Category: Disaster

Bad Day at the Office

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In the world of “holy crap,” we have an amazing dashcam footage of the crash of TransAsia flight GE235:

At least 23 people have died after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed into the Keelung River in Taiwan earlier Wednesday.

Another 15 people were reportedly injured in the accident, and 20 are still missing.

 Drivers on the road captured the moment the plane crashed into the river. Flying on its side, the aircraft hit a taxi and clipped the bridge with its wing before crashing into the river.

The footage is amazing, but I don’t see a cause here.

It’s clear that the left wing dropped, probably from a stall. Note that the ATR-72 does not have counter-rotating props, so a wing drop is normal for a stall.

Also, it appears to be descending before the wing drops, even though it was taking off, which is would correspond to the reports that the aircraft had issued a mayday call stating that an engine had flamed out:

The final communication from the pilots to air traffic control was “Mayday, mayday, engine flame out”, according to a recording played on local media. The recording was not immediately verified by aviation officials.

I would assume that it was the left engine that had flamed out, and then the aircraft departed.

Here are some screen caps that appears to show that the left engine prop was feathered (pitch altered for minimum drag):

In any case, here is the video:

That Tom Tomorrow Cartoon Is Looking More and More Prescient

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Over at the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza has an analysis of Obama’s coat tails, and it shows that Obama has been the most disastrous 2 term presidential tenure in 60 years:

Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves — and where the impact will be felt over the long term.

………

As NCSL notes, Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats — their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely — and have full control of state government (state legislature and governorship) in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. (Click here for an amazing NCSL chart that details which side controls every state legislature.)

………

st
The Fix
Republicans have gained more than 900 state legislative seats since 2010
By Chris Cillizza January 14 Follow @thefix

Everyone knows by now that 2010 and 2014 were very good to the Republican Party. What they don’t understand (or understand well enough) is just how good. Yes, Republicans now control the Senate and have their largest majority in the House since World War II. But it’s downballot (way downballot) where the depth of the Republican victories over the past three elections truly reveal themselves — and where the impact will be felt over the long term.

In the past three elections, Republicans have gained 913 state legislative seats, according to calculations made by Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia. Here are Sabato’s figures in chart form — and with historical comparisons — via GOP lobbyist Bruce Mehlman.
Now, there are more 7,000 state legislative seats in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which makes that 913 number slightly less eye-popping. Still, the Democratic losses between 2010 and 2014 amount to 12 percent of all state legislative seats nationwide.

As NCSL notes, Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats — their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely — and have full control of state government (state legislature and governorship) in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. (Click here for an amazing NCSL chart that details which side controls every state legislature.)

Why does the lopsided state of legislative control matter to national politics? For lots of reasons.

1. Policy is made at the state legislative level. That’s policy pertaining to states and policy that gets bumped up to the federal level. With Republicans in control of so many state governments, the policy incubator for their side will be vastly superior to what Democrats can do at the state and local levels.

2. State legislatures and governors redraw congressional lines. In most states, how the nation’s 435 House districts will look after the 2020 Census will be determined by state legislators and governors. And guess what? Republican legislators (and governors) are more likely to draw lines that are friendly to their side. Unless Democrats can reverse their state House and Senate losses before the 2021 redraw, Republicans could control the House for a very, very long time.

3. State legislatures are the minor leagues. Most of the politicians — President Obama included — who have gone on to great things, politically speaking, honed their craft in the state legislature of their home (or adopted home) state. Republicans’ farm system to grow the sort of talent that might one day run for House, Senate or even president is now significantly larger than that of Democrats.

Yes, in the near term, nothing matters more than which party hold the majority in the U.S. House and Senate. But, if you are playing the long game — and both parties have to if they want to stay vibrant and effective — what happens at the state legislative level has huge import. And, in that contest, there is no contest: Republicans are winning in a landslide.

Obama could not have done worse for the party if he had been trying.

This begs the question, how much has he actually concerned himself with the welfare of the party, which is the de-facto head.

Certainly, Obama ran the catastrophic 2010 campaign with the goal of it being a dry run for his 2012 run for reelection, which was precisely the wrong policy for an off-year election, and in 2014, he eschewed taking any policy actions that would have (a) been popular, and (b) would have improved the morale of the base, until after the election.

It does make this Tom Tomorrow cartoon a much more plausible:

H/t Digby.

We Have a New Definition of Chutzpah

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Obviously, the classic definition, the story of a boy who killed his parents, and then asked for mercy as an orphan remains the front runner, but the fact that Freedom Industries is asking for prosecutors to recuse themselves because they were among the 300,000 people whose water they poisoned:

A federal judge will take up whether the U.S. Attorney’s office can prosecute cases against former Freedom Industries executives or if a conflict of interest exists.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston is scheduled to hear disqualification requests from former Freedom President Gary Southern and former company executive Dennis Farrell in a 1:30 p.m. hearing today.

Both Southern and Farrell have asked the federal judge to disqualify U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin’s office from the case, saying there is a conflict of interest because the prosecutor’s employees were affected by last January’s chemical leak, which affected 300,000 people in nine counties.

Farrell’s motion only took issue with Goodwin’s office but Southern’s motion also sought to disqualify “agents and investigators” working with the office.

“The conflict of interest is real: the U.S. Attorney, his assistants, investigators and office staff were actual victims of the crimes charged against Mr. Farrell,” Farrell’s motion said. “Of equal or perhaps greater gravity, husbands, wives and children of the prosecutors and staff of the (U.S. Attorney’s office) also were, and allegedly may continue to be, actual victims of the crimes charged.”

In a previous filing, Goodwin said no one in his office has a personal or financial stake in the outcome of this case. He said no one on the prosecution team is an “actual victim” because the general public is the victim in Clean Water Act violations. He also said no one on his staff is a claimant in the class action lawsuits or in the Freedom bankruptcy case.

Seriously?

Because they are arguing that because they contaminated the water for half the f%$#ing state of West Virginia, no one should be allowed to prosecute them?

Seriously?

I guess that it is proof of the old adage, “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.”

Needless to Say, I Wish that I Wasn’t Right

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The Republicans have taken over the Senate, as I predicted 12 days ago.

Needless to say, I am kind of bummed about being right.

I expect there to be pressure in the next Congress to impeach Obama, and in response, I expect Obama to try to gut Social Security and Medicare.

I would also lay even odds that, in the spirit of hope and change bipartizanship cowardice, Obama will end up sending troops back to Iraq.

We are unbelievably screwed.

Tepid

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What a shocker.

Obama wants the folks who have supported Jihadis in Syria to take a lead roll in fighting the Jihadi group that has gotten out of hand, ISIS/ISIL/IS, and rather unsurprisingly, their response is f%$3 you white man:

Many Arab governments grumbled quietly in 2011 as the United States left Iraq, fearful it might fall deeper into chaos or Iranian influence. Now, the United States is back and getting a less than enthusiastic welcome, with leading allies like Egypt, Jordan and Turkey all finding ways on Thursday to avoid specific commitments to President Obama’s expanded military campaign against Sunni extremists.

As the prospect of the first American strikes inside Syria crackled through the region, the mixed reactions underscored the challenges of a new military intervention in the Middle East, where 13 years of chaos, from Sept. 11 through the Arab Spring revolts, have deepened political and sectarian divisions and increased mistrust of the United States on all sides.

“As a student of terrorism for the last 30 years, I am afraid of that formula of ‘supporting the American effort,’ ” said Diaa Rashwan, a scholar at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a government-funded policy organization in Cairo. “It is very dangerous.”

The tepid support could further complicate the already complex task Mr. Obama has laid out for himself in fighting the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: He must try to confront the group without aiding Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, or appearing to side with Mr. Assad’s Shiite allies, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah, against discontented Sunnis across the Arab world.

While Arab nations allied with the United States vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to fight ISIS and issued a joint communiqué supporting a broad strategy, the underlying tone was one of reluctance. The government perhaps most eager to join a coalition against ISIS was that of Syria, which Mr. Obama had already ruled out as a partner for what he described as terrorizing its citizens.

You can have a successful war, or you can continue to overthrow the Assad regime.

I don’t think that you can have both.

Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran, are about the only participants in this little adventure who are truly enthusiastic about helping to put ISIS down.

You fight the war with the allies you have, not the allies you want.

Sucks to be British Petroleum Right Now

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Bummer of a birth mark, BP

A federal judge has ruled that not only was BP negligent,  BP was grossly negligent in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.

This has the effect of increasing their fines by a factor of 4:

In the four years since the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers and sent millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has spent more than $28 billion on damage claims and cleanup costs, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and emerged a shrunken giant.

But through it all, the company has maintained that it was not chiefly responsible for the accident, and that its contractors in the operation, Halliburton and Transocean, should shoulder as much, if not more, of the blame.

On Thursday, a federal judge here for the first time bluntly rejected those arguments, finding that BP was indeed the primary culprit and that only it had acted with “conscious disregard of known risks.” He added that BP’s “conduct was reckless.”

By finding that BP was, in legal parlance, grossly negligent in the disaster, and not merely negligent, United States District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier opened the possibility of $18 billion in new civil penalties for BP, nearly quadruple the maximum Clean Water Act penalty for simple negligence and far more than the $3.5 billion the company has set aside.

Note, however, even at $18 billion, that is less than last year’s profits, which were just under $24 billion.

It ain’t enough.

Bad Day at the Office

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Bummer

SpaceX’s latest booster just blew up shortly after launch:

An experimental reusable rocket made by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. exploded over Texas on Friday, the company announced.

 The test booster, known as the F9R and a successor to the Grasshopper rocket, self-destructed several hundred feet over the company’s facility in McGregor after a problem was detected. There were no injuries.

 “Three engine F9R Dev1 vehicle auto-terminated during test flight,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted. “No injuries or near injuries. Rockets are tricky.”

There is a reason that it is called “Rocket Science”, I guess.

Well, This Explains Something About the MH17 Shootdown

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Bill Sweetman has a very good article on the Buk missile system, and how it was likely deployed, and how this contributed to the shoot-down of the Malaysian Airlines jet:

With mounting evidence that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian separatist rebels who believed they were engaging a military aircraft, attention is focusing on the Russian-built Almaz-Antey Buk-M1 ground-based air defense system (GBADS) that destroyed the airliner.

The Buk-M1 (SA-11 Gadfly to NATO) can be used by minimally trained operators to deliver a lethal attack, without the safeguards built into other comparable GBADS, an Aviation Week analysis shows. It is also one of the two GBADS — both of Soviet origin — that are most widely distributed in conflict zones with the potential for large-scale, cross-border or civil violence.

The feature that makes the Buk-series weapons uniquely dangerous was introduced in the 1970s when Tikhomirov NIIP, now part of Almaz-Antey, designed the system to replace the 2K12 Kub low-altitude missile system, known to NATO as the SA-6 Gainful. (The similar names are coincidental: “Kub” means “cube” and “Buk” means “beech.”)

The Buk transporter-erector-launcher is designed to operate both as a part of an integrated air defense system (IADS) and independently, and this capability is what probably led to the incident:

The designers of the replacement Buk system had anticipated this problem. In addition to a new radar vehicle – the Phazotron 9S18M, Snow Drift to NATO – they fitted each launch vehicle with its own X-band multi-mode radar, under a radome on the front of the rotating launch platform. The vehicle is defined as a transporter/erector/launcher and radar (Telar). Similar to a fighter radar, the Telar radar (known to NATO as Fire Dome) has search, track and illuminator functions and can scan through a 120-deg. arc, independent of the movement of the platform.

This feature may have been a crucial factor in the destruction of MH17. The Fire Dome radar’s main job was to permit simultaneous engagement of more targets – one per Telar – under control of the battery’s 9S18M Snow Drift. But the Soviet military and the designers installed a set of backup modes that would permit the Telars to detect and attack targets autonomously, in the event the Snow Drift was shut down or destroyed by NATO’s rapidly improving anti-radar missiles.

The autonomous modes are intended for last-ditch use by the Telar operators, not the more highly trained crews in the battery command vehicle. According to an experienced analyst of Russian-developed radar, the automatic radar modes display targets within range. The operator can then command the system to lock up the target, illuminate and shoot.

Critically, these backup modes also bypass two safety features built into the 9S18M Snow Drift radar: a full-function identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system and non-cooperative target recognition (NCTR) modes. The IFF system uses a separate interrogator located above the main radar antenna and most likely will have been upgraded to current civilian standards.

The 9S18M introduced new NCTR processing technology, according to a 1998 interview with Buk designer Ardalion Rastov. NCTR techniques are closely held, but one of the most basic – jet engine modulation, or the analysis of beats and harmonics in the radar return that are caused by engine fan or compressor blades – should easily discriminate among a 777 with high-bypass turbofans, a turboprop transport or an Su-25 attack fighter.

There is no sign of an IFF interrogator on the Buk Telar’s Fire Dome radar or elsewhere on the vehicle. In normal operation, it would not be necessary since the target’s identity would be verified (according to the prevailing rules of engagement) before target data was passed to the Telar. Other GBADS also leave identification to the main search radar and the command-and-control center; however, the launch units cannot engage and fire without central guidance. The Buk’s combination of lethality and lack of IFF/NCTR is unique.

In a heavy SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) environment, the capability to operate autonomously, with the main battery turning on only briefly, and then passing the general targeting parameters to the TELs would be highly desirable.

However, in a situation like the Ukrainian civil war, where the rebels clearly are not operating an IADS, nor they are even operating as a complete Buk system.  They are operating as a lone TEL.

No central guidance, acquisition radar, no IFF, no trained command center, no kidding.

Why on earth airlines were routing aircraft through the Ukraine in such a situation, and the rebels possession of Buk TELs was well known, is completely beyond me.

A Bit of Analysis on the Probable Shoot Down in the Ukraine

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Putin’s Flight Route from Sao Paulo to Moscow, and MS-12 MH17’s Route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur


Buk Missile Launcher


50 Km Radius about Snizhe (Red) where Launcher was Reported, and the crash site in Grabovo (Hrabove) (Blue)

Click for Popup Slide Show

What we know right now is that the Malaysian Airlines Flight 12 crashed in the Ukraine, and that it was very likely shot down by a medium of heavy surface to air missile (SAM).  (The aircraft was at about 10,000m, well above the range of light SAMs and AAA)

RT (obvious caveats apply) is noting that Putin’s presidential transport crossed paths with the airliner not that long before the shoot-down: (See map)

“I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft – 15:44 Moscow time,” a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

I don’t know what exactly happened and why, but I’m inclined that the regular Russian military would not be pointing anything into the air bigger than a water pistol until Putin’s plane was on the ground.

I’ve checked a couple of sources online, and it appears that timing is as close as RT describes.

I think that RT is implying that  it was the part of an attempted assassination against Putin, but I am calling BS on that.

Furthermore, I plotted a great circle route from Sao Paulo to Moscow (below, attached), which would appear to indicate that the Putin’s aircraft and aircraft would have come close to MH17’s flight path.

Given the timing, it is hard to imagine that anyone in the Russian military was allowed to point anything skyward more potent than a water pistol.

Ukrainian sources are alleging that a Buk missile launcher was used to shoot down the aircraft, and it should be noted that the Ukrainian rebels did capture some of these systems:

Ukrainian official said Thursday that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down near Snizhe today, a town close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. The plane was carrying 295 people and crashed early evening, local time.

 No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but immediate reports say that the airplane was grounded by a Buk surface-to-air missile system. The Buk, developed by the Soviet Union in 1979, has remained widely in use throughout the former Soviet states, including Ukraine.

 General Philip Breedlove, the commander of the U.S. European Command, said that Moscow has been supplying Ukrainian separatists with anti-aircraft weaponry, and has held training sessions along the eastern Ukrainian border, teaching rebels how to operate the systems.

 Direct supply of the Buk from Moscow to rebels would be a major escalation in the ongoing conflict. However, on June 29, Russia’s official news agency, ITAR-TASS, reported that pro-Russian separatists took a Buk system under their control. The report does not specify whether or not this was theft from the Russian or Ukrainian militaries, only that the rebels had seized control of the weapons system. An AP report, dated yesterday, noted that, “A launcher similar to the Buk missile system was seen by Associated Press journalists near the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne, which is held by pro-Russia rebels, earlier Thursday.”

As I noted the Buk fires the SA-11 (30km range) or the SA-17 (50km range).

The crash location is given as Grabovo (Hrabove), though, given the physics of the situation, the impact point could be anywhere from 10 to 100 km east northeast of that.  (See map)

Assuming that it was a missile, my opinion  is that the rebels are the most likely perps, followed by the Ukrainian armed forces or irregulars, with the Russian military a distant third.

I would also note that while it does appear that the rebels captured the missiles from the Ukrainian military, I cannot see them being able to operate the system without extensive training by Russian military of the FSB.

The Sound You Hear is Another Bubble Collapsing

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Remember those stories about all those investors paying cash to acquire rental properties?

Remember how they were going into single family rentals?

Well, it looks like the rush for the door has begun:

A year ago, buying foreclosed homes to rent out was the sure-thing trade for investment firms backed by money from private equity companies, hedge funds and pension systems. But with the supply of cheap foreclosed homes dwindling, some early investors are looking to cash out a bit by flipping homes to competitors.

The Waypoint Real Estate Group, one of the first companies to raise money from private investors to buy foreclosed homes, is quietly shopping as many as 2,000 houses in California that it acquired in the last few years in several private investment funds, said three people who had been briefed on the matter but were not authorized to discuss it. The homes, which are largely rented, are being shown to other companies backed by investor money that have also scooped up distressed houses in states including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Nevada.

Waypoint is considering selling about half of its 4,000 homes. Some of the biggest institutional investors in the market for foreclosed homes — companies like the Blackstone Group, American Homes 4 Rent and American Residential Properties — have slowed their pace of acquisitions in response to an increase in home prices and a dearth of foreclosed homes that do not require significant renovation.

Waypoint is following other early investors like the Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Oaktree Capital Management, which have sold homes bought near the start of the financial crisis. But unlike Och-Ziff and Oaktree, Waypoint is not leaving the single-family home market. It is still managing more than 7,000 homes for a publicly traded real estate investment trust, or REIT, it formed last year with the Starwood Capital Group called Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust.

Jason Chudoba, a spokesman for the trust and Waypoint’s management company, said the firm did not comment on market speculation.

The single-family home market, after a wave of acquisitions by companies backed by Wall Street money, is changing as institutional buyers now focus more on expanding their operations to manage tens of thousands of homes across the United States. Industry participants say that the rapid buying of foreclosed homes has ended and that they expect other early institutional buyers to sell homes to lock in profits. They say they also expect the business to consolidate into the hands of a few large companies.

So, the small operators are getting out, and the big operators, aka the too big to fail operators are doubling down, because they figure that they know better.

In a way, the TBTF players are right:  When this comes tumbling down, the taxpayers will find a way to bail them out, yet again.

We are f%$#ed.

Why You Should Not Give Money to the Red Cross

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Even if you ignore their blood products profiteering which killed a significant portion of the Hemophiliacs in the United States under Liddy Dole, you have their routine and brazen profiteering in the event of major disasters:

Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy?

The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a “trade secret.”

The Red Cross’ “trade secret” argument has persuaded the state to redact some material, though it’s not clear yet how much since the documents haven’t yet been released.

As we’ve reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.

The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.

So we filed a public records request for the information the Red Cross provided to the attorney general’s office.

 That’s where the law firm Gibson Dunn comes in.

 An attorney from the firm’s New York office appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the state Freedom of Information Law’s Trade Secret Exemption.

 The documents include “internal and proprietary methodology and procedures for fundraising, confidential information about its internal operations, and confidential financial information,” wrote Gabrielle Levin of Gibson Dunn in a letter to the attorney general’s office.

If those details were disclosed, “the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross’s business model for an increased competitive advantage,” Levin wrote.

(emphasis mine)

Trade Secret Exemption?  Proprietary Methodology?  Competitive Harm?  Business model?  Competitive Advantage?

Seriously?

You are asking us to give you money on the vague promise that you won’t blow it all on salaries and severance packages for senior executives (and, you know, give thousands of Hemophiliacs AIDS ……… Oops, too late on that one).

The American Red Cross, and the Susan G. Komen foundations are not charities should be our first choices for donations.

Lovely

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In Japan, the children exposed to the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown are developing thyroid cancer at 40 times the normal rate:

Some 39 months after the multiple explosions at Fukushima, thyroid cancer rates among nearby children have skyrocketed to more than forty times (40x) normal.

More than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people—nearly 200,000 kids—tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.

More than 120 childhood cancers have been indicated where just three would be expected, says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

The nuclear industry and its apologists continue to deny this public health tragedy. Some have actually asserted that “not one person” has been affected by Fukushima’s massive radiation releases, which for some isotopes exceed Hiroshima by a factor of nearly 30.

Why are children still in the area, and why are they not receiving large doses of KI would displace radioactive iodine from their thyroids.

I’m beginning to think Tokyo Electric Power Company strategy is to channel the Bobby McFerrin song, “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

My Hunch Seems to Have Been Vindicated

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I have always felt that the Black Death in Europe was from something significantly different from the Bubonic Plague as we know it now, if just because the speed of the spread was astonishingly fast (something more than 20 miles a day in Britain).

Well, a study now indicates that it was likely a variant of Yersinia pestis that was genetically predisposed to go pneumonic, meaning that the transmission would have been far faster than the flea borne variants that we see today:

It was already known as perhaps the bleakest episode in British history.

Now, new research suggests the Black Death was even more lethal than was previously thought.

The findings go further to exonerate rats as being responsible for the outbreak, which swept the country in the middle of the fourteenth century, killing vast swathes of the population.

Instead, the study claims the disease was passed directly from human to human and was, in fact, pneumonic plague – a more virulent and infectious form than bubonic plague, which has historically been blamed.

………

The same bacteria – which is almost identical to the strain still found on four continents – is responsible for both bubonic and pneumonic plague, but the experts taking part in the show concluded that the latter, which is spread by the fleas of infected rats, would not have been able to have the devastating impact caused by the Black Death.

Dr Tim Brooks, an expert in infectious diseases from Public Health England who is based at Porton Down – the Wiltshire site used by the government for dealing with biological threats – said: “As an explanation, for the Black Death in its own right, it is simply not good enough. It cannot spread fast enough from one household to the next, to cause the huge number of cases that we saw during the Black Death epidemics.”

Instead, he identified what he considers was a mutation from the bubonic plague, borne on rats, to the pneumonic variant, whereby it spread to the lungs of sufferers, who then passed it on to others, by coughing.

This makes sense, though there are alternate ways for it to spread so quickly, such as it being carried by bird borne parasites.

It is almost certain that it was Y. pestis though.

Flight MH370 Sort-Of Found

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Basically, the telemetry data from the 777’s motors was subjected to additional analysis, and Doppler shift allowed them to locate the track of the plane to southwest of Perth, Australia:

Inmarsat leveraged a “groundbreaking but traditional mathematics-based process” to analyze data from other flights that use its satellite network and establish a pattern that helped investigators nail down Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s (MH370) final flight path as traveling south over the Indian Ocean, an Inmarsat executive explains.

Inmarsat’s initial analysis, handed over to investigators on March 11, helped investigators establish the now-famous northern and southern arcs as possible flight corridors for MH370 after it dropped off radar on March 8 over the Andaman Sea.

Inmarsat VP External Communications Chris McLaughlin says the company continued to analyze its data, and concluded on March 23 that the aircraft’s last known position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, well southwest of Perth.

“What we discovered and what we passed to the investigation … is that the southern path predicted fits very well with the path that’s been indicated by our pings,” McLaughlin says. “To all intents and purposes, there’s no way [the aircraft] went north.”

A key calculation done by Inmarsat was determining the “Doppler shift” in the ping, or the slight change in the frequency of the signal caused by the movement of the aircraft relative to the satellite in space.

“From that process – a compression or an expansion of the wavelengths – you can determine whether the aircraft is getting closer or farther away,” McLaughlin explains. “It’s been a groundbreaking but traditional mathematics-based process that was then peer-reviewed by others in the space industry, and indeed contributed to by Boeing.”

It increasingly looks to be some sort of horrible accident, and not malice, with the most rational theory being an electrical fire followed by a diversion to the nearest airport, and then extended operation on autopilot: (The author is a pilot, and it is the only explanation that makes sense)

There has been a lot of speculation about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Terrorism, hijacking, meteors. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN; it’s almost disturbing. I tend to look for a simpler explanation, and I find it with the 13,000-foot runway at Pulau Langkawi.

We know the story of MH370: A loaded Boeing 777 departs at midnight from Kuala Lampur, headed to Beijing. A hot night. A heavy aircraft. About an hour out, across the gulf toward Vietnam, the plane goes dark, meaning the transponder and secondary radar tracking go off. Two days later we hear reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar, meaning the plane is tracked by reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the Strait of Malacca.

The left turn is the key here. Zaharie Ahmad Shah1 was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always. If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do–you already know what you are going to do. When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles. The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.

………

For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations.

MicroFlaccid is Doomed

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Seriously, there is doing the smart thing, and doing the stupid thing, and then there is putting Mark Penn in charge of your strategic planning:

In the biggest shuffling of Microsoft’s executive ranks since the company’s new chief executive, Satya Nadella, took over, Mark Penn, the former aide to the Clinton family, is becoming the company’s chief strategy officer.

The change will give Mr. Penn, who has been an executive vice president at Microsoft overseeing advertising and strategy, a bigger hand in determining which markets Microsoft should be in and where it should be making further investments, according to a person briefed on the change who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it had not been publicly announced.

Tami Reller, the company’s executive vice president for marketing, who shared leadership of advertising and marketing at Microsoft, will leave the company, as will Tony Bates, Microsoft’s executive vice president of business development, this person said.

After the way he handled the Hillary campaign in 2008, when he thought that the Democratic primaries were winner take all, when delegates were proportionately allocated , I’m surprised that anyone would employ him at anything.

This is not bad strategy, this is death throes.

H/t Atrios.

Well, This Sucks!

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How the F%$# did the UAW manage to lose a union election when Volkswagen was their biggest supporter?

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., have rejected the United Auto Workers, shooting down the union’s hopes of securing a foothold at a foreign-owned auto plant in the South.

The vote was 712 to 626, said the UAW, which blamed the loss on “politicians and outside special interest groups.”

The vote, announced late Friday night after three days of balloting, is a devastating loss for the UAW, whose membership has plummeted from a high of 1.5 million in 1979 to around 400,000 today. Outgoing UAW President Bob King had staked his legacy on organizing a Southern auto plant for the first time.

But the decision is a triumph for Tennessee Republicans like Sen. Bob Corker, who lured Volkswagen to Chattanooga as mayor in the early 2000s. Corker and other Republicans warned workers that the UAW’s presence would irreparably harm the plant, and in recent days he claimed — with little evidence — that Volkswagen would choose not to expand the plant if workers unionized.

How the hell did they pull this off?

This was like shooting fish in a barrel.  VW wanted the union so that they could establish a “works council”.

The UAW had advantages in organizing the Volkswagen plant it probably won’t find elsewhere. For starters, Volkswagen — under pressure from the powerful German steelworkers’ union, IG Metall, which holds seats on the company’s board — decided not to resist unionization. The union’s presence would have also allowed the company to set up a German-style “works council,” in which representatives of both workers and middle management offer advice to executives on how to best run the plant.

“I don’t think this is a bellwether for future success for the UAW,” said Donald Schroeder, a management-side labor lawyer at Mintz Levin, before the results were announced. “The UAW almost has had a free run at unionizing.”The UAW had advantages in organizing the Volkswagen plant it probably won’t find elsewhere. For starters, Volkswagen — under pressure from the powerful German steelworkers’ union, IG Metall, which holds seats on the company’s board — decided not to resist unionization. The union’s presence would have also allowed the company to set up a German-style “works council,” in which representatives of both workers and middle management offer advice to executives on how to best run the plant.

“I don’t think this is a bellwether for future success for the UAW,” said Donald Schroeder, a management-side labor lawyer at Mintz Levin, before the results were announced. “The UAW almost has had a free run at unionizing.”

This is an unmitigated disaster for the American worker.

Congress Does the Right Thing, and then Scrambles to Repeal It

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I am talking, of course, about the attempts to repeal changes to the federal flood insurance program, so as to stop subsidizing people who choose to live in flood prone regions:

Setting aside objections from the White House and fiscal watchdogs, a bipartisan Senate majority voted Thursday to delay rate increases in federal flood insurance for coastal property owners from Maine to California.

The 67 to 32 vote reflected mounting political opposition to big insurance hikes that Congress passed in 2012 to prop up the nation’s nearly bankrupt flood insurance program. The bill, which faces an uncertain outcome in the House, would delay the increases for up to four years for hundreds of thousands of property owners across the country, including tens of thousands in Massachusetts.

The measure also postpones the adoption of a new set of official flood maps for coastal regions, which would have dramatically expanded areas designated as prone to floods and required thousands more to obtain costly insurance. In Boston alone, the number of properties encompassed in the new maps would rise from 8,000 to 18,000.

Floods are getting worse because of anthropogenic climate change, and the original maps were too conservative, and the rates were never appropriate to the level of risk.

The solution to ameliorating damage from flooding is not to pay people to live there.