The Incredible Hulk. An Incredible Ass. An Incredible April. Yea, is your team 17-8 without their best player? Probably not.

Cliff. Lee.

Apparently the guy is extremely versatile (Kiper says he could play OT, OG or C). He played hockey, played rugby, fought fire, etc. Seems like a pretty cool dude, I just hope the damn kid can block cause Winston Justice sure can't. Oh, and he's 26 already, which I'm not quite sure is a good thing or bad thing. Overall though, I'm just be happy they didn't trade the pick.

From Scott Wright's Draft Countdown:

Strengths:
• Athletic with terrific quickness and agility
• Nimble feet w/ nice balance and body control
• Outstanding natural strength and power
• Shows the ability to recover when beat
• Will get some movement in the run game
• Understands positioning and angles
• Can get to second level and work in space
• Extremely competitive with a great motor
• Tough and plays with a nasty demeanor
• Still has a ton of unfulfilled potential

Weaknesses:
• A bit older than the normal prospect
• Just average size with short arms
• Frame appears close to being maxed out
• Is not real stout at the point of attack
• Does not have a lot of playing experience
• Raw technique, footwork and hand use
• Will probably have to change positions

Storms in the so-called Golden Triangle, the corners of which are New York, Atlanta and Chicago have caused a lot of air travelers to hunker down at the airport, or return to wherever they came from with plans to try to fly tomorrow. Meanwhile, here in the heart of it all, I'm happy as the proverbial pig. Why? Because I'm coming off a week-long airplane extravaganza in Oklahoma and now I am stranded at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. 

 On arrival this afternoon, I learned my onward flight to New York was canceled due to weather with no chance to get out of town until Friday afternoon. I'm no fool, so I hustled on over to the Hilton O'Hare Airport, which has absolutely one of the best views on the planet for plane spotting. 

The view from my room, if I look left. The view right is equally good.

From my room high above gates E, F and G, I am watching Kalitta Air, KLM and United B747s and Iberia and SAS A340s, British Airways and American B777s take off from Runway 14R. That lineup of Fed Ex and Lufthansa Cargo MD 11s probably won't start moving until late tonight. 

In the foreground, like pawns on the chess board, a passel of American, United and Continental (is that redundant?) RJs are chugging around - cute as can be. I am watching all of this over the screen of my laptop. I can hear the vroom of the engines and smell the jet fuel. Jealous yet?

Refurbishing seats at the American MRO in Tulsa

This all-airplanes-all-the-time afternoon - courtesy of Mother Nature, no foolin' - follows an extraordinary week in which I was trotted from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to learn how rich is the history of aviation in the Sooner state. I guess had I given it much thought, I would have realized on my own that Oklahoma is pretty darned steeped in aviation. 

The state's two biggest employers are the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center and Tinker Air Force Base. And the whopping American Airlines maintenance and repair operation in Tulsa, competes with Lufthansa Technik in bragging that it is one of the largest airline-owned repair operations. (More on this visit from KOTV.)

KC-135 flight crew at Tinker AFB

At Tinker, along with a group of twelve journalists from the U.S. and Europe, I toured the maintenance and repair operation for half a day. Yeah, it's a big building, okay? We rode around in tram that made us feel as if we were headed for Disney World but there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the sight of KC-135s lined up one next to another inside 3.8 million square feet of cavernous space. The base occupies bunches of buildings but we spent most of our time in one of Tinker's new acquisitions, a former General Motors assembly plant the state bought in 2006 and turned over to Tinker.  

Oklahoma feels, I am told repeatedly, that the more it supports aviation, the more stable, well-paying jobs will be available for residents of the state. These are "gold collar" jobs, I was told by Kara Gae Neal, superintendent of TulsaTech, a school that trains students in aviation maintenance and piloting among other things.  With an I'm-serious-but-let's-be-real approach, Kara told me, "This not your father's shop class." 

Susan Brake in a aircraft worked on by Tulsa Tech students

TulsaTech, like Tinker has been the beneficiary of Oklahoma's commitment to enhancing an already well-developed aviation industry. The school's gleaming new campus, spacious airplane hangars and engine shops are designed to turn out mechanics for many of the companies I visited and dozens of others in and outside of Oklahoma. 

Geek confession - I loved engaging in all this plane-talk with other aviation writers and it was with regret that we said our goodbyes this morning and set off on separate flights back to Cleveland, Washington, Paris, Rome and England. I was the only one rolling sevens (and I'm not talking about Boeing sevens here) which is why I am now perched unexpectedly and delightedly over the perpetually busy airfield at O'Hare. Unwilling to remove my head from the clouds after a week at altitude, it turns out for one more night I don't have to.

ATC simulator at FAA Center in Oklahoma City

Just a few days after taking the Flight Safety Foundation to task for publishing what can only be considered outrageously inaccurate statistics in 2007 regarding airport ramp events, I have to commend the Foundation's present boss for his excellent commentary today on the future of air traffic control in the United States. William Voss, writing for CNN, does the seemingly impossible, explaining the nation's air traffic control system and its hot subtopic, Next Gen, in a way that ordinary users of the system can surely understand. Then, like a good controller, he takes them to the next sector, explaining that high tech is good, but the low tech human is and will remain a key wild card in the system.

Regular readers of Flying Lessons know I'm a bit agog over the capabilities of Next Gen, but Bill's right. The overlay of sophisticated technology that marries the power of GPS and computer-fast calculations ain't all upside. As Lady Diana once said of her then-husband - Prince Charles, "there are three of us in the marriage". (Bet you didn't think I could incorporate a gratuitous reference to British royalty during this very special week in an article on air traffic control? Well, I just did.) In the case of the American ATC system, the 3rd person is the marriage is the controller.

So we're up to our ears these days in discussions about the foibles of controllers who are an essential part of the system. They've been sleeping, they've been watching movies, they've been acting generally, well...human, as they toil away in their dark towers helping keep airplanes safely separated. In his closing paragraph, Voss writes, that firing controllers for slip-ups like these may exacerbate the problem rather than remedy it.

"It is far more important to use chronic but minor mistakes to identify a deeper problem, such as irrational shift scheduling or unusual controller fatigue, and determine rational, science-based solutions, rather than fire controllers and drive mistakes deeply underground, unseen and unaddressed, until they emerge to create a tragedy." he writes.

Dave Schraeder FAA ATC instructor supervisor

While Voss was penning this thoughtful examination of the ATC system, I was touring the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City, where over the past five years, some seven thousand air traffic controllers have been trained.

Its almost comical how low-tech is the introduction these student receive. Plastic model airliners on a airport runway that calls to mind the Lego tables my boys used to play on.  But snickering stops as soon as one enters the control tower simulator where the education continues. Two and a half months of classes here, one to two years of on-the-job-training at the end of it all, and the system gets a human orchestrating a mix of high technology tools. 

We tourists to the Monroney Center, a group of a dozen aviation reporters from the US and Europe, were told that earlier that day, "executives from headquarters" had given students a lecture about professional responsibility. Of course our ears picked up at this. "Was it part of the new ATC safety stand down we've heard all about?" But we were assured it was a regular aspect of controller training. It's not too much of a stretch to assume the students were probably more attentive in light of recent news. 

And well they should be because laying aside the complicating factors of fatigue, boredom, technology overload, inconsistent scheduling, and just plain goof-ups and errors of judgment, the reality of air traffic control is that it is high tech/low tech system with a human at the center and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Well, that's one less thing we need to worry about. As we all know, Madden cover = death. Thankfully, America is rather racist, still loves dogs and can't get enough of white running backs. Now our 2011 season won't be ruined (minus the still-not-quite-fixed-very-confusing lockout situation).

On another note, Hillis is fucked. Poor Cleveland, even when something goes right for them they still ultimately lose.

NTSB phot

Well we are just a coupla' aviation writers riding a bus together in Tulsa, Oklahoma today and talking about how Southwest Flight 812 zipped open in flight on April 1st, when suddenly our collective memories zeroed in on what could be a coincidence, or could be something more.

Lori Ranson, Air Transport Editor at Flight Global and I were discussing the latest news from the National Transportation Safety Board that preliminary examination of a four foot plus section of the fuselage that burst open at thirty-four thousand feet showed a number of misshapen and inconsistently aligned rivet holes.

Well of course, the investigation is the NTSB's party, but a lot of armchair investigators (including me) have been all over Southwest, suggesting that its practice of fast turnarounds and short hops may be putting more cycle stress on its 737s than other airlines.  But the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration is weighing in with note of caution about premature opinions. 

Randy Babbitt photo courtesy FAA

Randy Babbitt told a conference 10 days ago that "People have leaped to the conclusion that it was fatigue." Perhaps his not-so-fast approach is the wiser course. "The airplane didn't have that many cycles on it so we're looking at other things, such as the manufacturing techniques," Babbitt said.

And that's what got Lori and me thinking. At the very time that this particular Southwest 737 - tail number N632SW - was coming off the assembly line in the summer of 1996, Boeing was living through a particularly difficult time. 

Boeing, under great competitive pressure from Airbus, was slashing assembly and design jobs by the thousands while boosting production. There was more pressure as the company was launching the B777, its first fly-by-wire airplane. Then came the high profile - and at the time mysterious - crash of the Boeing 747 flying as TWA 800. So momentous was the crisis at Boeing during this time that Business Week quoted an in-house assessment in 1997 that said, "Our production system is broken."

Tooling down the road between visits to aerospace companies in Oklahoma, Lori and I had to wonder if that period of turmoil might be relevant to what happened to Southwest  earlier in the month. If so, operators of all Boeing airplanes produced during this era might want to listen up. Bad times at Boeing 15 years ago may not be over yet. 

Etihad destroyed in Toulouse photo- Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses

If there's one thing you can count on in aviation it is that every aspect of it is a lot more complicated than you think. In a recent post on ramp accidents, I cited a Flight Safety Foundation report which gave some pretty alarming numbers. 

In the May 2007 issue of Aerosafety World, the Flight Safety magazine used numbers from the International Air Transport Association to estimate that there were twenty-seven thousand ramp accidents each year in which 240,000 people were injured. A number of readers have since told me they thought the numbers, which have appeared in other aviation magazines since the article was published were just too high. 

No one quibbles with the statement that ramp accidents are tremendously expensive, after all, it doesn't take too many dings in a $100 million airplane to start running up a serious repair tab. But a quarter of a million injuries? This just can't be. IATA, the source of the original numbers, is arguing with the FSS report.
   

Aeropuerto-Madrid-Barajas Internacional

Anthony Concil, spokesman for IATA said, "ramp fatalities are anecdotally five to ten per year."  He suggested that the quarter of a million injuries cited by FSS are on-the-job injuries, not atypical in any industry that deals with machines and moving vehicles. "To connect the number of on-the-job injury reports to ramp accidents misrepresents actual events."

Curiously, while Jay Donoghue of the Flight Safety Foundation's office of publications admits there was  some discussion over "the disparity in numbers", a week of exchanging emails with the Foundation yields no further explanation.

The Air Transport Association tracks ground-based events, but the numbers are not shared outside of the association.

So what do we know? Well, in the United States, when serious injuries or substantial damage are involved, a report must be filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.  Bob Matthews - attendant of these statistics at the FAA - says that from 1996 to 2010 there were 46 fatal or serious injuries during ground operations at U.S. airports. And while the U.S. is a busy aviation market, it represents just a fraction of commercial aviation worldwide.

The U.S. had a fatality-free year in 2009 and 2010, Matthews said. In other countries it is a different story. At one unidentified airport in India earlier this year, a worker's hand was trapped in an retracting jetbridge and while the employee was rushed to medical care, she did not survive. At an Asian airport, a ramp worker was crushed under the wheels of a power supply vehicle.  

photo- Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses

Ramp workers have been sucked into airplane engines, crushed in scissor lifts and hit by tugs. Five of the people on board this Etihad Airways A340 were injured when the airplane crashed through a containment wall during ground tests. A factor in the loss of the airplane? Wheels not chocked during engine and brake system testing. 

From simple mistakes do great losses originate. 

Whether the emphasis on the collision between an Airbus A380 and a Bombardier CRJ 700 is due to the fact that it was video taped and uploaded to You Tube, or an appropriate reaction to the latest illustration of something larger, there should be no argument that it is imperative that the industry get a handle on the size of the problem. 

That the assessment of two respected aviation institutions can vary so widely tells me that the effort to quantify the issue is long overdue. Last month, IATA began the first worldwide effort to gather meaningful statistics. Overstating the problem is no better than understating it. 

"Ground damage is a big issue but these statistics need to be related to their source," Tony told me while explaining that the FSS numbers just don't add up.  They are not, he said,  "the reality."

Photo courtesy FAA

When the call came in to the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center that the soundtrack to the movie Cleaner was being broadcast on the radio frequency, here's what the FAA supervisor had to say to the two men watching the film. 

(I paraphrase because I was not there to hear it myself.) "If you are going to watch a movie, don't transmit it on the frequency at the same time." He then walked back down the hall to his office.

For this lax enforcement of a policy that prohibits the use of personal entertainment devices at air traffic control stations, the supervisor was suspended. So was the controller who had brought the Samuel Jackson movie with him to work on April 17th.  

The restriction on distractions like music, movies and books is strictly upheld between 6:00 am and 10:00 pm, I am told, when there's enough traffic to keep everyone at the center on-task. On the overnight shift, its another story. 

In fact, watching movies at the control center in Oberlin, Ohio goes on nightly and in several areas of the facility. When one of the controllers watching the film kicked off his shoe it keyed the foot pedal-operated microphone which broadcast the movie's soundtrack to airplanes in the vicinity. The supervisor's lack of concern clearly shows that movie-watching in the center is a don't-ask/don't-tell kind of thing.

This practice is intended to keep workers occupied during long periods of inactivity. And I'll bet it is not unique to Cleveland.

"Now that everybody can put movies and shows on their iPhone, it's probably happening at a rate we can't even imagine," said Missy Cummings, a professor at MIT and specialist in human factors.

Missy says, "People are going to be distracted, they're going to be bored when they have long gaps of time with nothing to do. It's unrealistic to expect a sterile environment and that’s what the FAA wants." I get her point. I keep hearing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talking all gruff-like-daddy saying, "We're not going to pay controllers to nap." Will somebody please explain to this guy that air traffic control scheduling is working against a safe system? 

Whether you agree with the philosophy that stimulated minds are more desirable for the kind of work that requires focused attention - but only occasionally, the problem with saying one thing and doing another is that eventually, something happens. Now air travelers, politicians and bureaucrats are, with apologies to Casablanca 's Capt. Renault, "shocked, shocked I tell you" to find out that movie watching is going on as well as napping.

Does anybody else out there feel sorry for the poor schlump in Ohio who is demonized for doing the same thing as many others with intentions no more malevolent than trying to stay alert on the midnight shift? 

My friend, Missy must be a great mom, she is so understanding of human frailties. Her work is focused on this conundrum; our complex, highly technical world requires an army of people to work in less-than-optimum conditions while making safety-critical decisions. Anything that helps them achieve that, from napping to movie-watching should be considered.

"Can you allow people to be distracted, recognizing that is the natural human state?", Missy asks and not rhetorically. And if so "how to you bring them back? I tell you, this problem is only going to get worse before it gets better."

This is our dilemma. Its time to wake up and take control before the story comes to an unhappy ending.

UPDATE: April 20, 2011 7:00pm EST

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announces firings of controllers tonight. 
See update here.

Before I start, let's all remember that I did this last year and while I predicted the correct final record (10-6), I only got about half the games right individually. So what matters more? Where you end up or how you got there? I'm going with the former, but honestly does it matter if we don't have football next year anyway? Let's hope the owners stop being bitches and end this thing. Chad Hall needs a job.

Anyway, here's an all too premature look at exactly how the Eagles season will go next year:

Week One: at St. Louis (1 PM, FOX)

Um, the Rams? Yea, I know they were better last year and all, but let's be honest...they still suck. If the Eagles don't dominate this game right out of the shoot, we're in trouble. 1-0.

Week Two: at Atlanta (8:20 PM, NBC)

Vick returns home. Atlanta's home opener. The Eagles have owned the Falcons over the past few years, and dominated them last year in the midst of their #1 seed season (with Kolb no less). 2-0.

Week Three: N.Y. Giants (1 PM, FOX)

I feel like the Eagles never play the Giants this early. It's kinda weird to be honest, like a hand job. I mean, you know you've had it before, but it's been so long you can't remember. Anyway, until the Giants actually beat the Eagles again I refuse to believe it can happen. 3-0.

Week Four: San Francisco (1PM, FOX)

The 49ers game, which seems to happen every year, is always close. Like annoyingly so. Whatever, 3-1.

Week Five: at Buffalo (1PM, FOX)

Rumors ran wild that this game would be played in Toronto. It won't be, it will be played in Buffalo. I know some people were pissed about going to Toronto, cause Canada sucks, but Buffalo is worse. It's basically the Canada of the US. 4-1.

Week Six: at Washington (1PM, FOX)

Remember the last time they played the Redskins in Washington? Sure do. Not sure who the Redskins QB will be this year either, but I bet they suck. 5-1.

Week Seven: BYE WEEK

Week Eight: Dallas (8:20 PM, NBC)

I have a weird, sickening feeling that the Cowboys will be good again this year. Everything went wrong for them last year, and they still almost beat the Eagles twice. Andy Reid never loses after the bye though. So I'll run with the big guy here. 6-1.

Week Nine: Chicago (8:30 PM, ESPN)

Monday Night Football. Jaws. Gruden. The Bears. A loss. 6-2.

Week Ten: Arizona (1 PM, FOX)

I'm not sure what to make of the NFC West yet. They can't possibly be that bad again, but will they be good? Probably not. 7-2.

Week Eleven: N.Y. Giants (8:30 PM, NBC)

I think I've covered my thoughts on the Giants. 8-2.

Week Twelve: New England (4:15 PM, CBS)

The Patriots don't have that aura anymore, not after choking in the playoffs last year. They're beatable, they're quarterback is a terrible dancer and cries, They're defense is still a work in progress. But they'll still beat the Eagles. 8-3.

Week Thirteen: at Seattle (8:20 PM, NFL Network)

Stupid Thursday night games. Pain in my ass. As long as Marshawn Lynch doesn't go all beast mode on us, I think we'll be fine here. 9-3.

Week Fourteen: at Miami (1 PM, FOX)

Remember that awesome game in Miami 8 years ago? Brian Westbrook going all air-born and shit. Eagles won that game, this one too. 10-3

Week Fifteen: N.Y. Jets (4:15 PM, CBS)

The Eagles have finished the last few years on some sour notes. The Jets are probably a bad match-up here, being all good at defense and stuff. Plus a 3-0 sweep of NY is probably too much to ask. 10-4.

Week Sixteen: at Dallas (4:15 PM, FOX)

Odds are this game gets flexed, because I really believe it's our Birds and the Cowboys for the NFC East this year. Sadly, I think this game is a loss, I just have a bad feeling about Dallas this year. 10-5.

Week Seventeen: Washington (1PM, FOX)

It's about time they don't end with Dallas. That was getting old. Anyway, 11-5.

There you have it, 11-5. Not sure what that will be good for, either the #2 or #3 seed, or maybe a wild card if Dallas is really good (fuck the Giants). Either way, the schedule is a pretty balanced one, and there is an awesome road game (Miami) on there. I bet that stadium ends up 75% Eagles fans, easily.

Go Birds.

I have this image in my brain and I can't shake it. There's a man seated at a giant pipe organ, he's wearing morning coat with tails and he is pounding furiously. His fingers fly across all three levels of the keyboard. He's pumping the pedals with his feet, turning the pages on the sheet music, the music swells, the room is shaking. It's sooooo scary. 

This is what it feels like to be me. Here I sit at my keyboard and I am remembering the days when aviation news was an occasional thing. When, in between accidents or pilot strikes or fare wars, we aviation reporters would review a new airplane or write a nice little feature about what pilots and flight attendants pack when they go on vacation.

Them's the good old days.

Instead, I am living in fear. I am terrified of my inbox. The ringing of my telephone sounds like the dun-dun dun-dun soundtrack of Jaws. And can you blame me? Airplanes are going bump in the night. Wreckage is found at the bottom of the sea. Air traffic controllers are having nightmares in their sleep, I mean at work. Children are given security pat-downs. With a horrifying creak and a pffffff a not-so-old B737 gives up the ghost. And that's just the news so far this month. 

Really, what is going on here?

I have a theory. To many people the mere act of getting on an airplane starts the Jaws soundtrack in their brains, because flying seems like the riskiest thing they do; Riskier than driving in the snow, riskier than using a power tool, riskier than moving furniture in flip flops.  So its no wonder that any aviation-related event gets covered as news, even if - to insiders - it is just a quirky punctuation to the normal business of flying people around the world at thirty-thousand-plus feet.

Unusual smell in bin causes Airtran flight cancellation

There is history to this. Remember, in the early days of aviation flight attendants were nurses. What's new is the ability of every air traveler to record and transmit live, every detail along the way. See my photo from a recent trip I took on AirTran, when a mysterious smell in the overhead bin caused the cancellation of my flight. Boring eh?

How much more compelling then, when one's flight includes for your in-flight entertainment, the truly frightening addition of a hole opening up in the top of the cabin as happened to Shawna Malvini Redden on Southwest Flight 812. Or, when the perfectly positioned aviation geek photographing the ordinary comings and goings from a terminal window, just happens to record the world's largest airliner hitting and spinning like a toy, a loaded commuter jet.

"The video was key to understanding that this was more than one plane brushing against another," said Joan Lowy the aviation reporter for Associated Press in Washington, D.C.. Topping off the visual offerings is the availability of real time audio of the the actual conversation between the pilots and controllers on websites like LiveATC.net. "I think LiveATC has had a huge impact on aviation reporting." Joan says, hearing the actual radio exchange has so much more impact than what she calls (politely, of course) the "FAA's few dry statements."

Nicola Clark, who writes about aviation for the International Herald Tribune, says these event-specific dispatches from travelers-on-the-scene "can instantly send pictures, video and tweets or Facebook posts from their seats," while adding that this unfiltered news has the aviation industry responding with their own direct-to-the public communication. Whether this is a good or bad thing, Nicola doesn't say. Smart girl. That's a discussion not far different from the quicksand scene in Journey to the Center of the Earth. 

Patrick Smith, the airline pilot who writes the Salon column Ask the Pilot, and who is never shy about having an opinion, is equivocal. Its good and bad, Patrick says.

What it feels like to be me these days

"It's good because it has become harder for scandal and negligence to go unnoticed and problems that otherwise might be ignored are suddenly under scrutiny.  What's bad is that certain media blow almost everything out of proportion."

Well that's what a good horror movie does right? The music provides the tension while the dim lighting hides the menace. The wind knocking over a garbage can makes us jump. We know no more than what the movie director wants us to know, which is enough to be frightening.

At the risk of appearing self-serving, I'm going to agree with Mike Danko, a lawyer and aviation blogger who suggests that good or bad, all this amateur on-the-scene reporting can be beneficial.

"It has opened the door for bloggers to provide real analysis that the mainstream media can't or won't," Mike wrote to me in an email, citing this AvWeb analysis of the December 2010 American Airlines runway overrun in Wyoming.

In addition to being frantically busy, to be an aviation writer these days means being barraged by disparate facts, tidbits of videos and sound recordings, eyewitness tweets and partial impressions that when stitched together without care can create a Frankenstein-like picture of aviation.

On the other hand, with all the educated sources of information out there and the opportunity to communicate with them using this new technology, anyone truly interested, is able to separate the facts from the scare stories.

It is a good time to be an aviation writer? Frankly, it's a thriller.

This isn't exactly a big surprise, but Michael Vick has made the finals of the Madden '12 cover tournament vote thing on ESPN. Normally any time an Eagles player gets some recognition nationally, I like it. Especially Vick, who whether we like it or not, is now our best player and the key to us winning anything next year. However, the last time this happened, well it wasn't exactly a good omen. I'll spare you the laundry list of shitty things that have happened to NFL players the year they graced the cover of Madden, but it was Vick in 2004 and he promptly broke his ankle. So, yea, here's to Peyton Hillis winning. (Odds Peyton Hillis wins, I draft him on my fantasy team, and he breaks both arms the next day sit currently at 1:1.)

Oh, and doesn't this kinda speak to how much people don't give a shit about the dog-killing anymore? I mean the guy is being voted by the fans to grace the cover of the most popular sports video game ever. Football > dogs, or so says America. (And don't just says it kids voting either, EVERYONE plays Madden.)

Future Andre Iguodala has sent a message back in time in an attempt to change his fate. The current mediocre-76er is future-homeless, addicted to eating diapers and spends his days getting into bumfights in the trash bins behind the City Line Taco Bell.

Iguodala sent his message via FutureTweet, a recent invention in the future (not available for Verizon customers.) Scientists put the tweet through altavista babel fish translator (homeless to english) and found the following:

STOP GIVING ME THE BALL IN PRESSURE SITUATIONS!

Earlier Monday scientists tweeted the message to present-Iguodala with a #showyaluv hastag. Present-Iggy has yet to reply or tweet a response.

Pitching coach Rich Dubee said he had "very high" confidence that Phillies starter Roy Oswalt would make his scheduled start Thursday at San Diego. Oswalt was diagnosed with lower back strain, a condition which has previously sent him to the DL.

Not to worry Phillies fans… during his recent tour stop in Atlantic City Charlie Sheen (didn't) mention his interest in reviving the terminator and replacing Oswalt if needed.

First, I'll give you the potential good news:

For those of you weren't told directly by me, I'd given up on literary agents and had begun to send proposals for my new novel, The Toy Cop, directly to publishing executives and senior editors. Within hours, I got three nibbles. Jason Kaufman of Doubleday agreed to look at the sample chapters I'd sent and Bob Loomis, VP at Random House, said it wasn't his cup of tea but consented to pass it along to an acquisitions editor at RH's imprint, Ballantine.

The biggest nibble came from Judith Curr, Senior VP and Publisher at Atria Books (she's the founder), a major imprint of Simon and Schuster. Understanding, as with Jason Kaufman, how frustrating it can be to find an agent, she'd requested the entire manuscript, Apparently liking what she'd read, she tried to hook me up with a literary agent (who'd, unfortunately for her, rejected it with a form rejection letter just nine days prior to this.). Since then, she's passed the book along to Nick Simonds, an acquisitions editor on her staff. As Ms. Curr reminded me, she's not an editor and while she may have autonomous acquisition power with the editorial board, the journey from manuscript to finished book would be a lot less rocky if she had some consensus on the board. I do not know why she'd invest the precious time of a staff editor unless she thought it was worth the time to read all 470 pages.

I've been chewing my fingernails up to the elbow in virtual silence for the last 5 weeks because every time I tell you guys about some promising development, it's as if I jinx myself and it falls apart like a piece of cheesecloth in a thresher.

Now for the potential bad news: First, last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we lost the free internet access that we'd been using at home since Nov. and since I lost my unemployment benefits last month. We're now living solely on my fiancee's weekly $135 in unemployment insurance, we won't be able to use the local cafe's internet wifi (they generally get cranky when you don't buy something). In fact, I'm here now using their wifi but as the coffee shop closes at 6, this will be it for now.

Since we're now reduced to living on $135 a week, it's only a matter of time before we get evicted either next month or June. Obviously, we cannot afford to get internet access of our own since feeding ourselves is our direst and most immediate challenge. The state Department of Transitional Assistance won't help us since we're neither handicapped nor elderly and the application for SNAP food assistance (aka Food Stamps) I'd requested two days ago takes a month to process (although maybe I can get a hardship dispensation and get my claim processed in a week.).

I have a job interview in a little over 48 hours so perhaps that'll bear fruit but I've been disrespected and disappointed by companies too many times to get my hopes up.

Failing anything positive, Mrs. JP's seriously considering us moving to Texas or Florida on the vague promise of her securing employment. And, having lived in both states, I so incredibly do not want to leave New England, leave the place I fought so hard to get and keep since the Troubles of two years ago. Going back to where she came from would be an admission to her family of my failure, my inability to take care of my own fiancee. Plus, the prohibitive cost of highway gas for a car and a rental truck, plus tolls, would make moving too expensive.

I hate inflicting these constant personal financial troubles on you guys as I realize this kind of embarrassing disclosure borders on the irritating and perhaps even on the intrusive. But I have more than just myself to worry about. I also have a fiancee and a cat to keep fed and sheltered.

I'm sorry if this proves to be an inconvenience or an irritation for any of you but I suspect this is what John Lennon meant when he talked about life getting in the way when you're making other plans. We're slowly going under in spite of my most valiant attempts to keep our heads above water. I was hoping and praying that an advance from Atria would come to rescue us in time but that looks less and less likely. A job interview, let alone an actual paying job, is an utter impossibility. I was lucky to get the one I secured yesterday. I miss the America I knew.

If any of you could help out again or for the first time ever, not only would we appreciate it but if I get the book deal that I believe I'll get from Simon & Schuster, you can consider it a loan and every one of you will be repaid. As it is, we have less than zero chance of paying our $650 a month rent on May Day, much less stay fed, pay the $45+ gas bill that just came in, electric, car insurance, cell phone minutes and everything else that pops up.

Our backs are against the wall like never before, thanks in large part to getting clobbered with $1000 in car repair bills since last winter. There's no other place to go but up and anyone who can help us can consider any Paypal donation a loan they'll eventually get back.

P.S. I just found out I owe the IRS $438 because I couldn't afford to have federal withholding taxes taken out when I was on UI last year.

Weeee...!!

Ooops!!

Just like they drew it up. Back to back lockdowns of the Nationals bats to win another series. Straight domination by Cliff Lee and a Chooch-Bomb in the 6th was all the Phils needed to head back home with a .750 winning percentage. Now the focus shifts to a certain bashing of the Marlins.

Losing two consecutive games isn’t even possible, right?

Who needs to come up with their own clever tweets when the website 'That Can Be My Next Tweet' will do all the heavy lifting for you. The tweet you see above was the result I got when I put TheWizWit's twitter handle in. The site just scans every tweet you've ever posted and tries to make a coherent sentence out of random words and phrases you've used in the past. A lot of the time it makes absolutely no sense. But I was bored and kept hitting 'get your next tweet' about 180 times. Hit the jump to see some of the better randomness this site spit out for TheWizWit.

Cliff Lee. Boom.

See the previous post on this subject here

Stand by because in a matter of minutes, you may start seeing photos from the latest airport ramp event; a catering truck that clipped the wing of a Southwest 737 at Bradley International Airport this morning. Until then, and proving once again that there's-no-such-thing-as-a-new-accident in aviation, I invite you to view the photos of this week's A380 collision with a Delta Connection CRJ at JFK airport.  (Alright, alright, here's the video too.) 

Photos courtesy NTSB

It ain't pretty, but if it looks like something you've seen before, perhaps that's because you have. A remarkably similar photo appears in the May 2007 edition of Aerosafety World the magazine of the Flight Safety Foundation.

From the article Defusing The Ramp Aerosafety World 2007

Even if you didn't read the article but just looked at the pictures, you've got to remember this one.  An Airbus A320 on push back from the gate encounters the wing of a Boeing 777. Go ahead and click through to the full report which you can find here. 

Or, if you wish, here's the thumbnail version and my own take on it. 

Ground-based accidents and incidents are phenomenally expensive for industry, anywhere from $4 to $10 billion dollars a year in repairs and equipment down time. Or as Bob Matthews of the FAA put it, "Damage to the wing of an A380, a bazillion people inconvenienced;  you’re sucking up money like crazy over this one." 

On the human side, according to statistics from several years ago compiled by the International Air Transport Association, the Flight Safety Foundation estimated there were twenty-seven thousand ramp accidents a year in which 240,000 people were injured.  This runs the gamut from ground personnel to passengers, gate agents and flight crew. I made a small list describing some of the fatal accidents at U.S. airports over the past few years, which you can see here. 

The numbers seem high even to the folks at IATA and they should know. The organization has had its hand on the pulse of ground operations for years. Beginning last month, it began the first industry wide effort to collect data on ground based events.

Most accidents are like the one at Bradley involving land-based vehicles like fuel and catering trucks hitting airplanes or engines. But some are plane-on-plane just like Monday's JFK event.

When I ask my contacts at IATA and the FAA, "What is the common factor in these accidents?" I am told that a lack of standardized procedures plays a large role.

Photo courtesy NTSB

Safety isn't a new science.  It is well known what contributes to accidents - any kind of accident - working too quickly, inconsistent practices, lack of communication. So its striking that even today, there is no standard practices manual for ground operations. Each airport, sometimes each airline, determines its own way of working. 

Throw in ever busier airports and a growing fleet of large - no let's call 'em humongous - airplanes reducing clearance margins and well, there's your recipe for chaos. 

But wait, there's news. Next year, IATA will distribute to its members - roughly 93% of all the world's airlines - a ground operations manual, the "first globally harmonized set of ground handling procedures which will improve ramp safety and reduce training requirements," said Anthony Concil, director of communications for IATA. The idea here is to codify the best practices and eliminate a lot of the make-it-up-as-we-go along practices that result in bent tin, broken bones and worse. 

Had it been a picture book, it couldn't have come at a better time.