Do you have any references on this? My understanding is that it’s in kind of a similar boat with intergenerational trauma that quantum mechanics is with certain schools of philosophy, and that the actual science of epigenetics supports a much more limited scope (responding to e.g famine and other current stressors in utero), so anything that could fall into the intergenerational realm would need to be passed down through the normal evolutionary process of populations experiencing selective pressure.
No kidding. My old company needed to replace an aircraft engine part for a customer in Japan, and it ended up being something like a third of the cost and time to give one of our mechanics essentially a weeklong vacation rather than ship it (as a bonus, he was able to hand carry the broken part back for failure analysis, rather than having to deal with equally expensive and slow return shipping).
An airline pilot told me his only ever engine-failure event was on a flight from Dubai to Beijing, they were over half-way when one of the four engines failed. Company told them to return back to Dubai, logistically they were never going to get a new engine to Beijing
Just to be clear, the NRA Foundation and the NRA are distinct entities (the NRA is not a non-profit), even though the Foundation was more or less obviously created to take advantage of tax law. Hilariously, the NRA recently sued the Foundation.
Honestly this isn't something people select for at all--by the time you've made it through that many rounds of selection you aren't going to let GI issues keep you from the finish. I've heard of some creative solutions to the problem involving safing the ejection seat and getting out of your gear, but I don't really believe any of them. If you think it's a significant risk, you basically have two options: talk to the squadron flight surgeon and get medically grounded, or wear a diaper. Almost everyone is too proud to do either of those things, so a number of pilots have call signs related to shitting themselves in flight. Yes, everyone will make fun of you after the fact--if you're a decent person, you'll at least clean out the cockpit yourself.
That's one option, although for longer missions your preparation generally needs to start the night before and I wouldn't recommend flying on an empty stomach (unless it works for you, but it makes most people more susceptible to airsickness). There isn't one consistent method that works for everyone--I think the book Sled Driver has a section where they talk about physiological preparation for SR-71 flights, and the only consistent habit the crew had was NOT eating the "traditional," low-residue steak-and-eggs breakfast.
Good news for gassy food lovers is the cabin pressure changes make everyone fart, there's no one else in the cockpit to hear or smell you, and even if there was it'd be loud and they'd be wearing an oxygen mask. Little victories.
Imodium also does wonders for slowing things down and avoiding bowel movements, provided you use it carefully and infrequently such that you don't totally mess up your normal gut functioning.
The context is piloting a fighter aircraft in a multi-hour combat mission though. I think missing meal might matter for mission critical, uh, missions.
I'm not talking doing menial work while skipping lunch.
A full gut makes you sleepy and lethargic, as the blood moves to your gut to help digest. There's a reason many societies have a siesta after lunch.
A full belly can causes problem if you get wounded.
Besides, I doubt our ancestors went on the hunt with full bellies. I go jogging, but never after a meal.
If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.
One more thing. I hitched a ride with autocross racer. While I was strapped in tight, when he'd make a hard turn my guts would slosh over to the side, which was rather painful. The fix was to bear down hard on my abdominal muscles. I expect it would be much worse with a full belly, and a fighter pilot is going to be pulling lots of g's.
Oh, believe me, I know about the need for siestas.
But surely there's a middle ground between "heavy lunch" and "skipping lunch entirely" for a multi hour combat sortie?
Many people cannot focus (especially over long periods of time) on an empty stomach.
> If I'm busy, I also do not notice being hungry, even if I haven't eaten in 16+ hours.
Combat sorties are hours of boredom where you have to keep attention just in case, followed by an explosion of frantic action. Unless you're a combat pilot I'd say your experience doesn't apply here?
I'm not a combat pilot, but my dad was. Flying over enemy territory requires constant alertness, for many hours at a stretch. You can be attacked at any time, by flak or enemy fighters, who love to catch an enemy napping.
A favorite Luftwaffe tactic was to come up from behind, catch the tailgunner unawares, and rake it with cannon fire and get an easy kill. If the tailgunner was awake, he'd fire a few rounds of tracers (while out of range) to let the 109 know he was on the bounce, and the 109 would usually back off.
His cohort suffered 80% casualties.
> Many people
are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective.
(I didn't qualify, as I wear glasses.) They work hard to weed out slackers, people of low intelligence, sloppy people, unhealthy people, dishonest people, etc. They'll even reject you for a speeding ticket.
First, thanks for sharing your dad's experience! Very interesting.
I did say I thought it required constant alertness... over long periods of boredom, a bad combination. It's hours of nothing punctuated by frantic action. Worse to be keeping a watchful eye on a completely empty stomach, I'd say. Happy to be contradicted if your dad told you he flew long combat missions on an empty stomach...
I also think long combat flights with aerial refueling are longer now than in the WW2 era, right? Excluding maybe bombers, but surely bombers did have toilets, even if minimalistic?
> [many people] are not fit to be combat pilots. The AF is very selective.
I'm sure of this, but we're discussing a very specific thing. The other person who replied to my topmost comment, who also seems to be speaking from experience, assured me pilots don't select on this particular basis. In fact, this person said fighter pilots do shit themselves and earn nicknames because of it.
I didn't know that! But I do know that crews got eggs before flights. Nobody else did.
When RAF pilots went to the Soviet Union to help the Soviets, when the first frost came the pilots were horrified when the women brought out big vats of fat and ladled it out. But after flying in those cold temperatures, they realized the fat was just the thing to keep them warm!
(1) Why do you think this is worse for the Chinese government than the US? Also, this view of the strategic goals of the war seems fundamentally incompatible with both how it began and the ongoing US government narratives about it.
(2) I think we all (the author included) agree with you that it's easier to break things than to build them--both hardware and relationships--so it's obvious that maintaining trade through these kinds of choke points requires some degree of cooperation on all fronts. Iran does have a geographic advantage over other players, though (partial exceptions to Oman and the UAE), as well as a clear acute interest in constricting traffic through the strait. Sure, it may be bleeding them, but it seems to be one of the few ways they can meaningfully attack their enemies. It'll be interesting to see if anyone has the will to force the strait open against Iran's efforts.
Generally agree on Ukraine/Taiwan and the bigger geopolitical picture though.
(1) China is more sensitive to shipping and oil shipments (and derivatives) than the US. It hurts both but China much more. The US is hurt in so far as high gas price are bad for elections, a small price to pay for strategic advantage.
(2) Iran has a temporary but unsustainable interest in constricting traffic, and it's not the only country who could impose a filter there. The mere credible threat of a strike on shipping is enough to stop it, so other countries basically have an equivalent capability to restrict traffic. And all countries, including Iran, are unable to sustain a prolonged closure. The current situation is an unstable, non-equilibrium situation for Iran and it's neighbors.
Overall, all of it doesn't really matter to the US because simply taking Iran off the supply chain of China is good for them. They spin the narrative about starting the war for a variety of other reasons so that they can justify the pain it inflicts on their allies (Korea, Japan - very dependent on those hydrocarbons too, and EU) and choke China's oil supplies without looking intentional. Last time the US overtly blockaded an asian nation's oil supplies, Pearl Harbour happened.
Which is another reason why China had such a structural incentive to move toward solar power, battery storage and renewables in general while also powering most of their early growth with dirty power plants.
I think Trump wants to be remembered for having neutered the China threat and having restored American supremacy and dynamism, and doesn't care too much about what it will cost at the next federal elections. I think he cares more about his legacy and wanting to be remembered as a historical figure on the strategic level. He's portrayed as being merely a fool with self interested dictatorial tendencies but I think attributing such simple intentions to him is self deception and leads to poor analysis. It doesn't pay to trivialize figures for disliking them or their actions.
Without taking camp here, I'll say that taking Trump for a fool is shortsighted, in my opinion.
It's also fair to play with the idea that the whole US political establishment understood this, and agree with the plan, thus why the Dems have stayed so silent on those matters.
(1) Sure, I'm not arguing that the Chinese economy is less vulnerable to a SOH closure than the US. I do think the US government is much more vulnerable to economic pressure than the Chinese government is (especially in an election year that even before the war was shaping up poorly for the ruling party), and any calculus the government makes needs to include this. If this was the goal of the war, I think we would also see significantly different targeting and messaging than we do now. If there was a ceasefire tomorrow, it's unclear that China would be the outsize loser here.
(2) Again, sure, but Iran can clearly sustain it longer. They've read their Clausewitz and properly understand this as a contest of political will, which they have much deeper reserves of than capital or munitions. Anyone with any power in the Iranian regime knows they have no offramp.
Absolutely agree that Trump cares strongly for his legacy, maybe more than anything except for his self-image, but the most important part of that legacy is being recognized as both popular and a winner--I would argue that these are far more important to him personally than US power and influence on the world stage (shutting down USAID, for example, was a massive blow to US soft power, and the NATO infighting that he initiated is still probably a net negative for US hard power, even if it has had a positive impact on European defense spending and self-sufficiency). He also clearly wants to see that legacy established in his lifetime (hence the obsession with having things named after him). It's hard to imagine this being a particularly effective way to increase long-term US power and influence relative to China, particularly in a way that will generate positive sentiment within the US--especially among the majority voters who favored his populist-isolationist political platform.
This is an odd place to put a stake in the ground--there are a number of macro trends that have been going on for far longer (e.g. the military-industrial complex, the Cold War, Congress, American football), as well as a few others that have only really come to a head more recently (e.g. demographics, media spheres/tribalization). I would argue that our failure to learn lessons from the Millennium Challenge has a massive overlap with our failure to learn from Ukraine--not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam... The military is not monolithic--remember that the Millennium Challenge was more or less a sparring bout between two parts of the military with different philosophies--and it really takes something like an existential war for meritocracy and common sense to reassert themselves to a meaningful degree.
A smaller point: all military exercises are heavily scripted--it's more or less impossible for them to be otherwise, as you just can't simulate the details of war that matter without actually killing people, breaking things, and giving up your secret game plans. Usually the goal of this sort of thing is to make sure that everything (people, equipment, doctrine) works together more or less as intended, and people have the experience leading and operating in larger units than they do on a routine basis. The PR people then spin it into an unqualified and historic success, validation of our technology and tactics against the forces of evil, blah blah blah. It is still very difficult to draw the right lessons from these sorts of things--even more so when the civilian leadership of the military has 99 things to consider besides a certain kind of pure military effectiveness (and although I have strong feelings here, we're still doing quite well on the tactical and operational levels in spite of everything).
Fun fact: the Millennium Challenge is still taught as a case study in basic officer training, at least in the Marine Corps (well, probably--it definitely was a little over a decade ago).
My understanding of the UK CAA is that it isn’t as liberal as the US FAA when it comes to amateur-built experimental aircraft airworthiness. I would still be surprised if a 3d-printed intake manifold on a homebuilt passed an airworthiness inspection in the US without a number of detailed questions being answered to the satisfaction of the airworthiness representative.
It seems reasonable and prudent to go through decontamination after this sort of thing, but if the worker had just gone home to their family soaking wet without changing, there would still have been close enough to zero risk to anyone (again, cleaning up and making sure this is the case is a very reasonable thing to do).
This sort of place is safe enough to bring your kid into without significant precautions (I got to do this as a kid—it was really cool). The biggest risk by far is drowning.
