Overflow Valve

I didn't really send it. I wrote that last blog post right after completing the form, and I really wrote that on the form, but in the sober light of the next dawn, before the Purolator truck arrived, I was hit by a fit of sanity and reprinted the pages on which I had expressed my personality and frustration, replacing them with blandness.

In the same vein, when today I received the form letter telling me "Good afternoon Mr. Aviatrix, Your submission has been received and will be sent to a regional TDG Inspector for review. The inspector will contact you if they require more information or corrections to your documentation," I didn't write back asking, "Is it your department policy to address all persons in authority by male honorifics, or is that an individual initiative on your part?"

Also I went for a nice little flight today. We brief an emergency procedure before every flight, and today it was an engine failure before rotation. "Okay," I said, "so we're rolling down the runway at full power and for some reason we need to stop."

I paused for breath and my co-worker said, "Coyote on the runway," at the same time as I added, "Maybe there's a coyote." Great minds think alike. "So, clearly there's a psychic coyote on the runway." The runway here is long enough to stop after reaching rotation speed, so I brief that I pull power idle, brake as required, tell ATC, and get off the runway to try that again, once the brakes have cooled. I also brief the full procedure for if an emergency stop were made on a runway too short to accommodate it, necessitating magnetos off, fuel off, inform ATC and electrical off, then evacuate when the aircraft is done crashing into whatever is past the end of the runway. If the day starts somewhere that an engine failure on the roll could leave me without braking room, I brief to the specifics of the environment.

After run-up I was held short of the long taxiway because the controller said, "there are a couple headed your way." I hear other people call for taxi and also get held short, so I move up a bit so there is room for whomever is behind me, but not so much that there isn't room for whatever the couple I'm waiting for are. Not a couple of coyotes, though. Turns out to be a Navajo and a Beech 1900. Once they pass I am given clearance to taxi, and discover I'm catching up to the aircraft ahead of me. Kind of unusual for me. I taxi slowly. They turn a corner and I see that the slowpoke has a foreign registration. That makes sense. Tourist. The locals and the people who come here often enough to know the coyotes by name taxi fast.

I get my clearance and depart. There are no literal coyotes. Today.

FAA to the Rescue

I work for a Canadian company that does work in the US, which we're allowed to do under the North American Free Trade Agreement, but not without a packet of paperwork. The worst paperwork is on the Canadian side, but once I've coaxed that through the system, I send the result to an FAA office in the States and they issue me a permit to work in their airspace for the year. Traditionally I send the documents all in, wait a week, and then call to find out what's happening to them.

I followed the procedure this year, and found myself talking to an FAA employee who seemed nice enough, but clearly had no idea what I was talking about. I paused, looking at the e-mail I'd pulled up to get his contact information, and realized that I had called the gentleman who had helped me with this paperwork two years ago, and not last year. I asked, "Did you change roles in the last two years and keep the same phone number?" the answer was yes. I apologized for the intrusion, explaining that he had been very helpful back when this was his job. He asked my company name, and remembered me, and offered to help. A week later he e-mailed back to say that he couldn't see that anyone was working on the file, so he was going to do it himself.

I think maybe he remembered me because my business e-mails have the personality of my blog posts. Here's the one I sent back.

I will literally go home and talk about you, an employee of a foreign government who is doing something I need doing, even though it isn’t his job anymore. This may be the highlight of my day, and that includes the fact that there was pie at the safety meeting, and I finally got Microsoft Word to format the org chart properly. If the world were a just and proper place, there would be medals for this sort of thing.

Oh and he sent that e-mail at 5:30 p.m. in his time zone.

Everybody Counts

It's a Census year in Canada, all the ones ending in 1 are, I believe. June was the census month, and my household received two copies of the official form, one addressed to the basement. There's no basement, not even a crawl space you could hide a body in. Normal people just throw out an extra form like that. But me, I'm not normal people. It says it has to be filled out, by law. I can't just throw it in the recycling. I call the number on the form. The woman says I only have to do one.

"So I can do two for fun?" I ask, because that's what sort of idiot I am.

"If you want to." Good grief. How the heck are we going to count who lives here, if that's the advice they give? But I do do two, but by the electronic method. I log into the website and enter the code from the form, and then enter an accurate count of who actually lives here. For the second form I enter zero in the number field. No one lives in the non-existent basement. Why do I do this? I expect it to reject it, and I enjoy feeling superior to computers, and being stupidly accurate. To my surprise the site has a page ready for my response, with half a dozen reasonable suggestions for why there might be zero people at an address. I pick "does not exist or apartment has been merged with main dwelling," which perfectly describes the situation.

I'm impressed. Now you can see I'm not cranky about all questionnaires. Just the vast majority of poorly written ones. My only complaint is that they required every person in the household to be classified as either male or female, no other option. Requiring one or the other has caused pain and persecution for a lot of people. Biology isn't always binary, but boxes on forms and societal pressure cause people to be physically forced into one box or the other shortly after birth, even when they aren't. The expectation and the forced compliance are so pervasive that a lot of people don't even know that not everyone is born into one of the boxes. Everyone wants to know if it's a boy or a girl, but for one in every 1500 to 2000 births in North America, a specialist is called in to decide which box the baby goes into, often via surgical alteration. And although most people have little difficulty identifying with one sex or the other, one in a hundred people has a body that differs from the standard minimum equipment list for their placarded gender. If people are equally represented in the blogosphere as in the delivery room, that's about ten pageviews a day on this blog. Hello ten people, who possibly don't all even know that your bits don't match the spec! You count too.

And Another One

Okay that whole "keep the early morning momentum going" thing didn't work out too well. I don't think they will call back. If they liked me and were as busy as they clearly were, they would have trained an extra captain to get ahead of the curve. I'm back to the mode of no great thing in sight, so why should I do anything now. The place was littered with study materials, abandoned after the news that my new familiarity with the Screaming Whippet wasn't going to help anyone, and their presence wasn't improving my mood any. I wanted to put them in a pile and burn them, along with my licence, but sense prevailed. Besides, hey, free books! I put them away, with a huge pile of other manuals of airplanes I have flown, wished I'd flown, had friends that have flown or just acquired because it seemed cool at the time.

I checked into that whole chicken thing. My municipality has a whole packet of rules about chickens. There isn't enough room to accommodate the chickens here, not with following all the rules about the amount of indoor and outdoor space and the chicken jacuzzis and the distance from all dwellings they have to be. I'm also not allowed to hatch my own chickens, because both baby chicks and male chickens are illegal. The truth is, I probably didn't want to do that much work anyway. Chickens need a lot of looking after. How does anyone ever decide to have children? Chickens are nothing compared to kids, and if you're really fed up with them you can take them to an abattoir and then bring them home for dinner. So that means I'm apparently not properly equipped to care for a chicken. Yet they let me fly. It would be cool if they required you to get a licence and prove that you had the proper amount of space, and gave you a list of the required tasks and how much time they would all take before you were allowed to have children.

So no chickens. Maybe a rat. Do I qualify for a rat licence? It would probably bite me, anyway. Stupid rats.

I think I'll pull some of the more interesting airplane manuals out and make the groundschool thing a regular feature here. I'm going to read airplane manuals and translate them into basic silly English on the blog. But it seems like every time things go well, but the time I post blog entries about them going well, they've gone bad again. So I'm never going to tell you I have a job ever again. I'm just going to post random aircraft systems and make up stories about me flying airplanes. You'll never know if they are true or not. Maybe I've been making this all up all along.

Sigh.

Sad.

Mad.

But warm. I almost gave my old company jacket to charity last week, in anticipation of getting a new one. In that respect, if I were more organized, I'd be cold now.

Anti-Ice Without Electrical Heating

Yesterday's post was mostly about electrical heating elements that prevent ice from accreting on various parts of the airframe. Today is about anti-icing measures that do not involve electrical heating, except in as much as the flow of electricity always causes some heating.

The leading edge of the wing and tail are covered in what is essentially a network of bicycle wheel inner tubes stretched out straight, covered in a neoprene sheet and connected to a nozzle. At the pilot's command, an electrically operated regulated 18 p.s.i. bleed air inflates the tubes, called boots and pops off the ice. Whether the pilot commands it or not, at all times that the boots are not being inflated, suction pulls the boots back snugly against the wing. The suction also comes from the 18 p.s.i. regulated bleed air, through the same distributor as the positive pressure. I'll explain how it can both suck and blow later. This system is yet another controlled by a three position switch. The OFF position leaves the solenoids controlling the distributor de-energized, and the wing boots connected to vacuum and sucked against the wing and tail. The AUTO position opens the solenoid allowing 18 p.s.i. regulated bleed air into the wing boots, inflating them for six seconds. Then that pressure is dumped overboard and the wing boots gets sucked back against the wing while the tail boots get inflates for four seconds. After that the system rests for 170 seconds and starts over. The third position is MANUAL and all the boots will remain inflated for as long as the pilot holds the switch in that position. Electrical control of the solenoid can be assigned to either the left or right essential bus.

Inside the engine inlet is a probe called the P2T2 probe (or the R2D2 probe, depending on who is talking). Its job ought to be transmitting pressure and temperature readings for that station to the engine computer, but considering that it is kept ice free with P3 bleed air, it seems that it wouldn't be an accurate indicator of the temperature and pressure there. What am I missing? And does its output have to be translated by a C3PO probe before it can be used? This web page has condescending British people telling someone else who dared ask that anyone at the ATPL level who has to ask questions about a P2T2 probe is lazy and stupider than a toenail. Maybe so, but I know how it's anti-iced. Mostly I know. I'm not sure if it is automatically supplied with bleed air at all times or whether that's part of the inlet anti-ice.

I like the way the anti-ice for the oil cooler works. It simply runs the line taking hot oil from the engine around the lip of the air intake before routing it to the oil cooler. No electricity required.

The fuel anti-icing (i.e. to prevent ice crystals from forming in the fuel thus blocking the filters or lines) also uses heat from the oil, but not quite so simply. As the high-pressure engine fuel pumps draws fuel through the filter towards the fuel control unit, some fuel is routed off to the side, through a heat exchanger, heated with scavenged hot oil and then metered through a temperature-controlled anti-icing valve and sent right back to where it started before the filter. I don't know the exact mechanism; it probably involves a bimetallic controller, but the colder the fuel, the wider the anti-icing valve opens and the more fuel has to take the scenic route through the oil-fuel heater. An additional valve in the system, just before the heater, closes when the engine speed is below about 50 or 55% rpm, to prevent any fuel from being diverted during engine start, the only time such low speeds should occur.

Back to the very low tech, the manufacturer claims that the static ports and fuel vents on the airplane are anti-ice. They have no heating, it's just that the fuel vents are concave and out of the airflow, so there is nothing for ice to build up on, and the static ports are also very flat and at the rear of the aircraft. Just in case they were to ice up, there is an alternate static source located in the unpressurized forward baggage compartment.

There are two more anti-icing systems on the standard aircraft, but they are both irrelevant to this fleet, one because the system it belongs to has been removed, and the other because it was an option not installed.

Also, can someone please tell the person who writes the scripts for my bank's drones to read at me while I try to set up automatic payment on my new credit card that (a) a new credit card is not an occasion for "congratulations," and (b) "I want to inform you some points" is not English.

And in current news, when a huge tragedy strikes, and it's too much to take in all at once, people focus on the corners of it that are most relevant to them. I woke up to e-mail chatter about international flight schedules, plus this video of the tsunami associated with Japan's earthquake hitting an airport. Even people with no international connections have something in Japan they can relate to. I laughed to see the internet hasten to assure us that Maru the Cat and his owner are fine. But what is a mass tragedy if not thousands of individual tragedies, and, thanks to stringent building standards combined with preparation and training, millions of people who can say, "I'm okay, and so is my cat."

Re-Registration of All N-Registered Aircraft

In Canada when you buy or import an aircraft, or change any of the information (e.g. your name or address or the registration of the aircraft) you must obtain a certificate of registration for said aircraft. It's a piece of paper, about the size of a trade paperback, with another similar piece of paper stapled to it. The paper lists the basic information on the aircraft: make, model, registration, serial number, owner's name and address and commercial or private registration. The other piece of paper attached has the aircraft information and blanks for the name and address. If you sell the airplane or move, you fill in the new owner information on both pieces of paper, and send the main one into Transport. The secondary piece serves as a C of R until Transport sends you an amended one.

If you rent, borrow, ferry, or otherwise take command of an airplane, one of the things you do before flying is is check to ensure that the C of R and other key documents are on board and valid. Licence applicants are asked to list the required document and then asked questions like "when does this C of R expire?" They are expected to recognize that it's kind of a trick question, because it doesn't expire. A good answer would be, "It doesn't, but you need a new one if any of the information on it changes, or if this one becomes illegible." Most people keep their documents in a waterproof envelope, and it's pretty common to see a slightly dog-eared Canadian C of R that dates back to an aircraft import date in the 1970s.

I assume that the procedure is not completely different in the US. Except they're going to change it. It turns out that either Americans haven't been very good at sending in their aircraft registration cards, or that the FAA hasn't been very good at filing them and keeping their data entry up to date. Of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft they do know about, they are aware of problems in the paperwork of 119,000, about a third.

This has come to light because, in pursuit of terrorists and drug runners, the US tracks the movement of aircraft based on their registration numbers. Not knowing who owns an airplane makes it less useful to track it. I guess you could say that right now the US tracks airplanes the way they track kids. You're expected to register them when you first get them, but they don't check back every year to make sure you still have that kid. The new system will make them more like automobiles, where you have to renew the registration every year. Canadians and Americans already do this every year with cars, with new licence plates or licence plate stickers (the Americans call them DEEcals), so it's not an alien concept, but I expect resistance.

Here's an anecdote from another news story, one I don't have a link to:

There have already been cases of criminals using U.S. registration numbers, also known as N-numbers or tail numbers, to disguise their airplanes. In 2008, Venezuela authorities seized a twin-engine plane with the registration number N395CA on the fuselage and more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine on board.

Soon afterward, airplane owner Steven Lathrop of Ellensburg, Wash., received a call from a reporter. "He sort of started the conversation with, 'Do you know where your airplane is? ... Your airplane's in a jungle in South America,'" Lathrop said.

Lathrop's Piper Cheyenne II XL was locked safely in its hangar at the Ellensburg airport. The smugglers had apparently chosen his tail number because the model was similar to their plane. "Anybody with a roll of duct tape can put any number they want on an airplane," Lathrop said.

The re-registration of hundreds of thousands of aircraft wouldn't eliminate that tactic. Just find an airplane that doesn't fly much, and that is similar to your stolen or re-marked airplane, and make your questionable flights under that registration. It would narrow the pool of suitable registrations, by removing thousands of derelict, abandoned or I've seen some US aircraft with registrations in tiny letters and numbers. Many do have large numbers. I suspect that specification of the required size of registration number included a clause that grandfathered existing ones until the aircraft were repainted, and some people never repaint their airplanes.

In Canada we send in an AAIR (Annual Airworthiness Information Report) on each registered aircraft, so if an airplane is sold, scrapped or disused, that information reaches Transport Canada through that channel. It's still possible, I suppose that Canadian records are in disarray, but they've always been okay for any aircraft I've been familiar with that I've looked up. If Canada instituted an annual aircraft registration scheme it would be awful: we would have to pay a fee and no matter how much they charged, the bureaucracy collecting the fee would cost more than it made, and they'd still screw up the database. Such confidence I have in government and in databases.

The FAA plans over the next few years to cancel the registration certificates of all 357,000 aircraft, and require owners to re-register. The first batch of notices have already been sent to aircraft owners. I expect American aircraft owners to be displeased.

Bad Risk

My coworkers is married and getting a mortgage, so wants insurance. He asked on company e-mail if anyone knew of a company that would sell him life insurance for a reasonable price. I don't have any life insurance, but I have always had property or renter's insurance as appropriate, so I asked my insurance company if they covered pilots. They said:

Dear Mr. Anonymous,
Thank you for the inquiry with Canada Life. Yes, we do approve commercial pilots.

However, each case is underwritten individually, and individual circumstances are evaluated. We look at the total number of solo hours, age of the applicant, locations where the flying is done, what kind of hazardous conditions are involved, and more.

After an application is received, from a commercial pilot, we would either mail out our aviation questionnaire if the applicant prefers, or we can have our teleunderwriters gather the information by doing a telephoned interview. This is our fastest way to have a final decision on an insurance application.

I'm not going to object to a knowledgeable analysis of the risk posed by a particular client but solo hours? Solo hours become largely irrelevant after finishing the requirements of the private licence. It makes the insurance company sound like someone's mother. He's already spoken to this company, it turns out, and they gave him a quote that seems to indicate they don't think he has good odds to last out the year. I guess he doesn't have enough "solo hours" for them.

And yes, they did call me Mister.

IN UR BASE, READING UR WALLS

After the aquarium I had been planning to go back to the hotel for a quick nap, but I was feeling wide awake and knew I wouldn't sleep so I asked if we could go straight to the base, maybe look around a bit. I knew where it was already, as I'd seen several exotically pointy aircraft descending in that direction, and you can't miss the sound of jet fighters taking off. It's a small town, too. I could pretty easily have walked to the gates from the hotel. But no further, I'm sure.

I'm a little nervous about going onto a foreign military base, and think about what's in my purse to make sure there's nothing anyone could worry about. I brought only carry-on luggage, so I know I can pass a security scan. "Can I bring my camera? Will I be able to take pictures? Is there a dress code?" I have my ID and my pilot licence ready but we only pause a moment in front of the soldier at the gates before being waved on. They don't even check John's ID. He says he has a special sticker on his car. I knew the car had to have some redeeming feature. It wasn't the paint job, the tracked "automatic" shoulderbelts or the missing panel completely exposing the interior of the driver's door. Apparently his sister bought a truck with bullet holes from being blasted by a drunk logger with his rifle when it would not start, so it must be an issue of family pride.

The US military has Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines. I get that an air force flies, an army travels over the ground and a navy does things in boats, but that doesn't leave much room in the universe for a fourth force. The US Army, Navy and Marines were all founded in 1775 to fight the American Revolution. It seems that in those days the Navy concentrated more on sailing the ships and firing the guns, and the Marines were a fighting force that went with them. John explains that the Marines have always been regarded as shock troops, their traditional mission being to capture beachheads and hold them until occupation forces arrive. Nowadays it seems that they are an elite force that get to do everything all the other forces do, but spend their training being told they are better than everyone else, which, as John put it, "meant in practical terms that the individual marine trusted in and relied on his comrades to an extraordinary degree and that he himself was trustworthy and reliable."

They're better because they are told they are better? That seems a little touchy-feely for jarheads, but John has advised me that one doesn't mess with Marines, so I'll take their word for it. It does seems a little insulting to the other forces, who I'm sure have their own elites and don't think of themselves as the 'safety schools' of military forces. This whole base is a Marine base, no other forces personnel are present.

There are lots of civilians, though. I think I see more people in civilian clothes than military uniforms. I see a car with a GRAMMA personalized plate outside of a hangar and at first I think, "heh, some A&P has borrowed his grandmother's car." But there's no reason not to think that an A&P didn't order that plate when her son or daughter had their first child.

I had been hoping to take a picture of a real KC130 on the ground, and then the simulator inside, but it turns out that the entire flight line is one of the places where photography is forbidden. Not that I could see anything out there anyway. There was a pretty solid row of hangars all along the runway, so I can only see the aircraft on approach and after taking off. My US military aircraft identification skills are poor, but John pointed out a Harrier and a V-22 Osprey. You know someone doesn't know a thing about military aircraft when she has to have those identified to her. I can report that they are both angular, loud and grey.

The housing area looks like a nice residential district anywhere. There's a marina with sailboats, a school and a gym, that sort of thing. Along one road, the chain link fence is covered in creative homemade banners welcoming individual marines home from deployment. There isn't really that much military stuff to see just driving around. We go to John's office.

It looks like a computer geek's office anywhere. Cartoons on the door, old computer manuals (ADA, anyone?) on the bookshelves, undecipherable scribbles on the whiteboard and printouts taped to the wall. He gave me permission to photograph and post one of the snag sheets, a list of what is wrong with the sim. The items to be fixed are not burned out light bulbs or missing screws as on an actual aircraft, but rather modifications that are required to make the sim exactly like the real airplane. Amusingly to me, many of the snags relate to lights not dimming when they should, something I can definitely relate to. Presumably lights burn out and screws get lost on the sim, too, but someone junior to John gets those repair jobs. I poke around the office and giggle at the geeky calendar while John works on unclassified military business, related to photocopier maintenance contract billing schedules.

Hey, there are fifty thousand people on this base. They can't all be flying around in fighter jets and stabbing bayonets into mannequins all day.

SD-8G

SD-8G sounds like a new TV spinoff, about a portal into an alien world, but it's Security Directive 1542-04-08G, an insight into the way the TSA thinks about airports. As of June 1st, 2009 the TSA declared that everyone having unescorted access to the airside at any airport with airline service must undergo background checks for a badge, on a per-airport basis. That would be almost like requiring drivers to have a separate permit for every highway exit they use that is also used by transport trucks. It's so ridiculously infeasible that the Security Directive 1542-04-08F containing that provision did not go into effect, and, thanks to the input of pilot advocacy groups, was watered down to SD-8G which at least allows us to land, pee, and fuel our airplanes.

The new requirements, which have officially gone into effect (but might not be enforced everywhere), tell transient pilots without airport badges to remain close to their aircraft and leave its 'footprint' only for trips to and from the FBO. They haven't yet defined clearly our movements at airports with self-serve fuel, or even exactly which airports count as having airline service. (Does the "airline" have to fly something bigger than a Beaver? Does the "schedule" have to be daily? Do they have to be passenger airlines?)

They say pilots are advised to call ahead to airports they think might have airline service and assure themselves they are in compliance with the new TSA directive. Whom should we call? Are they going to publish TSA 24-hour numbers for us? I don't expect this to really interfere with my movements when I'm south of the border. American FBOs are pretty proactive, so if there is one I'll ask them what the TSA expects of me before I get out of my airplane. Any wandering around I do on the apron is usually in search of FBO personnel, anyway.

TSA hasn't interfered with safety publications yet, at least I've never seen a notation saying "pilots without badges are not permitted to park on apron C". It might be feasible to designate airports by security class, and publish those in the AF/D where pilots know what they are dealing with. Have a few where pilots require A-class badges, with the same background checks required by airline pilots, but allow a pilot to do one A-class security check and then hold a badge valid for JFK, DCA, LAX, etc. If he's at an A-class security airport with no badge or a lower class badge, he needs an escort. B-class airports would have a painted line on the apron around the area where airliners parked and you'd need an A or B-class badge to be inside the line. And so on down to grass fields in Montana with no fence around them and no stinking badges needed. What do they gain by per-airport clearance? Is there really something in my background that could make me safe to walk across the ramp and borrow a Dustbuster in Albuquerque but a threat to national security if I move away from a hangar to get better cell coverage in Spokane?

The thing that really drives security crazy is that they can put up a big fence and lots of rules but they can't control access to the airport. Despite all the barricades, signs and security checkpoints, any old Canadian can still literally fly in over the fence. For any spot on the field, if an airliner can get there, I can get there, too.

If you are a pilot, or even just hope to become one someday if time permits, or want to support the freedom to fly, I really suggest that you join COPA or AOPA. They have excellent publications and member services, but even if you never use those, they are an essential presence in monitoring and countering the regulations and fees that officaldom concoct while wearing airline-shaped blinders.

Communications Failure

No, there's nothing wrong with the radio, and the headset hasn't undergone a final disintegration. It's my mouth. I can't seem to get communications right with this customer. I try to be really communicative, because that's one of my strengths. I can express myself, explain things, recognize information that will help people make decisions, and share it in a way that is relevant and understandable to them. I've never fallen prey to the desire for power through withholding information. Yay for me! But I keep telling these customers things that make them angry.

For example, I received a text from my company about our planned maintenance schedule. I called the customer to get his approval on that plan, and while there was nothing wrong with the plan, and we were willing to change it if there was, the customer was unhappy. I believe he felt ambushed because a mere pilot knew before he did. I should have waited until my boss told his boss and his boss told him, so he'd know in a day or so, instead of my getting the information to him as soon as possible.

It just seems wrong to me to have information that someone needs and wants, and that is intended for him anyway, but to be obliged to withhold it until it arrives through the proper channels.

It's not all cruising along above the mountains, joking with ATC and recalculating my fuel reserves.

New Passport

Because I travel across an international border by air, I require a passport. And there's a funny rule about passports. Countries sometimes require your passport to be valid for six months in order to admit you. And I don't mean that some countries do and some countries don't. I mean that the same country, i.e. the United States will sometimes admit you with a passport that is close to expiry, and sometimes not.

Some people say, "so why don't they just add six months to the expiry date, or subtract them, or something, so the date on the passport really matches when you can use it." The thing is that you can get back to your country, I assume, with one day left on your passport, but you can't get out. The country that is taking you doesn't want to risk you getting stuck there because you stayed past the expiry date on your passport and now your real country won't let you in.

That sounds kind of unlikely to me. "I'm sorry, you were a Canadian yesterday, but now you're not, so you can't come back." Canadian citizenship doesn't expire. You can't even renounce it. The government does not recognize renunciation of citizenship if you, say, burn your passport in a public act of protest or become a citizen of a country that requires you to swear revokation of all other citizenships. You're a Canadian for life. So I suspect that if I were to turn up at a port of entry with an expired pasport, so long as it looked like me and hadn't been reported lost or stolen, that they would let me in. They might make a few phonecalls to verify my identity and possibly fine me. But I don't think they would leave me to wander statelessly forever in the airport.

But I'm not going to test that theory out. My last entry into the US was on a passport that had only four months left on it. It's time to renew. I would have done it earlier, but I needed it. To get a new Canadian passport I have to surrender the old one. And wait. I looked into doing it online.

They call it epass Canada. It claims to not support my browser. I look into that. They officially support Firefox 1.0.6, so I'm betting it will work fine in 3.0.5. There's the usual online service stuff: Choose a userID not already in use. Provide the answers to some terrible user security questions, such as "the name of an important person to you" and "an important date." In the end, after all that, it's not so much an online application as an online form. I have to print it out and bring or mail it in the normal way. Mail will take too long. It won't be done before I have to go back to work.

Taking it in and waiting six weeks for normal processing will take too long, too. But for an extra eighty dollars I can get the renewal process accelerated to two business days, so I opt for that. I get my photo taken and notarized by a photography store. You're not allowed to take your own photo anymore. It has to be a commercial photographer. I stand in two different lines, and pay my extra fee, which was reduced thanks to some calculation by the agent. I overhear a guy who has lost his medical card and had his driving licence taken away ask how he can get a passport. They seemed to have a procedure for him. There's a uniformed guy in a corridor who appears to have been hired expressly for the purpose of telling people nicely that they're in the wrong place. See, there's a preline and then there's the real line. Despite the labyrinth of frustrating procedures, everyone, including the guy who does nothing all day but tell people they're in the wrong place, is very friendly and polite. If you know someone who works on the front line providing passports to Canadians, please tell them "good job!" If you know someone involved in the back office bureaucracy providing passports to Canadians, tell them "Good job on staff training! Now please do something about the procedures!"

Application process done, I leave. When I come back in two days the passport is all ready for me. My photo looks distinctly green, not just my hair, but my skin. Everyone is, for some reason. There's even a piece of paper that comes with the passport explaining that that's normal. I suggest, as I'm signing on the little square where you have to sign but you're not allowed to go outside the lines, that it's too bad you can't apply for a new passport but keep the old one, then just come in to make the exchange once the new one is ready. THe reply is that "It's against the law to have more than one valid passport at a time." Sure, I understand that. But I'm not asking to have more than one at a time. I just want them to get mine ready for me before I have to surrender the one I'm using. This won't get fixed, because Canadian government officials, who would have to be affected in order for them to believe this was a problem, probably get their passports express updated as an internal service.

But I have a new passport. And my photo is really very green. I'm good for another four and a half years, as long as I don't run it through the laundry.

It Started With Telemarketers

Canada recently instituted a nationwide do-not-call list for telemarketers. Apparently the US Congress recommended such a thing fifteen years ago, but the final decision was to have individual telemarketers maintain their own do-not-call lists. That is fairly stupid, because there are so many companies that you'd never get on all the lists before one company folded and reemerged as another, quite possibly using its old do-not-call list as its new list of hot prospects.

Canada's new do-not-call list is equally stupid. There's a website you can go to in order to register your number(s) as do-not-call and any Canadian telemarketing company or foreign company making calls on behalf of a Canadian corporation is supposed to check their list against the registered do not call numbers and not call them. They can be fined $1500 for calling me anyway, so it sounds like something with teeth, but it disregards the fact the telemarketing is a scummy industry, and it's implemented in a stupid way.

Instead of being required to submit their call lists to be checked and pruned against a master list, the companies are required to buy the master list. That's right, telemarketing companies can buy a list of every Canadian who has asked not to be called by telemarketers. And the way the system works, the larger the company, the more they have to pay for the list. So of course what has happened is that little tiny companies open for the sole purpose of buying the list for cheap, and then selling it offshore where they can call me with impunity.

I got a call today, one of those machines calling. It told me that a friend had entered my name at the Bay or Zellers and that I had won a trip to Costa Rica. Now the Bay and Zellers are Canadian companies, and my friends are smart enough not to enter me in dubious contests, so I knew this was not above board. I pressed 1 to talk to a customer service representative. He had an impenetrable accent, so I couldn't understand his name, nor the name of the company calling when I asked for it. I think he may have made it deliberately unintelligible because when I asked him to spell it, he said for more information he would have to transfer me. Transferring is good, because the higher up the chain of command you get, the more of a nuisance you are able to be. In order to transfer me he wanted to know my name. I told him I wasn't giving him my name because he called me and therefore the onus was on him. He said he had to have my name to transfer me, so I told him sarcastically it was Jane Smith. He either didn't or chose not to recognize that as a default generic name and accepted it, but then wanted to know if I had more than $5000 in credit card debt. I told him I didn't give out that kind of information, just to transfer me please. He tried a few more times to get me to tell him. I told him the answer was Mu. He insisted on a yes or a no, and when I made it clear I wasn't giving it out, he hung up on me.

Scumbucket telemarketing company. This sort of thing is bad for my blood pressure or something, I'm sure. The *69 call told me that the call was from 616-980-2643 which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Their service provider is named Lucre but the company name is ex-directory. Michigan has do-not-call laws protecting Michigan consumers, but what can I do about it? Global telecommunications is such that every single country in the world would have to be signatory to a global death-to-telemarketers pact before do-not-call registries are of any use whatsoever. I can't screen my calls by number, because I get calls from all over and who knows when some pilot friend is calling from a hotel or an FBO in Grand Rapids telling me they are coming north and can I meet for lunch? And screening by always letting the machine pick up also causes you to miss important calls from people who want to talk to you now or not at all. I could solve this with technology, but it's not just about telemarketing.

While I was still fuming about this, a story came on the radio about a chemical plant in Canada that had been sold to someone in Edmonton who just walked away from the responsibility of the plant when the economy took a nosedive. No payroll no forwarding address no nothing. Because I live in a modern, responsible country, the government stepped in with an emergency order asking the workers to stay at work and make sure that the plant didn't just explode, or pump hazardous chemicals into the environment or become the incubation ground for a new Batman villain, or whatever happens to untended chemical plants. I'm not sure anyone knows. The government then tried to track down the owner of the company and apparently the trail ends in Slovenia.

That's the way the world is these days. I'm horrified to think of what is happening in countries with lesser ability to step in and deal with this kind of situation. A Canadian company could just walk away from responsibility in Zaïre and who is going to be able to do anything or even know? Someone knows, and with today's global communication I'm sure I could find dozens of such cases documented by concerned individuals, but how is anyone to distinguish real should-be-crimes from made-up stuff posted on the loony websites of whacko sky-is-falling nutjobs? And even if the whole world knows, who can prosecute or hold to account a numbered Uzbekistani company with investors listing addresses in Slovenia, Paraguay and Delaware? For countries that have environmental regulations, it would be possible to require, as part of the initial environmental permitting process for new facilities, the posting of a bond sufficient to safely close down production and clean up the area in the event of abandonment or catastrophe, but that would be a large amount, and the savvy investor would just build the facility in a jurisdiction with a more short-sighted desperation for jobs.

Anything that happens in the world affects the whole world these days. The working conditions and pay at your job may be cantilevered by unions and government regulations, but ultimately in the global economy it is dependent on what the most desperate person will accept. And that person can be anywhere in the world. We can't just fix our own countries. We have to fix the whole world to get this to work. How do you fix the whole world? Historically, the spread of law has followed conquering armies. I don't think conquering the world for freedom from telemarketers is the way to go here. More optimistically, manufacturing and environmental standards also spread by economic pressure. The kids who grew up in the Cold War had it good. They knew they'd be wiped out by the Bomb. Me, I can't figure out which worldwide disaster to be concerned about.

The telemarketing part had a happy ending. I called the Bay's customer service and they efficiently transferred me to a customer service rep who knew about the usurpation of the company's name and assured me that their loss prevention department was working with the relevant authorities to stop the telemarketers, who apparently were also fraudsters. I assume they are going to nuke them from orbit, so if you live in Grand Rapids, you should probably go out of town for the weekend. And if you comment on this blog entry, do take into account that the official Posterperson for Readers of Aviatrix's Blog is employed in the telemarketing business, so any comments demonizing all telemarketers will not be taken well.

The Final Nexus

I finally got home and got an appointment to be interviewed for the final stage in the Nexus Pass application. I went to the site listed on the website, only to find out that the website was wrong. They sent me to the correct site, and I arrived within seconds of the scheduled appointment time, where they looked for my name on a list, checked it off and sent me to sit and wait. The seats were the kind that bother my back, so I picked up a pamphlet, disobeyed instructions and stood around to wait.

It was kind of funny watching the guys in the office. American customs officers all carry guns, and it looks kind of silly when people are typing at computers, answering phones, rolling around on swivel hairs and reloading their staplers with Glocks strapped to their thighs.

I was called up to the desk after not too long, to be interviewed by a very young American customs officer. It was pretty informal. We didn't go into a separate room or anything, I just stood at the desk while he sat in a tall swivel chair on the other side. He had some very standard questions to ask, mostly the same questions that were on the online application and was genuinely interested in the answers. I ended up telling him how he might go about getting a pilot licence, but recommending against flying as a career. Customs officer doesn't look like a bad career. Maybe he was specially trained to be relaxed and natural so as to get truthful answers out of me, but I think he was simply enjoying talking to people as part of his job.

After a while another guy, with a Canadian uniform, came back from a break and sat next to my interviewer. "Oh hey," said my interviewer to him, "You can jump in and ask any questions you have any time." He then explained to me, "This is a joint interview. He's the Canadian." The Canadian told his colleague he trusted him and mostly just spectated amused.

One of the questions was "Have you ever been fingerprinted before?"

"No," I said. "Well, only at Disneyworld."

"Disneyworld?"

"Yeah, they scan your fingerprint on the way in and link a hash of the data to your pass, so you can't share it with anyone."

My interrogator was boggled. "Have you been to Disneyworld?" he asked the Canadian. He had. "Did you get fingerprinted?" He hadn't, but allowed that a lot might have changed there since 1983. "Heh," said my interviewer. "In 1983 I wasn't even born yet. My parents weren't even married, still working in the fields."

This must be the most human customs officer I've ever met. Did he miss the class on acting superior and aloof? The last name on his badge was Singh. Hundreds of East Indian immigrants come to the US and Canada to work as agricultural labourers. His parents were probably scrutinized and questioned by someone just like him, who might still work here. This kid was a genuine American immigrant success story. For over two hundred years people have been coming from everywhere in the world to the United States and becoming part of the nation. I think that's very cool. I wrote this before another dark-skinned immigrant's kid became the President-elect of the United States. Canada is like that, too, with our last two heads of state (Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson) being non-white first generation immigrants. I think people should be evaluated on their own merit, not on where they come from.

On one basis or another, Officer Singh approved my application. He and the Canadian signed it, took my fingerprints electronically, took my picture and gave me lots of brochures to read about how not to screw up in the Nexus programme. I had to go to another office for the retina pictures, but they weren't scary at all, no different than having my picture taken normally.

Now I can zip back and forth across the border for work more easily.

Voter Registration

Canadians don't normally have to register in advance to vote. This year there are new rules requiring everyone to have ID at the polls, even if they've been voting in that riding for years. This seems pretty straightforward, but there are places in the north where people have nothing in the way of ID, pay cash rent to landlords who pay the utilities, but everyone in town not only knows who they are, but who their mother is, their entire family, and every single person they have dated, place they have been, and stupid thing they have done their entire life. It's not like you're going to walk into one of those communities and pretend you live there and people won't notice. There are also homeless people who chronically don't have ID. And the homeless do vote and want to vote. The people who don't have any ID are likely not people who would be voting for the current government. I'm not quite cynical enough to believe it is intentionally a disenfranchisement scheme. I do certainly hope no one is denied their right to vote over such a thing.

Myself, I will be away from home on election day, so I have to register to vote by special ballot. I didn't have a chance to do it between finding out I would be away and having to leave, so I stopped at an Elections Canada office in a small town. I got the address in advance from the Elections Canada toll-free line, but I didn't really need it, because it was the kind of small town that has one main street where all the businesses are. The Elections Canada office was set up in an abandoned supermarket, with elections workers being trained under the Meats sign and lots of bustling going on behind partitions down at the back in front of the Dairy section. I was directed to sit down at a desk in Fruits and Vegetables, and fill out a form. it was pretty simple, just name and address, birthdate, phone number and sign to certify that I qualify to vote in Canada. Then the elections worker realized she'd given me the wrong form. I'd filled out the one for electors which to vote by special ballot inside their home riding, and I was registering to vote outside my home riding. I was then given another form to fill out. It seemed to be identical except for the title of the form. They tore up and promised to also shred the first form and then took the second completed form and went off to Deli to get me the special ballot.

This took a long time. The problem was that they didn't know the official number of my home constituency. I knew its name, but not its number, and they didn't seem to have a way of looking that up. They did find me an alphabetical list of all the candidates running for election in my riding and then spotted the voter registration card which I had brought with me. I was told by Elections Canada that I would not need it to vote by special ballot, so the only reason I had it was that I had scrawled the address of this office on it. But it also had the number of my riding on the address label, so they were able to give me an official ballot and an array of envelopes and stickers.

My instructions are to print the name of my chosen candidate on the ballot, then seal the ballot in the anonymous white envelope. Next I will seal the anonymous envelope in the envelope with the name and number sticker on it, and I am to sign and date that envelope. Finally I will seal the identifying envelope in the mailing envelope, put a stamp on it, and send it. I thought it odd that I require a postage stamp. There is no charge for sending mail to a member of parliament: I would think they would do the same thing for a ballot, so that they would not be symbolically charging me the price of a stamp for the right to vote. When the ballot gets to Ottawa, someone will open the outer envelope, verify that the next envelope correctly identifies someone who has the right to vote, then they will open and discard that one and the sealed ballot is now anonymous and can be opened by someone else for counting.

The ballot is a very simple, plain piece of paper for such an important purpose. Rather than having some special watermarked, official paer, they've gone for the simplest, plainest piece of newsprint you could imagine.

In the Interest of Security

My friend was flying from Canada to visit a friend in the US for a couple of days and wanted to bring a gift of local wines (don't laugh, Canada does too produce wine) for his host. As wine is now a terrorist threat, he couldn't carry it on the airplane, but as he was only going for a couple of days he only had one small bag, so he checked the whole thing. The bag also contained a palmtop computer with a folding bluetooth keyboard. In hindsight he knows he should have taken the computer out and put it in his shirt pocket, but he didn't.

So the bag goes through security, onto the airplane and back off again. The wine arrives unbroken. But his computer has been turned on and left on. The computer is of course also a wireless communications device. So in the interest of 'security' the TSA has activated a transmitter and left a heat generating device in a container with flammable material. I'm thinking the clothing, when I say flammable: Canadian wines aren't like Scandinavian liquors. Now, the chance of a small computer either interfering with airline navigation or starting a fire in a suitcase is very small, but this was in no way a positive move for anyone's security. They had looked at his e-mail and his media files. Checking, no doubt, to see if any of it read "Dear Osama bin Laden, here are the naked photographs of my eight year old daughter which you requested. Do you have any more of those music downloads to share with me?"

It was a positive move for someone in security, though. That is for the person who got an almost new wireless bluetooth keyboard for nothing. The keyboard was missing from the suitcase. I guess the bag checker thought it was pretty cool. So even if the battery hadn't been run down from running in the suitcase during the flight, he still wouldn't have been able to use his computer.

The most grievous thing about this kind of treatment is that you can't even write them a letter to complain. Well you can, but you might as well word it as "Dear TSA, Please make as much trouble for me as possible at all security checkpoints. Here is my name and address."

The NEXUS Step

NEXUS sent me e-mail saying I've been approved for the program and have to schedule an appointment at the airport to be interviewed, fingerprinted and photographed, and have my retinas photographed, too. They have a very simple online booking interface, showing the availability and allowing me to schedule, move and cancel appointments.

Nothing is available this month.
Nothing is available next month.
There are availabilities the following month, but I'm scheduled to be away working for the whole month,
Nothing is available the month after that.
Nothing is available for the two following months.

I kind of suspect that they have only opened the booking system for appointments in the next three months. I could wait and see if more opportunities opened up, but the e-mail states that I must book within 30 days.

I'll looked at some other centres and saw much better availability, so I'll wait until I know my work assignments and try to arrange an appointment there and then. I'm still kind of freaked about subjecting myself to US registration, though. I picture my fingerprints being in the same big database with all the convicted criminals, getting checked against the fingerprints on murder weapons. Also I hate getting my eyes examined at the optometrist, so the retinal photograph is going to be freaky.

Transport Canada Discovery

In an astonishing departure from computer traditions established in the 1970s, new Transport Canada licences use mixed case to list the qualifications and restrictions on the right side of a pilot licence. It's almost unsettling. A commercial IFR pilot gets a new licence at least every couple of years, so the community of working pilots will have their ALL UPPER CASE licences replaced within a couple of years. But there are thousands of pilots out there who have already earned all the ratings they are going to, and will retain licences declaring them approved to fly ALL SINGLE ENGINE NON HIGH PERFORMANCE LAND AEROPLANES. That is until Transport Canada finally implements the new booklet licences. Now that they've discovered how to unlock the shift key, I'm willing to believe it could happen.

Security Transmitted Diseases

Security signs usually make me laugh. They're so earnest and serious and I can imagine them being discussed and approved by a committee somewhere. I suppose that people may see signs reminding them to abide by security procedures for the few weeks that it takes for them to have the security procedures ingrained. Then they completely stop seeing the signs.

This one amused me more than usual. It's a good sign, really, drawing on the psychology of the stop sign, and it's trying to come up with a catchy acronym for the security area. But while SIDA is something you can catch, well-displayed security badges are not the usual prophylactic technique. I believe SIDA is also the Spanish acronym, so perhaps the reference is deliberate, rather than having been conceived in monolingual innocence.

The one below was repeated at about eight metre intervals all along the fence of the Salt Lake City ARTCC. They wanted to be very sure that even casual invaders with poor peripheral vision understood about the threat to human life that their invasion proposed. The facility behind the fence shared an architectural style with my highschool, and probably every other institutional building constructed in the 1960s, but it was in good repair. I guess the signs, and the absence of teenage hordes, kept decay at bay.

And I have no idea what the "flying colors" forbidden on this one are. It must be a gang thing. I didn't go in there.

NEXUS Please

Returning to Canada through a busy airport I found myself in a customs hall packed with travellers. The wickets at the end of the room differentiated between residents and visitors, but although there were two snaking lines, there was no compliance with the tiny sign indicating that one was for residents and one for visitors. I really wished I wore a company uniform, because the line for diplomats and uniformed aircrew was wide open. The other line that was open was the NEXUS line, for people who have paid extra to be scrutinized by Canadian and American authorities and earned a speedy bypass of border lines. It works at land crossings too. I wrote down on my to-do-when-I-get-home list "NEXUS pass." An hour and fifteen minutes later, when I reached the wicket, the customs agent suggested herself that I apply for NEXUS. And now I am.

The application process requires navigating a government form, and an American government for at that, because you apply to the US, then they share the data with Canada and they both have to say yes for you to get the pass. And in order to apply to the US you have to create an account on GOES the umbrella for all the US fast lane customs systems, for Canada, Mexico and International (i.e. other than Canada or Mexico) And to create an account on GOES you need to create a password that conforms with the following rules.

# Minimum Length : 8
# Maximum Length : 12
# Maximum Repeated Characters : 2
# Minimum Alphabetic Characters Required : 1
# Minimum Numeric Characters Required : 1
# Starts with a Numeric Character
# No User Name
# No past passwords
# At least one character must be ~!@#$%^&*()-_+={}[]|;:/?.,<>"'`

That made me laugh as well as roll my eyes, because it reminds me of a very old joke.

And then, because no one is ever going to remember the password they generated in compliance with those rules, and because most people will lose where they wrote it down, they present a list of security questions, clearly chosen by the most stable and boring bureaucrat in the word. You must choose five of the following and provide answers that will remain inviolate in your mind.

What was your childhood home address?
What is/was the name of your first pet?
What is/was your father's profession?
What is your favorite vacation spot?
What is your favorite movie?
What is your favorite restaurant?
What was your favorite subject in school?
What is your place of birth (i.e. city, state)?

If you were raised by a single mother who moved a lot and couldn't afford to feed a pet, and your tastes vary with time, there is only ONE question to which you could provide a permanent answer. You have to pick five. If you were raised in a stable household with one address during your childhood, and your father had a steady career in one profession that has one name (i.e. you won't put "doctor" now and get it wrong later with "physician,") and you have owned a pet, and your first pet acquisition was of a single pet, (not say, two kittens or six fish), then you still can't necessarily select five questions that you will always answer the same way. Unless you had a clear favourite subject in school (I didn't), you are not permitted to change your tastes from now until the application process is complete.

The next challenge was to provide a five-year employment history. The only fun part of looking up the addresses of everyone who has failed to continue to employ me over the past five years is giggling at the fact that they all have addresses on Airport Road. All different Airport Roads in different cities and mostly different provinces. Some employers no longer exist, but phone numbers were mandatory so I gave them the last known phone numbers. The person who designed the form lived in a stable universe where every employer exists forever.

And then the last stumping question asked me to provide details of my conveyances. I'm not being flowery here. Thе word was conveyances. There is a Type drop down at the top, but the only choice in the dropdown is "Vehicles." So what's a conveyance? I enter my seldom-used car then wonder if they want my bicycle, too? The airplanes I fly for work? My friend's skateboard? If they mean automobiles, why didn't they put that? In the end I just enter the car, because they demand a VIN for each conveyance, and I can't find the serial number on my bicycle.

In six to eight weeks I'll know if I'm an undesirable.

All's Fair in Love and War

This is kind of a part two to my earlier post office description, because it didn't fit well in the first entry. On one wall of the post office was an notice telling men to sign up for the draft, called "selective military service." Canada doesn't have that, and I didn't know the US had that still. You can ask for a form here to sign up, and I'd like to see it, but being foreign and female I'm afraid I would be regarded with suspicion for such a request.

The USA only drafts men into their armed forces, but accepts applications from female volunteers. That is probably a sore point with some men, and would certainly become more so if the US ran out of military volunteers and started calling up those registered for the draft. I imagine that will have to be redone at some point, but what a can of worms!

Under the laws of the US, the draft should probably be gender-blind. Women are supposed to be treated the same as men in voting, running for public office, receiving government benefits and every other dealing with government, so it's not exactly fair to the men for women to have a special exception for warfare. It's also, in a perverse way, unfair to the women, because if men are asked to pay a higher price for citizenship that justifies them receiving preferential treatment.

One reason women don't traditionally go to war is that they have not been considered capable of the duties. While being big and strong and testosterone-charged is very important when it comes to beating your opponent to death with a stone club, its importance shrank with the introduction of firearms, and size became a disadvantage in some military professions with the advent of tanks and fighter jets and other mechanized vehicles. Given training and indoctrination and assignment to appropriate war trades, I think women are as capable as men at waging war.

The things that women can do that men can't make a different and more valid argument against women fighting in wars. In order to sustain the population and produce the next generation of soldiers or post-war citizens, the women are more important. Only women can bear children, and once they have done so they nurse them, and traditionally they raise them. On the flip side, women can get pregnant during deployment, which is rather inconvenient to the army. This isn't accusing women of having poor self-control: it takes two to tango, plus in a war zone sexual assault is common.

The last is another reason nations keep women off the front lines. Part of what a nation is defending in wartime is their people, and their belief that they are better than the enemy. They don't want their women bearing the enemy's children. They want them home bearing their own children. The psychological effect of the war on the population at home is very important. Israel has a universal draft, and initially found that women performed well on the front lines, but when they saw the terrible effect on national morale of women coming home in body bags, they pulled the female draftees back to support positions. It may have been something people would have become used to, as people are quite used to women delivering mail and performing surgery these days, but it wasn't something the country was willing to try. There's also the risk of the enemy catching onto this and using the female soldiers as hostages, taking advantage of a weakness men have, that urges them to protect women even when it's not the smartest thing to do.

Warfare, it seems, is such a full-being activity that it really does matter what sex-specific body parts you have. I'd suggest a universal draft, with deferrals available for the essential functions currently exempted, plus pregnancy, nursing, and other childcare responsibilities. Parents of weaned children could choose which of the couple would take the deferral. This would have the weird side effect of inverting the population growth patterns of previous wars: I'm sure plenty of women would get pregnant in order to avoid going to war. And then that would be perceived as unfair by men who had no such option. I guess there's no fair answer.