Gongol.com Archives: July 2013
Brian Gongol


July 8, 2013

Aviation News One lesson of the Asiana crash: Don't trust eyewitnesses
People form very strong opinions about what they saw, even when they're completely wrong. A BBC News article about the crash quotes a passenger who says "the plane appeared to be coming in too fast", and a witness who says that the plane "looked out of control" as it came in. But the very first conclusion shared by the NTSB is that the plane was "significantly below" standard approach speed. In other words, it wasn't "too fast" at all -- it was way, way too slow. And as for being "out of control", one can see quite clearly from a crash video shown on CNN that there was nothing visibly "out of control" about the approach. And early on, the Associated Press was quoting an eyewitness who said the plane cartwheeled, when it clearly did not. They have since revised the published version of the story to remove the cartwheeling reference, but it was clearly used in the original. The fact we have so many erroneous observations from eyewitnesses that contradict the evidence just goes to show that you cannot accept eyewitness testimony without corroborating evidence. It just isn't reliable.

Aviation News Another lesson of the Asiana crash: Know where your emergency exits are

Threats and Hazards BBC reports that some Morsi supporters have been murdered by the Egyptian army

Computers and the Internet "Glassholes are the new little brother"
People recording everything around them with Google Glass will probably bother everyone sooner or later

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