The Devil at 37,000 Feet

Amazingly, the very instruments that should make flying safer brought these two planes to the same point in the sky with an accuracy no human could achieve.

legacy-600.jpgBack in September 2006 I read about an air crash between a Brazilian 737 and an Embraer Legacy 600–an American registered business jet. It happened at 37,000 over the jungles of Northern Brazil. The 737 spiraled to the ground killing all aboard while the biz jet landed safely.

What made the story more interesting was the presence of Joe Sharkey, who writes about travel and aviation for the New York Times and ended up writing about the crash. And then I forgot about it.

I’ve just read a more detailed account of what actually happened in Vanity Fair. This is a long article, but if you have any interest in aviation it’s a must read.

Amazingly, the very instruments that should make flying safer brought these two planes to the same point in the sky with an accuracy no human could achieve.

Deep Throat Revealed

I woke up this morning , flipped on the TV and saw a ‘breaking news’ banner at the bottom of the screen on CNN. Breaking news doesn’t proffer quite the same importance it once did, but it still got my attention.

Deep throat revealed – that was the gist of the story.

This just might have been the best kept secret in Washington, the identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate source. Only four people knew for sure: Woodward, Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and Deep Throat himself… a claim now raised by W. Mark Felt.

Mark Felt was a high ranking FBI official. AP says he was number two at the bureau, putting him just below J. Edgar Hoover at the time.

His name has been linked to Deep Throat in the past, but he is not a high profile person. A quick Google search of “W. Mark Felt”&#185 shows only 292 hits. Even I’m better represented than that!

Woodward and Bernstein continued to protect their source until a few minutes ago when the Washington Post issued a confirmation. Over the years, as names were tossed out, they neither confirmed or denied what Felt today claimed. Before the confirmation, I was guessing, since this is in Vanity Fair which (in spite of its wimpy name) is very well respected for top notch writing and reportage, it’s true. I would expect this story has been well vetted.

Deep Throat’s tips were what broke open Watergate and finally brought down President Nixon. It is an excellent example of an unnamed source leading to credible journalism. Lately, unnamed sources have been under fire.

It’s funny that even today the White House offers up unnamed sources in a very structured way.

MR. McCORMACK: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the briefing you’ve all been waiting for — all day long. (Laughter and applause.) We have a senior administration official here who is going to be — has a few words to say about the President’s meetings with Prime Minister Singh of India and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. And then he’ll take a few questions from you.

With that, I’ll turn it over to our briefer.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Hi. I’m the senior administration official. The President met with Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh this morning at 8:05 a.m. And he met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at 3:00 p.m. And let me tell you a little bit about those two, and then I’ll take some questions.

That’s from an actual White House briefing as documented on the White House website.

The White House uses unnamed sources for the same reason they’re used elsewhere. Sometimes, people who know news that must get out just don’t have the ability to speak freely. I’d rather they weren’t used without additional attribution, but I believe inside sources… protected unnamed sources… are an important part of journalism.

Now, how the heck did they keep this a secret for so long?

&#185 – By putting my search in quotes, Google limits its results to only those pages with the exact text I’ve entered. Searching for W. Mark Felt without quotation marks yield millions of entries, but most of them aren’t on topic.

My Trashy Story

Every week, on Friday, our trash goes to the curb. Every other week it’s supposed to be accompanied by recycling. It doesn’t work that way in our household.

Whether it’s our distance from the curb or the amount of recycled newspapers we have (we subscribe to both the New Haven Register or New York Times) or maybe all the boxes we get because of online shopping, going to the curb bi-weekly doesn’t work. So all of this recyclable material piles up in the garage. A few times a year we stuff it into the SUV and I drive it to the transfer station.

Transfer station, what a lovely phrase. It’s so much more genteel than town dump.

I drove up to the transfer station this morning only to find the new policy – no newspapers. I had an SUV full of recyclables, and of course, the supermarket bags of newspapers were on top!

I unloaded the 20 or so bags of newspapers to get to the cardboard and other material underneath. At this point the transfer station folks took pity on me and found a place… a transfer station loophole if you will… that allowed me to drop the papers off. From now on it’s newspapers to the street, I suppose.

I want to be a good citizen, but it is increasingly difficult to follow the rules. In fact, it would be much easier to hide the newspapers and cardboard and bottles with our weekly trash. I’m sure a lot of people do just that. It also always strikes me as a little ironic that the two most talked about recycled products are made from sand (glass) or grow on trees (paper).

I know this is supposed to be good for the environment, and I’m for that. But, is it really? Is this just a feel good exercise with no payoff… or negative payoff?

From “Recycling Is Garbage” – New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996:

Every time a sanitation department crew picks up a load of bottles and cans from the curb, New York City loses money. The recycling program consumes resources. It requires extra administrators and a continual public relations campaign explaining what to do with dozens of different products — recycle milk jugs but not milk cartons, index cards but not construction paper. (Most New Yorkers still don’t know the rules.) It requires enforcement agents to inspect garbage and issue tickets. Most of all, it requires extra collection crews and trucks. Collecting a ton of recyclable items is three times more expensive than collecting a ton of garbage because the crews pick up less material at each stop. For every ton of glass, plastic and metal that the truck delivers to a private recycler, the city currently spends $200 more than it would spend to bury the material in a landfill.

I don’t know what to think. I want to do what’s right, but I am really not sure. Until I know otherwise, I will follow the rules.

In the meantime, part of our recycling life at home will have to change. Newspapers to the curb. I can hardly wait for the first really big rain on a Thursday night.

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