Boy, I’m sure glad we put the federal goverment in charge of airline security. This certainly make me feel safer to fly.

One air marshal said he didn?t know about the interference problem because ?I never tried to communicate using [the PDA] because I really don?t know how to use it.? This air marshal said he received initial training on the device in September but wasn?t issued one until May ?with no additional refresher training,? he said. ?During the training in 2002, TSA said they were working on a glitch with the [PDAs] interfering with the cockpit transmissions, but I don?t know if they ever resolved the glitch or not,? the air marshal said…

…?We call these [PDAs] the ?Thousand Dollar Game Boy,?? said one air marshal, equating the device to the hand-held Nintendo video game player. ?Some air marshals have up to 70 games on their PDAs that they?ve downloaded from the Internet,? the air marshal said.

Another air marshal said that ?because my PDA is always crashing, I don?t use it anymore.? After his device crashed twice, wiping out an extensive series of notes painstakingly input into the PDA, ?I don?t use it except to play Asteroids,? the air marshal said.

Boy, I’m sure glad we put the federal goverment in charge of airline security. This certainly make me feel safer to fly.

One air marshal said he didn?t know about the interference problem because ?I never tried to communicate using [the PDA] because I really don?t know how to use it.? This air marshal said he received initial training on the device in September but wasn?t issued one until May ?with no additional refresher training,? he said. ?During the training in 2002, TSA said they were working on a glitch with the [PDAs] interfering with the cockpit transmissions, but I don?t know if they ever resolved the glitch or not,? the air marshal said…

…?We call these [PDAs] the ?Thousand Dollar Game Boy,?? said one air marshal, equating the device to the hand-held Nintendo video game player. ?Some air marshals have up to 70 games on their PDAs that they?ve downloaded from the Internet,? the air marshal said.

Another air marshal said that ?because my PDA is always crashing, I don?t use it anymore.? After his device crashed twice, wiping out an extensive series of notes painstakingly input into the PDA, ?I don?t use it except to play Asteroids,? the air marshal said.

Boy, I’m sure glad we put the federal goverment in charge of airline security. This certainly make me feel safer to fly.

One air marshal said he didn?t know about the interference problem because ?I never tried to communicate using [the PDA] because I really don?t know how to use it.? This air marshal said he received initial training on the device in September but wasn?t issued one until May ?with no additional refresher training,? he said. ?During the training in 2002, TSA said they were working on a glitch with the [PDAs] interfering with the cockpit transmissions, but I don?t know if they ever resolved the glitch or not,? the air marshal said…

…?We call these [PDAs] the ?Thousand Dollar Game Boy,?? said one air marshal, equating the device to the hand-held Nintendo video game player. ?Some air marshals have up to 70 games on their PDAs that they?ve downloaded from the Internet,? the air marshal said.

Another air marshal said that ?because my PDA is always crashing, I don?t use it anymore.? After his device crashed twice, wiping out an extensive series of notes painstakingly input into the PDA, ?I don?t use it except to play Asteroids,? the air marshal said.

I’ve made the point numerous times that we don’t have any shortage of astronauts, and that their loss in accidents like last February’s shouldn’t be the primary focus of our concern in formulating national space policy.

And actually, it’s old news, but the press is now starting to pay attention, because it’s gotten dramatically worse. That is, the problem of NASA having too many astronauts. NASA has always had more astronauts than it needed, and as the article points out, many of them end up being engineers on the Shuttle program.

What the article doesn’t point out is that one of the reasons for the oversupply was that when George Abbey ran Johnson Space Center with an iron fist, he used many of the astronaut corps as a spy network to know who was and wasn’t loyal, and rewarded or punished them by allowing them to fly, or not. If he’d had a shortage, he wouldn’t have had that kind of leverage over them.

Unfortunately, even though the Abbey regime supposedly ended when Bush came in, many in Houston still live in fear of his return, until they actually see his dead body.

This is one of the reasons that I’m not a member of either major party.

I have nothing to say about the Great Sausage Incident in Milwaukee, except that it represents baseball at its wurst.

I’m just wondering how many of the people who are spurring the president on to send troops to Liberia were concerned about him sending them to Iraq because it would be a “distraction from the war on terrorism and Al Qaeda”?

Jim Oberg writes about NASA’s “see no evil” culture.

Jim Oberg writes about NASA’s “see no evil” culture.

Jim Oberg writes about NASA’s “see no evil” culture.