True Horizon

It is not uncommon, when sitting at the gate before scheduled departure time, for passengers boarding my airplane to stick their head in the cockpit and ask if they can take a look. Most often those who do so are nervous flyers (who want to see if they trust us), aviation enthusiasts (who want to take pictures), or a fascinated little kid (who wants to push some buttons). But on occasion, the cockpit visitor is a seasoned veteran or frequent flyer who simply wants to ask a favor. They have a cold or a sinus infection and they are having trouble clearing their ears. They want to know if we can take it easy on the descent toward our destination. As long as operational necessity does not prohibit it, I am always happy to oblige.

With no conflicting traffic or weather to prohibit it, and minimal throttle movement to affect the pressurization system, we can actually make it hard to tell the airplane is descending at all. And though the pressure change from the top of descent to landing is exactly the same as it would always be, the result is a happy passenger who arrives at our destination pain free — and nobody else is the wiser.

As “Sanctity of Human Life” Sunday approached, some of my reading reached a “harmonic convergence” that struck me with the applicability of this simple practice to the attitude our society holds on the abortion topic. Two issues in particular jumped off the pages of history. (Read on …)

… continuation of “No Engines, No Wings – Won’t Fly” …

The first two definitions of evolution are not problematic. It is only evolution in the third sense that won’t fly. I will refer to this form of evolution as Evolution (with a capital ‘E’) because it is the prevailing view among the influential leaders of the scientific community. This is Darwinian (or neo-Darwinian) Evolution – the view that single-cell life emerged from non-life and, after billions of years of mutation and transformation, can account for all the diversity of life we see on Earth today. Before addressing the third (controversial) definition discussed above, Evolution must first prove capable of accounting for the Origins of Life. If it cannot do that, it can never get off the ground. This is Evolution’s greatest obstacle, and the reason it still sits quietly on the runway. There are several aspects of this problem. (Read on …)

There is an environment that makes most of the pilots I know gag. It is the sound of whirring disk drives and hissing pistons. It is the smell of hydraulic fluid and heated computer hardware. Each of these reverberates within a boxy cavern that pilots cannot help but associate with anguish, stress, fear and despair. It is a place we loathe but cannot avoid. It is the simulator.

I understand the purpose and inevitability of simulator training. I am glad that my family rides on airplanes flown by pilots who are required to undergo simulator training. I get all that. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. No one wants to endure any form of torture but that is exactly what the simulator is. Most of us call it the “sweatbox” for a reason.

That is the issue at the core of our hatred for simulators. The new, high-tech, high-speed generation of simulators is so well designed that, when you are in them, you begin to believe what you see. The picture that is projected on the windscreen in front of you looks real, right down to the last detail. The airports you land at have every light, and building, and taxiway perfectly represented. The flight and navigation instruments work just like they do in an airplane – complete with the wobbles and beeps and buzzes you would actually experience. The engines surge and push you into the back of your seat. The weather pounds you into submission. Birds fly by. Radios hiss and squeal. Your blood pressure rises. You sweat like a pig. You flinch when you hear a loud bang. You try to make smooth landings in a contraption designed to make you fail. It all looks very real – but it’s not.

They can do anything to you in the simulator. Engines catch on fire or blow up. Passengers have heart attacks. Generators fail. Hydraulic systems leak. Landing gear won’t retract, or extend. The weather can change from ice and snow to hot summer thunderstorms; from calm, opaque fog, to gusty turbulence, to driving rain – all in the space of a few minutes, or all at the same time. Pilots are used to dealing with inflight emergencies – but not with all the inflight emergencies you can think of, all at the same time.

And that is what we don’t like about simulators. On the surface, they are staggeringly convincing. But when it comes down to it, “flying” a simulator is not the real thing. A simulator looks good on the inside, but when you step back and look at the big picture, you see what an incomplete representation it really is. Pilots love to fly airplanes but simulators are not airplanes. (Read on …)

In keeping with the tenets of the Jocelyn Elders “every child a planned and wanted child” school of bioethics, England’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called for a public discussion regarding the “active euthanasia” of sick and disabled newborns. Their logic goes like this:

• “Active euthanasia” is illegal in England but apparently widely practiced
• Legalizing “life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants” (their term) would allow parents the option of continuing pregnancies that threatened risky or questionable outcomes
• Parents would therefore be more confident in knowing that they would not be deprived of the option to terminate their sick or disabled infants if they so chose
• This would impact obstetric decision-making and prevent late term abortions

In summary, the promise of an unfettered right to infanticide might serve to reduce the occurrence of exercising one’s unfettered right to abortion.

In defending the proposed legal change, one member of the English government’s Human Genetics Commission, Manchester University’s Professor of Bioethics, John Harris, argues that: