So...dumb question:

I agree, but as an atheist, I can see myself using that turn of phrase without any religious implications. I still say “God bless you” when someone sneezes, or “Thank God!” when something goes well. I have probably said “by the grace of God” as a euphemism for pure luck.

They’re flying civilian helicopters and turboprop aircraft, not A-10s. They are about as resistant to taking damage from hitting things at high speeds as your average automobile (Read: Not at all), with the additional advantage of falling hundreds of feet from the sky into a burning forest when they DO hit something.

I’m pretty sure my 1.8kg, all carbon fiber aerial photography quad could do a lot more to a plane than scratch the paint. This guy had no business putting lives in danger just to get a few pretty pictures.

But in a wildfire situation not flying aircraft because a single small drone is in the area is pretty ridiculous.

Firefighting aircraft have to fly very close to (and often beyond) the limits of safe flying. Where a commercial airliner could (by design) recover from a single failed engine due to a bird strike or drone ingestion, a water dropping aircraft can’t afford to lose an engine while flying deep into canyons and pulling…

Drones are made out of slightly harder material than a seagull.

It’s awesome to hear from a certified aircraft engineer in the Gizmodo comments!

Bird strikes force many aborts and a few crashes every year.

Until it gets sucked into an engine port or strikes the windshield.

So it took them 6 months to find the person? Or 6 months to make this a story? Seems like a long time here between the date in the article and the present...

As a drone hobbyist, all I can say is, “good.”

But I’m anonymous on the Internet and can do anything I please without repercussion!

All Lives Matter is moronic.

You choose to take a misstatement of facts as a way to shut people up?

Prostate cancer has never received more funding than breast cancer, so it kind of does matter that your anecdote doesn’t make any sense. Stick to ones that do and your point will be made more strongly.

Fair enough, but you just underscored what I believe are very common problems in public discourse these days: carelessly following one’s own tribe, repeating what one has heard without independent research, saying anything ‘cause maybe the ends will justify the means, etc.

I don’t feel ignorant, (I am myopic since I need glasses for distance viewing). I say Blue lives and all the other colors matter as well and most(?) of the people jumping on BLM do so after a brief video that doesn’t show enough to make an informed decision including what transpired before the camera started rolling…

Back in 1996, breast cancer funding from the National Cancer Institute, the largest giver of academic research funds in America, totaled $382 million compared to $86 million; a ~4.5 to 1 disparity. By 2006, the difference had shrunk to $715M versus $376M; still nearly double. By 2013, last year of available stats from…

The flip side of phishing is that banks and other entities need to get better at making their legitimate emails *not* look like phishing attempts. Have you looked at the sender address and actual URLs in emails from your bank? They're terrible strings of gibberish.