PUBLISHED : MON, 17 MAR 2014, 05:23 PM
UPDATED : WED, 26 MAR 2014, 9:00 AM
Did Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Land On Gilligan's Island ?
"Are we desensitized to the point of not being able to truly empathize, or is this our way of coping with tragedies since we’ve had to endure them in different ways than have previous generations ?" asked the Web site Elite Daily in a post trying to make sense of the morbid Internet memes about the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
Jokes about the missing airplane could be a way for people to cope with the outrageousness that the U.S. government can be so incompetent and impotent, given how much technology exists today, given how the limited computer power of a smartphone can now power record-breaking robots, but seemingly, by comparison, the U.S. government could still be blind-sided by the inadequate technology aboard jet airplanes over a decade after terrorists used airplanes as weapons of mass destruction during the attacks of 9/11.
These Internet memes are funny, when you think of the irony, but then they become tragic, when you think of the missing people and the pain and agony of their surviving friends and families. The government's continuing negligence in failing to update airline black box technology could be one of those concerns that Edward Snowden was warning us about : the danger that the U.S. government's dragnet surveillance program would inundate the government with so much useless information in such large quantities that the government would lose focus of more important issues, like finding missing airplanes, improving airplane black box technology, or being able to predict that Russia would pounce on Crimea, and, more importantly, when.
Internet Memes : When the implied butt of the joke is the impotent government
As the public's imagination has turned from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flt. 370 to morbid memes that the flight has accidentally landed on Gilligan's Island, or when the public imagines that Tattoo from Fantasy Island, who was famous for announcing the arrival of "The plane ! The plane !" would probably do a better job of locating the missing flight than the government, you know that the public's perception of government competence is in the gutter.
How soon before Republicans seize on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight as a flashpoint to demonstrate that President Barack Obama failed to improve world-wide aviation safety in the post-9/11 world ?
When is the U.S. government going to wise up, stop gutting the U.S. Constitution with its dragnet surveillance programs, and, instead, focus on the things the government should be addressing : like ensuring adequate safety technology being deployed and functional aboard every airplane ?
- RELATED : Nobody is asking why Boeing, the manufacturer of the missing aircraft, cannot explain or is not being asked to explain why the tracking systems failed on a plane believed to have continued its flight for several hours after last contact. (FAA, clueless to help, grateful it was neither an American flight that disappeared, nor that the disappearance took place near America * NYC : News & Analysis)
- RELATED : If the transponders had not gone silent on 9/11, air traffic controllers would have quickly realized that two jetliners en route to Los Angeles had made dramatic course changes and were bound straight for Manhattan. (Out of Control : Why Does the FAA Allow Pilots To Turn Off Transponders ? * The New York Times)
A lingering, yet compelling, question facing investigators is whether Malaysia Airlines offered its passengers Wi-Fi service. If so, did the Wi-Fi signal remain available, even though other communication services aboard the flight seem to have been deliberately disabled ? Because some airlines place Wi-Fi service behind a paywall, how many passengers on the flight had paid to access any available Wi-Fi service ? Since the Federal Aviation Administration and other airline agencies heavily regulate passenger use of cellphones, PDA's, digital tablets, and laptops aboard commercial aircraft, do airline regulators inadvertently cut-off communication technology that is undoubtedly "smarter" than black boxes and deactivation-prone transponders ?
