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The media is gushing over the heroic deeds of an airline captain on Southwest 1380, which suffered an uncontained engine failure. The stories generally do not mention a co-pilot (example) and therefore it would be impressive for this captain to have been the first person to earn a single-pilot type rating for the Boeing 737-700. However, when the airliner checks in with PHL tower, the first officer’s voice is heard on the radio (full audio). Newsweek identifies this pilot as Darren Ellisor. The big safety innovation of airlines is the crew concept and the multi-pilot crew so it is surprising to me that every time a flight makes the news the media gives us the impression that we are back to the 1920s single-pilot airline system (see below for how Captain Sully was apparently by himself in the Airbus).

[Why is the public apparently more interested in a narrative of a lone hero, be it Captain Sully or Tammie Jo Shults, the Southwest captain? Why wouldn’t a story about five people (two pilots plus three flight attendants) working together to achieve a successful outcome actually be more inspiring? Most of us work on teams so why wouldn’t we be more inspired by a story about teamwork?]

For the pilots of this airplane it was like a normal day in the simulator (they actually said as much a couple of days later in an official statement: “As Captain and First Officer of the Crew of five who worked to serve our Customers aboard Flight 1380 yesterday, we all feel we were simply doing our jobs.”). Essentially all airliner or bizjet sim training is single-engine operation following a failure because flying a working jet with a three-pilot crew (bulletproof autopilot, left-seat captain, right-seat first officer) is actually easier than a lot of single-pilot operations in light aircraft (hence the higher accident rate for four-seaters, even when experienced pilots are at the controls). Thus, the “engine failure then land single-engine” is something that a mid-career airline pilot would have done 500 times or more in a sim that is so realistic it can be logged as time in the actual aircraft. A 18-year-old seeking a multi-engine rating on his or her Commercial certificate would have to demonstrate managing an engine failure in a piston twin and then flying a single-engine approach and landing… solo. The applicant who failed to demonstrate this competently to an examiner would fail the checkride and not earn the rating. Similarly the pilot seeking a type rating for a turbojet-powered aircraft, such as a business jet or a Boeing 737, must demonstrate this capability before being legally authorized to fly the aircraft (only as part of a crew in the case of the B737, which requires two pilots minimum).

What did happen from the pilots’ point of view? The plane depressurized, necessitating the donning of oxygen masks (the ones in front are “quick-don” types accessible by reaching behind one’s shoulder) and then a reasonably rapid descent from what seems to have been about 32,000′. The goal is to get down to about 10,000′ where everyone can take off their oxygen masks. At the same time, the airplane would yaw because of the asymmetric thrust (dead engine on one side). The plane would have been on autopilot at the time and therefore the yaw damper would automatically kick in some rudder to counteract the yaw.

Usually the crew divides responsibilities between the Pilot Flying, who manipulates the flight controls and/or supervises the autopilot, and the Pilot Monitoring, who does everything else, including talk to Air Traffic Control (ATC). The Captain and First Officer, both of whom are fully trained to fly the aircraft, swap these roles after each leg of a trip. If something goes wrong, the Pilot Flying will take over the radios and thus free the Pilot Monitoring to dig into the checklists, typically accessible via a “Quick Reference Handbook” (“QRH”; see this example from the Canadair Regional Jet (CRJ) that I used to fly). It is the Pilot Flying’s job to ask for the appropriate checklist, e.g., “Give me the Engine Fire Message checklist” (though the Pilot Monitoring can suggest checklists, e.g., “Would you like the Left Engine Oil Pressure Message checklist?”). There are some items to do from memory, with the two pilots cooperating so that they can agree on which engine is the dead one and should have its thrust/fuel lever cut off, for example.

Airline training stresses the use of the autopilot in an emergency, which frees the human pilots to concentrate on the checklists and not pulling back, for example, the thrust lever on the running engine. The Pilot Flying monitors the autopilot and the Pilot Monitoring is going through the checklists and making sure that items such as gear and flaps are set appropriately at various times.

The Southwest crew was favored with “Day VFR” flying conditions (i.e., it wasn’t dark and there weren’t low clouds over the runway) and were near a super long runway, the 12,000′ 27L runway at KPHL. Once any fire is extinguished, e.g., by cutting off the fuel or blowing the squib on a bottle of fire extinguishing stuff (that’s about as technical as we got in training), the situation on a CRJ is no longer considered an “emergency” but merely an “abnormal” operation and the pilots go to the “Single Engine Procedures, In-Flight Engine Shutdown” checklist. The APU is started so that there is a backup source of electrical power (in case the second engine quits!) and various switches are set up so that the dead engine is secured. Then it is time for “ABNORM 1-9, Single Engine Approach and Landing.” The CRJ checklist calls for landing with partial flaps, thus resulting in a 25 percent increase in landing distance. Full flaps enable landing at a slower speed, but the extra drag means that the remaining engine would be straining to keep the plane on the standard glide path to the runway.

For a plane that ordinarily can land in 5,000′, landing on a 12,000′ runway with one engine is a normal day at the office (sim). As noted above, this is the very situation for which nearly all of airline sim training is directed, albeit usually in uglier scenarios, such as an engine that fails just as the plane is taking off (a “V1 cut”). The wind was favorable on the morning of April 17, blowing straight down the runway at roughly 20 knots (on the recording you will hear the Tower controller saying that the wind is from 280 (magnetic west-northwest) and a plane pointed down 27L would have a magnetic heading of 267 degrees (“27” is short for “270”, a west heading; the L is because there is a parallel 27R and, to avoid confusion, the final parallel runway is “26”)). This reduces the touchdown groundspeed and therefore the landing distance (I was once a passenger on a B737 landing in Ushuaia, Argentina into a 50-knot headwind, which the pilots said was normal for Tierra del Fuego. The airspeed of 120 knots thus translated into a groundspeed of 70 knots, a slower touchdown than a Cirrus SR20 in calm wind conditions!)

Not to take away too much from the pilots’ achievement, but keep in mind that a Boeing 737 on one engine and no pressurization is still a much more capable aircraft than a typical light Cessna, Cirrus, or Piper. The autopilot is much better (if it even exists in the little plane!). The climb performance is better (not that this crew ever needed to climb). There are a lot more redundant systems. That’s why there is the standard joke about the airline captain who rents a Cessna from a flight school and puts “Will be declaring an emergency” in the remarks of the FAA flight plan form. The Tower controller later asks why and the captain responds “I’m going to be down to one engine, one radio, one navigation system, and no autopilot.”

If you’re looking for heroes, though, think about the flight attendants. They’re in the back of the plane with 140+ screaming passengers. There is a hole in the airplane. At least one person has suffered injuries that will prove to be fatal. Others are injured as well. They have received no training for this scenario. (Most flight attendant training, as I understand it, is directed at evacuations once the aircraft has landed.)

Some questions that friends have asked:

Why is the term “souls on board” used in aviation? Why does ATC ask? Does it matter if there are 50, 100 or 150 on board? Answer: They want to know fuel on board so they can figure out how much firefighting gear to bring to the scene and also S.O.B. so that they know when to stop searching for bodies. It is the standard phrase even for quotidian matters such as filing an IFR flight plan mid-air (e.g., if the weather turns out not to be clear as hoped).

What is an “extended final”? Answer: Based on the plan discussed in the ATC recording, the plane was lined up with the runway about 20 miles away rather than the usual 7 miles or so (for instrument conditions; it might be only 1 mile at a crazy airport such as LGA in VFR conditions; I wrote about this). That makes life easier for everyone.

Dumping fuel? Answer: 737 does not have a fuel dump capability. If you’re too heavy to land you fly around in circles for a while or just try to land gently so that you don’t stress the gear. If you’ve got a serious emergency and the plane is already damaged it doesn’t matter. You just land overweight. Remember that the max landing weight is for an incompetent landing and is mostly driven by how much abuse the gear can handle.

Do you think damage to cowling/wing/window affected flight performance in any measurable way? And if so, would autopilot recognize and be able to compensate? Answer: The autopilot will manipulate the controls to achieve its programmed goal, e.g., airspeed of 210 knots or heading of 180 (South). Airplanes are usually at least slightly misrigged so that the autopilot will have to hold a bit of left aileron pressure, for example, to keep the airplane from rolling off course. So slight damage to one wing would be like a worse-than-average rigging.

[If you want to truly scare yourself, read Nine Minutes, Twenty Seconds: The Tragedy & Triumph of ASA Flight 529, about Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, which suffered a prop failure and ended up with a huge amount of drag on one wing that could not be corrected by feathering or any other pilot action. The twin turboprop couldn’t hold altitude on the remaining engine. Flight attendant Robin Fech proved to be a true hero.]

So… let’s hear it for flight attendants who put their lives on the line every day and don’t get to log multi-engine turbine time or look out the front windows. Also for any passengers who got right on a replacement B737 and took off again from PHL to Dallas or wherever else they were ultimately headed. And let’s try to remember poor Jennifer Riordan, the unlucky passenger who died.

Related:

• Unsafe at any speed: Philip and a piston twin (turbojets such as the B737 are actually much easier to fly after an engine quits because there isn’t a lot of drag from the dead engine)
• Airbus A320 certified for single-pilot operation (makes a similar point from 2009: “News accounts have not spent a lot of ink on the people who did the toughest job in this incident: Shelia Dail, Donna Dent, and Doreen Welsh, the flight attendants.”)
• Recording of Delta 1889 pilots trying to get out of a hail-producing thunderstorm. They can be forgiven for sounding nervous. A thunderstorm is the primary aviation hazard for which there is no

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In writing “While Starbucks runs a re-education camp for employees, can we run a re-education camp for customers?” I left out the most interesting part.

The racist incident occurred in mid-April. The anti-racism training is scheduled for May 29. So the corporate message is the following:

1. racism is bad
2. at least some Starbucks employees are racists (but won’t be after they get training)
3. we’ll continue to operate our racist enterprise in a racist manner for another 1.5 months

This doesn’t seem like a good theme for a press release!

Related:

• Starbucks scene from the movie Best in Show

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Our MIT alumni magazine ran a feature on an alumna who works in Hollywood, Dottie Zicklin:

Dottie Zicklin was working on Wall Street when she decided she needed a change. So she drew from an interest she picked up at MIT—theater. … As a woman who came to directing later in her career, Zicklin is enthusiastic about the future for women in that profession. “There’s sort of a tipping point here in Hollywood where they really want female directors,” she says. For example, the influential television writer and producer Ryan Murphy wants half of his directors to be female, as does NBC, she says. “I got into it late because it’s really tough to break into as a woman, but I think the younger generation is really going to bust through this.”

[Now that i know that it is easy to break into Hollywood if you’re a white male, I will send you all my forwarding address in Santa Monica.]

“White Men Still Dominate Behind-the-Camera Jobs in TV” (Fortune):

Some top producers, such as Lee Daniels, Ryan Murphy and J.J. Abrams, have mandated hiring more women and minorities for their TV shows, and started programs to mentor aspiring writers and producers. Shows such as “Empire,” “Black-ish” and “Fresh Off the Boat” have large portions of their writing staffs made up of minorities and women. Ava DuVernay hired only female directors for her TV show “Queen Sugar,’’ as did Frankie Shaw for her Showtime series “Smilf.’’

Diversity doesn’t guarantee ratings success. Fox’s viewership has slumped, even for “Empire,” and ABC has also lost ground despite featuring shows such as “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Black-ish” that star minorities.

If there is a quota system in place for everyone other than white males, doesn’t that mean that, on average, the white males who can overcome this discrimination will be more skilled than everyone else in the industry? If so, maybe consumers will start to seek out movies that are directed by white males and wait for streaming if a movie was directed by a female director with whom they aren’t familiar?

Perhaps skill in making films is simply a question of prejudice. “Sorry, Hollywood. Inclusion Riders Won’t Save You.” (nytimes):

Instead, the burden should be on white and male celebrities to realize that much of their power stems from their whiteness and maleness and to step back and empower marginalized people to have more roles on their sets, on and off camera.

In addition, studios could change their policies and actions. People in power should simply hire as many white women, people of color and L.G.B.T. people as possible. They should do so even at the perceived expense of white people, and even if those candidates are viewed as somehow “less qualified,” with the understanding that those perceptions are culturally fixed in racist notions and structures.

Perceived incompetence with Avid and Adobe Premiere is a cultural notion, according to the 2015 Harvard Law School graduate Rebecca Chapman (a photo suggests that she may identify as one of the “white women” whose hiring she promotes; I wonder if she would suggest that her law firm would have done better to hire a non-white woman (“twofer” in the old government contractor parlance) with apparently inferior qualifications).

Unless the government can force consumers to purchase tickets to female-directed movies or minority-directed movies, is it possible that we’ll begin to see audiences gravitating toward the creations of white males?

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“When Children Grow Up Poor, the Nation Pays a Price” (nytimes) is by Mark Rank, a sociologist and “professor of social welfare”. It turns out that a nation can get rich as easily as spending money on welfare:

Our analysis indicated that for each dollar spent on reducing childhood poverty, the country would save at least $7 with respect to the economic costs of poverty.

Back in 2011, spending on federal welfare programs was roughly $60,000 per family (Senate Committee on the Budget). Adjusted for the inflation that the government assures us does not exist, that’s $68,000 today. At least in theory, nearly all of this money, free housing, free health care, free food, and free phone service shoveled out to adults is for the benefit of children. So if we use the sociologist’s arithmetic and assume that each welfare family has an average of two children, that would be $612,000 per child spend by taxpayers over an 18-year period. The return on investment will be $4.3 million, according to Professor Rank’s arithmetic.

Between 21 and 43 percent of children in the U.S. are eligible for welfare (source) and there were roughly 74 million children in 2010 (Census). Taking an estimate in the middle of the range, that’s roughly 25 million children who were on welfare in 2010. Each child will yield a return on investment of roughly $4.3 million. That’s a total of $100 trillion in profit to the U.S. government, 5X the national debt and sufficient, one would hope, to cover pension and health care liabilities that are not on the books as official debt, as well as money that has been borrowed by state and local governments.

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Starbucks will shut down on May 29 to train employees: “Starbucks to Shut 8,000 U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Training After Arrests” (nytimes). In other words, the company will run re-education camps without the heat and humidity of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Could we use the same day to run a re-education camp for Starbucks customers? Let me start on the syllabus and readers can fill in the details…

• Lesson 1: There is a place called “McDonald’s” where insiders can purchase coffee for 99 cents and, even more miraculously, the food does not come out of a microwave.
• Lesson 2: latte is actually “milk,” a drink for baby mammals.
• Advanced Topics: How to obtain free refills on coffee at Panera.

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Tomorrow at 4 pm there will be a dedication ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery for a Vietnam helicopter aircrew monument (Army Times).

One of my early instructors told me that the U.S. government crashed 7,000 helicopters in Vietnam. Guts ‘N Gunships: What it was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam is a reasonably good explanation as to how this could have happened. (The book is included with a Kindle Unlimited subscription.)

Training:

In Advanced Primary Flight School at Fort Wolters, you were taught to land in what was called white, yellow, or red tire areas located in the Texas countryside, usually on the bluffs. These target areas had painted automobile tires in them that could be seen easily from the air. The white tire areas were fairly large and spacious and comparatively easy to fly in and out of. The yellow tire areas were smaller and more difficult to negotiate, and a student had to be with an instructor or be cleared by an instructor to fly into them solo. The red tire areas were small, and it took a lot of precision to get in and out of them. A student had to be accompanied by an instructor to fly into them. Working on more advanced maneuvers and flying in and out of these tire areas was the bulk of the rest of the training, along with continued study in ground school courses. When a student would fly solo into one of these areas, he would land and follow a precise procedure for safety’s sake.

War:

The slick aircraft in our company was the UH1H model that was powered by a Lycoming, turbofan jet engine that generated 1,500 horsepower called a T-13. Its rotor blades had a chord (width) of 21 inches and were rather long.

The payload of the aircraft (how much weight it could carry) was about 4,000 pounds, which translates into ten to twelve troops including the crew, and a full load of JP 4 jet fuel that weighed 1,600 lbs. The aircraft had a loaded cruise speed of eighty knots, but unloaded it would usually cruise at over 100 knots and still maintain its altitude. The gunship pilots however flew a UH1C model, commonly known as a Charlie model that was equipped with a Lycoming turbofan jet engine that produced 1100 horsepower called a T-11. It had what is known as a 540 rotor system with a 27-inch chord of the blades, built more for speed and maneuverability. These aircraft took a lot of precision flying just to safely get them off the ground when they were loaded with rockets, ammunition, and a full 1,600 lbs of JP 4 jet fuel, because they were often underpowered.

Another thing that necessitates intensive in-country training from the senior pilots is the necessity of squeezing a chopper into very tight landing zones (LZ) especially with a bunch of enemy troops shooting at you. Sometimes there was only a few feet clearance for the spinning rotor blades before getting into trees, other helicopters, or God knows what. For instance, dropping a four-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP Team) into a deep, dark hole in the triple canopy jungle in Nam, when there was barely enough room for one chopper, and barely two- feet clearance of the blades on all sides, was, by no means, an easy feat. Again it was a hard job made even more treacherous when receiving enemy fire.

In the civilian world, the aircraft commander flies from the right seat in a helicopter and from the left seat in a fixed wing aircraft. In Vietnam combat slick pilots flew command from the left seat, because they were always flying into very tight areas, and they needed all the visibility they could get through the chin bubble and the instrument panel was skewed to the right. This obstructed their view somewhat from the right seat. Gunship pilots, on the other hand, followed the civilian tradition, and flew command from the right seat, because they didn’t generally fly into tight LZs.

Triple canopy jungle has three major growth levels of trees. The first level reaches a height of about 25 to 30 feet, and the tops form a sort of canopy. The second level is taller, and reaches to about 50 to 60 feet before it canopies. The last and tallest growth of trees may reach, in places, over a hundred feet high, before it forms the top and final canopy.

Cowboy and I made the approach to the area, and came to a hover over a hole in the jungle that I swore didn’t have room for half a Huey, let alone a whole one. When we stabilized, Cowboy lowered pitch and started down into the deep, dark hole. It didn’t look to me like we had two feet clearance on the blades, and I was as nervous as a whore in church. The door gunner and crew chief were talking earnestly to Cowboy, saying: “About two feet tail rotor clearance on the left, Sir. Whoa, whoa, you’re out of room, Sir!” Then from the right backside, “No more room back, Sir. Only about a foot on the right.” In the front, it didn’t look to me like we had any room to spare at all. It looked as if the blades would strike the trees at any moment, and we would go down in a fiery ball. I glanced at Cowboy. I had never seen such intense concentration on a man’s face in my life. He was staring straight ahead and glancing down through the chin bubble. We were now half way down at an altitude above the jungle floor of about fifty feet. The light faded, getting dimmer and dimmer as we descended.

Then, just when I thought that things couldn’t possibly get worse, they did. Things got a lot worse. It became a descent into Hell itself. Without warning, the whole LZ lit up with enemy, automatic bursts of AK47 fire, and it seemed all of Hell escaped its gates. Rounds were hitting the aircraft now, with that all too familiar slapping ping sound. One round came through the Fox Mike Radio that set between Cowboy and I, knocking it out, and then exited through the ceiling plexiglass panel in the cockpit. Cowboy screamed in the UHF Radio: “Receiving heavy fire!! Receiving heavy fire!! Nine o’clock! Nine o’clock! Right on LZ perimeter!!!” Both the door gunner and crew chief had already opened up with the tripod-mounted M60s with suppressive fire. Hot brass casings flew all over the aircraft. The LRRPs on board opened up with their M16s and more casings flew, two of them lodging under my shirt collar and descending onto my bare back, burning my flesh, as I flinched forward thinking once again, that this time, I had been shot for sure. We were still at about 30 feet altitude and it was too high for the LRRPs to jump. As I have previously mentioned, the enemy troops had learned to wait silently and hidden until the aircraft was half way down in the LZ. They knew we would not have the power to pull out until we got rid of some weight, in this case, the LRRPs.

Unexpected hazards:

One of the reasons a thorough preflight check was necessary was because of the sappers (enemy insurgents) who often managed to sneak through the perimeter at night, and booby trap aircraft, among other things. One of the things they were most notorious for, was pulling the pin on a hand grenade and putting a rubber band around the handle to keep it from activating. Next they would remove the fuel cap on a Huey, drop the grenade in the fuel tank, and replace the cap. A couple of hours later the fuel would dissolve the rubber band, letting the handle release, and boom goes the Huey. It’s bad enough if it goes off on the ground, let alone when the Huey is airborne. To counter this, when we left the aircraft in the evening after a mission, we would put a small pencil line on the fuel cap, extending onto the surrounding metal, and if this line did not line up exactly the next morning, you got the hell away from the aircraft in a hurry, and called the bomb squad.

The author explains that he actually transitioned to flying gunships, which attracted a huge amount of enemy fire, because landing in tight spots within the jungle terrified him.

The book is also pretty good for helping the reader understand why Vietnam was so challenging compared to our current desert conflicts. Despite the use of Agent Orange, the enemy was almost always hidden by the jungle and the helicopter pilots never knew when they would face concentrated rifle fire or worse.

More: Read Guts ‘N Gunships: What it was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam.

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“Sex Abuse Scandal Casts Shadow Over Nobel Prize for Literature” (nytimes) has a slight twist:

the newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported that 18 women had accused Jean-Claude Arnault, a major cultural figure with close ties to the academy, of sexual assault and harassment. Mr. Arnault is married to the poet Katarina Frostenson, a member of the academy, …

Ms. Frostenson has refused to step down from the academy, despite calls for her to do so. In a recent closed-door vote, eight members voted to keep her on the board and six voted to oust her. (Ms. Frostenson did not vote.)

Presumably the wife did not endorse any sexual activities between her husband and other/younger women. Why then does she have to be purged?

[Separately, if you were looking for a definition of “not woke”:

Worsening the scandal, new evidence has emerged showing that as early as 1996, a textile artist, Anna-Karin Bylund, complained to the academy’s top administrator at the time, Sture Allen, about sexual harassment by Mr. Arnault. Mr. Allen, who remains a member of the academy, has said he did not act on the letter because “the contents of the letter didn’t seem important.”

]

Related:

• Knut Hamsun, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature who later became a supporter of Hitler (apparently this was less problematic than the #MeToo issues!)
• Ernest Hemingway, a recipient who had “endless mistresses” (Daily Mail)
• Bob Dylan, a recipient who may have interacted with at least one or two women?

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Today in Boston we celebrate violence as a means to settling political disagreements (Patriot’s Day). Part of the celebration is running 26.2 miles in what passes for “spring” here in Boston:

KBOS 161654Z 05017KT 1 1/2SM R04R/3000VP6000FT RA BR OVC008 06/06 A2995 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1622 
KBOS 161619Z 05019G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/4000VP6000FT +RA BR SCT004 OVC009 06/06 A2996 RMK AO2 PK WND 04029/1558 LTG DSNT NE
KBOS 161605Z 05023KT 2SM R04R/4500VP6000FT RA BR SCT004 OVC010 06/05 A2997 RMK AO2 PK WND 04029/1558 LTG DSNT NE
KBOS 161554Z 05021G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/4500VP6000FT -RA BR BKN004 OVC010 06/06 A2998 RMK AO2 PK WND 05030/1505 LTG DSNT E PRESFR
KBOS 161454Z 05022G28KT 1 1/4SM R04R/3500VP6000FT -RA BR BKN004 OVC008 05/05 A3004 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1440
KBOS 161452Z 05021G28KT 1SM R04R/3500VP6000FT RA BR BKN004 OVC008 05/05 A3004 RMK AO2 PK WND 06029/1440

Temps around 5 degrees C, visibility of roughly one mile, rain heavy (+RA) at times. Peak winds gusting up to 30 knots. The wind direction at Logan Airport was from the northeast and therefore mostly in the runners’ faces (the course goes from west to east).

Wikipedia says that the best time ever for this race is 2:03:02. Today’s fastest time was 2:15:53 (by Yuki Kawauchi of Japan). So the truly miserable weather slowed things down by about 13 minutes.

[Separately, check out the results reporting. Here’s a sample from the New York Times:

Teeming rain, strong winds and the coldest temperatures in 30 years upended the Boston Marathon on Monday, contributing to upset finishes, including the victory of Desiree Linden, the first American woman to win the race in 33 years.

The temperature hovered at 38 degrees, and a headwind of 10 miles an hour or more blew in runners’ faces. But the conditions did not stop Linden — at 34, it was her first major marathon win — and Yuki Kawauchi, 31, of Japan, who came from behind to win the men’s race.

The runner with a time of 2:39:53 won “the race” whereas the runner with a time of 2:15:53 won “the men’s race”.

From our local Fox TV station (with help from AP):

Desiree Linden splashed her way through icy rain and a near-gale headwind to a Boston Marathon victory on Monday, the first American woman to win the race since 1985.

Japanese runner Yuki Kawauchi surged late to win men’s Boston Marathon in an unofficial time of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 58 seconds.

From the local CBS station (also with help from AP):

Desiree Linden splashed her way through icy rain and a near-gale headwind to a Boston Marathon victory on Monday, the first American woman to win the race since 1985.

Yuki Kawauchi passed defending champion Geoffrey Kirui in Kenmore Square to win the men’s race…

Any man who wants to be featured in the press as having won the overall “race” can identify as a woman: “Transgender Runners Can Race Boston Marathon Under Identified Gender” (NPR). Also potentially useful for winning $150,000 in prize money plus a $50,000 bonus if the runner can set a new record time (separate prize money is set aside for runners according to gender ID, though currently only two genders are recognized).]

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As a New Englander, let me wish all readers a Happy Patriot’s Day!

April 19, 1775 saw the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the start of the secession of British North America from Great Britain (this was virtuous and not to be confused with the traitorous secession of the southern states from the U.S. a few decades later).

The American Revolution was a great thing for some rich white people who got a lot of additional wealth and power. But celebrating the rich and white is out of fashion these days, no?

Consider the alternative fate of black Americans. Slavery in Europe had ended by 1000. Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1833 (Wikipedia). Thus it seems that an entire generation of black Americans could have enjoyed freedom if the American Revolution had never occurred. (Arguably the colonists were some of the cruelest humans on the planet. They came from a place where slavery hadn’t existed for 500+ years and instituted slavery. That’s worse than growing up in a society where slavery existed, but not being an active abolitionist, no?)

How about Native Americans? A “steal land and power from Native Americans” day would not attract many public celebrants today, would it? Yet the American Revolution resulted in the elimination of Native American political power west of the Proclamation Line (see Wikipedia entry on the Indian Reserve).

What about non-rich white Americans? Hundreds of thousands might have avoided death in the Civil War.

By our current standards of vilifying the rich and white and celebrating victims, what is there to celebrate in Patriot’s Day?

Related:

• The tax rates that led American colonists to rebel

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“A $76,000 Monthly Pension: Why States and Cities Are Short on Cash” (nytimes) will, I hope, inspire you to send in those state and local tax checks today!

That states and cities are bleeding out due to their pension commitments is old news (see “Pensions: How states and local governments indulge in deficit-spending” from 2009, for example). What I find interesting are the reader comments. Essentially nobody wants governments to get out of the defined-benefit pension business (essentially acting like a life insurance company that offers annuities). People, presumably most of them private-sector workers with 401k and Social Security, want state and local governments to continue performing this function, but with “reforms.”

My comment on the piece:

Why would state governments be issuing defined-benefit pensions at all? Unless you are God and know exactly when people will die and/or you have a printing press for dollars (like the Federal government does), why would you be promising to send people checks until they die?

Insurance companies can afford to write annuities like this (though usually without an inflation adjustment liability) because if people live longer they won’t have to pay out so much on the life insurance side. But for an ordinary employer to do this is madness (as GM found out!).

Taxpayers should vote to amend state constitutions so that their politicians can no longer moonlight as actuaries. Government workers can have 401k plans like everyone else, plus Social Security for a defined-benefit check (backed up by the Feds, who DO have a printing press for dollars). Maybe government workers will demand higher current compensation if they can’t get a pension worth $millions, but at least the cost would be right out in the open for everyone to see, vote on, etc.

I forgot to add that, to do this right, state and local governments also need a letter from God listing what the returns on various kinds of assets are going to be for the next 50 years.

What would it take to get the American voter motivated to terminate politicians’ rights to do this to them and their children?

 

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