[FRIAM] Flight Training and Deprecated Skills/Languages, etc.

[Steve Smith]

Nick -

I also found BART a bit challenging the first few times I went under the
bay... just *imagining* that volume of water over my head!   I'm
guessing the chunnel could be much harder if I let it be. 

These days most people wouldn't even look up from their tiny screens for
the whole trip as long as you provide a good wifi relay.   They would
never notice beyond being relieved to not have sunlight on their screens?

As for decompression... I suspect we will have yet more improved
plague-doctor/pandemic masks to take care of THAT ?!  

Actually, I was fascinated to see perfectly well educated people
retweet/repeat the idea that since underwear and pants don't stop farts,
that masks (even N95) aren't going to stop COVID particles.   A *single*
COVID virus (composed of many macromolecules) particle is a full
micrometer in diameter (not even assuming much *effective* transmission
is through larger liquid droplets with *many* virus particles involved). 

The olfactory antagonists involved in your "decompression" event are
molecular (not macromolecule-complex) scale...   Skatole, Indole, H2S
and even Methane are 4 orders of magnitude smaller.   Currently biogas
scrubbers use chemical reactions to remove the H2S (which yields caustic
sulfuric acid in combustion processes), but nanotech is providing
somewhat more "mechanical" processes which are more easily reversed to
avoid requiring consumables such as iron chloride.   Methane is odorless
and in small quantities indole and skatole are more reminiscent of
jasmine or orange blossoms than their more familiar source.  

I only know all of this because of my (somewhat stale) interest in
expanding the artificial sensorium beyond the visual/aural/tactile...  
the olfactory is *much* harder to stimulate (or more critically, to
release for fresh stimulation) than the others...   no SmellOVision
until a broader base of nanotechnology is developed...   conventional
chemistry is just not "selective" enough IMO...

If pandemics continue to threaten us (how can they not?) I predict
full-face snorkel-mask style headgear will be de-riguer with scuba
rebreather-style gear, at which will facilitate synthetic vision and
olfaction...   as others noticed, wireless earbuds already give pretty
good localized sound if well presented.   In the spirit of Dave's
prediction about "the end of the Pandemic by mid-June":  I predict that
there will be a significant adoption of "closed cockpit" sensoria in
vehicles and PPE as described above (by 2024?).  

- Steve



> Steve,
>
>  
>
> Back in the old days, when I could tolerate Scientific American, there
> was a fascinating article on Pendulum-pneumatic trains.  You know, if
> you just dug deep enough you could get from Boston to NYC in an hour,
> with a push from the air behind you.  Who needs windows!  As a person
> who first discovered his capacity for claustrophobia in the BART
> tunnel under the Bay, shortly after it was constructed,  I am not sure
> I would be able spend an hour in a pneumatic capsule no matter how
> fast it got me there.  What would you do if the guy in the seat behind
> you started decompensating when you were several thousand feet under
> Middlebury CT? 
>
> HOOOO, boy!
>
>  
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>  
>
>  
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 13, 2020 12:00 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Flight Training and Deprecated Skills/Languages, etc.
>
>  
>
> I actually knew someone who lived near the Embry-Riddle location in
> 2000/2001 where several of the 9/11 pilots learned to fly well enough
> to do what they did.   She had friends (go figure) who worked at a
> strip-club who claimed these "boys" were regulars there.  It was
> pretty creepy 2nd order connection.  
>
> My uncles were both pilots in WWII but the older was trained up on the
> newfangled idea of a helicopter and proceeded to become a test pilot
> for Sykorski.  He was forced into retirement (chief test pilot) to a
> desk at 65.   Nobody wanted to ground him, but "rules is rules" and in
> fact his health degraded acutely and abruptly and he died just a few
> years later.  His family insists it was from "heartbreak" from being
> grounded.  
>
> I have a "young" friend (now 40s) who was just finishing up his
> commercial certification at Embry-Riddle Prescott on 9/11 and claims
> that the bottom not only dropped out for commercial pilots for the
> next couple of years, but has "never recovered" and he has been making
> a living as a bartender ever since.   Perhaps it is time for him to
> revisit. 
>
> My ex brother-in-law left his career in the Air Force to become "a bus
> driver" and recently was retired (for age) from Delta.   Even 30 years
> ago things were incredibly automated.   I see no reason that airliners
> won't be entirely automated and teleoperated in the next 20 years.  
> The risk-profile of such things is evolving as self-driving cars (and
> more aptly? Semi-tractors?) emerge.  
>
> The hyperloop game is going to change long distance rapid-transit
> eventually.   I don't believe anyone is planning for underground
> "ballistic-trajectory-velocities" quite yet, but mag-lev-centered,
> evacuated tube, zero-grade velocities could still be pretty
> impressive, and energy consumption as well with magnetic
> (regenerative) braking.     The earliest days of railroading involved
> gravity-trains often with empty return cars being towed by animal
> power.   Yet others used water from the high-side source as "ballast"
> and if the up/down routes were mechanically coupled, the extra weight
> of water plus load would allow the empties to be returned "for free".  
>
> Regarding Dave's friend's drug conviction, Denzel Washington's (one of
> a series of flawed) character in the movie Flight is a drug-addled
> pilot who, by implication in the story, actually achieves a heroic
> manouver *because* he's still jacked on the cocaine he snorted to lift
> himself out of his alcohol hangover.    The setup is that a jackscrew
> controlling horizontal stablizer breaks, forcing the nose of the plane
> down with no recourse...  Denzel's character quickly recognizes the
> futility of the situation and the *opportunity* of rolling the dive
> into an inverted orientation such that the forced "nose down" is now
> "nose up".
>
> Popular Mechanics (of all places) had an article on the plausibility
> of the Cocaine effects supporting the story (rather than the mechanics
> of inverted flying).
>
> I suspect I could get work myself using my 40 year-stale FortranIV
> experience on "mission critical" systems already old at that time, but
> still in some sort of service.  I did a huge senior project on a
> FortranIV system for simulating exo-Terran atmospheres (e.g. Mars)
> which might well be still be in service?   Fortunately my COBOL/RPG
> experience is so slim I'd never be tempted to try that domain.
>
> I'd like to believe that the myriad "stale skill" job opportunities
> (demands) we see today are going to be yet-more-fully deprecated.   I
> still have a coal-fired forge and an anvil, both probably manufactured
> 100 years ago, that I can shape and even temper iron and steel with
> (and aluminum if I'm incredibly careful), but I do not and never will
> have the skills required to do it well, and certainly not to replace
> what modern industrial processes can achieve... barring a full
> apocalypse, it is merely a quaint "hobby" that might afford me the
> opportunity to turn out some rustic items others would mistake for
> "art",  or more often, repair the various related tools I might
> *use*in my forge...   though in most cases a strap and some bolts or
> rivets makes more sense than trying to re-weld a broken connecting
> rod, or lever.
>
> Meanwhile, the discussion of how our "first programming language"
> defines us, I believe that my earliest "programming" experience was
> more "analysis" of the circuitry of pinball (and vending) machines in
> my friend's father's workshop where he repaired them, and there were
> always an array of pinball machines in various states of repair, with
> all the guts open for inspection while operating.   Very much an
> analog/digital hybrid system while the older vending machines were
> essentially all "rod logic" (albeit simple).   Later, at my first
> employer (radio station) I learned the ins and outs of automated
> infinite loop carousel "programming" which was a hybrid of relay and
> mechanical (rod/gear/lever) logics.    The "programming" was really
> simplistic, involving inserting "shorting pins" in matrices to define
> priorities and timing to get the "right" mix of commercials, PSAs, and
> a diversity of music played during any given period (usually a 4 hour
> shift).   I can't say how much it influenced my later understanding of
> "computer programming" which I was being introduced to simultaneously
> by our Driver's Ed teacher who had somehow wrangled a PDP-x rack into
> a small room with a teletype/paper-tape-punch.  He didn't really have
> a clue, he was learning BASIC along with us, following a simple set of
> "sample programs" listed in what I think was the "owners manual" for
> the machine.
>
> Ramble,
>
>  - Steve
>
>     Does it include lessons on how to land the plane?
>
>     —Barry
>
>     On 12 Aug 2020, at 21:53, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>
>         I just got an email from a flight training program offering me
>         a nine month
>         course to get a multi engine commercial license. They don't
>         read the Friam
>         listsrv, I hope. I'm too old in any case.
>
>         ---
>         Frank C. Wimberly
>         140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>         Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
>         505 670-9918
>         Santa Fe, NM
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