It just occurred to me that people reading this website in a feed reader may be missing half the action: the rather excellent comments (and the dodgy ones too). So, a reminder. Apart from the RSS feed of the posts, there’s also a feed of the comments. And if you have no idea what that means, well… I was going to link to an explanation but all those I found were too geeky.
Thanksgiving With the Kranzes
Yeah OK, it was mentioned in the comments, but the movie Thanksgiving With the Kranzes deserves its own post. It’s a superb satire on Ron Howard’s Apollo 13. 18 minutes well spent. And it ties in nicely with my posts about the oven crash and failure IS an option. Now back to work…
Releasing the Black Hawk crash video was A Good Thing
[Update 13 April 2012: It turned out that the Black Hawk wasn’t a perfectly good helicopter after all. I will eventually update this post. Perhaps. But today I’ll be linking to this post because the Department of Defence has respected the wishes of the family and not released the Inquiry Officer Report into the death of Sapper Jamie Larcombe. I think that’s wrong for the reasons set out in this post.]
An open letter to family and friends of those who died in the crash of the Black Hawk helicopter on HMAS Kanimbla, and to those who survived.
I understand why you didn’t want the crash video made public. Every time you see it, you’ll re-live that crash. And every time, you’ll feel that black void of horror creeping back up into your mind. The horror may stay with you for years. It’s pretty fucked, I know.
But despite the on-going pain it inevitably causes, I think it’s not only reasonable that such videos be made public, I think it’s essential.
In 1992, there was another accident. During an army live-fire exercise, an assault rifle accidentally discharged and a soldier died. A very good friend of mine was holding that rifle. And while both a military inquiry and a civilian coronial inquest agreed it was an accident and found my friend blameless, the post-traumatic stress and guilt stayed with him for years — to the point where it became unbearable and he hanged himself at the end of 1996.
His parents were devastated. I wasn’t too thrilled either, having cut him down from the tree in my back yard and, later, helped carry him to his grave.
Some of us reckon the army hadn’t taken proper care of one of their own. The 2005 Senate inquiry into the The effectiveness of Australia’s military justice system agreed.
As a direct result of Senate recommendations, the inquiry into the Black Hawk crash was headed by a civilian judge — the first time that’d happened. And that judge declared the video should be released. It was right and proper that he do so.
Secrecy provides a breeding-ground for corruption.
Secrecy can be used to cover up incompetence.
Secrecy is, of course, essential in many military operations. But when it comes to finding out why a perfectly good helicopter slammed into the deck of a ship and then dragged two fine men to their deaths, secrecy has no place. Justice needs to be done — out of respect to those men, and out of respect to every man and woman who chooses to serve the Australian people in the armed forces.
Justice not only needs to be done, we need to see that it’s being done — and that means putting the evidence on the public record.
I’m sorry you’ve had to re-live the disaster. I know even reading this letter will hurt. I’ll have trouble sleeping tonight too, having re-lived my own story. That’s the price of Justice. It’s worth paying.
Failure IS an option
Hugh MacLeod has written a great little piece pointing out that bravado about “Failure is not an option” is just stupid. I also like some of the comments from readers:
- “Failure is not an option” people are invariably the ones least willing to deliver the intellectual and physical juice to lessen the probability of failure.
- “Failure is not an option” people are invariably the same people who said, two paragraphs earlier, that they want bold, risk-taking approaches.
Failure is always an option, which of course you want to avoid, But if failure is inevitable, then fail fast — and then adapt.
Oven crashes: technology gone mad
Last night I had to re-boot the oven because it had crashed. I only wanted to grill a couple of tomatoes for our dinner. Does it really require that amount of computational complexity?
Trash sculptures
I’ve been very serious today so the time’s come for something a little more light-hearted — sculptures of garbage that, when looked at from exactly the right angle, form a silhouette of the artists.
Thanks to Signal vs Noise for the link.