Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Dr. Todd Grande"
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I've changed careers more than a few times myself, did a full military career as well. Lost everything a few times as well, losing a paid for house due to it being stripped of every ounce of copper in the building, walls and floors damaged to get to the copper, all furniture stolen, all electronics stolen, even family pictures strewn about while I was deployed. Some thank you for your service.
Had expensive property stolen during two moves.
Lost my wife coming up on three years ago after over 41 years together to sepsis that advanced fatally in only a few hours. My last memory of her was performing CPR on her when the police arrived and took over, then the EMT's arrived and well, I've done CPR before, but it's different when you feel your wife's ribs breaking under your compressions...
Even ended up homeless for a bit after that, just totally losing all drive for a period of time.
Oddly, never felt like driving a car through a crowd of people, trying to bomb a hotel or shoot some CEO. Maybe tie some shoelaces together around a chair... ;)
I'm also rather accustomed to being the best in each field I've been in, so if I'm not careful, I could go onto an ego trip and that never works out well.
And I walk on water. But, only when it's been really, really cold for quite a while...
But, I'm a perfect 10 - alas, on the Richter scale.
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I've failed more times than Carter had Little Liver Pills, learned, moved on.
One lead, a team trainer that trained the FBI on IT security things said to my lead, "He keeps making mistakes, but they're new mistakes, he doesn't repeat mistakes".
You succeed or fail, fail, learn and advance or well, continue failing, ala many HP execs converting the company from engineering centric to venture capital centric.
And why I won't buy their products beyond the LP5 series.
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So, we need to rake out the forests, like countries that don't have these fires (or deserts that are artificially propped up by irrigation until droughts cut off the water supply) don't do?
The severity of wildfires is due to mismanagement, due to insufficient knowledge and good intentions initially. Wildfires are natural occurrences and the ecosystem evolved around them. What we did for generations was to fight every fire as if it's something we could always prevent and control, adding to the mat of decaying fuel by literal yards in some places, so that when fires became intense enough, the fire traveled beneath the surface of that mat of fuel.
Then, some heretic came along and linked studies, conducted some of his own and found that allowing controlled burns lessened the severity of wildfires. Much resistance for much of a remaining generation and we're at today and trying to figure out how to decock that cannon we accidentally aimed at ourselves - while still building in wildfire prone areas.
And no, raking out the goddamned forests is a non-starter, get a sense of reality, rather than what some failed businessman turned unreality TV star turned politician says, he's also the guy who thinks we can nuke hurricanes to blow them out and apples are in supermarket refrigerators. Aerating the fuel isn't a solution, it's in invitation to a worse disaster.
If you're inside of the cylinder and survived the compression cycle, it's not time to light a match to look around.
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@terryowen6759 the problem also is, there's federal land that he can't control or manage and state/county land that can be managed. For what can be managed, before things get too dry, controlled burns over time would help, as that ecosystem originally was subject to both natural uncontrolled and natives controlled burns that limited vegetable matter that was dead and just waiting for lightning or other ignition sources to light it off.
But, budgets and the ignorant fighting such control measures conspired against all to result in this mess, so all are stuck with trying to control a wildfire in high winds instead. Thankfully, the weather reports are saying that the winds are falling off, giving responders a break in trying to control the mess.
Gonna take a huge amount of muscle and sweat, plus tanker aircraft to wrangle the mess! Wish I was younger and still able to offer to help, but those days are long gone now.
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The shame of it is, had she worn an N95 filter mask, she'd have likely avoided infection.
It's one of over a dozen hemorrhagic fevers that afflict humanity, with other forms of infection having a much lower morbidity and mortality rate than HPS.
The thyroid medication, difficult to say if it contributed. I take methimazole for Graves disease, a form of hyperthyroidism that itself nearly killed me thrice. Soon, I'll be tapered off, as my immune system, being bored with just attacking receptors has decided to attack the entire gland and Hashimoto's eventually destroys the entire thyroid gland - so, I'll eventually be taking thyroid hormones instead. As much as I loathe taking pills, I more intensely waking up dead, it being ruinous to my weekend plans.
Methimazole is beyond difficult to overdose on, similar with thyroid hormone tablets. So, self-harm isn't likely and I've spilled my pills a few times just this year.
HPS patients are known to suffer sudden collapse, typically having the lungs infected and systemic hemorrhagic fever, literally damaging the epithelial cell lining of their blood vessels, causing them to leak. Headline capturing hemorrhagic fevers being Marburg or Ebola, with an actually similar fatality rate, they're far from as spectacular as Hollywood makes them out to be and far more common and endemic within the SE US being dengue fever. Marburg and Ebola being zoonotic, aka spread by animals like hantavirus, in their case, largely via infected bats, dengue being spread by mosquitos and four strains infect humans. With dengue, if one's infected by one strain, then infected after recovery by the other, the effects are dire, as immune response fails to be effective against the second strain. That said, such dire infections are a rarity, recovery is typically within days and fairly uneventful, well, save for its nickname requiring significant pain relief - break bone fever, because it feels like one's bones are being broken.
So, masks and mosquito repellent, people! The biggest killer of man isn't man, it isn't rats or mice, it's the humble mosquito.
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Unlimited, unrestricted, uncorrected free speech is the favorite tool of Joseph Goebbels.
Unopposed, well, history speaks for itself and since we've not learned from WWII, we'll get to experience WWIII and even bigger and better camps.
We'll all give a wonderful, glowing review of the results, a totally Cerenkov glow.
Your choice, folks. I grew up hearing about that war and its destruction and costs from those directly involved in the fighting, although one uncle that liberated one of the camps never would speak about the experience. I heard about it from a few neighbors and later, other elders that had the camp tattoos. Suffice it to say, I'll fight fascists to the last drop of their blood, as I am also a wartime combat veteran.
My earliest memory, other than being pricked with a diaper pin, was of JFK being assassinated and watched the civil rights movement gain traction and now, appearing to be reversing.
My Twaddle account is long closed, my FB account is now disabled and if he wants to retain a fact free site, in June my charter membership will be deleted. I only kept my account to keep touch with my kids and later, grandkids while deployed.
I've long ceased calling these sites social media, they're antisocial media and frankly, they need my eyes and input for the advertisers to spew advertisements at, I really don't need them.
Always remember, old truckers never die, they just get a new Peterbilt.
Hey, I was only 5 tons and below, as well as armored vehicles of a wee bit more tonnage than that, semis, those I never learned how to operate, although had the opportunity for training been offered, of course I'd have accepted it. I've never declined any form of training. I'll still not decline training, even in my 60's.
I've done everything from shoveling, swinging a 10 pound sledgehammer, finishing concrete, electrical work, plumbing work, sawn more wood than I care to think about, refinished furniture, am a certified electronics technician to component level repair service, worked on nuclear weapons, was an SF medic, worked with explosive demolitions and later, evacuation and medical NCO, operations NCO and beyond, IT engineer and IT security. I've taught electronics theory and practical, complete with tutoring flagging students in algebra and trigonometry, land navigation, basic and advanced marksmanship, advanced medical and intravenous and drug therapies in a field environment, field sanitation and hygiene (with special attention to water purification and waste management) and even some nuclear weapons physics.
Entertainingly, I was highly proficient in every one of those occupations and activities. My favorites, teaching and running clinics. Next place, cooking.
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One thing about Greenland is, the US had multiple bases there, now we've just got Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule AFB. The other bases, well, the Ice won, as usual.
We even had, much to Denmark's ire, an attempted ICBM base buried in the glacier. Didn't work out well, differential flow in the glacier caused many corridors to suddenly not stay continuous, becoming blocked when flow moved the corridor edges away from each other laterally. The nuclear reactor had many hot loop leaks, resulting in many barrels full of radioactive waste and eventually, the entire mess was abandoned.
Denmark made the US go back and clean up the radioactive waste that was abandoned there, with some rather blistering comments.
We've other posts there, scientific ones that have absolutely no military usage. One recently observed the fastest movement of a glacier ever recorded, the glacier accelerating to visible movement speeds to even a casual observer.
Now, if I was Denmark defending my territory, first declare Article 5 for NATO against the US. Then, have trawlers drag anchors across the SOSUS sensor lines between Greenland and Iceland, rinse and repeat between Iceland and the UK. That'd tie up US fleet support. Then, mine the piss out of the region, cutting off SLOC for the North Atlantic.
Now, the US is spending billions to mere millions in being an annoyance. Toss in some anti-aircraft batteries, now it's a no-fly zone and fucking up the airlines. More billions lost.
Might end up with a US victory, but it'd be trivially turned Pyrrhic.
Panama, easy as well, mines and blow the locks. All you win is a trench and yellow fever, bon appetit on the turdburger. With one's forces surrounded on two sides of a really big stagnant trench.
Then, Trump can move on Airstrip One and he can order mandatory telescreens installed in the proles homes.
Damned shame that kid in Pittsburgh couldn't make a shot that any first week of marksmanship basic trainee could make.
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@aarondavis8943 if the government had aircraft, drone or otherwise operating, they'd neither confirm, nor deny. It's boilerplate and required for addressing a program of record that's sensitive.
But, testing a sensitive system isn't done over densely populated areas, as one's then exposing capabilities that are being tested. Hence, why the U-2, SR-71, F-117, B2 all were tested out of Groom Lake and officially, nothing ever took off from Groom Lake.
Hell, the best case study is the insanity from Roswell, where an atmospheric sampling balloon, collecting samples of air after Soviet nuclear testing, crashed. Generations of hilarity ensued, while the DoD remained silent until the declassification date expired and even today, the actual report remains rejected by the faithful. The greatest evidence of space alien presented by the faithful? Honeycomb aluminum - something classified at the time, now a common substance utilized in refrigerator truck walls. And pretty much the worst thing one could ever want to utilize in a pressurized aircraft, let alone a spacecraft.
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Difficult to analyze anything without all of the pertinent facts available yet.
Known, a warning was sent to the accident flight to warn of a potential bird strike threat. A literal minute later, the aircraft radioed a mayday call for a bird strike. Insufficient time during a stabilized approach to escape that kind of risk, engines take time to spool up thrust enough to begin significant maneuvers.
Aircraft attempted a landing, landing gear failed to deploy, TOGA was engaged (hopefully, as they did go around for a missed approach due to landing gear deployment failure), reciprocal approach was approved for the mayday flight (otherwise, they'd have had to circle the airport and begin a whole new approach on the original course). Belly landing was attempted, flight was without flaps or landing gear, thrust reversers did engage, but were ineffective. Video exists of a compressor stall in the #2 engine (starboard side). The reversers indicate at least partial hydraulic pressure was present, as they're hydraulically actuated, no out of balance thrust observed on landing when the reversers were engaged, indicating failure of the remaining #1 engine.
One odd report was stating something about a bird lodged in the wing, but I've not observed any further reporting on that, so that may just be noise. It is beyond unusual though for a bird to penetrate a wing, damage a wing, damage control surfaces, destroy an engine, but I'm unaware of any flights that have had a bird actually penetrate a wing and damage the hydraulic lines and/or actuators and aircraft are tested and certified to survive bird strikes to the wings.
So, open questions that the flight recorders will reveal, did #2 entirely fail, which appears likely? Did #1 fail and if so, when? Did the crew engage the APU and get it up to speed in sufficient time to retain full hydraulic function, which does take a fair amount of time during an emergency? Why did the crew fail to pull the landing gear manual deployment controls, which would have allowed the gear to drop and lock under both gravity and air flow assistance? With the gear down, they'd have lost airspeed rapidly and may have then avoided an overspeed landing that was extremely long - especially with no wheels with which to brake with. Also missing, the speed brakes, which automatically deploy along with landing spoilers when the gear is down and otherwise would have to be manually activated.
Panic isn't really a first consideration, pilots operate and survive by following checklists and checklists take time, hence reliance in time critical emergencies on memory items. In either case, quite a few disasters have been traced to not following a checklist or missing a memory item.
Basically, the accident occurred in absolutely the worst possible time, at the end of final approach and at a cleared to land time frame and that is where most fatal accidents do occur. Losing engine power on one engine is recoverable, it's literally part of the design of the aircraft and is necessary for certification. But, bird strikes can and have damaged both engines and damaged engines can manage to operate for some time after initial damage, we'll need the flight recorder data on the EPR and maybe EGT to be certain if the turbines were catastrophically failing or failed, but #2 is likely due to the observed compressor stall and consistent with fatal damage due to ingestion of a sizable object, specifically, a large bird. We're not talking sparrows or pigeons, we're talking geese or even larger, so twice the weight of a chicken or more, depending upon what species is being struck at a couple of hundred miles per hour and turbines spinning at 10000 - 25000 RPM, the fan spinning at 1000 - 4500 RPM.
And in a high workload, information overload environment, where CRM (Cockpit Resource Management) is critical to offset the massive workload between crew members. Landing is already a high workload situation, pop a sudden emergency and multiple problems into the mixture during one's final leg of landing, it's a hot mess of tons of information, only some being critical, flooding the displays and computer and without teamwork, has often resulted in disaster.
It certainly didn't help having the antenna array for the approach system resting on top of a tall double reinforced concrete wall, which is unconscionable to every pilot I've spoken to. Normally, they're on low concrete pads and on steel towers, which at least will shear off, even if they do damage the aircraft badly. Concrete, one may as well rammed into a mountain and frankly, it's a bit of a miracle that even two survived that crash.
But, panic would them imply rash and hasty actions and there's no sign of significant control inputs that would indicate panic. There was little time and as was noted with the Hudson River forced landing, both engines can be fatally damaged by a flock of large birds and there are a plethora of examples one can find where one engine immediately failed, the other failing later and again, on landing, that's doubleplus ungood.
Still, I'll await the report on the recorder's logs, which will fully tell the sad tale.
That the pilots accepted coming in hotter than a two dollar pistol suggests a loss of thrust though, but that's an educated guess from someone that hasn't flown in quite a few years. But, I do remember there not being a hell of a lot of time available to even panic when things go sideways and one being quite busy analyzing indicators and messages, while going through checklists and worst case, memory items. There is a very real possibility that things went so disastrously wrong, in a worst case scenario way, that the checklist and memory items just couldn't be completed until a half minute or longer after the crash and if thrust is absent, a missed approach then won't get you a go around, you're not going to miss the ground.
Because, gravity always wins.
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End of story, he exploited, likely unknowing, Murphy's Law. Barriers were down for maintenance, he showed up just in time.
For the religious malconversion, there's a specific set of personality defects that are present in terrorists and I've real world experience there.
Sociopathic and narcissistic being primary, schizophrenia helps, but are typically rejected by planners due to unpredictability and false triggering.
I'd go on, but the audience would grow glazed eyes.
His erratic behavior was reported by a second husband, not the wife herself, there might be bias, not a good house to stack cards on, hell, at this point the lot of "evidence" available is questionable, to put it gently.
Consistent, likely, but weak tea.
I've, as I've said, dealt with such people, both militarily and well, socially. Unpleasant, in some ways, to put it gently. But, one has to respect the culture and society or engage in hostile actions that are literally suicidal. Easier and safer to drop a JDAM on the SOB after departing and being beyond sight, as is the cultural norm in such an environment.
I've argued religion with both Christian and Muslim fundamentalists, having read both religious texts. Understanding an opponent can frequently result in the ability to convert those willing and capable to something safer for all. The others, well, as I said, military and those not "disarmed" via ideas, remained a threat that had already killed multiple civilian non-combatants, so mischief managed via high explosives.
In one case, we were able to help dig out non-combatants from the rubble of living next door, a decidedly unpleasant experience, but the villagers respected us for doing so alongside them and greatly appreciated the removal of a monster in their midst that they rightfully feared.
Still have some nightmares of that dig out, more on other experiences, but I'm dealing reasonably well overall. Although, there is some threat to the VA budget by some amateur night at the White House again...
Don't get me started on electrics, I've -45 db hearing loss, many internal combustion engine vehicles are quiet enough to be a threat at times to my deafening ass, electrics add to complexity and actually add to PTSD issues due to processing overload.
As for a life of failure... One only succeeds if one fails and recovers and learns and advances.
I've four careers under my belt at age 63, all being proficient at those careers, per evaluations. The career path failed economically, moved onward to more complex fields, from TV repair to IT security, on top of a military career.
One lead complained to our trainer once, "He keeps making mistakes", the trainer replied, "Yes, but he never repeats a mistake, he makes all new mistakes and guided in the right direction".
Said lead, also an infamous team wrecker, if things didn't go his way.
Long story there, he found more fertile grounds for his toxicity.
One odd thing reported, "They were at the same military base", that and a quarter won't get a phone call. There can be 25000 - 50000 employed and assigned on some military bases and nobody has a time frame.
If I was assigned to a base that Benedict Arnold was assigned, did we know each other?
You didn't address that, thankfully, as well as maybe a later awshit...
And oh, my differential blood pressure is quite low currently, due to a flaw in my health system's communication between patient, pharmacy and resident. So, I'm far from at my best.
There's one thing worse than aging. Not living long enough to age.
<grumble> <grumble> <grumble>...
Context, got about a half dozen medical issues that are trying to kill me, from a mitral valve blown, through AAA and more in between.
While stressed by being so poor that a church mouse stopped off to drop of crumbs.
Shared another moron's cultural and military history, but oddly refrained from renting an expensive vehicle, shooting myself and detonating a rather shittily designed bomb.
I'll stick with my glue gun, "Got a gun and know how to glue your shoes to the floor with it".
The rifles and handguns, safely inside of the safe.
They only come out on hunting season, when I can be assed enough to consider dragging a deer or competition for cash prize.
Hint, it's only competition now, when I have to calculate trajectories, wind, barometric pressure and the spin of the earth. In a way I can only suggest to being courtesy of my dyslexia.
Want to meet up?
<grumble> <grumble> <grumble>... :P
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