"At the request of and in coordination with the family, the Army is releasing the name of the third Soldier who died while performing a training mission near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29."

"Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, served as an aviation officer (15A) in the regular Army from July 2019 to January 2025. She has no deployments. She was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion, Ft Belvoir, Va. Her awards include the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon. Our deepest condolences go out to her family, and all the families who are mourning the loss of their loved ones impacted by this devastating accident...."

Reads the statement from the Army.

Trump press briefing, just now, on the air disaster.

 

Much of this was an attack on the FAA's diversity and inclusion hiring plan, "which says diversity is integral to achieving FAA's mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel":

"Glass from shattered car windows and storefronts littered the ground, whipping demonstrators along with tree branches and trash, video and interviews show. "

"Dirt and grit collected in mouths. Anyone without goggles had trouble keeping their eyes open. The roar of the blades was deafening. To calculate the approximate altitude of the Lakota [helicopter], The Post used geospatial data, building elevations, street widths and measurements of other street objects to create a precise scaled model of the intersection. It also used metadata from a photograph of the helicopter taken at 10:03 p.m. in the same spot to further build the 3-D environment. Sam Ward stood on 5th Street NW and watched the Lakota blast the nearby trees into a frenzy. 'It was pretty wild, and it certainly appeared they were using it as an intimidation tactic,' Ward, 27, said.... [T]he use of a helicopter’s rotor wash is a common military tactic to incite fear, disperse crowds and warn of other capabilities, like rockets and guns, said Kyleanne Hunter, a former Marine Corps pilot who flew Cobra attack helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan.... [T]he Lakota had an estimated 48 mph rotor wash.... That force was strong enough to snap a thick tree branch outside the National Portrait Gallery, a Smithsonian official said."

From "A low-flying ‘show of force’/Two military helicopters roared over demonstrators in Washington protesting after the death of George Floyd, producing winds equivalent to a tropical storm" (WaPo)(analyzing events that occurred on June 1st).

"The five passengers who were killed when a helicopter without doors splashed into the East River on Sunday night were cinched into heavy-duty harnesses and tied to the helicopter floor..."

"... with only a knife to free themselves from frigid waters. Given little more than a brief safety video beforehand, they were left at the mercy of a stiff current as the helicopter dragged them 50 blocks south, upside down and underwater, before rescue divers could cut them free. The crash... exposed what aviation experts called startling safety gaps in the fast-growing industry of doors-off photo flights, once reserved for professional photographers but increasingly marketed to tourists looking to dangle their feet outside and share stomach-churning pictures of the skyline on Instagram."

From "Doors-Off Helicopter Flights Under Scrutiny After East River Crash" (NYT).

It's so important not to fall out that it eclipses the question of how to get detached if there is a crash. There must be many situations where your attention to a primary safety issue exacerbates a secondary safety issue.

I'm sorry to hear about this accident. Look how happy these passengers were, just before dying:


Photo by Trevor Cadigan posted to Instagram on Sunday.

What was the carbon footprint?

"Chinese Helicopter Rescues 52 From Ship Trapped in Antarctic Ice."

"Third Icebreaker Fails To Reach Stranded Ship In Antarctic."

"That was the word early Monday from aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy — the Russian ship with 74 passengers and crew that's been stuck in Antarctic ice for a week now."

The passengers are not all scientists. Some are "paying members of the public." Oh, those people who just need to go everywhere, eh? People with "bucket lists." I suppose they want to pay to go up in space too. Will they have to chip in for the helicopter rescue or whatever else is going to be needed and/or will they sue the shipping company?

Here's how the cruise was presented to the public:

"I was on board the chopper with the door off — our pilot flew in nice and close to the top of the spire and hovered there for about 5 seconds as I stepped OFF, yes, stepped off..."

"...and onto the top of the rock which is only about 2 sq ft. Our director was holding my arm from inside the chopper as I stepped out to the rock — where our safety guy (who had climbed to the top – that’s right – climbed) grabbed my other arm to make sure I didn’t fall off the 125 ft rock and down to the ocean below."

Jeff Probst describes how they got that shot that begins the opening sequence in the new season of "Survivor." It disturbed me to see him there, and the video — here — of how he got there is scary too.

And here's that book "Stranded" that Probst wrote with a co-author – a novel for kids about kids stranded on an island.

A disappointing turnout for the Obama rally in Madison, Wisconsin.

Personally, I'm at work, but [my husband] Meade is on the scene, where he talked to a police officer who said they'd planned for 30,000 but were estimating the crowd at 15,000. And Meade encountered a friend who said he'd heard reports that it would be a nightmare trying to park downtown, but he pulled into a parking garage and was the first car there.

The police had cordoned off a big swath of lawn on the Capitol Square for the spillover crowd, Meade told me (by phone), but there is no spillover crowd.

Here's the #ObamaMadison Twitter feed, coming from many people on the scene. They are "shoulder-to-shoulder" packed in, they say. Here's the presentation of tweets at Isthmus. I selected these:

O hai black helicopter! #obama #madison

POTUS must be close because there's a Blackhawks helicopter out my window! #obamamadison #theboss...

Kind of crazy looking at the tweets from #ObamaMadison. Just 3 blocks away and I can't even tell, except for the circling military choppers

Couldn't those olive drab helicopters have the courtesy to quiet down so we can hear the speakers? #ObamaMadison....

UPDATE: Meade phones: "It was a very subdued crowd." Did they ever use the overflow area? No. Subdued for both Obama and Springsteen, said Meade, proceeding to sing me his imitation Springsteen.

Mendocino cops helicopter in to a backcountry marijuana farm.

"We have old hippies in our county growing marijuana and they are not our problem... These are people who are trying to get rich quick.... Mendocino County was basically being taken over by thugs."

"A man was arrested after stealing author Jonathan Franzen's glasses from the writer and demanding a ransom of £100,000 ($158,808) at a book launch."

"Police said a helicopter was called to chase the culprit, who jumped into the Serpentine lake in London. The 27-year-old has since been released with no further action being taken and the glasses have been recovered."

A helicopter? I mean, I know Franzen's book — "Freedom" — is considered tremendously important, but... it was a pair of glasses. Why chase the guy with a helicopter?

Is it because those glasses are part of his signature look? Quick! Which one is Franzen?



Without the glasses... he could be... just anybody.

Some book journal editor who was at the scene of the crime, said: "It was frankly quite bizarre. Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work, this is the last thing anyone expected at his book launch."

Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work! I don't understand literary-journalist logic. It's exactly seriousness that inspires absurd prankish tweaking. (If you don't understand my logic, you need to watch a few Marx Brothers movies.)

"Controversial propositions."

With health care politics raging, it's refreshing to debate over something — anything — else, and here, John Hinderaker has just listed a bunch of controversial things he feels like asserting are true. (Via Instapundit.) I'm going to respond to the items that it amuses me to respond to.

* Much as Bob Dylan was the most authentic spokesman for his generation, Taylor Swift is the most authentic spokesman for hers.

Well, that's a trick assertion, since Bob Dylan was never about authenticity:

During the first half of the concert, after singing "Gates of Eden," Dylan got into a little riff about how the song shouldn't scare anybody, that it was only Halloween, and that he had his Bob Dylan mask on. "I'm masquerading!" he joked, elongating the second word into a laugh. The joke was serious. Bob Dylan, né Zimmerman, brilliantly cultivated his celebrity, but he was really an artist and entertainer, a man behind a mask, a great entertainer, maybe, but basically just that—someone who threw words together, astounding as they were. The burden of being something else — a guru, a political theorist, "the voice of a generation," as he facetiously put it in an interview a few years ago — was too much to ask of anyone.

But no, it's not a trick assertion because he said "most authentic." Or is it that we Baby Boomers were raging phonies, and the biggest phony would thus be the most authentic. As for Taylor Swift, she seems like a nice person. Is she bland or am I jaded to find her too bland to care about? Is one more or less authentic when nice and bland?

So, my proposition is: Authenticity is bogus.

Back to Hinderaker:

* The three most desirable actresses in movie history are Paulette Goddard, Anna Karina and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

"Desirability" isn't a good abstraction. Hinderaker likes the brunette gamine. 

* London is the world's greatest city, and Israel is the world's most exciting place.

I can live without that kind of excitement. Have you noticed Indiana?

* America's youth have never been the same since Saturday morning television went from real programming (Fury, Sky King, the Cisco Kid, etc.) to cartoons.

I can't even remember that those shows were on in the morning. When I think about "Sky King," I remember this from Bill Bryson's "Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid": "Even at six years old, and even in an age as intellectually undemanding as the 1950s, you didn't have to be hugely astute to see that a flying cowboy was a fairly flimsy premise for an action series. Sky could only capture villains who lingered at the edge of grassy landing strips and to whom it didn't occur to run for it until Sky had landed, taxied to a safe halt, climbed down from the cockpit, assumed an authoritative stance, and shouted 'Okay, boys, freeze!' — a process that took a minute or two, for Kirby Grant was not, it must be said, in the first flush of youth." Now, I have to admit, I didn't think about that at the time. What I thought about was how it seemed that there was a competition between "Sky King" and "Whirlybirds" and that everyone had an opinion about whether they preferred airplanes or helicopters. I was adamantly helicopterist.

So my controversial proposition will be: The best people prefer helicopters to airplanes. 

* The only good lawyer show in the history of television was Perry Mason.

False. "The Defenders." That was the good one. 

* The smartest person whom most Americans see on a regular basis is Simon Cowell.

Ha. Maybe. I'm going with a corollary: Americans are better able to enjoy displays of intelligence that come with a British accent. And: What seems especially smart about Cowell is that he's willing to come right out and say — quite directly — things that are true. He gets away with doing that on television because he's got a British accent. An American panelist with the same amount of time to express an opinion will need to blow at least half of it on blather intended to make us feel that he is a nice (and normal) person.

That's all I've got to say. Sorry I didn't take the bait on any of Hinderaker's historical propositions — the best and worst characters in history and so forth. Or, no, I can make one very grand assertion: The best and the worst human beings who ever lived were undoubtedly shunned by most people and forgotten soon after they died.