The spinning ATR crash in Brazil

by philg

Friends have been asking me about the ATR turboprop that spun into the ground in Brazil on August 9, 2024 in which 62 people were killed. Aviation Safety Network says that it was warm on the ground (17C) with a potential for “severe icing” above 12,000′ (FL120):

CNN:

It began losing altitude a minute and a half before crashing. The plane had been cruising at 17,000 feet until 1:21 p.m., when it dropped approximately 250 feet in 10 seconds. It then climbed approximately 400 feet in about eight seconds.

A spin, which is not recoverable in an airliner, is a consequence of an aerodynamic stall. In a stall, the wings lose lift because the critical angle of attack (angle between the wing and the oncoming air) is exceeded. Why does the plane spin instead of simply descending due to the loss of lift? Because the wings don’t stall to the same extent at the same time. One wing will drop first and the plane then spins in that direction. As flight instructors we are required to learn how to recover from a spin, but these techniques are useful primarily in low-performance single-engine aircraft. A Cessna 172 supposedly will come out of an incipient spin if the pilot simply removes hands and feet from the flight controls. Making an airplane this forgiving impairs cruise speed and, therefore, airliners aren’t designed with spin-recovery in mind. Instead, they prevent the pilots from the initial stall via a stick shaker and/or stick pusher that activates when the plane is getting too slow. Fly-by-wire airliners, such as the Airbus A320, prevent the pilots from stalling by ignoring inappropriate flight control inputs. (Captain Sully had the stick full back during his heroic single-pilot landing on the Hudson, just like a panicked student pilot, but the French software engineers kept the plane flying (not quite at the optimum speed for a water landing due to the higher-than-minimum vertical descent rate, but apparently close enough due to efforts of the French aeronautical engineers in overbuilding the airframe to survive both the high vertical speed and the high forward speed from landing downwind).)

The ATR 72-500 apparently has both the shaker and pusher (source):

Shakers and pushers prevent most stalls, but not all. A Bombardier Q400 turboprop crashed in 2009 despite the shaker and pusher activating after the pilots leveled off and forgot to add power. Wikipedia:

Following the clearance for final approach, landing gear and flaps (5°) were extended. The flight data recorder indicated that the airspeed had slowed to 145 knots (269 km/h; 167 mph).[3] The captain then called for the flaps to be increased to 15°. The airspeed continued to slow to 135 knots (250 km/h; 155 mph). Six seconds later, the aircraft’s stick shaker activated, warning of an impending stall, as the speed continued to slow to 131 knots (243 km/h; 151 mph). The captain responded by abruptly pulling back on the control column, followed by increasing thrust to 75% power, instead of lowering the nose and applying full power, which was the proper stall-recovery technique. That improper action pitched the nose up even further, increasing the gravitational load and increasing the stall speed. The stick pusher, which applies a nose-down control-column input to decrease the wing’s angle of attack after a stall,[3] activated, but the captain overrode the stick pusher and continued pulling back on the control column. The first officer retracted the flaps without consulting the captain, making recovery even more difficult.

(The root cause of the above accident, in my opinion, is the complacent attitude by the FAA and airframe manufacturers regarding deficient avionics. The aspiration seems to be an LCD version of the gauges and dials that were in a B-17 bomber over Germany in World War II. The computers on board the aircraft had all of the information that they needed to warn the crew “you can’t hold altitude at this power setting” long before they came anywhere near stalling. See my 2010 post.)

The ATR 72-500 is equipped with de-icing equipment, but no aircraft is capable of maintaining level flight indefinitely in “severe icing”. Ultimately, pilots of a sophisticated airplane will have to do what the pilot of a crummy airplane with no de-icing gear must do: allow the plane to descend while maintaining a reasonable airspeed. If it is below freezing on the surface, this means that an epic amount of runway will be consumed for landing because it will be unsafe to slow down and also probably unsafe to add flaps (the airplane certified for operations in icing conditions comes with a big book explaining what speeds and configuration to use). If the airplane can descend into above-freezing air, the ice will come off almost immediately.

Circling back to Voepass 2283, the accident airplane from yesterday, the CNN report is consistent with pilots who were trying to hold altitude rather than accept a descent: “The plane had been cruising at 17,000 feet until 1:21 p.m., when it dropped approximately 250 feet in 10 seconds. It then climbed approximately 400 feet in about eight seconds.”

The last sentence suggests that they were actively trying to get back to their assigned altitude of 17,000′. In hindsight, of course, the best course of action would have been to hold 200 knots (a good all-purpose safe speed) and descend to warmer-than-freezing air (Campinas is no higher than about 2,500′ above sea level and was 17C on the surface, suggesting that warmer-than-freezing air was available up to about 12,000′ (lapse rate of 2C per 1,000′).)

(Have I encountered icing myself, you might ask? Yes, but never “severe”. In jets and turboprops I was always able to use the onboard equipment (hot wings or rubber boots that inflate) to deal with the icing while we hunted up or down for an ice-free altitude. In little piston-powered 4-seaters that aren’t certified for known icing, the rule is that you never fly into clouds that are forecast to contain ice. However, sometimes you pick up ice that wasn’t forecast. So the rule is to descend to warmer air and, if warmer air doesn’t exist (New England in the winter), the rule is not to fly through clouds because you don’t know if you’ll be able to shed any ice. An instrument rating combined with an unpressurized non-deiced small plane isn’t a fly-on-your-own-schedule formula because you can’t get over thunderstorm lines in the summer and you can’t go through clouds in the winter due to the risk of ice.)

So… icing by itself likely cannot be the cause of the recent accident in Brazil.

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Price change for auto insurance in our inflation-free economy

by philg

State Farm, January 19: $936 + $884 = $1820 for six months of car insurance.

State Farm, July 20: $1049 + $1001 = $2050 for six months of insurance.

That’s a 12.6 percent increase in half a year. If we weren’t assured that we live in an inflation-free economy, we would call that “25 percent/year inflation”.

(It’s the same two cars and, ordinarily, they would be worth less every six months. Thus, the rate of increase is actually higher than 25 percent (but it is not “inflation”).)

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Social Justice at the Library: Farming While Black

by philg

The Jupiter branch of the Palm Beach County Public Library seems to have at least five copies of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land:

Keeping five copies on the shelf seems like an odd choice in a town where forty acres and a mule would, if available, cost more than $40 million. While my mother was in the Large Print section, I did a quick survey of the patrons and found just one who appeared to identify as “Black”.

(There’s a separate part of Palm Beach County just west of us called Jupiter Farms that isn’t part of the Town of Jupiter and a 40-acre farm there might be assembled for $10 million. Wikipedia says that roughly 1.2 percent of Jupiter Farms residents identify as Black. (The “white” population of Jupiter Farms fell between 2010 and 2020, according to the Census data in the Wikipedia page, while the overall population grew. Only a racist conspiracy theorist, however, would say that white people were being “replaced” in Jupiter Farms.))

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History lessons at the art museum

by philg

I touched on my visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Is Donald Trump worse than George Washington? but I’d like to share some additional history lessons from the signage. This is a government-funded institution, so the lessons are, presumably, official State of North Carolina versions.

We learn that rich people love to laugh at peasants:

The Dutch were bad in general:

One Dutch guy was especially bad, being responsible for “Dutch expansion, exploitation, and violence” and giving Dutch people ships was bad because they used them for “violent establishment of foreign colonies”:

The English were bad settler-colonialists in North America (see previous post regarding a wall-sign biography of George Washington) and the Bostonians were especially bad, e.g., Sir William Pepperrell who was “the sole heir to a well-known merchant and enslaver in Massachusetts”:

The bird nerd is bad:

If you think that racism 200 years ago isn’t relevant, note that the National Audubon Society continues to support the party of slavery, with more than 98 percent of its political contributions going to Democrats (opensecrets.org; I think this might measure the contributions of executives and officers since a nonprofit org itself shouldn’t be donating to any political candidates).

Unlike Audubon, the museum bravely takes a stand against slavery (“deplorable”!) and “systemic racism”:

Has all of human civilization been exploitation and violence? No. Elites and peasants lived in harmony in pre-Columbian America. They danced and made music together at “communal feasts” where “diverse parts of society coexisted, sharing food and drink.”

What kind of “food and drink” was shared? From the History Channel:

When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a grisly ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor.

Andrés de Tapia, a conquistador, described two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls, and between them, a towering wooden rack displaying thousands more skulls with bored holes on either side to allow the skulls to slide onto the wooden poles.

Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the ruthless destruction of Tenochtitlán and the enslavement of its people. But in 2015 and 2018, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico City discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs—none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that conquistadors had described in their accounts.

While it’s true that the Spanish undoubtedly inflated their figures—Spanish historian Fray Diego de Durán reported that 80,400 men, women and children were sacrificed for the inauguration of the Templo Mayor under a previous Aztec emperor—evidence is mounting that the gruesome scenes illustrated in Spanish texts, and preserved in temple murals and stone carvings, are true.

In addition to slicing out the hearts of victims and spilling their blood on the temple altar, it’s believed that the Aztecs also practiced a form of ritual cannibalism. The victim’s bodies, after being relieved of their heads, were likely gifted to noblemen and other distinguished community members. Sixteenth-century illustrations depict body parts being cooked in large pots and archeologists have identified telltale butcher marks on the bones of human remains in Aztec sites around Mexico City.

Maybe show up for the concert, but don’t stay for dinner?

The state-funded museum provided some follow-up reading in the gift shop:

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Our democracy is threatened by Democrats (says Cori Bush)

by philg

For at least eight years we have been informed for by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the New York Times, et al., that Republicans will end our democracy (see Why do the non-Deplorables deplore the Trump shooting?). Yesterday, however, I saw something new. A Democrat in a primary election says that if a fellow Democrat is elected that will end our democracy:

Unfortunately, democracy lost yesterday and it will be a different Democrat representing this district in Congress (at least until democracy is ended, as predicted, and Congress is dissolved). The Hamas-supporting politician says that the loss will “radicalize” her:

(Click through to Mona Eltahawy’s profile: “she/her” and “Cairo/New York”)

What does a radicalized ex-member of Congress do next? Can she become a lobbyist as so many former politicians have? Her job would be highlighting to Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib some additional progressive causes to fund?

Here’s her successful opponent, Wesley Bell, on the most impactful issue of our time:

The St. Louis region has been enriched and strengthened by generations of immigrants choosing to start new lives in our community. But for decades, Washington politicians have kicked the can down the road instead of actually coming together and tackling this issue. It’s time for comprehensive immigration reform that addresses current challenges and prepares for the future as well.

We need to work toward finding the appropriate balance in creating a system that ensures safety and security at the border, while also treating people with dignity and respect, and honoring the rights of asylum seekers. A pathway to citizenship must be established for those who are already here, working hard, and paying taxes. We need to ensure that our country is protected from MS-13 gang members, drug traffickers, and terrorists. You can count on me to fight to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security has adequate funding to serve our country.

I can’t figure out how this kind of statement, which seems to be standard at least for Democrats, is convincing to American voters. He implies that he will limit the number of low-skill migrants (“appropriate balance”) and in the same sentence talks about “honoring the rights of asylum seekers”. Yet under our present laws, the right to seek asylum is without limit and, thus, the only way to honor the rights of asylum seekers is to have unlimited low-skill immigration.

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The Coast Guard helicopter pilot lifestyle

by philg

Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival by Tristram Korten offers us a window into an unusual lifestyle.

Ben Cournia, aviation survival technician (“rescue swimmer”), flight mechanic Joshua Andrews, and pilots Rick Post and Dave McCarthy show up to mosquito-infested Great Inagua Island (Bahamas) in September 2015 to be ready with a MH-60 Jayhawk in case undocumented importers need to be followed or people need to be pulled off ships or out of the water. They work two weeks on and two weeks off.

Here’s the machine, parked on the ramp in Portland, Maine in fall 2020 (see Maine/NH coast video)

This won’t be a story about diversity being our strength:

The four men made up a pretty good snapshot of the Coast Guard in terms of demographics (the service is overwhelmingly white) and disposition.

If there’s no racial diversity, maybe there is gender ID diversity?

Today there are 360 rescue swimmers spread out among twenty-six Coast Guard air stations. Three of them are women.

It also won’t be a story about the depredations of climate change. The deadliest hurricane season on record was almost 250 years ago:

Three back-to-back hurricanes in October 1780 killed tens of thousands of people and sank dozens of ships throughout the Caribbean and United States. The storms severely weakened the British Navy as it fought the American revolutionaries. The first storm struck Jamaica and then tore through Cuba, sinking British warships and collapsing whole towns, killing an estimated 3,000 people, half of them sailors. The second storm sped from Barbados to Bermuda, claiming roughly 4,300 lives. On the island of St. Vincent, a twenty-foot storm surge washed villages out to sea. On St. Lucia, the storm killed 6,000 people. About 9,000 more died in Martinique. Fifteen Dutch ships sank off Grenada. All told, this was the deadliest storm on record in the Western Hemisphere. Incredibly, another storm picked up within days and ripped through the region, smashing sixty-four Spanish warships sailing to take back the Florida panhandle from the British. Nearly 2,000 men died.

The Coast Guard was an early adopter of the helicopter, despite having missed out on Hanna Reitsch’s pioneering flights:

As soon as Coast Guard brass saw the public flight of Russian-born Igor Sikorsky’s prototype in 1940, they put in an order. In 1944, the Coast Guard conducted the first helicopter landings on a ship. The service’s first helicopter pilot, Frank Erickson, conducted the first helo rescue mission later that same year. Erickson and the Coast Guard’s helicopter detachment were stationed at the Sikorsky Aircraft plant in Connecticut to get trained by and work with the famed helicopter designer. Erickson collaborated with Sikorsky to develop power hoists for helicopter rescue missions and pioneered the idea of using stretchers to evacuate the injured.

Let’s leave the El Faro story and look at another ship, the Minouche. This one was also old (35 years), but not because of American protectionism. The Minouche went back and forth to Haiti with low-value cargo. She had a crew of 11 Haitians and a Filipino captain, Renelo Gelera. They didn’t make any obvious mistakes, according to the author, but Hurricane Joaquin still snuck up on them and sunk their ship from a distance of more than 100 miles (moderate winds, big waves, and an old engine that couldn’t be restarted after an automatic shutdown when the screw lifted out of the water).

The eye was now about one hundred miles north of Great Inagua. Tropical storm–force winds easily stretched over the rescue site. McCarthy mustered the helicopter and ground crews in the big hangar for a briefing. He explained the mission: cargo ship down, forty miles southeast, crew abandoning ship. He ran down a list of known risks. The main one, of course, was the weather—driving rain, high winds, extensive cloud cover. Then he asked if anyone had reservations. Silence. They may have assessed themselves as ready, but the truth was, this was virgin territory for the helicopter crew. None had flown in conditions this extreme before, except maybe Cournia during his tour in Alaska, much less conducted a search and rescue operation in a hurricane—at night. Most civilian helicopters won’t take off in 20-knot winds. The MH-60 has a wind limitation of 60 knots off the nose and 45 from any other direction for takeoff. The Coasties were heading out in 35-to-40-knot winds with gusts up to 60.

(Tech correction: 20 knots was our wind limit for doing sightseeing tours over Boston in the Robinson R44. A good practical limit for lessons at the flight school was 30 knots (not for a beginner student, though). I remember a successful photo mission with winds of 35 knots. We landed with surface winds gusting to about 30 knots on the last leg of the helicopter trip from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts. There is no wind limitation for the R44, but I would say that you’d need a good reason to operate with surface winds over 30 knots if there were any nearby hills (a formula for turbulence). The Jayhawk is 10X heavier than an R44 and should be much more stable.)

Not to spoil the suspense, but Ben Cournia was able to get the sailors out of their life raft and into the basket for hoisting. He was in the water for hours. The first trip to the stricken vessel involved about four hours of hovering over the raft. The second trip involves some ugliness and a save by a technology:

Post, who couldn’t see anything out the windshield, was flying almost entirely by his instrument panel. His altitude was good, but his hover bar showed him moving even though he felt as if the aircraft was stationary. His mind couldn’t reconcile how his body felt with what the instruments said. This was a dangerous sensation for a pilot. Vertigo could set in and the pilot could think up was down, and try to fly accordingly. He needed to reestablish some frame of reference. Post alerted his crewmates that he was having trouble staying oriented. He hit the “auto depart” button, which takes control of the Jayhawk and lifts it three hundred feet in the air, then reestablishes an even longitudinal hover. It’s a reset, a way for the pilot to start over and try again. From there, Post knew which way was up.

I’m not sure what the author means by a “hover bar” instrument and I haven’t heard of an “auto depart” button, though I know that the various versions of the Blackhawk have some advanced automation, e.g., to approach to a point in space or fly a predefined search pattern.

After some instability combined with a big wave grabbing the basket, the winch cable gets damaged and they return to base to check out a second helicopter and make a third visit to the life raft. There was a whole second crew available to fly that second helicopter, so I don’t understand why the exhausted first crew went out yet again (“you have to go out, but you don’t have to come back” surely doesn’t mean that one crew relaxes in the ready room while the first crew goes out three times, does it?). Obviously there was some learning that had happened on the first two trips, but a member of the first crew could have gone out with the fresh/rested second crew as an advisor.

Just when you think that the weather and waves are bad, Katherine Clerk Maxwell’s equations zap you:

As the basket was hoisted, Cournia hung on to minimize swing, and as he was lifted out of the water he felt a sudden jolt pass through his entire body. It was so strong that it locked his arms in a spasm of convulsed muscle. He tried to free his grip but couldn’t. Eventually the jolt passed and Cournia was able to drop back into the water. A special static discharge cable—which had been attached to the basket to siphon excess electricity generated by the helicopter’s blades cutting through the air—had somehow ripped off, and a current of electricity had passed from the helicopter’s metal frame down the cable to the basket. This meant Cournia had to be extra careful to make sure the basket was in contact with the water whenever he touched it, in order to provide a ground for the electricity.

In case you were wondering, I love Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival almost as much as I love the Coast Guard (and who doesn’t love the Coast Guard?). Just don’t start reading it before bedtime because it’s tough to put down.

Related:

  • the book will inspire you to carry a PLB or EPIRB even if you’re just heading out to the grocery store!
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Is everyone in the U.K. and Bangladesh now entitled to asylum in the U.S.?

by philg

Politicians from both parties say that they want to “control” the U.S. border, but nobody ever proposes changing U.S. law to eliminate the right to claim asylum. There are minor differences between politicians, e.g., “Biden administration reverses Trump-era asylum policies” (Politico, 2021), in which Joe Biden opened the door to people who claimed to have been a victim of domestic violence 10,000 miles away (good luck disproving one of those contentions!). But nobody has been willing to say “The world is too big, too crowded, and too connected for us to continue to offer this” or “We are shutting down asylum because it is impossible to build a cohesive society among people who have nothing in common other than they didn’t like where they used to live.”

Given the recent unrest in the U.K. and Bangladesh, I’m wondering if 100 percent of those countries’ populations could show up in the U.S. and claim asylum. Their fear of violence would certainly seem credible based on video clips. For example, “UK riots live: arrests pass 400 as police prepare for further riots; man in serious condition after suspected hate crime” (Guardian):

Wes Streeting told PA he condemned the “mindless thuggery” seen in the rioting and said that the government “will not tolerate” the continuation of violence that has spread through towns and cities across England over the last week.

Kenya and the United Arab Emirates have also warned their citizens in the UK to steer clear of the violent protests in England.

In an advisory issued on Tuesday, Kenya’s high commission in London said it was closely monitoring the unrest which it said was “primarily driven by far right and anti immigrant groups”

It added: “The violence has flared up across various towns and cities in the United Kingdom. Kenyans residing in or travelling to the United Kingdom are urged to stay away from the protest areas and should remain vigilant.

“Furthermore, the [UAE ministry of foreign affairs] warns UAE nationals against visiting areas witnessing riots and protests and to avoid crowded areas. UAE citizens must adhere to the warnings issued by the UAE Embassy in London and comply with all safety instructions.

The U.K. is now considered too violent by Nigerian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian, and Australian standards (CNBC). Why aren’t these determinations sufficient to support an asylum claim here in the U.S.?

(What I find most surprising about the U.K. discord is the arrogance of the London-based elites. A typical outcome of a multi-ethic multi-religious society is civil war. Recent examples include Lebanon, Rwanda, Sudan, and various Eastern European countries. Why did the folks who set up the current UK imagine that it would be different if they set up a multi-ethnic multi-religious society in the British Isles?)

From the Daily Mail, for example:

The U.K. Prime Minister has threatened to imprison anyone who expresses ideas contrary to the government’s point of view on the merits of low-skill immigration (Independent; “Anyone who stokes this violence, whether on the internet or in person, can be prosecuted and face prison.” (“stokes this violence” to be interpreted by the government, of course!)). The civil unrest is geographically widespread within the U.K. (NYT):

Bangladesh, 2021: “Bangladesh’s Hindus living in fear following mob attacks” (BBC). If their fear was “credible” (and the BBC certainly seemed to think so) then perhaps Bangladeshi Hindus were entitled to US/UK asylum no later than 2021. The U.S. government now says that Bangladesh is too dangerous for anyone, regardless of religious affiliation: “US urges its citizens not to travel to Bangladesh” (Deccan Herald, August 6, 2024).

Bangladesh has a population of 175 million. The U.K. has a population of around 70 million, so that’s roughly 245 million people who gained the right (under our asylum laws) to become U.S. residents/citizens in just the past week.

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Why you’re likely safer on a Panamanian- or Liberian-flagged ship than an American ship

by philg

A maritime safety lecture from Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival by Tristram Korten…

SS El Faro’s hull, a towering wall of blue-painted steel, loomed over the wharf at the Port of Jacksonville’s Blount Island terminal as gantry cranes loaded her decks with cargo containers. She was a steamship (designated by the “SS” before her name), using two large boilers to power a single-propeller shaft. And she was old, built by the Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Chester, Pennsylvania, just south of Philadelphia, which rolled her into the Delaware River for service on January 1, 1975. That put her in the minority of big ships [in 2015]—less than 9 percent of the world’s merchant fleet is over twenty years old.

This doesn’t sound good for structural integrity:

Twenty years later, in the mid-1990s, she was hauled into a shipyard in Alabama, where her mid-body was lengthened to increase cargo capacity.

The 790-foot El Faro didn’t make it past her 40th birthday, sadly, but it turns out that she would almost certainly have been scrapped many years prior to the dramatic events of 2015 if not for U.S. laws to restrain maritime trade.

Sun Shipbuilding has since closed, a casualty of America’s decline in manufacturing, leaving a dwindling number of shipyards able to construct big cargo ships in the United States, which also means a dwindling number of shipyards capable of fulfilling the requirements of the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that any cargo transported from one U.S. port to another must travel on ships that are American built, American crewed, and American owned. (Puerto Rico, being a U.S. territory, counts as a U.S. port.) The law was designed to protect America’s supply routes during times of war. Today its primary effect is to protect the jobs of American sailors, preventing companies from hiring much cheaper crews from Third World countries. But there is a cost—and it is steep. To build a Jones Act ship costs $120 million to $140 million. To build the same ship in South Korea, which is a developed nation, would cost about $32 million, according to Court Smith, an industry analyst with Shipping Intelligence and Analytics. It’s even cheaper to build one in India or China. South Korea builds roughly two hundred commercial ships a year, according to Smith. America puts out maybe four. As a result, shipping companies pushed the life spans of their expensive American-made ships to the absolute limit. The average age of the U.S.-flagged cargo fleet is thirty-three years, compared to thirteen years for the global fleet, according to UN statistics, and most shipping experts say the average age a cargo ship is retired worldwide is around twenty years. El Faro was a product of this dynamic. Due to its age, it was allowed to remain outdated in certain areas. For example, a regulation requiring new ships to carry enclosed lifeboats was waived for older ones, for which compliance would require a costly retrofit. Grandfathered in, El Faro continued to carry two old-fashioned open-top lifeboats. Likewise, the ship’s emergency position-indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB, did not have to be encoded with GPS, which would give the ship’s position in a time of distress.

In addition to putting American sailors lives’ at risk, the Jones Act dramatically drives up costs for businesses and individuals in Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Hawaii. In addition to the obvious costs described above, there is the non-obvious cost that the closed market facilitates collusion:

For two decades, Sea Star had been one of several shipping companies that sailed supplies to Puerto Rico on a regular schedule. All that competition meant slender margins and low profits. But companies stayed with the route to Puerto Rico—travel between a U.S. state and a U.S. territory—because they had invested so much to comply with the Jones Act. There were no dodgy flags of convenience for El Faro; she flew the Stars and Stripes. That was a high barrier to entry for would-be competitors—they would need an American-built ship, crewed by U.S. sailors. Then, in 2002, one of those firms, Navieras, went bankrupt. Suddenly the companies still afloat—including Sea Star, Crowley, Trailer Bridge, and Horizon—started seeing increased business and profits for the first time in decades. Rather than risk losing their newfound earnings to any potential newcomers, the companies bought Navieras’s ships, and executives from at least three of the companies, Sea Star, Crowley, and Horizon, conspired to fix their prices. They created secret email accounts to communicate, and set up spreadsheets that kept track of their rates, which increased by as much as 30 percent—so that, as Forbes magazine wrote, “they could assure that nobody was cheating, while they were cheating.” They weren’t clever enough to fool the FBI, however, which got involved after learning of a meeting between executives from the competing firms.

Even a newly built South Korean ship would have had some trouble handling what the American captain and crew did with El Faro, but the new ship might not have sunk and, if it had, the modern lifeboats would have given the crew a chance to survive.

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Did the U.S. boost Iran’s military power by killing Saddam Hussein?

by philg

Iran has been displaying its military power recently and its indifference to directives from the U.S. The country attacks the west in general and Israel in particular via support for the Houthis, Palestinian militant groups (Hamas, UNRWA, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, et al.), and Hezbollah. Iran has also been supplying Russia with drones, thus taking the opposite side of the conflict with Ukraine from the US and Europe.

I’m wondering if the U.S. is ultimately responsible for Iran’s freedom to flex its military muscles. The biggest thorn in Iran’s side was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (eight years of war, for example). By killing Saddam Hussein and trying to run Iraq as our puppet state, the U.S. essentially functioned as Iran’s military ally. More recently, the U.S. has been helping Iran more directly:

Separately, in May 2024 Joe Biden criticized Israel for killing Hamas soldiers in ways that put non-soldiers (“Hamas voters”?) at risk (AP). This month, Joe Biden criticized Israel for killing a Hamas leader in a way that resulted in zero civilian deaths (Reuters). Maybe there is some ideal ratio of Hamas/non-Hamas deaths that Joe Biden thinks Israel should be required to achieve?

From state-sponsored NPR:

There isn’t a price tag on the above, but I have to believe that Saddam Hussein was able to keep the Iranian military busy at less than 1/50th the dollar cost of what the U.S. military will spend.

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Science denier wins Olympic gold by identifying as a woman

by philg

“Novak Djokovic defeats Carlos Alcaraz for first Olympic gold medal” (NBC):

He had tried five times to win the gold, failing each time. … The two sets played had to go into a tiebreaker, which was neck and neck the entire way. During the first set, there were 13 unsuccessful break points. The match lasted nearly three hours, an eternity for earning the best two sets out of three.

A three-set match? That’s typically for tennis players who identify as “women”. Thus, it seems fair to say that Djokovic, who has repeatedly denied Science by refusing to be injected with a Scientifically-proven vaccine against COVID-19, won gold due to switching gender IDs. (It would have been easier if Spanish prodigy Carlos Alcaraz hadn’t also changed gender IDs.)

Related:

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