Aviation accidents at Centennial Airport
Re: “Flying unforgiving skies; Busy Centennial Airport leads U.S. in general-aviation accidents,” Aug. 21 news story.
The Post’s story on the history of accidents at Centennial Airport validates the concerns of many nearby residents who witness the frequent airplane crashes associated with flights at this airport. A great majority of aircraft using the airport are flown or owned by individuals who are too busy, too wealthy, or too important to stoop to using the Denver or Colorado Springs airports.
My issue with Centennial is the noise associated with the jets that use Centennial at all hours of the night and the unwillingness of the airport board to restrict or limit the operation of these very noisy airplanes, as other airport boards have done.
Given that the airport staff and board are “pro” general aviation and apparently care little about noise- abatement controls, I don’t foresee any actions on their part to limit jet aircraft that generate unreasonable noise during takeoffs. I wish I was wrong, and this letter may prompt airport staff to respond that they’re limited in their ability to enforce meaningful noise abatement controls. Maybe we need new airport board members who aren’t hearing-impaired.
Martin J. Allen, Centennial
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My dear friend Ken Magid was killed in the plane crash near Centennial Airport on Aug. 13.
In spite of what I consider smokescreen articles with information given out by the airport, I cannot believe pilot error was the factor here. In today’s world, where everyone plays the blame game and worries about litigation, it is so simple to blame the pilot. He’s not around to defend himself.
Stephen Gavit was a very careful pilot. I know that from firsthand observation. Recently, when approaching Centennial Airport, two planes crashed when coming in on instrument landing only nine days apart – approaching the same runway, crashing in the same place. Both pilots were experienced. In Gavit’s case, it was reported in The Post that the ground controller said the plane was low. Is there any doubt that Gavit would have then checked his instruments? And, in fact, he replied, 25 seconds later, that the plane was “back on glide slope” just before crashing. It is my understanding that several of the pilots who have crashed recently at Centennial were experienced check pilots.
An acquaintance at Magid’s memorial service reported touch-and-go landings on the day that Magid and his party of four died, and noted, “My friend said his instruments were reading way off, but because it was daylight, things worked out.” The Federal Aviation Administration had never taken the time to interview him about his experiences.
Foster W. Cline, Sandpoint, Idaho
Is fuel efficiency paramount?
Re: “Time for a real energy plan,” Aug. 21 Perspective article.
Mark Squillace eerily foretells of government mandates dictating how we should all live our lives if his particular set of priorities isn’t met soon. He would, it appears, have the government tell us not only what kind of cars to drive, but how many miles we can drive them. Why? Because of the impact of energy use on the environment.
Unlike the single-minded Squillace, most of us have a number of considerations that weigh into our choice of transportation, fuel efficiency being but one. Survivability in a collision is near the top of my list, and no hybrid yet meets that test. Agility is another: How well does it brake, accelerate and corner in order to avoid accidents? How quiet and comfortable is it on long trips? How well will it navigate in a Colorado snowstorm? Does it have the capacity to carry our “stuff,” our kids and our dogs?
Jeff Miller, Thornton
John Andrews’ beliefs
Re: “A half-century of Adventure,” Aug. 21 John Andrews column.
I noted with some amusement the credos that John Andrews purports to live by – especially the one where he opines that the few should never be allowed to rule over the many. He is forgetful at best, and hypocritical at worst, when we look at his record as a legislator.
As the legislative liaison for my school district over the last five years, I monitored then-state Sen. Andrews’ bills and resolutions regarding schools and school districts. Most, if not all, took power away from the many locally elected school boards and vested it in the hands of the few Republican leaders of state government. Remember the civics requirement? Remember the Tom Tancredo-sponsored resolution on the teaching of Western civilization?
Regarding the latter, Andrews could only muster three former high-school students who testified that Western civilization was not taught properly to them. He could not answer Sen. Sue Windels’ research showing that nationally 90 percent of students believed that Western civilization was taught – and taught well – in high school.
The Denver Post needs a balance of liberal and conservative views – but John Andrews? Surely someone who is less of a hypocrite is available.
James N. Stamper, Centennial
Fighting the U.S. image war
Re: “U.S. ‘rapid response’ teams will fight image war abroad,” Aug. 21 news story.
No amount of PR and advertising will repair an unfavorable image caused by a policy that is viewed as expansionist and interventionist around the globe. The neoconservative policies that led to this image problem need to be addressed by the Bush administration before any real image improvement can be achieved.
As a previous practitioner and teacher of advertising, I recall the adage, “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.” The corollary is that you need to fix the product before you start advertising. The Bush administration needs to repair flawed policies first; otherwise, sending Karen Hughes to “set up ‘rapid response’ teams to counter bad news and defend administration policies around the globe,” as described in your article, will be a quixotic adventure and no image improvement will be accomplished.
Jay M. Mower, Breckenridge
Checks and balances
Our Founding Fathers recognized that the American public needed protection from one branch of government becoming too powerful. A means of checks and balances was written into the U.S. Constitution, but it can only be effective if it is used.
In the case of Iraq, Congress did not adequately check the executive branch. Congress and the American public were snookered by a deliberate and well-organized public relations deception from the White House. The president selected evidence to support his desire for war. Our pre-emptive attack was not based upon full, objective and factual intelligence.
We must not be snookered a second time. Have you begun to hear the Bush buildup to military action with Iran, North Korea or other countries seeking nuclear power? We must not let the president cherry pick what intelligence information supports his war machine. I trust our Congress and not our president. Congress must check the president, and remember to honor the U.S. Constitution and not the person, position, religious affiliation or political party.
Glenn E. Haas, Fort Collins
Science and religion
Re: “Intelligent design lacks intelligence,” Aug. 21 Diane Carman column.
Thanks to Diane Carman for exposing intelligent design for what it is. It is not a theory, but a belief. As such, it should be respected. In the educational curriculum, it should reside in the domain of philosophy and religion, an area of inquiry valued highly by many of us. But beliefs usually remain beliefs, until/unless they are tested, retested, substantiated, proven, etc. Beliefs can have an impact, certainly, on our understanding of the world and even to our methods of the pursuit of knowledge. But beliefs, as such, are largely personal and should not be confused with theories or facts.
Anne Culver, Denver
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Diane Carman says that with most people content with being scientifically illiterate, it’s no wonder so many believe intelligent design is a scientific theory. The real wonder is that most people blindly accept what scientists say about the origins of life in our universe. The average person has let scientists become priests of a new faith-based system called “science.” When we don’t understand science, we’re supposed to trust scientists to explain it. Shame on us for not equipping ourselves with enough technical knowledge to question these priests about their mysterious religion.
Jan Krankota, Arvada
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Please accept my enthusiastic congratulations on the columns by Diane Carman and John Aloysius Farrell (“In time, religion and science coexist, Aug. 21”) on the nonsense about intelligent design. Not in all my readings have I read a more incisive, more forceful indictment than Carman’s column of the scientific ignorance of those who want to cram intelligent design down our gagging throats. I feel equally indebted to Farrell for reminding us of the “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925, as well as the sage words of President Bush to the effect that both “theories” should be given equal time in our schools.
Thomas R. Mark, Fort Collins
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True, intelligent design is not yet ready for equal time with Darwin. But it really deserves at least a sidebar or a footnote or two alerting students to the fact that some perfectly competent scientists are saying that some things cannot be explained by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. To deny all mention of intelligent design or simply dismiss it as stealth fundamentalism is scientific dogmatism of the worst kind.
W. Robert Shade, Lakewood
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An interesting comment in the letters about evolution in last Sunday’s Post states, “A strong piece of evidence is the existence of many different breeds of domestic plants and animals … produced by human beings.”
No one denies that flora and fauna have adapted to their various environments, but no human being has made one “kind” change into another “kind.” Canine, feline, bovine, etc., don’t change, and life itself is still a mystery.
Until evolution can prove spontaneous generation, supporters of the theory have no bottom plank to build all the endless words that have been printed about it. It is without foundation and sinks into nothingness.
I have to see a man create some living thing, even a blade of grass, from something that wasn’t alive before I can give the slightest credence to the unscientific theory of evolution.
Mary Jane Eaklor, Penrose
The politics of science
Re: “Political interference with science real, troubling,” Aug. 21 Perspective article.
Thank you for Tom Yulsman’s thoughtful and researched essay on current politics and science. The Bush administration appears to make many decisions based on ideology. It consequently has a track record of mistakes and distortions that have set the stage for huge costs in terms of national security, environment, and federal and state budgets. As history shows, the trouble with coming from a rigid ideological position is that real suffering is often left out of the equation. Too much effort (and money) is spent on defending and promoting ideology. Not enough effort is spent on objectively assessing problems and the impact of decisions on our real needs, now and for generations to come.
Lois Allaire, Broomfield
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Tom Yulsman’s opinion piece complaining about the politicization of science contains a political attack against science itself.
The data for the “hockey stick” graph (supposed evidence of global warming), published by Michael E. Mann and colleagues, was analyzed by two Canadian researchers, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who reported a fundamental flaw in Mann’s results. They reported that, “The main error affects a step called principal component analysis (PCA). We showed that the PCA method as used by Mann et al. effectively mines a data set for hockey stick patterns. Even from meaningless random data (red noise), it nearly always produces a hockey stick.”
Yulsman dismisses their findings, saying that they were “published in a self-avowed political ‘journal’ without peer review.” In fact, their findings were published in the prestigious, peer-reviewed Geophysical Review Letters in February 2005.
It is also suspicious that in an article about the politicization of science, Yulsman never mentions that the controversial hockey-stick graph has been used to advance the politics of global warming.
What Mann, McIntyre and McKitrick are doing is the normal process of science where scientists attempt to reproduce the results published by others and either confirm it or find flaws in it.
Yulsman’s larger error is failing to acknowledge the politics of the pro- global warming side of this controversy and the political stakes for that position.
Dean Schulze, Arvada
Utility companies’ appeals
Re: “Utilities jumping the gun on PUC appeals,” Aug. 22 editorial.
In its editorial, The Post states that “state regulators shouldn’t second-guess local governments unless there’s a compelling need.” The Public Utilities Commission agrees with that statement. However, in making its case to back the statement, The Post misunderstands the legal obligations under which the PUC must operate.
In reference to the dispute between San Miguel County and Tri-State Generation and Transmission, The Post claims that “the PUC let itself get dragged into the dispute too early. The commission should have told Tri-State that it wouldn’t act until the local process was finished.”
However, the commission has no choice whether to get “dragged into” these disputes. Colorado law compels the commission to act as an appellate decision-maker. It also requires that a decision be issued within a certain number of days (extendable for a finite number of days). Only the applicant can waive this deadline. That a local government body may repeatedly amend its earlier decisions on a land-use application doesn’t start the clock anew. In short, while the commission always encourages parties to work out their differences short of litigation, it cannot avoid its statutory responsibilities to hear and decide these matters.
The PUC respects the role of locally elected government officials in their decision-making process. The PUC only becomes involved in the event of an appeal. Fortunately, this occurs rarely.
Doug Dean, Director, Colorado Public Utilities Commission
TO THE POINT: Short takes from readers
If every person who writes to criticize and castigate President Bush for his handling of the Iraqi war were required to include a serious discussion about what should have been done instead, the number of letters criticizing Bush to date would be exactly zero.
John E. Ottem, Denver
Kaiser Permanente recently announced that people having heart attacks late at night and on weekends have a 7 percent higher risk of dying than those having an attack on weekdays during the afternoon. Can someone have them explain how to schedule one at their convenience?
Howard M. Botnick, Aurora
I have been reading about the “Stop Snitch’n” T-shirts. I am going to make my own “Stop Snitch’n” T-Shirt. It will have Karl Rove’s picture on it.
Tom Bell, Aurora
I am a Christian, and I believe in evolution. What could be a more intelligent design than evolution?
Kathaleen Strubel, Cañon City
Denver has removed many outhouses from city parks, so folks have trouble locating places to perform certain delicate functions. Yet the city is considering increasing availability of alcohol intake in the same parks! What’s wrong with this picture?
Kathy Glatz, Denver
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