Tag Archives: journalism

Link Bait: Gun Control Edition

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Why are you sharing this poorly written crap?

Link bait is defined by Wiktionary as

Articles, infographics, videos, and other content on websites created as part of a strategy to attract links and go viral.

Linkbait TitleWe’ve all seen it. It usually has a title or headline written with a hook to reel you in. (In researching this piece, I even found a Linkbait Generator and a Link Bait Title Generator.) Link bait is commonly shared on social media, often by people who link to it specifically because the title leads them to believe it’s something their friends and followers might be interested in.

One of my Twitter and Facebook friends posted a perfect example today: “Father Open Carries Into School; The School Board’s Reaction Was Perfect.” The title formula leaves you curious to know exactly what the school board did. You want to click it. I know you do. Go ahead. It won’t hurt you.

But what it will do is display a really poorly written, misleading piece of drivel — which, after all, is what most link bait does.

The article is about a father who was carrying a pistol in a hip holster picking up his kid in school. The school board adopted a lock down policy that included dialing 911 for any future episodes. There. I just told you everything of interest in the article.

The rest is a mishmash of conflicting information which can’t all possibly be facts. Let me deconstruct some examples.

A Michigan man, picking his child up at school, carried his pistol into the building in his hip holster. The staff was not amused. Since open carry is legal in Michigan, the parent was within his rights.

Let’s accept for a moment that the holster and gun were visible. That qualifies the possession as “open carry,” which simply means that the gun can be seen by anyone. Many states allow open carry of firearms. The Wikipedia link lists them.

But later, the article says

Open carry is perfectly legal in Michigan but only if you have a Concealed Pistol License (CPL). The parent — who remains anonymous — did have a CPL.

Huh? Why would a CPL be required to open carry? “Concealed carry” means that the gun is hidden from view. Concealed. Duh.

Of course, the author got that wrong. About five minutes of research uncovered this on the Michigan Open Carry, Inc. website:

A person without a CPL can legally open carry a pistol as long as the pistol they are carrying has been lawfully purchased in accordance with MCL 28.422 and is registered in their name and they are at least 18 years of age. Without a CPL you may NOT carry a firearm that belongs to and is registered to someone other than yourself.

We’ll assume the dad was at least 18 years old and was carrying his own gun. So that’s the first piece of conflicting info. The article incorrectly states that open carry requires a CPL. It would have taken the author less than five minutes to find the correct info online. Hey, but why get the facts? That’s not the purpose of link bait content.

The article then says:

But both state and federal law prohibits guns on school property except for a legal parent or guardian who must leave the weapon in the car and this only applies to CPL holders, who must pass a comprehensive background check and carry the gun visibly.

WTF? She’s mixing up so much information here that it’s clear she’s clueless about this issue. Dump everything after the word car and you have all the information you need to get to the heart of the matter.

If Federal and State Law prohibit guns on school property, allowing parents or guardians to bring them only if they leave them in the car, then how was the parent “within his rights” when he brought it into the school? Clearly bringing the gun into the school — whether he had a CPL or not — is in violation of federal and state law.

So this is how I see it. A man comes into the school illegally carrying a gun. What the hell should the school do? Obviously, what they determined their new “plan” should be:

School Board President Rebecca Walsh has set out the following plan:
“If this occurs during school hours, the building will immediately go into lockdown status, and 9-1-1 will be called so law enforcement agencies can make a determination on the status of the person with the weapon.”

And we needed an article about this?

Of course we did! We needed link bait. We needed people to come to “Addicting Info” and get all fired up by something so poorly written that the facts don’t matter. It’s the emotions that count. Let’s fire them up with some misleading drivel!

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of link bait content. Come on, people. Read what you share before you share it. Stop linking to poorly written crap. Stop linking to sites with hidden agendas. Stop trying to drag controversy into places it doesn’t deserve to be.

At least I got something to blog about this morning.

The Rise (and Fall?) of Drones for Aerial Photography

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I’m watching the developments closely for a few reasons.

I care about unmanned aerial vehicle or drone use, no matter what size it is. But I really care about drones flown by amateurs for photography.

The Death of a Revenue Stream

I first felt the sting of drone use for aerial photography when one of my best aerial photography clients began using a six-rotor, radio controlled quadrocopter to create some of their excellent 360° interactive panoramic images. Their setup even made international news when it photographed a protest in Moscow in 2012.

Bryce Canyon Pano
Our trip to Bryce Canyon was especially memorable because it was so freaking cold.

The drone seemed to be the perfect solution for one of our biggest problems: finding a cost-effective way to get an aircraft to some of the most remote locations in the world. In the past, I’d flown this client at Bryce Canyon in Utah, Lake Powell, Horseshoe Bend on the Colorado River in Arizona, San Juan River Goosenecks in Utah, and the San Juan and Colorado River Confluence in Utah. Drones theoretically also made it possible for them to get images at places helicopters couldn’t legally fly — such as within certain national parks and other restricted airspaces. I worked with one photographer on many of our flights; he was just as disappointed as I was about the drone use because it meant he wouldn’t be sent to these locations, either.

As I saw more and more images and video footage shot from drones, I thought I was seeing the writing on the wall. Why spend $500 or more per hour to fly with a helicopter pilot when you could spend less than $10,000 for a ready to fly quadrocopter designed for photography that you could use over and over anywhere in the world? Or much less for something more basic, like a Parrot AR.Drone or Phantom Quadcopter that you could attach a GoPro camera to? Theoretically, an investment of less than $1,000 would give you everything you needed to get the aerial photos or videos you need.

Of course, you have to be able to fly the damn things. But apparently, that isn’t much of a problem.

So I saw the very real possibility of a revenue stream — aerial photography flights — drying up because of the proliferation of drones carrying cameras.

Bigger Worries

But there was something else that worried me — something that worried me much more. As a helicopter pilot, I often fly at or below 500 feet AGL (above ground level). And contrary to popular belief among airplane pilots, there is no minimum altitude for helicopters. I fly where it’s safe to fly and try hard not to annoy people on the ground. Still, there’s a very real possibility that I could be flying in the same airspace as someone with one of these drones.

And that scares me.

Yeah, you say. Fly higher. But sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes I need to fly closer to the ground. And besides, the FAA has given me permission — by issuing me a helicopter pilot certificate — to fly in this space. The same can’t be said for most drone operators.

Watch the video from the crashed drone.

These drones are not toys. They have the potential to be very dangerous. This became very apparent in October 2013 when a Quadcopter crashed in Manhattan after bouncing off a few buildings, landing only a few feet from a pedestrian.

Can you imagine what would have happened if this drone had struck someone on the ground? Or went through one of those office building windows? Or collided with a helicopter or small airplane?

Here’s what happened when a radio controlled helicopter struck the man controlling it in a Brooklyn, NY park in September 2013.

And the possibility of drones and aircraft colliding isn’t so remote. It almost happened near Denver in May 2012.

In December 2013, the PBS NewsHour did a story about this: “How will thousands of drones impact already crowded skies?” That story explores other issues, too, including computer-operated drones that can fly themselves and privacy.

The FAA Steps Up to the Plate

After dancing around the issue for a while, the FAA finally made a statement — and it’s one I’m very happy about.

It all started last week when the Spokesman-Review newspaper published a video shot from a “radio-controlled helicopter.” The aircraft that shot the video was clearly operating in close proximity to people on the ground — indeed, even right overhead. A self-proclaimed “troll” tweeted about it and the legality of “drone journalism” turned into a Twitter debate that was picked up by Poynter. The operator of the drone claimed such use was a “gray area” as far as the FAA was concerned. As covered in later articles on both Poynter and the PBS NewsHour, the FAA plainly stated that “drone journalism” is not allowed. According to the Poynter piece:

“There is no gray area,” said FAA spokesperson Les Dorr.

Hobbyists are allowed to use small, radio-controlled crafts under specific guidelines, but “if you’re using it for any sort of commercial purposes, including journalism, that’s not allowed,” he added.

Although I’m very happy about this development, I’m sure this isn’t the last word. I’m equally sure that drone photographers will find loopholes to avoid use being classified as “commercial” and that the practice of strapping cameras onto drones will continue into the future. Hopefully, however, drone operators will limit their use to more remote areas and keep them away from people and property on the ground.

It also proves to me that the FAA is finally paying attention to this issue. With luck, their attention will be enough to limit drone use for these purposes — at least until some sort of controls can be put in place to ensure safety.

January 10, 2014 Update: Watched the latest video of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee this morning. In the first 30 seconds of this video (after the commercial), you can see a UAV with a camera flying over the Delorean. Seconds later, it crashes. I’m thinking they didn’t do this on purpose — although Jerry masterfully works it into his script.

Screen Grab from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee
This screen grab is from 1:11 in the Patton Oswalt episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. (Highly recommended show.)

On “Air Vortexes”

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The media stumbles over a basic aerodynamic aspect of helicopter flight.

I was on Twitter Thursday evening when manp, one of my Twitter friends, tweeted:

So, what is this ‘vortex’ condition with ‘higher than expected temperatures’??? @mlanger any idea?

To be honest, I had no clue what he was talking about. But I Googled “vortex condition with higher than expected temperatures” (don’t you love Google?) and saw an article about the helicopter that went down during the Bin Laden assault in Pakistan. Moments later, manp sent me a link to a Bloomberg article titled “Helicopter Carrying SEALs Downed by Vortex, Not Mechanical Flaw or Gunfire.” The first paragraph read as follows:

A United Technologies Corp. (UTX) Black Hawk helicopter carrying U.S. Navy SEALs to Osama Bin Laden’s hideout was downed by an air vortex caused by unexpectedly warm air and the effect of a high wall surrounding the compound, not mechanical failure or gunfire, according to U.S. officials and a lawmaker.

Whoa. What a mishmash of information. You have to read further into the article where the phenomena they’re trying to explain — vortex ring state — is explained at least two more times by people who actually have a clue what it is. But that first paragraph sure is misleading. It makes it seem as if there was come kind of weird warm air vortex in the compound that brought the helicopter down.

Any vortexes, however, were caused by the helicopter itself. My educated guess of what happened, based on this article and knowledge of helicopter aerodynamics, is this:

As the helicopter was descending inside the 18-foot walls — a descent that was likely nearly vertical — it encountered a setting with power — or vortex ring state — condition. This occurs when the helicopter settles into its own downwash. This may have been made worse by the change in the flow of air due to those 18-foot walls — as suggested in the article. It may also have been made worse by the outside air temperature being warm.

This image from the FAA’s Rotorcraft Flying Handbook helps illustrated what the vortexes are and how they manifest themselves in a hover far above the ground and close to the ground:

Hover Vortexes

As the Rotorcraft Flying Handbook explains:

Vortex ring state describes an aerodynamic condition where a helicopter may be in a vertical descent with up to maximum power applied, and little or no cyclic authority. The term “settling with power” comes from the fact that helicopter keeps settling even though full engine power is applied.

In a normal out-of-ground-effect hover, the helicopter is able to remain stationary by propelling a large mass of air down through the main rotor. Some of the air is recirculated near the tips of the blades, curling up from the bottom of the rotor system and rejoining the air entering the rotor from the top. This phenomenon is common to all airfoils and is known as tip vortices. Tip vortices consume engine power but produce no useful lift. As long as the tip vortices are small, their only effect is a small loss in rotor efficiency. However, when the helicopter begins to descend vertically, it settles into its own downwash, which greatly enlarges the tip vortices. In this vortex ring state, most of the power developed by the engine is wasted in accelerating the air in a doughnut pattern around the rotor.

Vortex Ring StateIn addition, the helicopter may descend at a rate that exceeds the normal downward induced-flow rate of the inner blade sections. As a result, the airflow of the inner blade sections is upward relative to the disc. This produces a secondary vortex ring in addition to the normal tip-vortices. The secondary vortex ring is generated about the point on the blade where the airflow changes from up to down. The result is an unsteady turbulent flow over a large area of the disc. Rotor efficiency is lost even though power is still being supplied from the engine.

There are three ways to recover from settling with power once you’re in it:

  • Cut power – you can’t settle with power if you don’t have power. This is usually not a good option when you’re very close to the ground.
  • Lower the collective – this reduces the blade pitch. This is also not a good idea close to the ground, since it will result in a descent.
  • Get some lateral airspeed – this breaks you out of the vortex ring state so you’re not settling in your own downwash. This is not possible when you’re surrounded by an 18-foot wall.

(They train us to recover from settling with power using a combination of the second two methods, but we always practice at altitude, since you can get a good descent rate going if you’re really into it. Indeed, settling with power is a serious danger during aerial photo missions requiring hovering at high density altitudes or heavy weights.)

So the pilot did the only thing he could: land hard. Fortunately, although his hard landing damaged the helicopter, it didn’t cause injuries to to men on board. They were able to complete their mission and come home safely. And they left a souvenir lawn ornament in Bin Laden’s yard.

I realize that this is a pretty complex topic and it’s probably not reasonable to expect the press to get it right. But I personally believe that all technical content published in the media should be reviewed by an expert — or at least someone knowledgeable — to make sure it’s not misleading or unclear to the layperson who will read it.

manp is a pilot — although not a helicopter pilot — and he couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. I can only imagine how much that opening paragraph confused the average reader.