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> My point is why not look at the individual person > rather than their birth certificate? Well, it goes back, oh, a few hundred thousand years? If you're running around the plains and spot an animal, you have to decide within seconds if that animal can be lunch for you, or if it wants you for lunch. If walking down a jungle trail you spy a stranger, you have seconds to decide friend or foe. You watch potential mates in the group for ability to conceive offspring and nurture them to independence by how bosomy or strong they look. We are all programmed to use superficial appearances as a fast surrogate for actual usefulness or threat, and a valuable skill it is--or was. Then civilization was invented and the useful skills for that are not yet programmed into us. It has taken many thousands of years to get to the point where our leaders are chosen by our notions of merit, not forced on us by hereditary privilege. America is perhaps the first, and still one of the few, societies that says merit is the highest qualification for a job, not looks or birthright or threat of violence. And we still do a poor job of it. The FAA, not unreasonably decades ago, made a decision to not test pilots on actual abilities but on a simple surrogate: age. Back then we weren't as conscious of health, diet, smoking, exercise, and so on. Now we are, and like others I think the FAA should revisit the issue. We have better knowledge of what's important in an airline pilot, and how to test for those qualities. ========================================================================== ==== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm Search the archives on http://escribe.com/aviation/coupers/
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