Kodo Mount

Dangerous Gadgets

Last week I was on a AirFrance-KLM flight happily listening to Within Temptation on my iPod when the whole blabla about electronic equipment was announced as usual. And of course I was instructed to switch off the iPod as it might interfere with the sensitive electronics of the airplane... Sigh.

After so many years, after so many millions of people that were transported with active gaming devices, laptops, cell phones and whatever not one single plane crashed because of that. I can imagine that in the very early days of the GSM airlines and safety regulators were cautious. But that was more then a decade ago - almost 2 it must be by now! Have they still not figured out that it is impossible to overtake the controls of a Boeing with a PSP? That it is only in SF movies that you can override the computer system of an advanced alien society with a laptop?

Or turn it around. You are a baddie and you want to crash a plane. Bummer: security! Can not get any explosives on board. What to do? Think think think. Suddenly you got it, you buy a gameboy at the airport and a cell phone you already had that. Security could not care less and you enter the plane with your deadly devices. You go to your seat and secretely you switch on both. But you keep them in your pocket. Nobody can see the toys of death! And when after a while the plane is on the runway speeding you simultanously press the dial button on your cell phone and the A button on the gameboy: BOOOOM!

Stupid story right? So then why the *beep* are we subjected to those stupid instructions concerning turning off electronic equipment?

Just kidding

Beijing, Friday 12 September 2008,

An enormous explosion was the wake-up call for almost all of the proud hard working people of Beijing.
The chief of police Mr. Ma Tian stated that he had never seen such a terrible scene in his whole career. Further he announced that the person(s) responsible for this horrendous deed will not go unpunished.
The police did not want to comment on the remains of two bottles of hazardous chemicals found at the rim of the crater. According to a reliable source know to our journalist, these chemicals: sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid are used to make home bombs. Continued on page 2 of this issue

Just Kidding. We were having some trouble in getting a specific assay set-up in China. Nothing to complicated, in a sense it is very basic old analytical, or if you wish clinical, chemistry. It involves some extraction and hydrolysis in which sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid solutions play a role; just mL amounts. Chemicals so common that I would not think twice before using them. In fact you can probably buy them at any decent hardware store or whatever equivalent to that you may have in the neighbourhood. Agreed, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) in pure form is not innocent and neither is concentrated hydrochloric acid. But hey, we are talking about a laboratory. People who are trained to work with chemicals etc.

Anyway the lab in question commented to us that they could not set the method up within the next couple of weeks/months because they would need a special permit for these 2 chemicals. Special permit? Yes. Yes, because these chemicals can be used to make a bomb. A bomb? From NaOH and HCl? Sure if you mix them it becomes pretty warm and you get hydrogen gas. And if you pour concentrated hydrochloric acid on sodium hydroxide pellets there is certainly some serious heat production with the boiling and splashing that goes with that. But other then getting a couple of serious alkali and/or acid burns there is no true danger. But a bomb? LOL. There is more explosive power in a liter gasoline!

Irritating, but what can one do? So we made some fun about the whole issue. The faked newspaper was my way of dealing with the frustration. Take care.

Flight Attendants

Flight attendants, or stewards / stewardesses, have a very praiseworthy job. And I am always amazed how efficient and good natured they do their work. Especially on these long distance flights in which they have to stay alert and energetic for 10 or more hours.

For years there has always been this magic ring to it. A nice, exiting, traveling to exotic places kind of connection in a lot of peoples minds when they think or talk about stewardesses. And there must have been a billion young girls that wanted to become a princess or (in case that could not work out) at least a stewardess. But is that still true nowadays I have started wondering. One reason is that I, and a lot of other people who also fly both US based as well as EU airlines, repeatedly observe that the nowadays American flight attendant is on average many many years older then her EU colleague and often, let's say, far from fashionable. Hence the joke of attaching a pic of a good looking lady in a sexy fantasy flight attendant uniform to my previous post. And to stress it a bit further (and running the risk of being called a male chauvenist pig for the rest of my life), EU flight attendants are on average much better looking and dresssed then their American counterparts. Now why is that?

I did a little bit of googling and one of my first hits was Ellen Simonetti. The photo at the top (which I 'stole' from the New York Times website) is her. She was a flight attendant at Delta. Now surely, this undermines my suggestions above that the stewardesses on US airlines are old(er) and not good looking. But there is something special with Mrs. Simonetti. Apperently she got fired for posting to liberal photo's of herself in her Delta uniform on her blog. To liberal? Nudes you mean? No. Nothing indecent. But if you like you might call them sexy.

I am not going to write about this case. Many others have commented on it and you only have to google her name to find it. She actually has beccome somekind of celebrity: there is even a Wikipedia entry on her. Look it up yourself or buy her book or check out her blog: Diary of a Flight Attendant. But what strikes and bothers me is the over the top reaction of her employer. Why would they do that? Was it realy that 'out of order' what she did? Damaging to the company? Is Delta run by conservative dinosaurs? Or is it the in the States omnipresent christian puritanism? I am afraid that it is mainly that.

Strange contrast is it not? The country which speaks so highly about the freedom of speach, of choice. Gives so much room to individuality. That has the biggest porn industry on the planet. Gives their kids at the age of 16 the right to operate a deadly dangerous tool: a car. Has perhaps the highest number of teenage pregnancies in the developed world, but at the same time prohibits their youngster from drinking even the weakest alcoholic beverage before the age of 21. All these aspects are substantially different in Europe while at least up to the late 1900s almost all the imigrants are of European origin. Not a contrast you would immediately suspect. Did we Europeans evolve further with our more liberal society or is the US ahead of us and soon christian conservatism will set the standards here as well?

Afterthought. At least now I understand why on the whole US cabin crew is not among the better looking ones: they fire the pretty ones!