Good Gracious, All These Accidents

Accidents and "human error" abound these days. Oopsie!

Swine Flu May Be Human Error
"May" be? Human "error"? Yeah, rrrrright! Get better information about it here.

One-fourth of overseas votes go uncounted

WASHINGTON (AP) - One out of every four ballots requested by military personnel and other Americans living overseas for the 2008 election may have gone uncounted, according to findings being released at a Senate hearing Wednesday. ... there is a chronic problem of military voters being sent a ballot without sufficient time to complete it and send it back. He cited estimates that a ballot can take up to 13 days to reach an overseas voter.

Oopsie! Most military persons tend to vote Conservative, by the way. Gosh darn it, we'll just have to DO something about all this human error.

Buffalo Plane Crash Linked to Pilots Fatigue

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board's inquiry in Washington focused its attention on pilot fatigue as a possible contributing factor to the crash of Continental Airlines Flight 3407, which killed all 49 people aboard and one person on the ground.

Co-pilot Rebecca Shaw, 24, was working out of Newark Liberty International Airport and had complained about having a cold on the day of the Feb. 12 crash.

The night before the crash, she flew overnight as a passenger from Seattle, investigators told the hearing. The trip required her to change planes in Memphis en route to Newark.

Uh huh. Well, what about the PILOT of the plane, an experienced pilot who was making three times more than the co-pilot (which of COURSE means that he was not fatigued nor inexperienced)?

Renslow reportedly had little hands-on experience with a stick-pusher — a critical component in a system used in emergencies. It automatically kicks in when a plane is about to stall, pointing the aircraft's nose down into a dive so it can pick up enough speed to allow the pilot to guide it to a recovery.

According to flight data records recovered from the crash, the captain put the stick-pusher in the wrong position when the plane began to nose dive. Renslow pulled back on the plane's control column, apparently trying to bring the aircraft out of the sudden dive by raising the nose up. Pushing forward to gain speed is the proper procedure.

Pardon me, but as unfamiliar with a stick-pusher as Renslow may have been, as an experienced pilot with at least some hands-on experience, it's pretty obvious that he would know which direction to move the stick. I mean, I've never even been in a cockpit, but even I've seen those old Sky King shows.

The entire crash is suspicious, and should be treated as such. Not to mention that another 9/11 relative has been killed. Oopsie. These 9/11 folks have SUCH terrible luck.