Let’s have a look back at the nation’s worst-ever oil spill, by the numbers:
NAMI On the Germanwings Air Crash
Reprinted in full: NAMI shares the grief of the rest of the world over the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. We extend our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this senseless tragedy. As often happens in tragedies, information emerges first through an immediate frenzy of reporting in news media and then through more careful analysis. … Read More
Don’t Blame Depression
This is in Forbes, so I don’t have to write it: You saw a depressed person today. Probably dozens or hundreds of them. They drive cars. They perform surgery. They fly planes — and safely land them. Of course, that’s been frequently forgotten since last week’s devastating Germanwings tragedy. Many pundits quickly blamed the horrific plane crash on depression, noting … Read More
Stigmatization Of Mental Illness Begins
So it looks like the copilot responsible for that awful crash was “depressed”. Let the stigmatising of mental illness commence. — Alexa Muir (@awannabe_writer) March 27, 2015 Depression is no excuse to kill 150 innocent people. The copilot was a dirt bag, and deserves to be remembered as one. #Germanwings — Imperious (@Aryte) March 27, 2015 It’s an explanation, not … Read More
Co-Pilot Had Undisclosed Illness
The recent GermanWings crash gets more interesting everyday it seems: …[I]nvestigators had found a sick leave certificate valid for “several days” including Tuesday — the day of the crash. They also found the certificate’s carbon copy, which is supposed to be presented to employers. “It seems clear that he deliberately ignored the doctor’s directive,” a spokesperson said. The revelation came … Read More
Deliberate Mass Murder
The co-pilot of the doomed Germanwings Airbus A320 locked his captain out of the cockpit before deliberately crashing into a mountain to ‘destroy the plane’, it was sensationally revealed today. French prosecutor Brice Robin gave further chilling details of the final ten minutes in the cockpit before the Airbus A320 plunged into the French Alps killing 150 people. Revealing data extracted … Read More
I’m Guilty
I was going to write a post about disaster porn — specifically, the CNN wall-to-wall coverage of Germanwings Airbus A320 flight which crashed in the southern French Alps yesterday, taking 150 souls. I was going to write about the aching narrative they repeat over and over again, and the strained effort they make to come up with a different “angle” (“Coming … Read More
Flightradar Is A Scary App
Actually, it is a cool app, but it scares the crap out of me sometimes. This is a live screenshot of Hawaiian Airlines Flight 47 from Oakland to Honolulu. What the hell is going on??? UPDATE: The Hawaiian Airlines website said it is being diverted back to Oakland, although it has just been circling in that same spot for over … Read More
Scary Dashcam of Taiwan TransAsia ATR-72 Plane Crash
The wing clips the car in front, then goes into Taipei River. Incredibly, 15 have survived. 28 dead; 18 still missing. This isn’t the one making the rounds. This is actually a more rare (but clearer) dashcam video taken from the car BEHIND the car whose dashcam video is making the rounds. UPDATE: The Guardian is reporting that the taxi driver … Read More
So Long It’s Been Good To Know You
So… we're experiencing the deadliest outbreak of ebola in history. It's so bad that the leading ebola doctor died yesterday. Fortunately, it is all happening in Sierra Leone and other parts of Africa. But then this happens: UPDATE: They were checking out a patient who wanted to be checked out because s/he just came back from a country … Read More
Didn’t See This Coming?
West Virginia'ss image as caring more about corporations than people is really being bolstered this week. West Virginia emergency planners never put together any strategy for dealing with spills of a toxic chemical from the Freedom Industries’ tank farm, despite the facility’s location just 1.5 miles upstream from a drinking water intake serving 300,000 people, officials acknowledged this morning. Local emergency … Read More
Beyond Horrible
Really horrible: Corpses hung from trees, were scattered on sidewalks or buried in flattened buildings — some of the 10,000 people believed killed in one Philippine city alone by ferocious Typhoon Haiyan that washed away homes and buildings with powerful winds and giant waves. As the scale of devastation became clear Sunday from one of the worst storms ever recorded, … Read More
Meanwhile, On the Other Side Of The World
Scary cyclone affecting billions of people. Hardly a blip about it in the news here though. Bigger than Katrina, this thing is going 135 mph. And will affect about 6.1 million people.
Those Who Don’t Laugh At The Past Are Forced To Repeat It
So this happened in 1919: Panorama of the Molasses Disaster site On January 15th, 1919, in what was probably the most bizarre disaster in United States' history, a storage tank burst on Boston's waterfront releasing two million gallons of molasses in a 15 ft-high, 160 ft-wide wave that raced through the city's north end at 35mph destroying everything it touched. … Read More
Blame Obama
I'm always amazed at how many Republicans can just lie to themselves about basic immutable facts. Here's the latest example: A significant chunk of Louisiana Republicans evidently believe that President Barack Obama is to blame for the poor response to the hurricane that ravaged their state more than three years before he took office. The latest survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy … Read More