This Ain’t No CNN.

So I stumbled upon this article by a woman who touts herself as The Food Babe. An avid blogger and touter of all things holistic and natural, the Food Babe apparently tells the world what’s wrong with your food, air and such and strives to educate the world on ways to living a healthier life.

That’s all well and good, except this article tells me that she’s full of crap. Scouting around on the internet indicates that others share the same belief.

If you read the first article I linked to, you’ll see that “The Food Babe” offers tips for a better flight on your favorite airline. Now, even though I am a pilot I must admit that I have never flown an airliner. However, I do know several appropriately related pilots and in my many hours of instruction, as well as my many hours of flight training, there are some things that I’d like to point out showing why The Food Babe is nuts.

From the article:

When your body is in the air, at a seriously high altitude, your body under goes some serious pressure. Just think about it – Airplanes thrive in places we don’t. You are traveling in a pressurized cabin, and when your body is pressurized, it gets really compressed!

Um, not quite. While the pressure in the cabin of an airplane is probably not the same as what you’re used to back home, the purpose of pressurizing the cabin is to make your body as comfortable as it would be at around six or eight-thousand feet above sea level. Even though the airplane is cruising along anywhere as high as 41,000 feet or so, your body still thinks it’s at the aforementioned six or eight-thousand feet. You’re not being vacuumed sealed into the airplane. You’re not a sardine. Yes, it’s different, but you’re not being shrunk, sealed or squeezed any differently than if you were to go hiking in the Rockies. If you feel like a sardine it’s because of the size of your seat, not because you’re packed in for freshness.

The air you are breathing on an airplane is recycled from directly outside of your window. That means you are breathing everything that the airplanes gives off and is flying through. The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this! The nitrogen may affect the times and dosages of medications, make you feel bloated and cause your ankles and joints swell.

The air you are breathing on an airplane is the same exact air that you’re breathing on the ground, it’s just getting to you differently. The way The Food Babe words this paragraph, you’d think that there’s a huge net hanging off the back of each engine scooping up air and pumping it into the cabin, but that’s not quite how it works. For more information on how the environment is maintained on an airliner, take a look at this blog entry over at Ask The Pilot. And don’t worry, you’re not getting dosed with anything from the “chemtrails” (don’t even get me started on that).

Choose a seat as close to the front as possible. Pilots control the amount of airflow and it is is always better in their cabin.

I have no idea what this woman means by this. As a pilot that often flies a Piper Cherokee I can tell you that we have air vents around us just like you do in an automobile. I can also tell you that your standard run of the mill Boeing or Airbus airliner probably has the same thing. If you need air, use the twisty thing above your head and enjoy the breeze, it’s probably coming from the same place as the air vents in the cockpit. And if the pilot is sitting in the cabin, they’re not flying. Flight deck or cockpit, you choose.

One of the most disappointing things about the Internet is that it’s easy for anyone to write up they’re own version of the truth and sell it to the masses, which seem all too eager to lap it up and take it as the Gospel. Coupling this with the trend toward eschewing common sense and you end up with a whole bunch of malarky out there.

Take everything with a grain of salt.

Crystal O’Connor, owner of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, was the first to step forward and announce that they’re not serving gays at their restaurant, but only if a gay couple wants them to provide catering for their wedding. It’s perfectly fine for a gay couple to come in and dine in their establishment.

Predictably, the Facebook page and Yelp profile of Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana are both getting trashed, and not in a “I drank too many beers” kind of way. There’s also stories of the Memories Pizza website being hacked and reimagined with images of gay men in various states of undress accompanied by penis shaped pizzas, but it turns out that website address was registered today, so that doesn’t count.

I have just two comments: Ms. O’Connor doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb in the chandelier as I don’t know how she thought this would bring any positive attention to her establishment but more importantly, what self-respecting couple, gay or straight, would ask a pizza joint to cater their wedding?

Adirondack Central School District has decided to implement “Incentive Raffles” for students taking state mandated exams. ACSD is about 30 miles from us.

Students are entered into a raffle if they attend school all three days of standardized testing. If they take the tests they are suppose to take, they get entered into the drawing. If they get good grades, they are entered into a drawing and if they show improvement when compared to last year’s performance, they are entered into drawing. Prizes include gift cards to Subway, iTunes, Google Play and the like.

As mentioned in the newspaper opinion piece linked above, the school is essentially bribing their students to participate in the standardized exams. I have no children in any school district, so I don’t really have a vested interest in this, but I can’t help but think that bribing students with prizes simply to take a group of tests can’t be a good thing for the public in general.

When I was in school (I graduated 29 years ago) we had standardized testing as well. In elementary school we took the “Iowa Tests”. There are only two things that I remember as being remarkable about the Iowas: it was the first time we colored in the dots on a scan sheet for scoring purposes and when we got to the end of the section for our grade, there was a very accurate STOP sign graphic signaling where the test ended. I didn’t feel emotionally scarred by having to take a standardized test. I don’t remember it phasing me in any way; it’s what we had to do.

As an adult do I agree with standardized testing? Absolutely not. I think the whole Common Core program and the endless barrage of scripts and mandates and the like are ludicrous but then again, I think that the thought that EVERY student that graduates from high school is automatically going to go to college is idiotic as well. Not every person is wired to go to college. The latest approaches to education in The Empire State focus too much on trying to make every student fit into the same ideal. There’s no room for creativity, on the behalf of the teacher nor the student. Follow the script, take the test, move on. I really am against standardized testing.

But this is the direction that our education system is headed today, just like when they got rid of “Algebra”, “Geometry” and “Trigonometry” when I became a freshman in high school and they replaced it “Course 1”, “Course 2”, and “Course 3”. Did I have an interest in every subject I had to take? No. I couldn’t care less about “Afro-American” (a Social Studies course) but I still took the course, for the most part did what was expected of me and got through it. The “bribe” in all of this was my success. I did what I had to do to succeed. This should be the rewards. Not game store cards, not iTunes cards and certainly not food. Is the school going to give them a biscuit when they sit on command?

In a society that seemingly gives child a reward for remembering to breathe and refraining from not soiling their pants in the middle of a restaurant (and if they do poop, they still get a reward, because, well, just because), how are students going to cope with life once they’re outside of their little world full of bribes, goodies and prizes for routine, mundane activities?

Yes, I think this whole standardized testing thing is ridiculous, but Adirondack CSD is approaching this in completely the wrong way by having door prize raffles simply for attending what should be a required activity. Example #71823 why I think the world has completely lost its collective mind.

I was recently listening to a political talk show on satellite radio. I normally enjoy such endeavors, but there was something about the moment that was just rubbing me the wrong way. As I thought about it, I realized that there were actually two things that were rubbing me the wrong way.

Firstly, the hosts was using words such as “totes” and “deets”, for example, “I totes have the deets on what Chris Christie was doing yesterday.” I don’t know who came up with the idea that a person using the words “totes” and “deets” in this way was suppose to be taken seriously, but nevertheless, the person speaking is a respected political journalist and apparently quite successful in their endeavor. I think this speaks volumes as to the direction of the National Average IQ.

Secondly, the conversation was about the 2016 election and the viability of Jeb Bush running against Hillary Clinton in the Presidential Election. The only thing that was running through my head regarding this discussion, other than the fact that “totes” and “deets” were smattered amongst the dialog, was, “really? There’s no one else that can run? There isn’t anyone else from some other family, some other part of the country, anywhere, out there, that can run for President without assaulting the citizens with a big ol’ helping of leftovers?

Is there anyone in the general populace that is excited by government these days? Does anyone find them productive? Intelligent? Representative of the populace that they serve?

Talking about this with Earl made me realize that I need to stop paying close attention to politics for a while. Fox News is a joke. The whole lynching of Brian Williams is beyond ridiculous (he got way more press than the whole WMD debacle in Iraq back in ’02 and ’03). And quite frankly, the slate of corporate sponsored politicians is getting tiresome.

I have narrowed my talk show consumption down to one show. The guy is a moderate, has a sensible head on his shoulders, doesn’t have an offense accent and has a great selection in hairstyle. If you want further details, ask me in the comments or send me an email.

I’m not going to tolerate the dumbing down of syntax during a debate nor am I going to get all excited about a ballot that is mediocre at best. I expect better. We deserve better. I don’t have the answers.

Maybe someday I will.

Sony announced yesterday that they are canceling the Christmas Day release of “The Interview”, a comedy starring Seth Rogan and James Franco. Their decision came after threats were made against theaters that would be showing the movie. The threats alluded to 9/11 type activity and this made key people nervous enough to cancel the release of the movie.

If you’re not familiar with the movie “The Interview”, it’s basically a comedy (and I’m sure I’m using that word loosely) about two journalists traveling to North Korea. Before going on their jaunt, they are contacted by the CIA with the request to assassinate North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. No fictional country or leader was named, the movie focused on the North Korea we all know and their current leader, who is often in the news for various reasons.

Setting aside the obvious political, social and economical differences between the United States and North Korea, I find it astonishing that this movie was actually conceived, scripted, filmed, edited and ultimately readied for a wide-release throughout the United States on Christmas Day. A lot of people had to have signed on board this whole concept, and it just seems wicked stupid to me that this movie was even made. Am I worried about offending North Korea? No. However, I find the use of real political figures in this manner to be quite tacky. Sony is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas and the inclusion of real political figures in this manner in the plot. What on earth were they thinking?

That being said, canceling the release of the movie after spending millions of dollars on it, hyping the hell out of it and then getting scared because of threats is rather cowardice. It shows that they absolutely do not have the courage of their convictions. When an organization can make threats against our country and then get a movie they don’t agree with canceled, it’s just another example of how scared our country has become. The United States has a scared population. At no other time in recent history has our population felt more terrified. It makes me angry that the execs can’t find the courage to stand up for what they believe in. You made the “art”, stand behind your “art”.

Unfortunately, “The Interview”, whether it’s ever released or not, is going to be in the forefront for a while.

Perhaps this is the real threat that we should be concerned about.

If you’re a citizen of the United States, get out there and vote!

I am an avid user of Twitter. If you’re not following me on there and you’re all about the Twitter, please feel free to follow me at flyMachias. While I talk about my piloting adventures on there, I talk about a lot of other stuff as well. It’s like a mini-version of this blog but with more frequent updates.

One of the thing I like about Twitter, at least until the company messes up the stream by “curating” what the users see, is that you can get breaking news quickly. A couple of years ago when the earthquake rocked Virginia, and subsequently the northeast, I actually saw it on Twitter a split second before my computer monitors at work started rocking from the same earthquake. When a celebrity passes on, I always see it on Twitter first. It’s like Twitter contains the pulse of what’s going on in the world.

One of the accounts I follow is @breakingnews. Since I rely on Twitter for news information, it makes sense to follow @breakingnews. They often tweet important things, like the number of people that have died from Ebola, details of a shooting in Europe and details of the latest unrest in the Middle East. This brings credibility to the account, in my eyes, and it sets a certain expectation for me. So imagine my disappointment when not one, but two tweets today were devoted to this drivel:

Now, I know I’m getting old. At 46 years old, I realize that I am seeing the world in a different way than those of the younger generation and I often my comparisons between my reactions to a given topic versus what my father or grandfather would have said. So, be that as it may, after looking up Rhianna and realizing who she was (she came around after my days in radio), I realized that not only is this woman the epitome of everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry today, I doubt that whether her song is played before a football game on CBS really qualifies as “Breaking News”. I mean, if this is what is breaking news in the United States, then I’d say we have all our poverty, health care, human dignity, governmental, etc., problems solved and we should therefore devote our time to trivial things. But the truth of the matter is, there’s a LOT of stuff going on in the world today, and quite frankly, whether or not this Rhianna woman’s song is going to be played is not even in the Top 200.

I call this “distracting the masses.”

Going through the recent tweets of @breakingnews to research a little bit for this blog entry, I realized that they also have a tendency to include Apple news as breaking news. News flash, unless Apple has had a massive security breach, has been nuked by a terrorist, or has outright purchased the United States Government for a bargain basement price (face it, we’d be on a corner rack in Filene’s Basement if that chain was still around), nothing that Apple does is “Breaking News”. It’s more distraction. And because people are celebrating the steady decline of the average IQ by applauding mediocrity and reducing their world view to a very tunneled down definition, the masses are distracted easily.

So now I’m wondering if I should unfollow @breakingnews and go with something a little less ridiculous. If anyone has any suggestions of another Twitter account of follow, I would welcome the input.