Air crash investigation - The videos

After my previous post about air crashes, I did a search on Google video and found several complete episodes for your viewing pleasure:

• The Tenerife disaster
  


• Mid-air collision
  


• Aloha Airlines 243 - near crash in a 30-minute flight
  

Moving out

That's it! I have moved all my stuff out from my dorm room and office. My father helped pack and move all the stuff I have gathered in the past nine years into boxes and bring it all home to my parents' house, where it all stands (as you can see on the right) filling up the entire room.

After four hours of work packing and carrying, all my physical belongings are now in this one room. Moved items include lots of clothes, paper, and one computer and printer.

The next step is the hard one: unpack and sort all of this junk and pack only two suitcases for my new life in the United States.

My favorite TV show

Well, after telling you about my favorite TV show in the 80s, I'll talk about my favorite TV show at the present. That show is called Air Crash Investigation or Mayday. It is a documentary about air disasters. Each episode begins with a narrative of a flight that ends in some kind of disaster, and then begins to follow the investigators in their quest to determine the cause of the accident. Using interviews with eyewitnesses and dramatizations based on CVR transcripts the show recreates the drama of the crash.

What I find most interesting is the investigation, and the highly unlikely chain of events that is usually required for a crash to happen. Usually, crashed are caused by a combination of unforeseen weaknesses in design coupled with a series of serious mistakes (or malice) on behalf of the pilots, maintenance crews, or sometimes a third party.

For those of you who have read this far, here are some interesting facts you may have not known about air crashes:

• The deadliest accident in aviation ever with 583 dead - the Tenerife Disaster - involved two 747s which crashed on the ground. The primary cause of the crash was a mistake on behalf of the KLM captain, who believed he was cleared to take off when in fact there was another aircraft on the runway at the time.


• A system installed in order to prevent mid-air collisions (TCAS) has been deemed partially responsible for a mid-air collision that left 71 dead (most on board Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937. It turned out that the pilots were not instructed how to act when the TCAS system and the air traffic controller gave conflicting instructions.


• The worst single-aircraft crash (JAL Flight 123) killing 520 people was caused due to a critical mistake during repair on the accident aircraft seven years prior to the accident. This was one of only three reported cases where all four redundant hydraulic systems have failed at once.

Things to do before I leave (part 3): Preparing for Stanford

In the first two parts of this list, I've written the thing I need to do in order to leave Israel. Now comes a list of things to do in order to get acclaimed at Stanford.

• Stanford
  
  
  
  • Send PhD completion certificate
  
  
  • Confirm payment for flight to germany in October
  
  
  
  


• Temporary organization
  
  
  
  • Order hotel for first days
  
  
  • Buy temporary health insurance
  
  
  • Rent a car
  
  
  
  


• Research car purchase and maybe order a car


• Research cellular phone


• Money
  
  
  
  • Research banks and accounts
  
  
  • Figure out if and how to transfer money
  
  
  
  


• Pack (clothes and other items), buy stuff if needed.

80s Nostalgy post #1

My brother has recently posted a nostalgical post about 80s music from our time in the United States. This, together with news about Bush's attempt to shut down PBS remined me of the educational TV shows I enjoyed while in the US in the 80s, and especially Square One, a crazy show with math concepts (including quite advanced math) presented to children in an attractive form.

You can search YouTube for examples, but here are a few great clips, some of them still pop in to my memory even today:

• Angle dance (... have some geometric fun)
  


• Tesslations (ריצופים)
  


• Apple rap "I think I see the problem/ I know what you mean...)
  
  


• Graph of Love "Just glance at this graph my friend/ Romance shows an upward trend/ I'm singing the praises of/ a thing called the graph of love."
  
  


• Ghost of a Chance

We are the finalists!

Today I participated in the Israeli English Open Debating Championship at IDC in Herzliya. In a British Parliamentary Style debate four teams of two debaters represent two opposing opinions. The adjudicators then rank the teams according to how convincing they were and based on some rules.

In today's tournament, me and my partner Mark broke to the finals, which means we were one on the four top ranked teams out of 20. We won two of the three preliminary rounds, and came third in the other round. We were the highest-ranked team of the three Technion teams.

The final was between us, two teams from IDC, and a legendary team of two very experienced debaters. The motion for the final was "This house believes in immediate withdrawal from Iraq". We were first opposition. We did not win. However, all finalists got a medal, and so did I.

Handbag Only

Last week I flew back home with no luggage, with only a handbag. This was due to the fact that I left my luggage at my brother's house in Saarbrücken. I will pick the luggage up when I return to Dagstuhl (and my brother) in October.

However, then I will be flying from the US and back, and thus will be able to carry the luggage left at my brother's house in addition to whatever luggage I fly with to the US.

So, how do you fly handbag only? I checked in for my flights the day before and printed out an electronic boarding pass. I then used this boarding pass to go directly to the gate and board the flight without even passing the checking counters. Even my Silver status was mentioned on the boarding pass, so I got to use priority boarding as well.

In the Amsterdam - Tel Aviv leg I was assigned a whole row, but shortly before departure the flight attendants had to move two children who sat near the emergency exit to my row.

Upon landing at Ben Gurion airport, I head directly outside and wait for a shared taxi that (after three hours) brought me home.