RIFLE RANGE BOY

Sully (2016) Director: Clint Eastwood This movie is quite relevant in this time and age. The democratisation of access to information and freedom to verbalise has reached such a height that everyone with half a brain is a warrior, at least in cyberspace. With the luxury of an obscene amount of information that their disposal assisted by the ease of artificial intelligence (which, knowledge-wise, coincidentally is as much as its inventor), turns every armchair critic into a seeker of the Truth and a self-appointed Robin Hood of the oppressed. Heroes are born every day, but most of them remain unknown to us all. They appear out of thin air at the necessary time, do things beyond their expected capacity and disappear as quickly as the manifest. Sadly, many a time, their genuine intentions are questioned and put under the spotlight for scrutiny. Too much trust is placed on computer simulations. The human factors like empathy and compassion which had brought mankind through so many ob...

There was an anaesthetic medical officer with whom I had misfortunate to work with always had the, at least I thought so, annoying habit of encouraging the patient that he was going to anaesthetise to engage in a little prayer. He would do so as he was just going to induce sleep. The puzzling thing is that even when a regional anaesthetic failed to induce desired actions, he would ask the patient to brace and say a little prayer! To a staunch believer, what the good doctor does seem to appear just right; that we are mere mortals, that we should not be too cocky, that everything is indeed not under our control and that we are not infallible. In the other words, we dress the wound, He heals it! To most people, rationalists and atheists, a call for prayer may sound like a desperate measure and the one that most people resort to when all other humanly endeavours have failed! In other words, a mayday message saying, "only a miracle can save you now!" In the modern world, i...

The tagline 'Now everyone can fly' must be the most overused, ridiculed and abused business tagline ever in Malaysia. Now only every Tom, Dick and Harry can fly, and Jane and Mary be stewardesses; the news on a podcast recently convinced me that even any Ahmad, Ah Chong and Samy can fly a plane! You see, there was an analysis of the ill-fated Air France 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. As we all know, it went down, and it took 2 years for its wreckage and flight decoder to be found and analysed. My untrained aeronautically challenged mind interpreted the simplistic turns of events as such... The plane, an Airbus, was cruising on autopilot at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. It was manned by 2 co-pilots after the captain retired to take a nap as the going was easy. There was a minor storm, noting alarming, but it caused a little frosting over one of the wings. That is when all hell broke loose. Airbus has an automatic system called 'fly-by-wire'. It is suppose...

You cannot fault me for thinking that when I am air bound, I am just a particle in the sky away the scrutiny of eyes of people who were supposed to be on a lookout for my welfare. From a person whose knowledge of projectile does not go beyond the problems I have solved in Mechanical Mathematics and understanding projectile vomiting, I cannot be faulted to think that if anything were to go wrong in stratosphere, I would be literally on a free fall. Nobody would know where I am and where to look for me. It is not paranoia or some kind of phobia of flying that drove me to think so. 10  months ago, our plane went missing and till date no one has a clue where it went, where to look for it and what came out the billions spent looking for it. And more recently, another one went missing. They had all the communication records and flight path at their disposal and yet 2 weeks into its disappearance, they are unable to put a closure to the mishap. So, when you are up there, you are re...

Above us only sky? "Why is it that people get all emotional when a plane goes down in its line of duty?" complained a friend after viewing umpteen posts of the downing of a plane involving 166 and  hardly anything on the massive floods that submerged almost the whole of the east coast of the peninsular, affecting close to 200,000 people of all strata and tears that would fall after the aftermath. Is it because traditionally flying involved people who are important performing jobs which would literally alter the course of mankind? Perhaps, it does not hold water anymore, since, now everyone can fly! The glitz of flying as being the domain of the rich and famous was relevant in mid 20th century. Is that the reason so much of resources is spent on its search and rescue missions? I tend to think that perhaps, man's ability to fly is one giant step in their civilisation. Being a biped, walking on land, ability to fly off the ground with no physical contact with Mother ...