EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) starts today. Given how slowly everything in aviation moves, Oshkosh is more of a social gathering than a trade show, but manufacturers do like to announce their progress here.
Earlier this month, I checked in on the General Electric “Catalyst” Advanced Turboprop engine. This competitor to Pratt’s PT6 (first flight: 1961) had been scheduled to fly in 2018 (November 2017 press release). It still hadn’t flown. I went to GE’s aviation blog to see if they offered any explanation for being years behind schedule. The top of the blog was “A Conversation With Carmen Campbell, GE’s Transgender Advocate for Europe”:
They say it’s easy to stand with the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone. This Pride Month, the GE Aviation blog celebrates Carmen Campbell, the first person to ever transition at GE’s Grand Rapids, Michigan, site and now GE’s Transgender Advocate for Europe.
Campbell, originally from the US, is an advanced lead systems engineer based in the Cheltenham, UK Power Distribution & Controls business. She is passionate about using her experiences to help cultivate a safe and supportive workplace for her transgender colleagues.
This role sits within the transgender advocacy group, which is part of GE’s Pride Alliance. We run education sessions, work with GE to develop policies around transitioning, and provide support for transgender people within the business. The role is relatively fluid and it’s important to note that we are a resource for everyone at GE, transgender or not.
One of the areas I’m most proud of is the work we have done on the GE transition toolkit, which summarizes GE policies, provides helpful suggestions (like how to develop a communications plan), goes in to site specifics like bathroom usage, and lists who to contact for further support.
There has been some progress in the last 20 years, most notably the step change in legal representation. Gender reassignment became a protected characteristic under the UK’s Equality Act 2005, for example, and it was stipulated that people should be treated in accordance with their acquired gender.
However, I do think we’ve casually been sliding backwards since then. Certain groups, individuals and media outlets have been chipping away at the trans community, trying to roll back the trans rights that we’ve fought so hard for. Indifference can also be an issue.
“Casually sliding backwards”? Maybe the LGBTQIA+ engineers at GE can slide backwards far enough to catch up to where Pratt was in 1961. Then they could put their turboprop on an airplane and fly!
Related:
- Cessna Denali, the airplane that has been delayed by the failure of GE to get the engine working
- “Textron delays Denali’s first flight due to ongoing Catalyst engine testing” (October 21, 2019): “The Wichita-based airframer had planned for the 8- to 11-passenger Denali to fly this year and to complete certification in about 18 months.”
Is the Cessna Denali some kind of a Pilatus for people who are legally obligated to buy American?
It’s a Beechcraft now!!!
Yesterday I was listening to NPR on Sirius Satellite Radio and the program featured an exhaustive (and utterly exhausting) stream-of-consciousness harangue from a half-white, half Latinx woman who has apparently spent all of the attention and consciousness she has over the past several years working through the many fractured and broken pieces of her complicated “dual identity.”
It is a huge problem for her, and she documented some of the turmoil for NPR and then, I guess, got to go home and take a Xanax so she could get up the next day and keep moving through her endless process of identity development and acknowledgment.
I realized two things:
1) This is going to be – if it already isn’t – the “next big thing” for psychotherapists who are already seeking their continuing education credentials for sex therapy in a world with 150+ genders. Without the certs. to counsel “identity conflicts” nobody will be able to bill.
2) This poor woman (who was nominally intelligent, articulate and well-spoken) was absolutely addled and consumed with all the kaleidoscopic nuances and pitfalls of her identity crisis. Another person with about 110 IQ who has been brainwashed into the new Cult of Identity.
We’re in trouble. It’s a big mind disease, and it’s spreading fast, promulgated by National Public Radio with your donations and on your taxpayer dime.
I think the optimal condition for most of the population they’re aiming to teach is an endless episode of half-stoned navelgazing and identity crisis, so everyone does nothing else while the lawyers make money, the intellectuals sit back and laugh, and everyone else is basically a neurotic, fucked-up slave for life, starting in Pre-K.
I almost wanted to switch to Howard Stern (who is Sirius’ Supergiant) because my goodness, I’ve heard so much of him in my yoof and basically he cut through all the identity politics crap all the time with porn stars, chicks he’d like to bang, Baba Booey, Robin the Black, Jackie the Joke Man, the occasional Angry Spic and Tightwad Jew, and the rest of his crew every day while becoming the King of All Media. And he did it for free on FM radio! Save your money. Listen to Howard Stern!
I would challenge this 110 IQ assessment… one doesn’t need high IQ to leaen to regurgitate smart-sounding phrases and long words. A parrot can do that.
Intelligence is about functioning in the real world, not about gullibility and lack of critical thinking – so manifest in every member of the Cult.
@averros: Prudence and Good Government demands that we vastly inflate the ranks of the terminally confused, indecisive, neurotic and fucked-up ranks of our population and provide them with the resources to become even more determined and validated than EVER! What else can we do in a postmodern world that doesn’t make sense, and will continue to make less and less sense as time goes on, exponentially? Everyone must be converted or “humanity” cannot survive in the managed world they are most assuredly going to live in.
@Alex, NPR is just another form of Howard Stern talk radio. They replaced all the stimulating erratic sex words with the stimulating erratic victimhood words. By doing so, NPR can now broadcast to a much, much larger audience.
@George A: Prudence and modesty prevents me (for the time being) from describing the rest of what I have seen, and it’s a lot. But I can tell you this: most of the people I’ve known who want to do this are deeply disturbed and their fondest wish is that you will be, too, so they won’t feel so alone.
@George A.: I’ll be frank. I may be wrong – that’s always a possibility – and this is an unusually brief summary, but I think about 20 years ago, maybe more, maybe less, the APA realized that most of the “research” it has conducted throughout its history is complete-to-slightly-less-than-complete garbage, they didn’t ever really “cure” anyone of anything except in extremely rare cases, their psychiatrists and psychologists were working with the equivalent of Stone Age tools, and what they were really good at is talking and screwing people up, then managing the screwups they created, so they could continue to bill for those hours. And it had to be done in a way that would be accepted and paid for by insurance plans and out-of-pocket, and if you can get the MDs involved too, wow! that’s AWESOME.
So they can pay off all those student loans.
@averros, 110 is not particularly high IQ. It s above British mean which is set to be 100 I believe (I can be wrong) by IQ test developers. Usually IQ score cut-off for those considered gifted enough for advanced studies is 130 however 120-125 + IQs are often considered too since there were very successful and influential people with IQ in 120-th (but not very smart, i.e William Shockley who was obsessed with it)
@Alex, @George –
Previously I used to think that these things are much prevalent in a developed society like the USA, as people have lots of time & attention to get the fringe of the society in ‘mainstream’, in the name of equality & compassion so to say…
But I didn’t find this to be the case in other developed places say Japan or South Korea (at least not in their ‘mainstream’ ) for example.
GE was generally considered the best company in America say 25 years ago & was America’s largest by market cap –what the stock market says it was worth. By market cap it is now ranked slightly ahead of Zoom. Its market cap today is about 20% of what it was twenty years ago. Its demise seems to have been the result of unchecked bureaucratic stupidity — lots of bad decisions by lots of very overpaid people over many years. You have to wonder if GE had paid a little less attention to this sort of thing it might have more to say for itself. From a financial point of view.
I consulted for GE ~15 years old, visited several offices across North America and Europe. GE had the lowest morale of any company I ever visited. Their business model devolved into: borrow money, buy a company, install aggressive up-or-out managers, raise prices, replace staff with contractors, offshore as many jobs as possible. People seeking stable careers left in droves. Its no surprise GE tanked.
So basically, this transgender person is using company time and money to advanced his/her agenda. OK, fine. Will GE or any other such company also support the agenda of some other group such as NRA? What about TFI [1]? Can those groups use company time to advance their belief and agenda on company time and dime?
As for “This competitor to Pratt’s PT6 (first flight: 1961) had been scheduled to fly in 2018.” Well that can wait because another country will get their first.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_International
Is it a new thing for lazy engineers in their 40th who are afraid to be fired- gender change?