Perspective

A little perspective

By Times Wires
Published January 27, 2008

Only 7 in 10 army recruits have high school diploma

The Army is lowering recruitment standards to levels not seen in at least two decades, and Slate says the implications are severe - not only for the future of the Army, but also for the direction of U.S. foreign policy. The latest statistics - compiled by the Defense Department and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Boston-based National Priorities Project - are grim. They show that the percentage of new Army recruits with high school diplomas has plunged from 94 percent in 2003 to 83.5 percent in 2005 to 70.7 percent in 2007. (The Pentagon's longstanding goal is 90 percent.)

Bad tidings in Baltic Dry index

Worried about the world financial markets? Then don't even peek at the Baltic Dry index. This is neither a specialist beer nor a measure of Russo-Finnish trade but a composite of global shipping costs for bulk commodities such as grains and coal. As such, it is a rough and ready measure of the state of global trade. And the Economist points out that it's fallen by a third since its peak in November.

Why your plane is late

For a quarter century Don Brown was an air traffic controller. He now writes an aviation blog: gettheflick.blogspot.com. Here is a posting where he explains the cause of many flight delays:The runway - the system - must have some "give" to it. It must have some unused capacity in order to ensure safety. In reality it does. That unused capacity is after midnight. That is the reason you see flights arriving at 1 or 2 a.m. after a day of bad weather. There is no "give" - during normal hours - in the system when there is adverse weather. This leads to the massive flight delays Americans suffered through this summer. Airlines can make more money selling 70 airplanes worth of tickets per hour than they could if they limited themselves to the 60 airplanes per hour that the runway can handle. In fairness to the airlines, it's not in their interest to limit themselves. It is easier to sell the tickets and blame the delays on the weather or the "antiquated" air traffic control system. Especially if the flying public doesn't understand runway capacity limits and therefore fails to notice that the "antiquated" air traffic control system is delivering more airplanes to the runways than the runways can handle. Read his blog to learn what "the flick" means.

Charging toward the fast lane

Wired magazine reports that the oft-delayed Tesla Roadster, the all-electric high-performance sports car that is supposed to marry up gearheads and greens, will finally go on sale March 17. The gearhead attraction: 0 to 60 mph in 4 seconds. The green attraction: powered purely by electricity. One problem of another green kind: the $98,000 price. Because of reliability problems with the transmission, the first Roadsters will have a sturdier interim transmission that slows the car down to 5.7 seconds to reach 60 from a standing start. Even at that, a Prius it's not.

[Last modified January 26, 2008, 23:08:39]