a way, this cruise was like most others. Things go wrong, you fix them, and you adapt to an ever-changing plan. Oceanography isn’t accounting, or farming corn in neat, orderly rows. It is not for anyone who isn’t flexible or averse to stress. It is however a very unique way to earn a living, and as it was on the seafloor in Panama (With yet another plagiarized reference to Star Trek), to go where no man has gone before.

David