The Newsletter
Spare Part and Leftover Screws

Yes, it is really here. A new post. Looking back at my posts I realized that the last time I posted anything was when the world was supposedly mad at the French. It's been a LONG time. It's been a long time since I've sat down at this computer. I can't say that I missed it much. So much has happened. It is hard to believe that school ended about a month ago.

Since my last post:

I finished up finals. The more semesters I take the less relevant they become. Finals fell so low on my priority list it is a wonder I was able to get decent grades at all.

I said goodbye to a bunch of people. It happens every semester. I guess each time there are more and more. That is what I get for going through school so slowly. Everyone beats me out. So long Cowboy. Glad you are doing what you want to do. See you Steve. It's been fun jamming, sitting through classes, and talking about airplanes, the future, and how they are going to fit together. To the girls in the Yellow Ghetto House - it's been great being neighbors. Sorry my home improvements caused such a headache.

I made the trip home in record time - for the longest trip ever. After being delayed two days waiting for my commercial certificate paperwork to go though I left in the mid afternoon to get stuck in a traffic jam caused by a combination of Friday night rush hour, a bridge, constuction on the bridge, and and accident on the bridge involving at least 6 cars. Fun stuff. Then I stopped at a hotel for the night and overslept. Then I got diverted 100 miles out of my way due to an accident closing my road and missing the exit back on the right one. Then I stopped to help someone who blew a transmision. (I let them use my phone to call a tow truck - something blew a hole in the bell casing in its hurry to exit the gearbox.) Then as I was pulling back onto the highway I heard a load bang, followed by the loudest 1.9 cylinder engine I have ever heard in my life. I limped off at the exit a mile down the road and discovered that the down pipe on my exhaust had completely separated from my exhaust manifold. In addition the hot gases had burnt through the vacuum line for my power assist brakes. (It was a bit of a surprise to realize I had to jump on the brakes to stop as I exited I-81) I needed to clamp the exhaust system back together, but there was no VW dealer even remotely close by, so some chick offered to call her dad to see if he could help. I asked him to bring a vise grips and a carpenters C-clamp. He arrived a bit later slightly drunk and very confused, but with the clamp in hand. I managed to get it clamped back together with the additional help of some baling twine and went on my way. I splice the vacuum line back together with a random bit of tubing I bought at the only open parts store in town and limped back into my driveway well into sunday morning. Pretty exciting stuff really.

I started work. It's always a change to switch hats between school and work, moving from shooting approaches to pulling wires, from airplanes to houses. It's great. Almost therapeutic. I was getting burned out with airplanes to the point where I didn't want to set foot in another one for a very long time. Now it is great to got to work and come home at the end of the day with nothing else to think about until the next morning.

I am preparing for my trip to Africa. The latest development there is that we have to find a new way to get there. Last week British Airlines received terrorist threats against flights into Naroibi Kenya. They stopped their flights and my ticket became a bookmark. They are working on other possibilities. I'll keep you posted.

That's been my life the last month. Hope yours has been as good.

The French and the Pitot Tube
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws
The Limey Brit got me thinking about how aviation would be different if we followed the same vane as the rest of the world's effort to bring politics into everyday language. Here's to a patriotic de-frenched version of aeronatutical terms.

Empannage - French for "Feathers of an arrow." English equivalent - You can't get too fancy with a tail and get away with it.
Pilot - French for "steersman of the ship". English equivelant - I'm the one in charge so I can call myself whatever I want
Fuselage - A weaving term for a spindle with thread wrapped around it. (Only the french could make that connection) English equivelent - Very expensive place to sit out the ride.
Aileron - "little wings." The English call them flippers. How about "freedom flippers"
Nacelle - French (and in Latin (Navis) "ship" English equivalent - Conquer cowling?
Mayday - Taken from the french "m'aidez" which means "help me" They need it. English version- "Holy crap - I'm going down."

Christian Potpourri
Rants and Delusions

As I walked the aisles of the store, I was amazed at the wares they were hawking. They had everything. Books lined one side, self-help manuals the other. I passed aisles of household trinkets that would have made Martha Stewart proud and rivaled Pier 1 for selection. They had sections of CDs, DVDs, and every other form of home entertainment I could ever want. I saw posters and post-it notes, decorative mirrors and door mats, breath mints and those little inspirational potpourri candle things that cover the scent of yesterdays garlic bread. My head was spinning. Then, as I turned the corner, I remembered why I had come in the first place. There under the bestseller spotlight was the "Prayer of Jabez" display. It was a Christian Bookstore. I had come for a book on Godly living. They were out of stock.

Welcome to the world of cultural Christianity. I spent the last several years watching it grow with much interest. Sometimes I find it very amusing. Other times I border on concern for how far it has gone.

I remember going to a weeklong church convention and being amazed at the variety of "God Stuff" that has worked its way into the act of worship. I walked into the foyer and was immediately greet by dozens of stands, each selling their own method of worship. I passed tables of tambourines, rows of multicolored ribbons, various displays of banners, tables of every type of worship CD imaginable, highly polished rams' horns, and prayer vests. Prayer vests? $100? They were handmade. Oh-I see. It made me thankful that the Person interceding on my behalf doesn't require it to be a "black tie only" affair. I made my way through the foyer (with my wallet still intact) and entered the auditorium. There the pianist was praying for the power of the Holy Spirit to enter the room. First, I wondered where He had gone and then looked over my shoulder hoping that He came back it wouldn't be with whip in hand, looking for some tables to tip.

What has brought about the big business of Christian Potpourri? I think John Fischer best described the reasons behind cultural Christianity in a poem he wrote. He used a play on words to describe the reaction to Christ's commandment to be "in the world, but not of it." He explains that many people have taken it to be "of the world, but not in it." Think about it. He is right. We have taken the world of materialistic commercialism and made it our own. We justify our desire to fill our life with things by giving those things a message. I see two very real problems with this mentality

First, we have removed the Christian message from the world by creating its own category. Music can no longer just be music. It is either Christian or secular. In our effort to create an identity of Christian art we have taken artists who are Christians and forced them into the box of Christian artists. In doing so we have lost the ability to find God in anything other than Christian things. Is God not in everyday life? Then why can't we find Him unless it has a Christian label?

Second, if is Christian then it must be so obviously Christian that we blunt the power of honest expression. There is no room in a Christian record label to express anything other than an "everything is always okay now that I know Jesus and you should know him too" attitude. We surround ourselves with inspiring pictures of lighted houses and pithy sayings. We barricade ourselves behind a wall of Christian T-shirts and WWJD bracelets. Thomas Kincaid, in describing his paintings, admits that he paints the world without flaw. It is not reality. Is that really surprising? The reality of the Christian life does not always neatly fit on a poster. The truth of my walk with Christ does not fit on a refrigerator magnet. I am a liar every time I reach to put on a FROG (Fully Rely on God) bracelet. We can't live up to that. Filling our world with more reminders doesn't make it easier.

The result is that the rest of the world sees right through it. Take the "Prayer of Jabez" for example. I do not deny the message of asking God to expand our opportunities for service is a good one. However we have taken that and created a frenzy that is nothing short of laughable. Do we really need "Prayer of Jabez" stationary? Is it more spiritual to write the need for toilet paper on "Prayer of Jabez" grocery lists? Give me a break. The result is seen in a T-shirt I saw on Andrew Duncalf's page. What was its message? "I prayed the Prayer of Jabez for 30 days and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt." Well said. Taking the power of prayer away from God and creating a marketing opportunity out of it only creates scenarios that are laughed at on the latest "Saturday Night Live."

Effective evangelism is not in marketing a Christian Label. Anybody can see through that. It depends on the honest interaction of individual people. When was the last time you sat down to watch Christian TV? The world depends on us to be real. The love of Christ cannot be expressed on a doormat. It takes more than a picture of some footprints by the beach to convey the Hope of knowing Christ. A breath mint never saved anybody. The answer is not in things.

I guess that leaves me. If only I didn't have a headache from sniffing all that potpourri.

The End of an Era?
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago ordered midnight sneak attacks on Meigs Field , using bulldozers to carve massive "X"s into the runway. The cowardly act has left the aviation industry outraged. He has used the false pretense of homeland security to close a historic and beautiful airport, and prompted a backlash from AOPA, the FAA, the state legislature, and the general aviation public. It is a sad day, and, yes, I'll admit to being sentimental toward a piece of land.

Lady Wisdom Gives a Dinner Party
The Casual Cynic

I have spent the past couple of weeks trying something new. A friend gave me a copy of the Message this past Christmas, and I have been reading its version of the Proverbs. I found them to be very amusing and at the same time quite effective. It was like reading a letter from my Grandfather. They are very down to earth and express the truths in an incredibly matter-of-fact way. While I would not delve too deaply into theology with this book, it is interesting what a little rearrangment of style does. Here are some of my more amusing favorites.

On work:

Make hay while the sun shines - that's smart; go fishing during harvest - that's stupid.

On wealth:

The rich can be sued for everything they have - but the poor are free of such threats.

Banks foreclose on the farms of the poor, or else the poor lose their shirts to crooked lawyers.

On wisdom and the fool:

The wise accumulate wisdom; fools get stupider by the day.

Knowledge flows like spring water from the wise; fools are leaky faucets, dripping nonsense.

A quiet rebuke to a person of good sense does more than a whack on the head of a fool.

The words of a fool start fights; do him a favor and gag him.

And finally:

To ask a moron to quote a proverb is like putting a scalpel in the hands of a drunk.

Weapons of War
Rants and Delusions

It has been a while since the last post. Most of the blame falls on the weather. It has been far too nice outside to sit in front of my computer inside, and I have been to lazy to actually unplug all the appendages and actually use the laptop for its intended purpose - mobility. I need to get me one of those cordless network things so I can take my house's DSL to places that are worth sitting to write.

Despite my failure to write, the world continues to turn. We have declared war on a nation. "Operation Iraqi Freedom," I think it is called. I watched the news for a couple of hours last night to see what would happen. It appears as though there could have been a chance to end the war before it started with an early decapitation attempt that ultimately failed. It is indeed a different time when it is altogether possible to turn on CNN in the morning and find the world a completely different place. I haven't done it yet this morning. Some things I prefer not to know until I am fully awake. Some things I prefer not to know, ever.

I remember the first time we made a push towards Bagdad. I was all of 11 years old. I watched the Iraqi anti-aicraft fire from TV and tried to comprehend all that was going on. I don't think an 11 year old ever understands the fullness of war. I don't think a 23 year old does either. Or a 99 year old for that matter. About that time in my life I had a couple of posters of F-14's on my wall. I loved those planes. My father didn't. He was and is a pacifist and we had a couple of conversations about those scraps of paper. I loved the power that they possessed, the ability to take off from a bobbing flight deck, fly faster than anything a preteen could imagine, and slam back home after a successful flight. My father told of stories of listening to planes fly overhead during the cold war heading toward some missile crisis with some sort of bomb that would bring an end to civilization as we knew it. He spoke of the fear it evoked. I couldn't understand that.

Perhaps that is the biggest difference between us. My father is still afraid to fly. I watched the F-18E Superhornets take off last night and wished it were me in the cockpit being hurled out over the water. I love the machine. Both of us hate the destruction to humanity they can cause. Were that me in the cockpit my enjoyment would end with the release of munitions. War is not a training excercise. It is not Top Gun. It has real and devestating consequences.

War, as horrible as it is, is also sometimes necessary. I haven't made up my mind about this one yet. I guess the only way to know for sure is to look at the life of an Iraqi 10 years from now and see if we made the difference we now hope we can. My hats off to all those over there right now doing all they can, each in their own capacity, to somehow make the world a bit better. That is the only way this thing can be successful.

The Golden Rule In Action
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

I guess it was only a matter of time until an FBI Plane is Mistaken For Terrorists

Captive Across Texas
The Casual Cynic

I spent the weekend, and much of the past week for that matter, traveling around the state of Texas. Most of it was done from a sterile veiwpoint of thousands of feet above the landscape, but this weekend I had the chance to traverse the countryside the old way. I drove. There is much to be seen and heard on a trip to the southern portion of the state. The trip to San Antonio did much to reinforce the notion that Texas is an entity all of its own. Perhaps the most persuasive argument for this conclusion is the sounds that can be heard across the airwaves.

I grew tired of my selection of CDs and decided to try something I hadn't done in a while. Timidly I punched the "scan" button on my radio. First there was nothing but the standard worn-out, classic rock and whining country music coming out of my speakers. Then there was something that caught my ear. Something I had never heard before. I listened wondering what in the world was going on. How can someone write something so spastic, so unusual, so ... "interesting." The song finished and the DJ explained that his station, 104.something - "The Ranch," played the very best in...Big Band, Western, Swing. Wow. This was definitely a new experience. I decided to stick around and check out this mutation of music, and found myself questioning, "If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich." It sounded like Marty Robbins suddenly woke up wearing a zuet suite and playing a trombone. The selection was followed by the financial advise, "You gotta sell them chickens (before they die, and the eggs before they hatch.)" I didn't know what to do. Should I break out in a swing move or a two-step. Fortunately I was strapped to my seat and the steering wheel kept me from getting to crazy, and I had to settle on pointing at the stereo and laughing like Nelson, the bully on the Simpsons. It made me want to find a hip holster for my tommy gun. It was like flagpole sitting at a rodeo. It was crazy. It entertained all the way from Corsicana to Temple. Texas truely is a state like no other.

.

Can you Hear me now? Good.
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

I have spent the last several months browsing the banter and reading the essays that have been posted via the keyboard. It has been quite enjoyable and refreshing. I remained largely quiet, keeping my thoughts and opinions to myself. However, a sponge can only soak up so much without a means of release. An undisturbed wet sponge is nothing more than a square chunk of mold. It is time to escape from the dank corner and stretch my brain for some active thought.

The process of publishing blogs is an entirely new experience. It is a process and a challenge that I welcome and I am excited about the opportunities it will provide. I don't pretend to have incredible insight into the meaning of life (although the word on the street is that it is 47) or even an interesting life. I realize that writing will never be a breadwinning skill, and that my attempts to wield the pen have the same results of a drunken monk using chopsticks to eat his soup. That is why I am studying to be a bus driver. However I hope this page will provide a perspective that can be beneficial to someone, at least occasionally.

Please feel free to respond to my page with thoughts, comments, derisions, and suggestions. I am encouraging you to respond to what you see here. Any suggestions about format, etc. is also appreciated. Let me know that you are out there. Thanks for stopping by and I’ll do my best to make it worthwhile to come back.

Snowballs Replace Bullets as Snow Hits Holy Land
Spare Parts and Leftover Screws

Ripped from the News...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Witness to centuries of bloodshed, the ancient walls of Jerusalem's Old City saw only white Tuesday as Palestinians and Israelis traded snowballs instead of stones and bullets.

The exchange -- between Palestinian youths and Israeli passersby at the ancient Dung Gate -- came in celebration of a rare heavy snowstorm that brought much of the Holy Land to a standstill, offering a respite from 29 months of fighting.

"This sort of thing gives everyone perspective. It makes people focus on what they have in common rather than politics," veteran Israeli meteorologist Danny Roup told Reuters.

Across the West Bank, the strongest cold front in a least a decade brought snow as deep as 12 inches, almost unimaginable in a region better known for balmy winters.

In Israel, snow blocked palm-lined highways and only a few vehicles dared to venture out as the Mediterranean country's tiny fleet of snowplows went to work.

Most of neighboring Lebanon and Syria were also snowbound, with the main Beirut-to-Damascus road blocked and dozens of mountain villages isolated.

In West Bank cities that have been largely reoccupied by Israeli forces, the winter whiteness masked the scars of almost daily Israeli-Palestinian clashes.

Palestinian youths who on other days might play deadly games of cat-and-mouse by throwing stones at Israeli patrols or putting up nationalist posters made do with tamer pastimes.

Snowmen went up in Ramallah''s main square, indistinguishable from those made by Israeli children only a few miles away.

In Bethlehem, the town revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, snow dusted church steeples and mosque spires.

"People are out and about. There is a sense of relaxation and joy that comes with snow -- children and even young men throwing snowballs at one another," said Sami Awad, a Christian activist who promotes nonviolent resistance to occupation.

A Uninvited Twist of Homeland Security Part II
Rants and Delusions


Ripped from the News...

The Transportation Security Administration has suspended the airman certificates of two Saudi Arabian Airlines pilots and restored the flying privileges of two others. The Saudi Press Agency said airline lawyers are appealing the suspensions of Moen Hassan Zarie and Tarek Hassan Jifry under the recently announced rule that allows the TSA to order the FAA to suspend airman certificates if it believes those holding them pose a security threat. The airline was apparently able to convince TSA authorities that Nabil Mohammed Adawi and Khaled Fahd Al-Olayan were not security risks, and their certificates were returned Jan. 22, the Arab News reported last Saturday. Zarie and Jifry continue their battle. The still-suspended pilots appealed to the NTSB's chief administrative judge but, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal, he rejected the appeals because of the way the act creating the TSA is written. The judge said the 2001 Aviation and Transportation Security Act compelled him to assume that the TSA is correct in considering the two pilots security risks. The pilots are taking their case to another NTSB judge but he apparently said there can't be a hearing until the TSA makes public its now-classified evidence against them. That same act allows the TSA to keep the evidence secret for security reasons. We wouldn't even know this much about the case if the pilots hadn't taken their case to the NTSB, which still conducts its proceedings in public.

A Post to Valentines Day
Rants and Delusions

Women have been compared to a lot of things. I heard it said that they are the Devil, Satan's gift to men, etc. Someone once attempted to convince me that there is nothing that you need in a woman that you cannot find in a dog. I never quite figured that out, but he was pretty sure of it.

I would like to add another comparison at the risk of sounding like just another crazy guy who has nothing better to do than complain on Valentines Day. I would dare to venture that of all the comparisons that are out there, there is none more truthful, more painfully accurate, than the similarities between a woman and an airplane.

1. They are both incredibly expensive. Looking back over the years, either directly or indirectly, I have spent more money on women than I paid for my current car. With the amount of money I have spent flying airplanes I could buy a nice car. Perhaps a Corvette, with enough money left over to buy a Mustang on the side.

2. They both take an incredible amount of maintenance. Airplanes by nature are a high maintenance item. They are required to undergo routine periodic inspections, maintenance, and repairs. Women...also high maintenance by nature.

3. Both airplanes and women can be difficult to handle. Airplanes can be unpredictable. You can be flying around in smooth air when all of a sudden, there is a big of clear air turbulence that nearly throws you from your seat on the way to an unusual attitude that, if not corrected, will send you screaming toward the ground. Women are just as unpredictable. They can come out of nowhere and send you reeling wondering if you are ever going to recover. Airplanes, especially tailwheel aircraft, can be very touchy, especially on simple matters such as taxiing. Women can be just as sensitive over crazy little things.

4. There is always a bit of a mystery as to how they really work. Airplanes produce lift by using a combination of Bernoulli's principle and Newton's 3rd law of Thermodynamics. However, these theories do not completely explain all the effects of lift and drag, etc. There is always some uncertainty as to how a airplane will perform until it is actually flown. Nobody has figured out women. There is no theory on earth that explains how they operate.

5. There are both beautiful airplanes and airplanes that make you wonder what the designer had to drink while at the drawing board. Women...

6. They both make watching a sunset an unforgettable experience. There is nothing like watching the sun slip under the horizen from a solitary perch on the top of the world. Except perhaps, watching it with an woman by your side.

7. Life would not be the same without them. It would be much simpler, less stressful, less painful... Less exciting, less fulfilling, and a whole lot less to talk about.

Staring at the Screen
Rants and Delusions

Right now I am spending my time with one eye one the sky and the other on my computer, praying that the clouds don’t drop 300 more feet. If they stay where they are I have something to do today.

I haven’t been this bored in a long time. I thought I would enjoy this semester. It should be nice to have free time to do what I want, when I want, and for as long as I want to. I conceived plans to read new books, think new thoughts, study new interests, and ENJOY life. I wanted to spend more time with friends, be more active in church, and generally be more productive to society.

Instead, I am stuck in a rut, a rut with a big rain puddle laying on the bottom. I’ve done a bit of everything I wanted, but not to the extent I had dreamed. School has become an afterthought. Classes threw nothing at me to make life interesting. It doesn’t help that I am only taking 16 credits. That is certainly not enough to fill a day. Work is a nonevent. I spend my time pulling inspection panels off, only to put them back on the next day. If only I could hurry up and get my certification. (That is an entirely different story - How Jon Got Screwed) I have read a couple of good books. That has really been the only bright spot of the semester. I read some Orwell, some Dante, and just finished one on Thoreau. Some were interesting; One made me think.

I need a challenge. Right now I am coasting through life with nothing to grab my attention and motivate me. This has been on of the hardest semesters to get going.

(Nuts…Received phone call informing me that I lost my plane…All dressed up and nowhere to go.)

An Uninvited Twist of Homeland Security
Rant and Delusions

Amidst the cries for tighter security and a call for greater vigilance in the war on terror, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the newly minted Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have written some legislation that flies in the face of American Democracy and the right to due process. The results of such legislation on the aviation industry is pretty dramatic and the ramifications of the repeal of the rights to human liberty could be tragic for the rest of the country as well. I invite you to read this and think about what this could mean to you.

This is the latest brilliant scheme by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration). It basically entails the right for the TSA, through the FAA, to revoke any pilots license who is suspected of terrorism or otherwise poses a threat to national security. Furthermore, no information regarding the suspected cause of the threat has to be divulged to the pilot. THERE IS NO TRIAL. The only appeal can be back to the TSA itself. In addition the rule was put into place without the normal due process of a public hearing and time of comment. (According to 14 CFR 11 regarding Notices of Proposed Rule Making) As of right now, the legislation is in place and enforceable, and they are only now getting to the process of public forum. It has resulted in action against 11 pilots. I am not sure how many others have been accused as well.

All in all this is an case of conviction without trial, representation, or even proof of guilt. There is no one who will be able to monitor the TSA. There is no telling who will be considered a security threat or what constitutes a violation of homeland security. For example, if the TSA goes so far as to revoke licenses for stumbling into a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction [zone] such as over stadiums or the Crawford Ranch) then about 10 pilots a weekend will lose there license. Right now the penalty is an automatic suspension of the license after the first offense. If these are pilots who owe their livelihood to this certification, then there career is over with no chance whatsoever of recovery. So far all of the cases of such blunders were simply navigational mistakes that caused no threat to the security of the nation.
The ruling is an outrageous knee jerk reaction to an uninformed outcry from the public over safety issues they know very little about. It will do little to solve the actual problem of homeland security, but the consequences of the legislation is very real and very devastating.

The Casual Cynic
The Columbia Tragedy, and the explosion that preceded it.

Columbia. Columbia. Columbia. Columbia...Has the entire bandwidth of the nation been taken over by the Columbia. I am forced to retreat into my cave to avoid the sensationalism the Hype-Doctors have spun on this story. But only to avoid the secondary tragedy that always follows. The tragedy caused by callously commercializing the event in order to maintain ratings. We listen to ourselves talk about circumstances we have no understanding of, project our theories on events we have no knowlege of, and look painfully foolish in the process. A terrorist attack? GOOD GRIEF. Do you have a brain? Conducting natinonal interviews with family members even while pieces of debris were still falling on overhead? How tasteless can you get? Posting pieces of that debris on e-bay? You deserve to be shot.

It shocked me to hear the news. It stunned me to see the footage. It flashed back memories of a six year old boy glued to the television watching the Challenger explode over and over again while trying to comprehend, as only a kindergartener can, the importance of the image being shown. The tragedy made an impact then on a kid dreaming big dreams of science and exploration, and the fresh one makes an impact today on a bigger kid still dreaming big. It is staggering to see the power of the technology we have, and how terrible the consequences of the inevitable inability to contain its power.

Please don't create another tragedy. Don't let the significance of what happened become a casualty of the war of sensationalism. Don’t use the situation to get a leg up on proving who has the loudest mouth, the most eloquent way to sell a story, the most convincing “I told you so.” And please, please, please, don’t write a song about it.

Forces of Habit
Rants and Delusions

I am a creature of habit. I spend massive amounts of time and effort developing these habits until they become instinctive thought patterns. In the world of aviation this is a positive thing. Critical situations require instantaneous action that can only come as a result of automatic response. Methodical action and an affinity toward the routine forced its way into my life. Why is it that, within a city infrastructure with so many ways to get from point A to point B, one street becomes the sacred route? No one way is necessarily more suited than the other, only more natural.

How far does this obsession with familiarity dig its claws? How deeply rooted are my attachments to tradition. Am I capable of an original thought, a unique opinion, or am I forced to assimilate the actions of those around me, engraining them as my own. When does habit become detrimental? When is repetition merely a monotonous hum-drum lifestyle. Even “thinking outside the box,” and “bucking the system,” can become merely a reactive process that is done because one is a “free-thinker.” Is not automatic opposition the same as instant acceptance? Hum...

More to come…promise.

This is my first post. I am diving into the world of the blogger in an attempt to stimulate the mind and balance the effect of being blasted by five years of Aerounautical Science. My hope is that there will be a slight shift in perspective on my posts as a result of the advantage I have of being able to delve into the world of essays and written thought as a matter of diversion rather than normal fare. Perhaps more than anything, this is meant to be a release of all that is forced to remain secondary to structured ritual and pre-organized thought. There is no such thing as an orginal thought in the world of flying airplanes. This is an endeavor to to discover if I can still produce an origional thought or I have already been reduced to a life of regurgitation of endless facts, checklists, and meaningless rules and regulations.