Joe Sharkey At Large

From the morning news…

–Airport men’s rooms: who knew about this foot-tapping business? Next time you’re in a men’s room stall with a bouncy 2/4 tune, maybe a Sousa march, going through your head — well, just watch that foot-tapping, pal. On the other hand, soon-to-be-ex-Senator (Family Values) Craig did plead guilty almost two weeks after he was arrested, which would seem to be sufficient time for reflection on the ramifications of being busted for engaging in lewd behavior in public, rather than humming “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” (Play it!) Senator Craig blamed the nattering nabobs of negativism in his local newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, for giving him so much stress that he was forced to solicit sex in a men’s room. Repeatedly, so it seems. By the way, nice going at the Idaho Statesman. It’s good to see a local newspaper that still knows how to do serious reporting. It’s a newspaper owned by the McClatchy chain, in case you were wondering. [Don't miss Jackie and Dunlap's colloquy on the topic on Red State Update.]

–Mother Teresa and Princess Diana (or “Diana, Princess of Wales” as the preternaturally prissy insist on saying) : So sue me, but in my book the two of them were narcissistic wack-jobs. Please spare me the hand-wringing over Mother Teresa’s newly reported crisis of faith. Better she should have had a crisis of conscience for her own behavior, such as hanging out with crooked dictators and wickedly exploiting the poor and sick as a propaganda tool for advancing extreme fundamentalist religion while posing (with great success) as a holy person. As to Princess Diana (”Diana, the Princess of Wales”), she was the only person in the world who ever made me feel sympathy toward Prince Charles. Spare me the supermarket floral bouquets. Sorry she died while carrying on with a slimy playboy in Paris 10 years ago, leaving two children. That was very sad — but let’s put a lid on the endless weeping and gnashing of teeth. Shoot arrows through me.

– I know It’s the Week Before Labor Day and Everybody’s Phoning It In: But Sweet Jayzus, what is this guy on about?

–And finally, a note that arrived in the e-mail this morning from a pilot, forced into retirement, per regulation, at the absurdly young age of 60:

“My Funeral Flight (by Capt Keith McCormick)

I recently completed my last flight as pilot-in-command of a United Airlines B-747 from Sydney, Australia to the San Francisco International Airport. I was the senior pilot at United Airlines, with 38 years in the cockpit, and required to retire after this flight because of the FAA Age 60 rule applicable to all United States Air Transport Pilots flying for U.S. carriers. Since November 23, 2006, pilots of foreign carriers, even U.S. pilots working for foreign carriers, are allowed to fly in/out of the U.S. until Age 65. However, U.S. citizens are not allowed to command a U.S. carrier aircraft beyond age 60, period. Age 60 is the “new age 40″ we are told, but not the eyes of the FAA or Congress if you are a U.S. citizen.

It’s been a long journey, this airline life. At age 10, as I bumped down a grassy farm runway on my first airplane ride, courtesy of Dave Reece in New Providence, Iowa, and I was immediately hooked on flying. I even helped push the big red airplane back into the hangar behind his barn. At 13, I made an application to be a pilot for Braniff Airways. Braniff quietly responded I should get an education, preferably a college degree in Engineering. As I was taking flying lessons all through high school, some of the strongest memories I have are the smells: gasoline, grass, pilots smoking in the small airport shack, walking along the railroad track from town to the small airport, strolling down the grass runway when it was too windy to fly. By the time I was 14, I could identify, by the sound of the engine, the type of airplane flying over my bedroom at night. By soloing on my 16th birthday, teaching college students to fly during college, I graduated with an Aerospace Engineering degree in three years of college with enough flying time to possibly get on hired by an airline.

Hired by United Airlines in 1969 at age 22, it’s been an interesting ride. Furloughs, mergers, failures, consolidations, recessions, the 1970s oil crisis, blizzards, war, airline crashes, controller strikes, airline strikes, ESOPs, 9-11, SARS, deregulation, thunderstorms, marriage, three children, international expansion and incessant safety training; the airline scarcely looks like the airline I knew when propeller airplanes were old and I was young. The bankruptcy of United changed the paradigm by enormous proportions. At age 60, even though holding a renewed First Class medical certificate in my hand and the FAA announcement the Age 60 Rule is no longer justified on safety grounds, I can no longer fly for United Airlines under current FAA regulations even though 96% of the foreign airline pilots fly to age 65, including flights into and out of the United States.

Time for my last flight, now. What is this painful feeling I have? I get up, get dressed, head for the airport, and go through the motions of flight preparation. But I am empty inside. I dread this; this part of my life ending that has been so big, so rewarding, so”".. me. My mother and father died in that small Iowa town ten and twenty years ago, respectfully. Now, I find that I have that same feeling on this final day of flying for United. It is like waiting for my parents’ funerals to be held. The viewing at the funeral home and meeting friends and family to grieve our loss was bad enough. The dread of the approaching funeral at the church was worse. Daybreak on the funeral day inevitably was to come; the clock just kept ticking and would not stop. You cannot stop it. My mind was numb and I was not feeling anything. I was just going through the motions. Just thinking of the dreaded change in my life about to come because my parent(s) are no longer here to talk with me, always willing to help, and always THERE. My wife sits with me and is silent; what can she say to make them come back, to make this not my last flight? Mercifully, the funerals came and we returned home to contemplate our loss. Mercifully, this last flight, my funeral flight, will end too. The people around us are laughing, talking and carrying on without any recognition of what’s happening in our life. Life goes on all around us even though I feel I am dying inside.

The purser flight attendant gives me a black cardboard box containing chocolate and a well wishing card signed by the entire fifteen member cabin crew. How sweet. We agree NOT to tell the 350 passengers this is my last flight on the 7800 mile route back to San Francisco. Such an event would burden me with saying goodbye at the aircraft door three hundred fifty times. I couldn’t take that. “You don’t look 60, you look like you are 40″ is mentioned over and over. Graciously, I nod and thank the speakers.

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy was meant to “save” United Airlines. Labor and management resolved to “share sacrifices” and save the company for future generations. UAL pensions were handed over to the PBGC early in 2005 and United survived. Twenty five months before my retirement, my planned pension was reduced to just 18% of the pre-bankruptcy amount. Now, my pension from the PBGC totals just 12% of my pre-retirement annual pay. Substantial health insurance and income tax are deducted from the PBGC payments, further reducing the amount received, and the PBGC payments have no COLA provisions as health care and taxes go up per schedule and inflation. Fifteen years from now, with modest inflation, my monthly pension will barely pay the electric bill. Although I am required to retire at age 60 by Federal regulations, I am unable to collect Social Security until almost age 67. There is no exception for impact of Federal rules from differing agencies. Can anybody live on that? The United Airlines CEO received over 100 million dollars post bankruptcy and I receive 18% of planned retirement - some shared sacrifice.

After the final landing in SFO, the three First Officers each shake my hand and say “Good Luck”. They know. None of them offer congratulations. It would be inappropriate. We haven’t talked about it, but they know. They each have a chance to save for their retirement because the law will change for them, but not for me. They each have between 15 and 25 years to plan for retirement, accumulate savings through tax favored policies, and make family decisions. Two and 1/2 years was not enough time for me to make any substantial recovery or effective savings plan to cover the enormous pension loss. Nobody can change it. I will never recover the lost 72% of my pension.

Virtually all pilots I have recently flown with in my cockpit will fly to age 65, except me, under proposed FAA regulation changes. “it’s just going to take time to change the rule,” the FAA says. The FAA denied my request for an exemption to bridge age 60 termination and the pending rule change to age 65, perhaps by only a month or two in my case. A friend of mine, a UAL pilot having just completed his last flight before his 60th birthday, committed suicide in front of a fire station in Denver on the last day in June, just one day before his forced retirement from United and one day before his company paid life insurance would terminate (another bankruptcy concession). The location was chosen because he didn’t want to make a mess at home, we are told. Several other pilots have similarly taken their lives after forced retirement, some from United, but no one wants to talk about them.

I am gone now … that love of flying is not a part of my life anymore. I wonder how many other people have experienced this feeling. Amputees? Widows and widowers? Divorcees? Bankruptcies? Farmers? I notice how life continues around me, like after those funerals I can never forget. Passengers fly, couples laugh with their families and friends, incessant news programs on the television report on hurricanes, crimes, Middle East fighting, weather, and Congress goes on vacation rather than vote on Age65. Life goes on. There were legislative bills before the Senate and House in July 2007 to change the Age 60 rule to Age 65, but Congress didn’t think it important enough to save the few of us caught “in-between”. The law will change soon enough to capture most of the pilots still flying and allow them to continue to do so. News reports, put out by press releases from industry and unions, say the laws are going to change; but not in time for us. The 2,000-5,000 pilots turning age 60 between November 23, 2006 and effective date of the new law will be lost. This an acceptable loss and we apparently do not count? The outgoing FAA Administrator thinks so. My once strong and proud union, the Air Line Pilots Association supports the change but is clearly dragging their feet. Further delay of the new law benefits the younger pilots, now a majority of ALPA members, who vocally want us out of their way. PAC money is spent by ALPA to delay the new rule with further “consideration”. My airline employer refused to help the older pilots by requesting exemptions from the FAA or offering alternative interim employment awaiting the law change. My funeral flight is at an end. Happy Labor Day 2007. Not all can celebrate.

(Captain McCormick retired from United Airlines, after 38 years in UAL’s cockpits on numerous aircraft, because of the Age 60 rule. Captain McCormick resides in Florida with his wife, and is currently looking for employment.)”

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As a hot-weather nut, I’m always sorry to see the end of August, with the sun thinning and those trillion or so green leaves on the trees in front and back just glowering at me with menace, threatening to die and pile up on the ground like organic slag-heaps.

Heck, I start mourning the passing of summer at the end of July. And in the Northeast, summer has been no great shakes anyway. Pity the poor souls who spent large sums of money to get away to the shore, given more than a week of temperatures in August that barely got into the 60s, with a sun that barely peeked out from clouds.

Usually, as hot-weather nuts, my wife and I spend part of the summer (and winter, too) in southern Arizona. For various reasons, we didn’t this year. But it’s interesting to note that it was hot. Very hot. In Phoenix, the temperature has hit 110 or above on 29 days this summer, a record. (Please excuse the link to the local newspaper that infantalizes and anthropomorphizes even the weather: “We did it!” Gannett, of course).

Anyway, a cooling trend is coming.

Above, for Arizonans and others who like the desert, a reminder of what it looked like in Tucson when I got up one morning just seven months ago, on Jan. 22 — the first snowfall in a generation. By 1 p.m., however, all traces of the snow were gone and the temperature was in the 70s.

Strange weather we’re having.

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A Brazilian court is demanding that American pilots Joe Lepore (l) and Jan Paladino return to Brazil for criminal proceedings on charges in the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon that killed 154. Citing a U.S.-Brazil treaty, the pilots say no, they’ll testify in the U.S. instead . See my Brazil blog.

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Snafu, or SNAFU, is one of those terms writers always misuse to describe a situation that is unexpectedly out of control. Actually, the letters stand for “situation normal, all f—– up” (sometimes euphemistically rendered as “all fouled up.”) The term comes from the Army, and it was in use before World War II, but the war gave it a boost into everyday language.

Snafu describes the situation once again tonight at the nation’s airports. It’s got to the point this summer where we barely consider it news that the air-traffic system is in meltdown — again.

Check out FlightStats.com The flight-delay alerts are blinking like the monitor on a hedge-fund manager’s desk. Ground delays (here’s a link explaining what they are again) are posted over the place. This afternoon and tonight, O’Hare joins the usual suspects among airports on the East Coast in originating long delays, rather than just being affected by them. It’s a real Goatf—, as they say in today’s Army.

Can this crisis continue much longer before people in large numbers say the hell with it and stay home? Stay tuned. Labor Day weekend is coming up. Then the business-travel season resumes.

And come fall we’ll learn whether the situation is (fouled) up beyond all repair. That’s Fubar in the old Army.

Or a Clusterf— in the new.

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Some words you need to keep in reserve for when the occasion calls for their use.

Words like “odious.”

I’m referring to a forthcoming reality-television series called “Kid Nation.” It will be on a once-respected American television network, CBS.

You really have to read the waivers that were signed by the parents of the children selected for the program. Here, via the Smoking Gun is the remarkable 22-page contract in which parents grant CBS and two production outfits astonishing rights to their children’s lives and well-being, and indemnify them from liability, so that the children could participate in “Kid Nation.” The show is to premier on Sept. 19 — and in my opinion, anyone who watches it after reading that contract should be ashamed of themselves.

For the reality show, 40 children aged 8 to 15 were hauled off to Bonanza City, an abandoned mining town in the New Mexico desert, for 40 days, where they created their own ad hoc society — out of contact with their parents.

The contract the parents signed to allow their children to participate, among other things, stipulates that the parents acknowledge “certain risks” to their child – referred to as the Minor — participating in the 13-part series.

It says: “I agree that should the Minor be killed, injured or harmed” to release CBS and the producers “from any claim based on the Producer’s failure to inspect or investigate” the children’s “accommodations.”

For $5,000 (children who are voted best participant in each of the 13 episodes are eligible for another $20,000, at Producer’s discretion, the contract says), parents agree to the following, among other things:

“I understand that the Program may take place in inherently dangerous travel areas, that may expose the Minor and other participants to a variety of unmarked and uncontrolled hazards and conditions that may cause the Minor serious bodily injury, illness or death, including, without limitation: general exposure to extremes of heat and cold; crime, water hazards, floods; drowning; treacherous terrain; collision with others, including those submerged below water surfaces; injuries arising from equipment failure or defect; falls from heights, objects and equipment; falling rocks and objects; crevasses, cliffs and rock avalanches; encounters with wild or domesticated animals; acts of God (e.g., earthquakes); food poisoning; encounters with dangerous flora and fauna; collisions with other participants, spectators and others; loss of orientation (getting lost) in primitive areas; exhaustion, dehydration, fatigue, over-exertion and sun or heat-stroke; hypothermia; and risks arising from evacuation and rescue activities in remote or less-developed areas.”

Also: “I acknowledge that the Minor’s participation” in the program “may present certain risks” … “and I hereby assume any and all risks on behalf of the Minor and myself associated with the Minor’s participation in the program, including, without limitation, the risk of death or physical or emotional injury, minor and/or severe bodily harm and/or illness, which arise by any means, including, without limitation, instruction by Producers or other program participants…”

Parents also agree not to hold CBS and the producers responsible if “the Minor chooses to enter into an intimate relationship of any nature with another participant or any other person [italics mine, but think about that], [then] the Minor does so without any influence by the Producers and the Minor and I hereby assume any and all risks that may be associated with any relationship, including, without limitation, emotional distress, illness, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and pregnancy, if applicable.”

Remember, these are kids aged 8 to 15 (”if applicable”). Of the 40 kids, incidentally, a dozen are aged 10 or younger, and only one is 15.

Among other things, the parents also agree to abide by a confidentiality clause that prevents them from talking about the program and their child’s participation in it unless the interview is “sanctioned by the press officer of CBS.”

Penalty for breaking the CBS oath of omerta and blabbing: $5 million.

Wondering about child-labor laws? The contract stipulates that any money paid to the children is a “prize or stipend” and “not, in any way, a wage, salary or other indicia of employment.”

The story from today’s Times is on the Web site, unaccountably buried. But here it is.

A major television network in the United States pulled this stunt, in cahoots with television production companies. A guy named Ghen Maynard is the head of alternative programing (reality shows) for CBS. He should be very proud of himself.

The parents who signed on to this — what the hell were they thinking?

And by the way: Where were — and are — the kids’ schools?

Meanwhile, parents interested in peddling their children for the next round of the series are offered an “Eligibility Requirements” form to fill out and send to the show’s office at 1823 Colorado Ave. in Santa Monica, along with a video showcasing the kid’s personality and a long questionnaire for both parent and child. I can’t link to the questionnaire, a protected pdf file, but it’s online at:

www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation_application/kid_nation_2.pdf

The application requires the child to answer a long list of questions. Among them:

–”How important is religion to you?” and how often do you go to church?

–”Who did your parents vote for in the last presidential election?”

–”Do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend or do you have a crush on anyone? If so, tell us about him or her.”

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Travelers to Venezuela will need to fiddle more than usual with their watches after New Year’s because President Hugo Chavez has decreed that clocks will be moved ahead by a half-hour. A half-hour, not an hour, meaning that of all the major nations on earth, Venezuela will be the only one maintaining a time-zone 30 minutes out of step with the rest. *[See correction below]

In a rambling six-hour discourse Sunday on his TV and radio program, “Alo Presidente,” Chavez said changing the clocks would allow citizens to benefit from “the metabolic effect where the human brain is regulated by the sun.”

After the change, Venezuela will be 3 1/2 hours behind GMT, rather than 4.

And I can’t be the only one who’s thinking about the 1971 Woody Allen movie, “Bananas,” in which Fielding Mellesh, a hapless product-tester from New York, wanders to the fictitious Central American country of San Marcos and ends up as the revolutionary dictator. Among his decrees: That everyone must change their underwear daily, and wear their underwear outside their regular clothes so it can be monitored.

* [Correction appended August 24--As noted in the readers' comments, it isn't true that Venezuela is the only major nation that will set its clocks off the hour. India is on the half-hour. There are other out-of-steppers here and there, including some places in Australia and in the Canadian maritime provinces. Nepal is even odder, being 45 minutes off the little hand.

There is a handy Web site, www.Timeanddate.com for finding out what time it is anywhere in the world. I should have checked it.]

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–I looked up the daily newspaper in Jamaica to see how the approaching hurricane was being covered from the scene. At first I thought I was reading an Onion parody, but no, it was real. Maybe there’s some sort of movement for phonetic authenticity going on there that I don’t know about. Who knew dialect was still being rendered this way in 2007?

–The only TV news we can stand to watch regularly in our house is the BBC World News, despite that ridiculous shiny red set that looks like a South Jersey diner, that thumping techno music that would be more at home in a Bulgarian nightclub, and those male news-readers who affect weird British speech patterns that make them sound like Elmer Fudds who have passed their A-levels. (I keep hoping there’ll be riots in Kuala Lumpur just to listen to these guys try to say the words).

But I digress. This is about the coal-mine disaster in Utah. Why do the American media keep parroting the term used by the coal-mine owners, who insist that disaster is the result of “seismic shifts.” The BBC, to its credit, calls it what it is: A cave-in.

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If you’re flying today, you already know that a good part of the nation’s air traffic system is in a serious mess. A series of late-afternoon and early-evening thunderstorms on the East Coast has backed up flights all over the country.

The best way to assess current conditions is at FlightStats.com Use the “Airports” tab for specific airport delays information. The F.A.A. claims to have a flight-delay feature on its Web site, www.faa.gov — but as usual it’s worthless when you need it. As I write this, it’s frozen.

If (as I do) you need a reminder of what “ground delay” and “ground stop” programs are, here’s a link.

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Matt (”All Links All the Time”) Drudge has a characteristically breathless headline over a link to a story from the always-quotable London Evening Standard: “Airport Meltdown As EVERY Flight Leaving Heathrow Is Delayed.”

Wot? Granted, Heathrow is a great big mess, easily the most screwed-up major airport in the world.

But was every flight delayed yesterday morning? A simple check of FlightStats.com shows that to be an exaggeration, to put it mildly. At Heathrow, 81 percent of flights between 6 and 9 a.m. left on time; 60 percent between 9 a.m. and noon did, and 52 percent between noon and 3 p.m.

That’s a lousy record. But air travelers need reliable information, not British press hysteria related as fact.

By the way, speaking of British press baloney, there’s another hyperventilating link on the Drudge site today, from the Telegraph newspaper: “German Physicists: We have broken speed of light!” it says — yes, in red.

Here is the top of the story:

“A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light– an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.”

Holy Cow! (to quote the late Phil Rizzuto).

The learned physicists who came upon this earth-shaking discovery (which is strangely unmentioned in other world publications, undoubtedly because the media is in bed with those jealous bastards in the reality-based scientific establishment!) are identified as the Drs. Gunter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz.

That’s K-O-B-L-E-N-Z.

[The University of Koblenz -- K-O-B-L-E-N-Z -- was most recently in the news when jealous members of the reality-based scientific community worldwide ridiculed a research report from the U-Koblenz physics department claiming that cell-phone signals were decimating the world honeybee population.]

In finally overturning that smart-ass Albert Einstein, U-Koblenz’s dynamic Nimtz-Stahlhofen duo found that light travels “instantaneously” rather than at the speed of light, making it possible for you and me to one day get on a spaceship and arrive at our destination at the exact same moment as we actually left, assuming we didn’t change our plans or miss the connecting flight. This, of course, holds new promise for addressing the growing problem of airline flight delays and cancellations. Northwest Airlines should hire those two birds.

(Explaining further, the learned Koblenz (K-O-B-L-E-N-Z) scientists also discovered that the speed at which bullshit takes up permanent residence in an otherwise empty skull is infinitely greater than the speed of light.)

The Telegraph article is based on a report in the august New Scientist magazine, a publication that some jealous bastards in the realty-based academic community have ridiculed as being “scientifically illiterate.”

Whatever. I get nervous with this talk of time travel because, to paraphrase Woody Allen, it might mean I’d have to sit through Grandma and the other Mime-Clowns at the Big Apple Circus again.

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