I have no doubt that any amount of alcohol within 24h of doing a hop in the soup is playing with fire. But absolute abstention? I dunno.
As for flying in IMC, modern avionics makes that stuff much easier. Getting an instrument rating has become more of an effort in mastering procedural complexity than any relevant flying skill. I did my rating almost 40 years ago. It took a different mind-set with basic steam-punk instruments.
Nephew got his rating about three years ago and has about 700 hours, with about 150 on the gauges, but all done with the modern stuff that does the situational awareness thinking for you. We were shooting an RNAV in the soup last winter in my old bird with mostly old stuff in the panel. He never got stabilized and I had to take the bird and took a missed approach.
His comment was that it should be illegal to fly in IMC with that "old shit". Whatever. Never bothered me any. And I have a few beers per week, but never within 48h of screeching "clear prop".
I'll tell what should be illegal: my wife's pork tacos without beer.
Unless the ATIS specifically stated that you should expect a visual approach, the controller violated FARs and is part of a criminal conspiracy. Also, phrases and specific words that controllers are allowed and required to use are well documented. The transcript revealed the use of non-standard terms; which is very dangerous when a controller does not precisely communicate with a pilot using English as a non-primary language.
I am a licensed (private) pilot with an instrument rating. I fly a GA airplane aprox 150 hr/yr, mostly for business. Within the previous two years, FAA controllers have given me incorrect instructions in three seperate instances, twice while I was deep in the soup. The controllers failed to correct their errors even after my readback, then yelled at me when I wasn't going where they wanted me to go. Each time, I had a camera on the panel and the camera's audio connected to the ICS and radios.
The latest incident, the controller told me to call them after landing. I refused to talk to them without legal counsel, so they forwarded the incident to an Air Safety Investigator. My lawyer listened to the controller's many falsehoods, then listened to the investigator ask me questions. Then my lawyer talked to the investigator as follows:
lawyer - have you pulled the tapes?
FAA - yes, but I have not listened to them.
lawyer - do you think that the controller could have given him an incorrect vector?
FAA - not possible.
lawyer - please listen to this. [plays video on computer]
FAA - [after playing video] we cannot further discuss this. We will need [controller] to bring a union rep.
me - Why don't we send the video to the FBI. Isn't it a felony to lie to a federal investigator?
FAA - [quickly exits room]
Most enroute controllers are working six days a week. I do not care, so am I. Many, perhaps most, experienced controllers are making north of $200k. I am not.
Final note. When dealing with any level of authority, record everything. Put cameras in your home, in your vehicles, and on your body. The authorities, whether it be the local police or the feds, are not there to help. You will lose money and time and freedom if you cannot document their incompetence and malfeasance; and even then you may still go to jail.
Cool story, but of course the SFO ATIS specifically mentions visual approaches when they’re in use. In fact it’s night VMC right now and the current ATIS says:
SFO prioritizes non-precision approaches because they're prioritizing throughput over safety. They got lucky with Air Canada, but at some point their luck will run out. The bigger issue here is that ATC gave the flight a 10 minute penalty instead of denying clearly communicating that they would not make an ILS approach available.
You can see that the ILS will be non-op on 5 December (and 6 December for 28L). If SFO is going to deny use of ILS they should clarify in the published approach procedures and/or in a NOTAM. As it is the ATC had no business trying to bully a pilot into doing something they're not comfortable with.
Visual approaches are not non-precision approaches. They’re visual approaches.
Lufthansa wasn’t denied the ILS, they were put in a hold until separation could be created. The same thing happens every day at airports all over the world. The difference is the vast majority of pilots don’t whine about it on a congested frequency and expect to get priority.
And any pilot who is not comfortable performing a visual approach shouldn’t be at the controls of an airliner.
Not quite anecdotal, but a very narrow range of subjects.
Sample of 19, all male, between 19 and 26, medium age 21. Approximately half were smokers. All had scored a class I or II PFT prior to deployment, had passed a physical, and were in good to excellent health.
Environment and Conditions = Aircraft carrier on gonzo station in the Indian Ocean. Period = 4.5 months. Working temperature range 24 to 35C, 50 to 100%RH. IMA mostly sedentary, sitting at avionics bench in air conditioned space. OMA mostly active, on flight deck or on hanger deck
Work level = 12 to 24 hr/day for OMA(this includes chow breaks). 10 to 20 hr/day for IMA. Both worked 7 days/week.
Food Intake - OMA people ate 3x to 5x per day where range of consumption not less than 3400 cal/day. High end of consumption range indeterminate, probably over 5700 cal/day. IMA people ate 3x/day, unless standing a mid-watch, where range of consumption was 3100 to 4200 cal/day.
About 30% of OMA subject did weights 3x to 5x per week. Essentially all IMA lifted 2x to 6x per week.
Results - all OMA people lost between 5% and 20% body mass by end of cruise. I lost approx 9%, but may not be representative because I spent approx 30% of time working in IMA.
IMA people weight gains ranged from 0% to 10%.
Source = Senior Chief Corpsman (paygrade E-8) that was collecting performance data on aviation maintenance personnel for unknown reasons.
Based on this small sample, I could conclude that both caloric intake and activity level are among the principle things that effect a weight loss or gain.
This is an edge case. Marines in particular, and the military members in general, will form a special bond that can seldom be duplicated elsewhere. And that has been my experience.
I was among a group of six that met at the schoolhouse after boot camp. We did not get sent to the same units, but we were all PCS'd to the same base. Two of us (not myself) made a career of the corps, and the others went to school after separation to get various STEM degrees; all four of us attended two schools within 60 km.
After graduation, our physical distance slowly increased with each new job, but we never stopped talking to each other and typically met in person one to five times per year. The singular spouse that accepted our special friendships and our strong sense of mutual loyalty to each other, is the marriage that endured over the last 35 years.
My wife is very special to me. She is the center of my immediate world. But these, now five, friends would have been there to pick me up if my wife had ever kicked me to the curb.
Epilogue. The five of us are now, at least, semi-retired. The other four are now single. Three of them are building another house on my property in which to live out the remainder of their time. They have accepted my wife is the sixth member and as a 'principle'. Our only recurring issue is which of the six will have to die alone.
I hear this same sentiment from marines, cops, fireman, and fraternity members. I also hear it from Masons, Elks, Shriners, etc.
I don't understand why men have to think they've "discovered" something about lifelong bonds that is exclusive to just men's clubs. My guess is that men are taught not to have strong emotional bonds with anyone but their mothers or wives, and then think it is something magical when they are allowed to have these feelings under the guise of life-threatening situations, or secular drinking clubs.
Men haven't rediscovered it, they're simply enumerating that deep bonds are forged in shared struggle and suffering [1]. There is no Disney ending, and life is not a fairytale. Life is about shit getting real and hoping the people you need are within arm's reach. Maybe that's friends, maybe that's a partner, maybe that's both. It does not just happen, it has to be cultivated intentionally.
One of the things that distinguishes the first three groups in your set is shared hardship. Many in the military (and elsewhere) think this is a necessary component to form those kinds of tight bonds. So it's not that they are "allowed" to have these feeling under life-threatening situations, it's that dire circumstances foster those feelings.
Fraternity hazing is (was) supposed to create those bonds, but it's been drastically curtailed at most universities, and I'm not sure how well it ever worked (was never in a fraternity). In many cases it was just "here drink all this liquor and if it doesn't kill you, we'll initiate you"
There’s hazing in the military too. But rites if passage is different than what I’m talking about. Hazing in particular isn’t shared suffering, because it’s one person or group doing it to another while not going through it at the same time. I wonder if there may also be an aspect of suffering needing to be coupled with purpose.
Understood, and that's what I was pointing to with the slightly different idea of a rite of passage. But I think there's an important distinction that impacts the bonds that are formed. For example, all Marines went through the roughly equivalent rite of passage of boot camp. Given that, a Marine who served in Iraq may still feel some camaraderie when meeting a WW2 Marine, but probably not to the same level as another veteran from Iraq because the bond from the latter has closer, shared experience. And when it comes to someone who served in the same unit, the bond will likely be greater still. I think there's an aspect of psychological distance that is relevant to the bond.
I think you're just over-analyzing the words a bit. When I hear someone say "seldom duplicated elsewhere" I don't think they're convinced it's unique all throughout the world. They know there are millions of other soldiers out there who make similar bonds. They just mean seldom duplicated with other people within their own lives.
> > I don't understand why men have to think they've "discovered" something about lifelong bonds that is exclusive to just men's club
It's special because you risk your life together. You kill the enemy together while it's conspiring to kill you and your friends, but you manage to outsmart them and get to live.
Also Nature, when Nature comes at you and you find a way to dominate and resist the elements and ride it out, so that you make it home.
Men are not made to bob their heads in a club, they are made for "close call" type of scenarios and situations, if it doesn't come down to a close call with very high stakes on the line then it's kinda boring and pedestrian which is the prelude to depression and feelings of worthlessness
Going out to talk to random strangers and dance triggers that “close call” juice too. The problem is the restrained head bobbing.
I’d take it over all my adrenaline-junkie hobbies. Something pure about the charged verbal joust. Once I get a little taste of that sweet sweet validation (usually imagined), I just keep building myself up until I decide that I’ve taken over the club (as a poorly dressed middle aged sober married man who doesn’t touch anyone or take any numbers), then I move on to a new challenge and feel the party energy die as I leave and just laugh at the poor thirsty masses I leave behind.
Yeah, for a lot of people finding good friends is always a life-changing event no matter the outer circumstances surrounding that bonding.
The interesting part of the discussion though is how often those bonds are misattributed to causation from the concomitant circumstances (violence, special secretive clubs) as opposed to correlation and just raw, "boring" proximity. The general loss of consistent "third places" to encourage proximity among potential friends somewhat makes it seem even more "causitive" that people (especially those socialized under today's idea of masculinity) misattribute the wonder of forming a new friend bond to "requiring" ugly circumstances such as shared violence or special secretive clubs, rather than just being a healthy and natural outcome of social proximity (and emotional "closeness") among our aggressively social species that doesn't need to be forced through pain or sweat or hazing or forced philanthropy or secret handshakes.
Nope, it's got nothing to do with being discouraged and everything to do with culture and identity. The problem is that men don't bond over nothing. Sitting around watching TV, drinking beer or whatever are nice, you can make good friends just because you share a hobby or whatever.
Our ancestors went out into the world together and killed animals. They taught each other's sons how to fight. Our social organization is ingrained, we evolved this way. Men need more than just physical proximity and shared interests to form the deepest of bonds, we need a shared identity built around a core way of life, we need a tribe.
Hm. I'm man. I don't need to kill, fight, or some paleolithic tribe narrative to forge deep lifelong bonds.
I just tell the men in my life that I care about that I love them and will be there for them if they ever need me, and then follow up on that promise. That's all it takes to forge a bond. None of this Rambo death fantasy that 90% of the replies to my post keep blathering on about.
I'm curious. Are you a man? If so, Have you ever told a male friend that you loved them, without needing the excuse of shared extreme duress? (And not that apey thing that bros do when they hug-slap each other vigorously and say "luv yuh brah" because actually saying the words clearly and not smothering it with mild physical violence is just too scary?)
Yes and yes. But it's not the same, you've never experienced the strongest of bonds between men.
It's not about killing, it's not about paleolithic shit, it's not about apey dudebro stuff. You don't understand it, what you're doing when you discount it is the same thing your caricature of these men do when they want to avoid emotional situations. You're dismissing, youre cringing, you're making light of it so you don't get seen behaving that way. No different than a "tough guy" pretending he doesn't love his wife or whatever. You're closing a part of yourself off same as them and pretending it doesnt exist same as them and you are missing out on something so overwhelmingly engrossing that is at the core of being a human.
You'll note, in the comment of mine you responded to, I never said anything about extreme duress.
This used to be much more common, for men too. You don't have to go too far back in history to find a time when intense male friendships were not at all unusual, complete with holding hands and writing love letters to each other.
Of course, some of these were gay relationships, hiding in plain sight pretending to be socially acceptable non-sexual intense male friendships. But gays wouldn't have been able to hide that way if the concept of a socially acceptable intense male friendship hadn't existed in the first place!
Maybe the Marines and the like are the few holdouts in modern society where this really positive part of pre-modern masculinity is still alive and well.
Is it really positive in today's context though? When OP said only one spouse out of this whole group accepted these special friendships, I'm guessing that the time spent maintaining these kinds of friendships is getting in the way of marriages. If hardly any women will stay married to a guy with friendships like this, that's kind of a problem if he wants to be married.
Given the benefits of cultivating social circles and the risk we see in those who don't have a good social circle as they age, it's probably positive.* The "getting in the way of marriages" may be true, but only in the context of how we've changed our definition of what a marriage should be. One argument is that it's a relatively new phenomenon that we look to our marital partner to be the end-all-be-all of our social circle. There is a modern expectation that our partner is our best friend, confidant, partner in raising children, sexual companion, and everything else under the social sun. I'm not sure that's entirely healthy, especially when a marriage fails.
* side note: I don't think most of the veteran suicide that we see is how we tend to mentally internalize it as a troubled veteran returning from a fresh deployment. The average age is close to 60, meaning these are veterans who have been out for awhile. I suspect the lack of social community, particularly as they age and no longer have the typical social aspects like work to define a social circle, may be part of the issue.
I have read that physical affection in male friendships is paradoxically more accepted in societies where homosexuality is punished by death, simply because no one is worried they might seriously be signaling or receiving sexual interest when expressing affection towards other men.
Externally, it seems this bond could be explained by:
1. Everyone is together, away from distractions, and unable to leave easily for months on end
2. You are working toward shared goals
3. You are friendly toward each other
It's a recipe for a strong bond. Another example of this is famous bands. They're constantly traveling for work, together, trying to write more music and become more famous as they go.
I think it's more than that, it's the extreme psychological and physical challenge of going through boot camp together. I have not gone through it but understand it to be beyond anything a "normal" person ever experiences. This bonds people in a way that's closer than ordinary friendship or in many cases closer than even biological brotherhood.
Many civilians are aghast when they see how Marines act toward one another. The constant shit-talking and physical fighting probably wouldn't be described as "friendly" but definitely "brotherly"
I'd extend the shared goals bit to include difficulty. Physically challenging, life risking, risk of failure etc... I've seen far too many "team bonding" setups fit all 3 of your criteria, but fail dismally to result in bonding.
Out of curiosity, what's the context of those team bonding exercises?
I'm curious if the failure is due to short duration and knowing you can revert back to your normal mode in a few days. Humans are creatures of habit, after all, and I don't think what I see in most corporate team-bonding exercises is enough to overcome that in most people.
> Our only recurring issue is which of the six will have to die alone.
Hire someone.
I'm not kidding. Hire someone as a nurse/caretaker/doula now, integrate them into the group, and then you've solved your remainder problem. You can use a trust to pay them out on the death of the last member of the group.
Think of it like anti-loneliness insurance. Even if you're the last one standing, you'll have someone to chat with and play cards with who you've known for years.
I am not a great father. I am an uncle that 'helped' my wife raise a niece and nephew. Many consider my guardianship to have been, at best, poorly implemented.
I simply went along with whatever they had wanted to do. My wife was stuck with all the non-fun stuff. We climbed mountains, we hiked across deserts, we flew airplanes, we canoed rivers, we ate whatever we wanted and when we wanted (at least when the wife was not around), let them routinely skip school when the wife was not in town, taught them to use all of the power and hand tools in my shop, taught them to use all of the equipment on my electronics benches, took them to IPSC matches, took them to rock concerts (at least I did not allow any weed smoking). Took them to whatever R-rated movies they wanted. Read Heinlein, Asimov, Sprague de Camp, Le Guin, and other such stuff when they were young as bed-time fare. I shit you not, their favorite was 'A Brief History of Time' - not a chance that kids at 5 and 7 years of age understood that Hawking shit, but they liked it.
The boy got a fancy PhD and does stupid shit for stupid people that pay him obscene salaries. The girl got music and math degrees and teaches music and math in a New Mexico public school.
My wife says that they turned out ok in spite of my non-efforts, not because of them. She may be correct, I dunno.
0. I am mostly a hardware guy. Process automation, ATE, manufacturing, and product and process compliance. Banging out code ranges from 10% to 50% of each job.
1. My experience and skill set is not that common. Most EEs and MEs have eschewed this field because it has, outside of FAANG-type companies, paid less.
2. If you go the formal accreditation route, getting up to speed in EMC/Product Compliance/Corporate Conformity, depending on the industry sector, is approx 4 to 7 years.
3. Most of my original client contacts came from attending various IEEE Society symposiums. New business contacts are through former/current clients.
Regardless of Amazon's true long-term intent, The legalization of cannabis is not immune to the Law of Unintended Effects.
We are having serious problems in San Diego and Riverside counties in Southern California with non-permitted growers. Many are linked to Mexican cartels. Many tend to operate with pirated power and water. And all of the illegal growers have been bad for the local environment because of improper and excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers.
An illegal grower recently stood up a greenhouse, made of stolen materials, on a neighbor's property. When he stumbled onto the site, they threatened him and shot at him. The Sherrif's department would not respond to a 911 call so we called the local fire marshall. When fire people got threatened, the sherrif's dept decided they would respond. The county DA has not charge anyone with anything. It cost him several thousand USD to clean up the site.
We need to de-criminalize cannabis use. We need to be much more thoughtful about legalizing cannabis.
Thanks for posting your comment, this is an important issue to me.
I would have thought, originally, that legalization would do a better job suppressing illegal grow operations than decriminalization. Decriminalization can create a murky semi-legal area where sanctioned, fully above board businesses can't enter the market, which might empower illegal operations to operate with greater impunity (and to be clear, the "illegal" thing I fear and despise isn't some small time grower with a few plants in a closet or small backyard greenhouse, it's the wildly environmentally destructive and violent organized crime you're describing here).
Maybe the problem is that legalization turned out to be so restrictive that a large scale illegal market has persisted. When you legalize, you really need to legalize. This, people have trouble with - like, would people tolerate cannabis at a farmer's market stall? That may be what it takes.
Another thing is that people see the legalization day to day, whereas the don't really see and experience the harm of what you describe on a regular basis.
Many U.S. states have labor law that cover this. And any company that I have seen do anything similar to this has lost money to both the state and the claimant.
Typically, at least for at-will states, the employer simply terminates you without stating any reason. Very simple for the company and the employee at least gets unemployment pay.
Have been in the lab for last 14 hours (thinking that this will be my last contract before retirement) just watching stuff to be certain that all is ready to go for the client's first production shift, so some time to think about this..
1. A cousin in the old country that is a strident anti-vaxer.
2. An 80 year old guy about 2km down the road that, while reclusive, refused masks and vaccines.
3. My beloved wife - well educated at two of those 'progressive' east coast schools, took me three weeks to convince her to get vaccinated.
4. A long-time friend and colleague (we met on the USS Midway in the late 70s), that had a PhD in biology, died two months ago from cardiac arrest - I suspect that it was related to covid. He was black and distrusted governmental bodies.
The common thread for these four example cases is the confused 'data' and 'guidance' from organizations such as WHO, CDC, FDA, etc during the past 15-20 months. And last week, my wife showed me a table she built of contradictions from NGOs and internationals and national organizations. When looked at logically, I can see that some people (not necessarily the people that are the subject of the linked article) have a valid reason to doubt.
Final thought. I have a very rational neighbor that is both self-taught and well-educated (three university degrees). He confided to me recently that he distrusts the medical community and life scientists and social scientists. There are many reasonable people out there that have been shaken by the last 15 months such that they no longer know who or what to trust.
My siblings are not morbidly obese, but they have been overweight most of their adult lives. The people they hang out with personally and professionally are also overweight and many have the typical health problems that accompany the overweight demographic.
My wife and myself are not overweight and have never been. She was a tom-boy and a jock during high school and did intramural stuff in college. I was on high school track team and either walked or rode my bicycle - no car. While in the military, most of the people in my shop had to eat 4x per day to maintain our weight. Afterwards, during college, I lived on cheap beans and pasta or rice, and the occasional can of cheap tuna, and peanut butter sandwiches until I met my wife. She taught me how to cook and introduced me to much better stuff. So I did not eat 'correctly' until my early 30s.
Until the last two years, we had remained physically active and were never overweight. We have gained some weight but are not overweight and, other than the incident that severely curbed our physical activity, have had no significant health problems.
The pattern of life-long activity and a physical mind-set seems to be a common factor when you look at older healthy people (over 55) that were never overweight, regardless of food quantity and type consumption.
You either are lucky enough to have decent genetics and the willingness to start an active life well, or you go through life increasingly overweight with chronic health problems.
As for flying in IMC, modern avionics makes that stuff much easier. Getting an instrument rating has become more of an effort in mastering procedural complexity than any relevant flying skill. I did my rating almost 40 years ago. It took a different mind-set with basic steam-punk instruments.
Nephew got his rating about three years ago and has about 700 hours, with about 150 on the gauges, but all done with the modern stuff that does the situational awareness thinking for you. We were shooting an RNAV in the soup last winter in my old bird with mostly old stuff in the panel. He never got stabilized and I had to take the bird and took a missed approach.
His comment was that it should be illegal to fly in IMC with that "old shit". Whatever. Never bothered me any. And I have a few beers per week, but never within 48h of screeching "clear prop".
I'll tell what should be illegal: my wife's pork tacos without beer.