The line our society must draw is at protecting citizens from medical coercion in order to conduct business. Some might worry this would constitute a mandate on businesses, but it isn’t. Mandates compel action.

States and private firms that demand vaccination are the ones leveling mandates: businesses like a lobbying firm in DC that has informed a mother who intends to have more children soon that she must get a new, emergency vaccine with unknown affects on fertility and pregnancy if she would like to travel — and thereby succeed — at the company. //

On the other hand, denying activity that strips choice and dehumanizes citizens and families fits neatly into traditional conservative governance. “You may not compel abortion,” “you may not marry a child,” “you may not have multiple spouses” — these are bans based on traditional values we can confidently defend. “You may not mandate a novel injection for customers to engage in commerce” fits cleanly into this tradition. //

Government-corporate databases are both a dream for hackers and a quick path to a social credit system, and the only way to retard that kind of power is to make medical mandates a terrible burden to the states and businesses that demand them. The way to do this is a patchwork of states that resist by banning them. Do corporations want to do business in states like Texas, Florida, and Montana? Do airlines want to maintain hubs in states that say no? Are companies willing to write off that much market share?

This patchwork of resistance will also bring on reluctant allies who otherwise would happily join the new regime. //

“I don’t care if Google is a private company because it has too much power,” J.D. Vance, bestselling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a possible 2022 Ohio candidate for senator, told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on his podcast. “And if you want to have a country where people can live their lives freely you have to be concerned about power, whether it’s concentrated in the government or concentrated in big corporations.”

Vance is right. While the past year has revealed that a depressing number of Americans will yield to arbitrary power wielded in the name of COVID-19, and will surely submit to both novel medical procedures and invasive private databases just for a chance to return to normalcy, moral governance ought to protect them from being coerced into that choice at all — and should protect those who still refuse from being treated as second-class citizens. //

To stop COVID vaccine passports, legislators concerned must target the databases. The databases are going to have to be digital to make sense, for speed, for efficiency, and because people will otherwise forge paperwork. The only effective way to go after them will be to prohibit any sort of digital database that collects or distributes personal medical data, and to make it a crime for organizations not covered by HIPAA to make services conditional on a customer granting access to medical data.

Organizations that are covered by HIPAA include doctors, clinics, pharmacies, nursing homes, and health-care plans, among others. If a business is not among those then it is not allowed to ask for access to your medical records. This will both protect privacy and prevent medical coercion, and when added to executive orders like those in Florida and Texas, will deal a death blow to the plan to force the COVID regime of the past year onto American citizens for years and decades to come.

This is the kind of survey liberals loathe. Not that the rest of us don’t already know they’re the most miserable people on the face of the Earth, of course, but when the survey is the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, an ongoing survey of Americans conducted since 1972, which The New York Times describes as a “widely used resource” and “the scholarly gold standard for understanding social phenomena,” that’s gotta leave a mark. //

Yep, conservative white women are the happiest people in America.

And the unhappiest people in America? Drum roll, please… the survey says… white liberal men. My initial reaction was: of course, they are; I assume the majority of them are either married to or in relationships with white liberal women. I mean, this is not a giddy crowd. //

I’M A WALKER
@HourTommy
Replying to @Timcast
Aren’t liberals upset being called men and women? //

Jim
@Jim_Bachelor
Replying to @Timcast
It’s because they are in a abusive relationship with politics where they are told 100% of the time they are the bad guy that causes so much pain for women and minorities.

The NOTAM problem is clear. We have an antiquated, cumbersome, ineffective, frustrating, dangerous system. Pilots are missing the essential few pieces of information, unable to hear the call of criticality in a cacophony of irrelevant noise. //

Never before have we had this energy. Not in 1964, when we were first promised a better system, not in 2014, when the MH17 crew were cruelly handed a set of unusable coordinates and cryptic text to warn them of the risk in eastern Ukraine, not in 2017 when I wrote that Notam article, nor a few months later when the Air Canada crew became victim to the same problem. Nor in 2018, when we ran the Notam Goat Show in Geneva, and first published our Field Guide to Notams. //

In a Summit, there’s a clear attachment to an outcome – getting something done. Its dictionary definition says it’s a top-level meeting of minds, and those minds were here. //

The presentations came thick and fast. We watched, we listened. A steady stream of people showcasing how they manage the problem – how they are parsing the current format of Notams. Flight Briefings from Leido. Fancy graphics from Foreflight. DoD flight planning interfaces. Notam Search from the FAA. A multitude of front-ends that attach to a gremlin-laden back end with all the structure of a chronic hoarders hallway.

And now, an outsider: Drew Zachary from the US Census Bureau. But wait, can aviation learn from not-aviation? Surely we have all the answers here already? What could we learn from someone outside our field? As it turned out, everything. Of all the morning presentations, this one would set the scene for a change in the weather. Turns out, it’s not an aviation problem, it’s a data problem. And Drew showed us some novel things: How to build an API. How to listen to customers. How to structure large chunks of source data. How to make data available in a form that allows the customer to use it effectively.

Wow.

But dreams were quickly crushed. We were told by the next speaker that building fancy API’s were for the Stripes and Slacks of this world, and not for the FAA. Granted, Stripe (payments) and Slack (messaging) have a combined valuation of $48 billion and lead the way for API design and documentation, //

Enter Abby Smith, FAA.

Just behind those aircraft-at-peace lies the White House, where Ronald Reagan famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”

There’s a strong urge in our ops community to lay the responsibility for the Notam problem at the door of Government. After all, in each country around the world, it’s the CAA, CASA, the DGCA, the FAA – the agency, the administration, the authority, the directorate: all of which are the Government, that is responsible for the steady stream of Notams. Can they truly take responsibility for fixing them, too? Or do they just want to look like they are?

I like to believe there are no coincidences. After lunch, the sun comes out. That ominous, nebulous overcast is steadily replaced with warming rays of November sunshine. Abby is that light. She is, unquestionably, truly here to help.

Abby Smith’s title is FAA Executive Champion of NOTAM Modernization. Back to the dictionary. “Key agent of change … the Executive Champion must gather resources, create a strategy, and keep the process moving. They must manage points of contention and chart the course to full acceptance.”

The title is telling, and shows that the vision is real. The FAA really wants to see Notams fixed.

Which King Issued the Commandment to Rebuild Jerusalem in Daniel 9:25? //

Daniel 9:1-2, “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans; In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”

Jeremiah 25:12, “And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, saith the LORD…”

Jeremiah 29:10, “For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.”

II Chronicles 36:21, “To fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbaths, to fulfill threescore and ten years.”

The Bible plainly teaches that Cyrus, in his first year, fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah by bringing to an end the 70 years of captivity and desolations when he decreed for the Jews to return to their homeland and for the city of Jerusalem and the temple to be rebuilt. Here are the key passages. //

II Chronicles 36:22-23, “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing... //

Ezra 1:1-3, “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, //

If Cyrus fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremiah by ending the 70 years of desolations on the city of Jerusalem, then Cyrus must have been the king that decreed for the rebuilding of Jerusalem at the end of the 70 years

The greatest threat the digital yuan poses to the United States is that it endangers the international financial system America has led since World War II. //

Communist China became the first major economy to create a government-sanctioned digital currency — digital yuan. Such a move will significantly impact the great power competition between the United States and China and may reshape the dollar-dominated global financial structure forever.

When Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary, talked about returning China to a world superpower status, he always envisioned China’s currency (the yuan) would achieve a global reserve currency status akin to what the U.S. dollar has enjoyed since the end of World War II. //

Yet, despite the Chinese government’s relentless efforts, the Chinese yuan currently accounts for only 2 percent of global foreign exchange reserve assets while the dollar’s dominance remains unchallenged. Close to 90 percent of foreign-exchange transactions entail U.S. dollars, and more than 60 percent of all global central-bank reserves are held in dollar-denominated assets. China’s digital yuan, however, presents a challenge. //

The biggest threat the digital yuan poses to the United States is that it presents an alternative to the existing international financial system America has led for two generations. Individuals under U.S. sanctions will avoid suffering any financial pain by using digital yuan to access their assets thus rendering typical economic sanctions toothless.

America’s adversaries, such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia, will likely use digital yuan to exchange money, settle trades, and engage in weapon sales or other illicit activities. Doing so will enable them to bypass the existing financial system entirely, meaning American intelligence agencies won’t be able to monitor such activities and hurting the ability of the United States and its allies to anticipate potential threats before they metastasize. //

There are at least three things the United States should be doing in responding to the digital yuan. First, the Security and Exchange Commission should approve the existing requests to launch exchange-traded funds focusing on cryptocurrencies. Such funds will bring an inflow of fresh capital, stimulate the development of digital currencies and digital assets, and make them more accessible to the general public.

Second, the Fed should consider accepting some of these well-established cryptocurrencies into the U.S. financial system. Some well-known businesses such as Tesla and the Dallas Mavericks basketball team have already announced they would accept specific cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or dogecoin as an alternative means of payment. As more businesses embrace digital currencies every week, the Fed may ultimately not have much choice but to adopt at least some type of digital currencies. If that’s likely to be the case, it’s better to do so now rather than later.

Finally, the Fed can issue a digital dollar as long as there are sufficient privacy protections in place to prevent some ambitious politicians from using the digital currency the way the CCP does as a means to control the American people.
Competition produces better goods and services at lower prices. The more free-market choices of digital currencies we can offer, the less likely China’s digital yuan will replace the U.S. dollar and gain international dominance as the CCP intended.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard to overlook the importance of local general aviation airports as commercial airlines cut back on service, flights and personnel. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are approximately 5,100 public use airports in the nation that are accessed by general aviation aircraft, compared to approximately 500 that offer commercial airline service. This means that business aviation reaches 10 times the number of U.S. airports than do the airlines. //

According to the National Business Aviation Association, business aviation contributes $150 billion to U.S. economic output and employs more than 1.2 million people. In addition, general aviation activities reap substantial financial benefits for every state in the nation. Only about three percent of the approximately 15,000 business aircraft registered in the U.S. are flown by Fortune 500 companies, while the remaining 97 percent are operated by a broad cross-section of organizations, including governments, universities, charitable organizations and businesses.

Grounding and bonding serve different functions, use different methods, and have different requirements.

This article is the fourth in a 12-part series on the differences between grounding and bonding.

Where more than one alternating-current system connects to a grounding electrode at a building, the same grounding electrode must be used for all systems [Sec. 250.58] (Fig. 1 below).

Boeing’s 747 assembly line is winding down. The aircraft manufacturer only has 12 orders left to fill. When the last jumbo rolls off the assembly line, it will mark the end of an era for an aircraft that’s spanned fifty-plus years. Production of the plane is expected to wrap up next year.

Boeing’s list of unfilled orders, current at March 31, confirms the 12 unfilled deliveries. According to Boeing, four Boeing 747-8Fs are going to Atlas Air, seven Boeing 747-8Fs are going to UPS, and a single 747-8 is going to an unidentified customer. //

So what do we know? Those four 747 freighters going to Atlas Air were only locked in three months ago. The New York-based global freight business already operates 53 Boeing 747s and will now take the final four Boeing builds. John Dietrich, President and CEO of Atlas Air, called the 747-8F the best and most versatile widebody freighter in the world. Mr Dietrich also thinks there will be demand for the big planes to fly freight for some time. //

Highspeeddirt
14 Apr

To paraphrase Lindbergh, four engines means twice as much to go wrong. You lose an engine on a three- or four-engine jet you still have to divert. I did an article for Av Week back in the day that revealed ETOPS twins had fewer turn backs and diversions than quads and tri-engine jetliners, backed by statistics. //

Hank
Dazza367
14 Apr

Sadly, Boeing isn't capable of developing anything anymore...at least not to a competitive cost and schedule.

There was a good article published by The Atlantic called “The Long Forgotten Flight that Sent Boeing Off Course” that explains this very well. There was a good article published by Forbes called "Boeing Will Pay High Price For McNerney's Mistake Of Treating Aviation Like It Was Any Other Industry" that explains this very well. There is also the famous 2009 "Bob Bogash Not Acceptable” discussion amongst Boeing retirees, including Program General Managers and VPs, that explains this very well.

The Malaysia 17 story has been told. But beneath the knotted narratives of the accepted version of events, well woven in the three years since the Boeing was brought into an afternoon cornfield in Ukraine, lies a simpler, darker truth. //

As industry experts, we’ve comforted ourselves knowing that “Nobody considered that civil aircraft, at cruising altitude, were at risk” (Dutch Safety Board report). When fingers were pointed at Malaysia Airlines for overflying a war zone, we were quick to tell the public “Not fair. Everybody else did as well”. We were all apparently operating under the same misguided reassurance that this was a war going on underneath the airways, and that cruising at 33,000 over the top of it would be just fine. As an airline pilot at the time, I did the same as everyone else using the eastern Ukraine routes, and monitored the conflict beneath us with interest on each flight, but without concern.

But what if we could have known — what if the risk information was actually there, but for some reason we weren’t seeing it?

Well, it was. //

On a routine post-Soviet eastern block overflight, I will see tens, maybe hundred of Tempo Restricted Areas in my 20, 30, maybe 50 page NOTAM Briefing. Russia is very fond of them, as are many Eastern European countries. I don’t plot the coordinates of them, and I trust that Air Traffic Control will keep me out of anywhere I shouldn’t be.

I would discard it with a glance and move to the next one.

But wait.
_
This notice was on board MH17. This was the warning from the Ukraine Authorities that something was going on that the MH17 crew should know about. It was published on the Monday, three days before MH17 was shot down, and it was published only because on that Monday at 9am, an aircraft at FL210 (21,000 feet) had been shot down.

To the pilot, to the dispatcher, and to the crew of MH17 it’s indecipherable. It looks the same as every other routine TRA.

What if, instead, the Authorities had simply written what they meant? //

The core problem of the Notam system is not language. The core problem is that we rely on a single source for critical flight information and analysis. The State.
So, can the state be relied upon to provide that information? Can the state be trusted? In the case of Malaysian 17, it seems not. The vague language may or may not have been deliberate, but there was nobody else to provide the check and balance.
In many cases, states flagrantly disregard the basic principle of the Notam system. A Notam is clearly defined as “information concerning the establishment, condition or change in any aeronautical facility, service, procedure or hazard, the timely knowledge of which is essential”.
Almost all states are guilty of ignoring the word essential. The vast majority of Notams now in the system are anything but. Many are completely unreadable by humans. Some of the garbage in the system has to be seen to be believed. //

Worse still, states routinely omit information, or hijack the system. Greece and Turkey use the Notam system to score political points, endlessly discussing boundary disputes. Deeply troubled states like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen cannot be trusted to provide essential information. For others, like Egypt, protecting tourism is consistently higher priority than publishing safety of flight information.

It’s absolutely ridiculous.

We communicate the most critical flight information, using a system invented in 1920, with a format unchanged since 1924, burying essential information that will lose a pilot their job, an airline their aircraft, and passengers their lives, in a mountain of unreadable, irrelevant bullshit.

Yes CASA Australia, that’s you. Yes, Greek CAA, that’s you. And you’re not alone. //

In an unintended twist of irony, the agencies seeking to cover their legal ass are party to creating the most criminal of systems – an unending flow of aeronautical sewage rendering the critical few pieces of information unfindable.

This is more than just hugely frustrating for each pilot, dispatcher, and controller that has to parse through it all; it’s downright dangerous.

If you’re a pilot, you’ll either have already experienced this, or you’re going to – you stuff something up, and then be told: “but there was a Notam out about that”. Sure enough, there it is in black and white (and in big capital letters). Do you think that “but there were 100 pages of them” is going to be a valid defence?

Well, it should be. The same agency conducting your post-incident interview is busy on the other end stuffing the system full of the garbage that prevented you from seeing it in the first place. //

There are three parts to the problem: the system, the format, and the content. The system is actually quite amazing. The AFTN network connects every country in the world, and Notam information once added is immediately available to every user. Coupled with the internet, delivery is immediate.

The format is, at best, forgivable. It’s pretty awful. It’s a trip back in time to when Notams were introduced. You might think that was the 1960’s, or the 50’s. In fact, it’s 1924, when 5-bit ITA2 was introduced. The world shifted to ASCII in 1963, bringing the Upper and Lower case format that every QWERTY keyboard uses today, but we didn’t follow – nope, we’ll stick with our 1924 format, thank you.

Read that again. 1924. Back then, upper case code-infested aeronautical messages would have seemed impressive and almost reassuring in their aloofness. But there weren’t in excess of 1 million Notams per year, a milestone we passed in 2013. The 1 million milestone is remarkable in itself, but here’s something else amazing: in 2006, there were only 500,000. So in seven years, Notams doubled. Why? Are there twice as many airports in the world? No. Twice as many changes and updates? Possibly. But far more likely: the operating agencies became twice as scared about leaving things out. //

It’s not what comes out that needs to be fixed, it’s what goes in.

Even in 1921, we had much the same problem. Obstacle, 18 feet high, several miles from the runway.

Nobody cares. Unless you’ve parked the Eiffel Tower on the threshold, leave this stuff for the AIP. And nobody cares about kites either. Nor about goat-grazing times. We don’t care if your bird scarer is U/S. We don’t care if there’s a cherry-picker fixing a bulb somewhere. We don’t care when you’re cutting your grass.

Nor do we care about closed taxiways. The only way I can get onto a taxiway is with an ATC clearance, and ATC will not clear me onto a closed taxiway.

We care if the airport is going to be closed when we get there. If we’re going to have to divert because the runway is shut. If someone might shoot at us. If there are new rules. We care about the critical items, but we won’t see them as things stand.

Approaching history with condescending arrogance, as the woke movement does, merely highlights the smallness of the examiners. //

Clearly, the political left has a significant problem with our national story. They don’t understand history, either the actual developments that made the United States or the field of study that seeks to make sense of that process.

Historians try to understand how and why human beings acted the way they did in the context of their circumstances and possibilities. But social justice warriors know better. For them, the past is a convenient arena in which to practice the latest exercise in cancel culture.

The shocking ignorance of the past many social justice warriors display is all too evident. The 1619 Project overflows with untruthful assertions and gross distortions, beginning with its ludicrous claim that the American Revolution was launched to protect slavery. A clueless woke mob in Madison, Wisconsin dismembered a statue of an outspoken abolitionist and pulled down another symbolizing the advance of women’s rights.

One of the most egregious errors committed in San Francisco concerned poor Paul Revere, who was unhorsed from his midnight ride because he participated in the Penobscot Expedition of 1779. The school board decried this as a campaign to capture American Indian land when, in fact, it was a failed assault on a British fort during the American Revolution.

While this disdain for historical facts is distressing, even more troubling, however is the woke movement’s profoundly wrongheaded approach to history itself. Sometimes, they simply seek to abolish it.

Leftist disciples shrewdly sense (and fear) that history tends to create a sense of attachment and perspective, qualities that blunt efforts to remake the world anew. Revolutionary zealots have always targeted historical symbols as a key enemy in their crusades for purification. In the French Revolution, Jacobins sought to erase the centuries-old influence of Christianity by installing the Cult of the Supreme Being to harness religious feeling without the danger of religious content. //

The awakened believe that the past is just like the present and its inhabitants should be judged by contemporary standards. This is mistaken. Early on, the student of history learns to beware of “presentism,” or judging the past by the standards of the present. If not, you end up condemning Charlemagne for not endorsing women’s rights or Susan B. Anthony for insensitivity to transgenderism. The awakened believe that the past is a pantheon of heroes and villains to be lionized or condemned. //

The awakened believe that the past is a morality tale to be ransacked for lessons illustrating good and evil. Yet even a cursory look at past events discloses a whirl of motivations, often conflicting or ambiguous, at work in shaping outcomes. Henry Ford’s adoption of the assembly line in 1911, for instance, a move that reshaped the modern world, combined idealism (lowering costs to make the automobile available to average people), interest (boosting profits from an increased volume of sales), and unforeseen developments (such as overly repetitious labor workers often resented or rejected).

The awakened, however, believe that an overarching theory — class conflict or modernization not long ago; whiteness, the patriarchy, heteronormativity, intersectionality currently — offers a tidy explanation for everything. This is mistaken. The incredible complexity of human history demands multicausal explanations and vigorous debate among competing interpretations, not a conga line of liberationist theorists sent snaking through the past shimmying and shaking to the rhythm of revolution.

‘Interrogate the Past, But Don’t Bully It’

Judicious students of the American experience steer clear of these mistakes and approach it cautiously, seeking wisdom, not weaponization. They understand that history does not repeat, but instead unfolds as a process that produces the present. They understand that historical facts matter to provide credible evidence in support of reasonable judgments along with all the facts, not just those cherry-picked for ideological reasons. //

Edmund Burke observed that human society is a contract between “those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born,” and urged citizens to beware those who “should act as if they were the entire master.” In that spirit we should ponder American history as a pursuit of political participation, individual equality, constitutional order, social opportunity, and economic freedom, however imperfectly realized and full of ambiguities it has been.

We should celebrate what is worthy in our past and chastise what is reprehensible. We should submit our history to rigorous, fair-minded analysis and see what it can tell us about the human condition and how we got where we are.

This important task demands thoughtful examination and nuanced judgments, not a frenzied kangaroo court convened by wokesters jacked up on ideological amphetamines and spouting slogans. Confronting the imperfections of the past — as well as the human beings who inhabited it — should heighten an awareness not of our superiority but our shortcomings. In the end, such a careful investigation of history can provide the key inspiration for us to overcome them.

Starship SN15 is expected to undergo a Static Fire test as early as Tuesday to clear the path for a test flight no earlier than Wednesday as SpaceX’s rapidly reusable interplanetary launch and landing system gained a massive sign of NASA approval – and a ton of government cash to boot.

SpaceX was the sole winner of NASA’s initial Human Landing System (HLS) award worth in total more than $2.9 billion, meaning the human return to the Moon’s surface will be via Starship.

This per the Washington Examiner.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was initially believed to be caused by rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, succumbed to natural causes stemming from a stroke the day after the violence, according to the top medical examiner in the nation’s capital.

Francisco J. Diaz, the chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C., told the Washington Post that Sicknick died on Jan. 7 after suffering two strokes and he did not suffer an allergic reaction to any chemical irritants.

Separately derived systems have special grounding and bonding requirements.

A TBM Avenger from the Valiant Air Command performing at the Cocoa Beach Air Show in Florida put on a show for some people on the beach on Saturday when the pilot set it down in the surf for a textbook ditching. Audio in the accompanying video features the staccato notes of a dying radial engine as the big single-engine attack aircraft settles softly into the chop in front of astonished beachgoers.

Fourth, Chauvin’s attorney was able to mention a couple of times on the record something that I hoped he would be able to get into evidence — that being the fact that information about expert opinions and other evidence in the case was continually being provided to him while the trial was underway, long after it was supposed to be delivered to him by the prosecution. //

He needs to take some time to show the jury that the entire process has been unfair and unethical. The prosecution has helped in this regard by using multiple prosecutors to examine witnesses. There was no need for that. The operative facts, in this case, covered a grand total of about 18-20 minutes — from Chauvin’s first contact with Floyd up through Floyd being loaded in the ambulance and being driven away. There is nothing about this case — with only 12 days of witness testimony in the prosecution’s case — that required more than one prosecutor. //

But he should criticize the government for its approach to the case and ask the jury why all these resources are necessary when the case is not very complicated. Could it be that the prosecution recognizes the weakness of their case, and they are trying to mask that by overwhelming the single solitary defense attorney battling back against them? With so many attorneys working on the case, why did materials related to witness testimony reach him so late so often? //

he needs to mock the dismissal by the prosecution’s experts of the impact of the Fentanyl in Floyd’s system. The Medical Examiner paid by the taxpayers of Hennepin County told the police that if Floyd had died alone at home, he would have ruled it an accidental overdose based on the lethal level of Fentanyl in his blood. //

The key to this point is that Dr. Tobin was never made aware by the prosecutors of the Fentanyl tablets found in the rear of the police car. The DNA testing proving they had been in Floyd’s mouth was done in February, but in the 60 days thereafter Dr. Tobin was not given that information. I would ask the jury to consider why that was held back by the prosecutors? Was it because they knew it would alter Dr. Tobin’s opinion about the mechanism of Floyd’s death? The defense asked that the patrol car be searched and that the tablets be tested — not the prosecution. If it hadn’t been for the defense, that evidence would have never been part of the case.

But the prosecution controlled what information was given to the prosecution’s experts, and on this one key piece of evidence that would impact Dr. Tobin’s opinion, the prosecutors chose to not give that information to him. Why?

The vice chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, Bruce Landsberg, has published a commentary on the NTSB’s blog on the human factors and systemic failures which led to the near-miss collision on 7 July 2017 between an Air Canada A320, inbound from Toronto, and four other aircraft awaiting takeoff at San Francisco International Airport.

Landsberg suggests that the events, which occurred near midnight, had the potential to be twice as deadly as the 27 March 1977 collision between two Boeing 747s on the runway in Tenerife; an incident which killed 583 people and remains the deadliest crash in aviation history.

In the Air Canada incident, disaster was averted by 13 feet, when pilots realized their error and aborted landing, but it was a very close call. //

The problem was that the Air Canada pilots did not realize the parallel runway (28 Left) was closed, and lined up for landing on a nearby taxiway instead of their assigned runway. //

The NTSB investigation was hampered somewhat by what happened next. The captain, exhausted, did not notify the Air Canada dispatcher of the incident before going to bed. At that point, he had been awake for 19 hours.

“The captain was not technically ‘on duty’ that whole time, and, under Canadian regulations for reserve crew members, he still could have been available for duty for another 9 hours,” Landsberg says. “If we expect solid human performance where lives are at stake, fatigue rules need to be based on human factors science. The NTSB has recommended that Canada’s fatigue regulations be modified.”

When the captain filed his report 16 hours later, the aircraft had already taken off on a morning flight. The 2-hours of cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data was overwritten.

Recommendations from the NTSB report are based on what investigators could deduce from the evidence available.

One is that the FAA revise the format of NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen), something which the agency was originally tasked with doing in 2012.

“NOTAMs contain dozens of notices of varying importance, such as closed taxiways, wet runways, and small, unlit towers miles from the airport. Information about closed runways, however, is critical,” Landsberg states. “From a human factors perspective, we found that the presentation of information in the NOTAM the crew received did not effectively convey the information about the runway closure.

One of Cyrus" first official acts after capturing Babylon was to allow the Jews to return to their land. This took place in his "first year" ( Ezra 1:1), that Isaiah, as king over all Medo-Persia including Babylonia (i.e, 538 B.C.). The writer of Ezra regarded539 B.C. as the beginning of Cyrus" reign probably because when Cyrus defeated Babylonia he gained authority over Palestine that had until then been under Babylonian sovereignty. //

About150 years earlier, Jeremiah had prophesied that the Babylonian captivity would last70 years ( Jeremiah 25:12; Jeremiah 29:10). Cyrus proclaimed his edict67 years after the first Babylonian deportation from Judah (605 B.C.). Important matters were put in writing in the ancient Near East. [Note: Breneman, p68.]

Ezra 1:2 reads as though Cyrus was a believer in Yahweh. However, Isaiah presented him as an unbeliever ( Isaiah 45:4-5). Evidently he was a polytheist and worshipped several gods. [Note: See Edwin M. Yamauchi, "The Archaeological Background of Ezra," Bibliotheca Sacra137:547 (July-September1980):200.] On the "Cyrus Cylinder," the clay cylinder on which Cyrus recorded his capture of Babylon, the king gave credit to Marduk for his success. He said he hoped the people under his authority would pray for him to Bel and Nebo. [Note: James B. Pritchard, ed, The Ancient Near East, pp206-8. Cf. Amelie Kuhrt, "The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament25 (1983):83-97.] Probably Cyrus gave lip service to all the gods his people worshipped, but the evidence suggests that he did not believe that Yahweh was the only true God.

Apparently Cyrus knew about Isaiah"s prophecies concerning himself ( Ezra 1:2; cf. Isaiah 41:2; Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1; Isaiah 45:4-5; Isaiah 45:12-13).

He ". . . read this, and . . . an earnest desire and ambition seized upon him to fulfill what was so written." [Note: Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 11:1:2.]

Ezra 1:1-11 – Cyrus’s Decree
Summary
The decree of Cyrus the Great permitted the people to return to their homes in Jerusalem, thus ending the Babylonian exile and fulfilling Jeremiah's prophecy.
Analysis
The Babylonians dealt with conquered peoples by deporting them to Babylon where they could live in relative freedom and prosperity, perhaps accounting for the meager numbers of exiles who wished to return to Jerusalem with Ezra and Nehemiah. When the Persians defeated the Babylonians in 539 B.C.E., the policy of deportation as a means of dealing with conquered peoples changed. The Persians preferred that conquered peoples stay in their own lands (but pay tribute) worshiping their own gods (and praying for the Persians). This tolerant religious policy signaled the end of the exile for the people of Israel and led to Isaiah's description of Cyrus as God's "anointed" (messiah) in Isaiah 45:1, even though Cyrus was not a follower of Israel's God.

While they were in Babylon, Jeremiah had urged the exiles to accept their lot (Jeremiah 29:4-9). But he also announced that the exile would last only seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11, 12; 29:10), after which time the people would return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. These first verses of Ezra see the decree of Cyrus as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's words. Notice that Cyrus's apparently magnanimous offer is somewhat self-serving and that it is "the Lord" who "stirred up" Cyrus's spirit to make the proclamation, just as it was the Lord who "stirred up" the Assyrian and Babylonian kings who brought God's judgment upon Israel (1 Chronicles 5:26; 2 Chronicles 21:16) and who "stirred up" those exiles who returned to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:5). The majority of those people who returned at the stirring of God were members of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, the priests, and the Levites. But the text understands Cyrus's decree to mean that, though not all the exiles need return to Jerusalem, they all need to support the rebuilding of the temple (vv. 3-4).