Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, January 12, 2025
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31 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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The Jeju Air crash in Korea just keeps getting more bizarre.
The latest news is both black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, stopped gathering data around four minutes before the crash, which is about the same time as the infamous bird strike.
Assuming the plane was operating normally before the strike, this means there will be no data at all of the crucial part f the accident for investigators to examine. It’s almost as bad as if the black boxes had never been found.
About the only inference which can be made from this development, is that the plane lost all electrical power. It turns out, I just found out, the 737 NG line has no ram air turbine for generating power in case of dual engine failure. Instead it relies on batteries. It should also be possible to make use of the auxiliary power unit, which the crew in this flight wouldn’t have had the time to start so close to an emergency landing.
@Kathy:
Design bug? Fixable?
Steve Bannon on Elon Musk, per the NY Post: “He is a truly evil guy.”
Looking for some help from the collective memory: there’s a post WWII movie that is set in a small village in the Italian (I think) mountains. At one point the mayor is in the town square surrounded by the townspeople who have just realized he has wronged them somehow. Desperate, he points dramatically across the valley to the next town over, and shouts “Those Bastards!” He goes on to work up the crowd about how they have been cheated by them for years, because their town had saved for a bell, which tolls them out to the fields in the morning, for lunch, and when to come back. But the cursed village across the field never paid a dime but uses the tolling of their bell for the same purpose! The Bastards! He works the crowd up and they end up muffling the bell with leather so they can just hear it in their fields but it is too faint to be heard across the way. Later, when they need to alert the entire country side to some dangers (Nazis?) the bell is too quite to hear and so disaster ensues.
It’s great that the DOJ is releasing a report on the Tulsa Race Riots, and I understand the reasons for the deadline of Jan 20, but it would have been nice to spend that time and energy investigating and prosecuting more current crimes — to prevent future race riots.
@DK:
The black boxes don’t run off the NG’s battery power. I can see why. It would be more important to use all available power for instruments and controls to prevent a crash. Just the same, planes with a ram air turbine do run the black boxes off that generated power.
There may be an FAA rule mandating ram air turbines. If so, it came after the 737 NG line.
Music for the Wild Card Weekend: The Hebrides Overture by Mendelssohn
@MarkedMan:
A Bell for Adano, I think.
Steve Bannon doesn’t realize he’s Ernst Röhm, the Nazi who led the Brown Shirts, only to be shot by the SS on Trump’s, er, Hitler’s orders.
Steve, Steve, Steve, do you really imagine that needy, insecure Donnie will choose a slob like you and your MAGA lowlifes over a billionaire?
@CSK: I thought so too, but can’t find that sequence. I looked again more closely, but still didn’t find it. Same for “The Secret of Santo Vittoria”, another Italian village movie
Recently we had a few household items quit working. Our gas powered pressure washer, the vacuum cleaner and this beautiful ceiling fan that looks like a prop plane propeller made from cherrywood. It took some doing, but we were able to get everything repaired, instead of replaced.
The hardest to get fixed was the ceiling fan. Two electricians and the self proclaimed “Fan Doctor” wouldn’t touch it. Just buy a new one, they said.
Then we found one young fellow who said all it needed was a new receiver for the remote, the cause of most ceiling fan problems. Repairing some models may not be cost effective, but in our case it saved us hundreds.
The vacuum cleaner repairman has had to hire several new employees recently. The small engine repair shop was booming. We found an electrician willing to buck planned obsolescence.
And less junk in the landfill. Every little bit helps.
@Michael Reynolds:
What? You seriously believe the slob can’t raise more money than President Xlon can give the felon? Really? 😀
BTW, on billionaire throw down, both Xtarship and New Glenn are scheduled for launch tomorrow. The latter was supposed to go since Friday, but rough seas in the booster landing area have kept it from going ahead.
@becca: Our robo-vac battery died. A replacement from the manufacturer, Samsung, was $300, almost what the vacuum cost. The vacuum is running again. I wandered around online and found a battery for “only” $100. Installing it is flip the machine over and two screws on a cover. Obviously designed for easy replacement. Samsung pissed me off, but I doubt anyone else is better.
What really pisses me off is battery operated hand tools. As battery tech improves, they make better, non-interchangeable batteries and, sometimes, very expensive adapters. I hate to throw away a perfectly good, albeit decades old, tool because I can’t get replacement batteries. Or an adapter to new batteries costs as much as the tool. Same game, sometimes I can find Chinese batteries online. The last set I bought had a big notice on the badly translated instructions to call the manufacturer with any problem, but no name or phone number. Hopefully nothing will catch fire.
@Michael Reynolds: As much as it pains me to say it, I hope that Bannon somehow wins the fight to be first buddy.
Nazis — or sparkling white nationalists — are marginally better than TechBros*, and significant better than Nazi TechBros.
——
*: TechBros insatiable need for power — literal electrical power — is causing coal plants to be brought back online to power ai and crypto. I think they’re a threat to all of humanity, whereas the Nazis at least have some group they don’t want dead. YMMV. I’m a consequentialist more than a deontologist.
@Kathy:
If Bannon is Röhm, Elon is Albert Speer. Röhm was a lowlife slob, Speer was good-looking and successful. Hitler never turned on Speer. He also never really turned on his generals, perhaps because they were largely high-status junkers. Of course Speer didn’t capture the limelight.
It must be quite the dilemma for Trump – the scumbag who helped make him? Or the acceptable-to-the-oligarchy and ego-stroking, Musk? Bannon went to prison for Trump, but psychopaths don’t do loyalty.
My money’s on Musk, Bannon and the MAGA mob have served their purpose. Time to re-ignite inflation, let their children die of measles, open the border to H1B’s, bankrupt some farmers, sell them more worthless merch and give the MAGAts the good hard fucking they deserve.
@Michael Reynolds:
More because they had an army, and were also pretty compliant. And he took the precaution of having the army swear an oath to him personally. While he didn’t turn on them generally, nor they on him, Rommel would like a word.
Also, too, you note Speer was good looking. Seems a flaw in analogizing him to Elon. I remember an anecdote about Speer, I think from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Speer’s mentor was originally Hitler’s architect. He had a bad habit. If he discussed a proposed building with Hitler, Hitler would say, “The wing must be one hundred meters long.” and the older architect would explain why, for aesthetic and structural reasons, it should be ninety. Speer would respond, “No, mein Fuhrer, a hundred and ten!”
Smack down or kerfuffle?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/12/steve-bannon-calls-elon-musk-racist
But seriously, do demons fight with each other?
@Michael Reynolds:
Only losers go to prison. He likes people who didn’t go to prison.
@Rob1:
So Bannon’s upset Presiden Xlon’s stealing his schtick?
@becca:
Good for you.
I’d bought into the notion that replacing is often cheaper than repairing*, or that repairs may not be worth it given the expected life of the repaired object. Until first we got the office’s microwave repaired for a fraction of what a new one would cost, and then my home desktop PC for literally less than half what I spend on groceries each week.
Now I’m determined to at least ask how much a repair costs.
*And without benefit of hypnopaedic lessons like “ending is better than mending.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Joke, right? Because Trump at heart is constantly looking for approval from those that have actually succeeded rather than merely play someone on TV that succeeded. Bannon may have helped him, but he’s obviously a loser or, at best, a two bit chiseler
I recently had to replace the bowl of my food processor. Mine was old enough (circa 2007?) that the replacement bowl wasn’t available online, so I had to call the manufacturer. Was told the replacement bowl would be $43. Fine, that’s cheaper than a new food processor.
When it arrived I discovered that the bowl/base needs a lid/pusher combo that is designed to work with it. In other words, the bowl fit onto the food processor base, but the lid has a safety/locking mechanism, so my old/existing lid didn’t fit and wouldn’t work. Annoyed, I called the manufacturer back. They immediately sent out the new lid/pusher combo, at no additional charge.
It works now, but I continue to wonder why the whole thing wasn’t sent after the initial request.
@MarkedMan:
Trump’s whole life has been a mad fruitless quest for approval and acceptance by the “top” people. They spurned him in Manhattan (they know a hopeless vulgarian when they see one), and he’s never recovered from that slight.
@Kathy: In a certain way it indicates a condition which reduces the bizarre a wee bit: Why those pilots were desperate to hit a runway, no matter how clumsily, was bizarre. It’s a reasonable guess that if the recorders could not get power a lot of other things couldn’t either. Points to loss of both engines and a near complete loss of electrical power….while close to the ground.
@MarkedMan: It was in the novel. I never saw the movie, so I don’t know if it made it onto the screen.
@dazedandconfused:
Contrary to my inclination not to speculate, the only thing I can see now is they lost both engines. Either through ingesting birds in both, or by shutting down the good engine by mistake (it has happened in other accidents). Left with only battery power and no thrust at low altitude, they’d have put the plane down since the runway was right there.
This wouldn’t explain why a thrust reverser was seen activated in the video of the crash, nor why they failed to deploy the gear. It would explain why they didn’t deploy flaps or spoilers, as that would have slowed them down.
Odds are very high I have it all wrong.
@Kathy:
So like, would this be “the fifth turning, or the 6th turning? I’m losing track.
@Kathy:
Discount the accounts of the thrust reverser being deployed. They are based on a photo of an engine that had been dragging on a runway for some time.
If you know you’re going to be going off the end of the runway, and they certainly did, a decision to not deploy the gear could’ve been made. I wouldn’t assume they had the ability to deploy slats and flaps without any electrical power just yet.
@dazedandconfused:
The reverser might have deployed due to damage, or by some action by the pilots for some reason. The problem is we won’t know because there is no record for that whole time.
But they had electrical power. The NG has batteries. Further, they maneuvered at low altitude after the bird strike. It’s speculation whether they didn’t deploy the flaps or gear on purpose, due to oversight given the emergency, or whether they failed to deploy.
@SC_Birdflyte: Thanks! This means I have to watch it in more detail. Honestly, because the movie came out in ‘45, I thought I had misremembered, as it seemed darker than a rally-round-the-troops (not an insult) movie would have gone
@Jen: where’s the money in that?
@Kathy: It’s difficult to imagine any crew knowing they were high and hot but had to make the runway not trying to deploy flaps, slats, and any and all available speed-brakes. It’s on a par with someone approaching a stop sign and forgetting the car has brakes.
Far more likely that they were, or considered themselves, unable.