Month: March 2001

FedEx Beats the FAA

For literally decades now the Federal Aviation Administration has been promising it is going to do something about the long outdated air traffic controller system. About the only thing it has accomplished, however, is its skill at coming up with excuses why the system is still not ready. Meanwhile private companies are concluding they can’t wait for the FAA any longer and FedEx Corporation recently went ahead and deployed its own high tech system in use at a private airport it runs.

The New York Times reports that FedEx is actively testing an air control system that relies on Global Positioning System to make landings much more efficient. Using a specially-equipped Boeing 727, the GPS system is able to tell the plan where it is at any given moment to within three feet, resulting in landings that are basically on the same spot every time. As FedEx’s Robert L. Ranchor told The Times, “All the tire rubber is all going to be in the same spot. They’re going to have to scrub it off more often.”

Currently the system is being tested only in clear weather daytime landings, but once FedEx is certain about the precision of the landings, the GPS-based system could revolutionize air flight. Today airplanes can only make straight ahead landings and inclement weather conditions such as fog typically shut down airports. Not only would the GPS system allow perfect landings even in thick fog, but it would allow for a variety of landing paths allowing for arrivals to occur more efficiently.

Moreover the system is extremely cost-efficient. The actual price for using a GPS system is about the same as a standard radar system, but a GPS system serves an entire 25-mile radius compared to a radar system which serves only a single runway.

Where FedEx has enjoyed a great deal of success, however, the FAA has crashed and burned. In 1995 the FAA announced a $475 million project to create a super-GPS system that would be have an accuracy of 7 meters and be in operation by 1998. That system is still in the ubiquitous “under development” stage, and apparently FAA contractors have had problems writing the software to manage the system.

Leave it to a private company to take existing resources, like the now aging GPS system, and design a solution that drastically outperforms what a government bureaucracy with a bloated budget can do.

Source:

FedEx Is Moving Ahead of U.S. to Improve Airport Landing. Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times, January 21, 2001.

Should Abuse Victims Have to Pay for their Abuser’s Care?

Should children be forced to subsidize care for parents who abused them? A couple of adults in New Jersey have been ensnared by a law which requires them to do just that, and the media spotlight on their case will likely result in a much needed change in the law.

Passed in 1918, the state law requires relatives to pay for any hospitalization that is the result of a court order. As a result New Jersey plans to ask Michael and Chrissy McMickle to pay for the state-ordered hospitalization of their father, Nelden McMickle, who went to jail for sexually abusing them.

Under a 1993 New Jersey law, the state can commit some sexual offenders to a mental facility after their prison term is completed rather than simply release the offender back into the community, if the offender is deemed a threat to the community (such laws, by the way, should be unconstitutional, but have, unfortunately, been upheld by courts).

After Nelden McMickle finished his prison sentence, the state deemed him a threat to the community and committed him to a state hospital — and began sending Michael McMickle a letter asking him to pay part of the annual $90,000 bill for his father’s hospitalization. If Michael refuses to pay, the state could pursue him in court to force payment. Barring a change in the law, Chrissy McMickle, now 18, will not receive such letters until she has finished college, if she pursues post-secondary education.

The McMickle case will probably spur a change in the law. Michael McMickle has already hired a lawyer to challenge the law and says he won’t pay a single dime to support the father who regularly subjected him to physical and sexual abuse. Meanwhile as Chrissy McMickle sums the whole case up, “I didn’t think I would have to go through this again. It’s like being victimized again.”

Source:

Law could force siblings to pay for abusive father’s treatment. Amy Westfeldt, Associated Press, March 26, 2001.

House of Lords Rejects Fox Hunting Ban

The House of Lords voted 317 to 68 to reject the portion of a recent bill that outlawed fox hunting in the United Kingdom. The Peers also voted 249 to 108 to reject a proposal to continue fox hunting but only with heavy regulation. Instead, the Lords voted to allow fox hunting to continue in its current, self-regulated form.

Peers reject fox-hunting ban. Ananova, March 26, 2001.

It’s Your Music. Burn it With a ???

MacCentral Online reports that, “Apple today released new [OS X] versions of iTunes, iMovie and AppleWorks. All of them are available for download from a Downloads page on Apple’s Web site” (thanks to Don Larson for the link).

I’m not sure I’d be touting this at the moment. In fact it’s been surreal watching television this week to see these Apple advertisements featuring a young man assembling various musicians in order to burn his own personal CD. Of course if you have OS X you can’t do that a the moment, because the OS isn’t compatible with CD-RWs at the moment.

This isn’t quite as bad as Intel’s stupid commercials claiming their processors speed up the Internet experience, but it’s close.

Detroit Police Routinely Arrest Witnesses

A couple weeks ago I was in Detroit for the first time in several years. If you’ve never been to Detroit but want to get the same experience go to a local video store and rent the cheesy John Carpenter film, “Escape from New York.” The cityscape of Carpenters’ futuristic New York isn’t that different from Detroit (the Detroit Free Press/Detroit News building, for example, has enormous fences and brick walls as protection and looks more like an armed fortress than a newspaper).

Ironically Detroit police can’t seem to do much about crime even though they routinely violate the civil rights of suspects and now, it turns out, witnesses as well. The Detroit Free Press reported this week that last year a federal prosecutor contacted Detroit police chief Benny Napoleon to warn him that his department’s policy of arresting witnesses to crimes was unconstitutional.

Apparently the police have a written policy such that when investigating murders they arrest witnesses, family members and anyone else in any way contacted with the crime on top of arresting any suspects. As Michael Steinberg of the American Civil Liberties Union tells the Free Press, “Arresting people and interrogating them without probable cause to believe they committed a crime is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment.” Witnesses can apparently be arrested if they are likely to flee, but this requires the approval of a judge. Detroit cops were simply arresting everyone in the vicinity, taking them down to the police station for interrogation, and then releasing them — sometimes not until several days later.

And of course since this is Detroit, even the fact that the city was paying thousands of dollars to settle civil suits over the practice didn’t motivate Napoleon to put a stop to it. According to the Free Press, Detroit last year settled a false arrest suit for $500,000, and yet the policy remained in place.

Police had been warned: U.S. prosecutor and chief discussed witness arrests. David Ashenfelter and David Zeman, Detroit Free Press, March 22, 2001.