The Curiosity Desk’s weekly roundup of the stats, facts, tidbits and leftovers that almost slipped through the cracks in the WGBH newsroom.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FORM 2535
Despite a fair amount of advanced warning, plenty of folks were taken by surprise when six fighter jets began screaming across the skies over Boston on Tuesday around lunchtime.
Anyone know why fighter jets are flying overhead in Boston with support coptors in toe right now? Feels like the start of a The Rock movie
The flyover was nothing more than a photo shoot for the Navy’s famed Blue Angels. But it got me wondering about flyovers. I reached out to the Navy and got a hold of Lt. Kelly L. Cartwright in the Office of Community Outreach.
As it turns out, anyone can request a flyover. And government being government, step one is to fill out a form — DD 2535 to be precise. As far as forms go, it’s a pretty interesting one. You have to show that your organization doesn’t discriminate and that you’ve worked things out with the FAA and your local air traffic control. And in addition to a traditional flyover, you can also request demonstration from the Navy’s Blue Angels, the Army’s Golden Knights, or the Air Force’s Thunderbirds. Other options include or a static display of a fighter jet or “other aerial support” (i.e., parachute demo).
Some more tidbits from my chat with Lt. Cartwright:
If you want to request your own flyover, you can grab a copy of DD 2535 here. But, unless you’re John Henry or Bob Kraft, you might not want to get your hopes up.
TO-MAY-TO, TO-MAH-TO; CLIMATOLOGIST, WEATHERMAN
Investigative reporter Isaiah Thompson spent hours this week, snooping haunches up, combing through the transcripts of the state Senate’s three-day slog to pass, or not pass, a pile of 942 amendments to the Senate’s version of the state budget. He was struck by a moment when Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R—Essex, Middlesex) rose to speak on behalf the 248th, which he had sponsored:
As it turns out, the senator was talking about a “state climatologist.” Massachusetts is one of only two states (along with Tennessee, which also shares the oddity of having two sets of consecutive consonants in its spelling) that doesn’t have a state climatologist to monitor and report on climate change -- and to represent their state as a member of the American Association of State Climatologists
Last year, then-Gov. Deval Patrick proposed the establishment of a state climatologist as part of a $52 million, state-funded initiative aimed at climate change preparedness. The state climatologist would work out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with the $100,000 salary being split between the school and the state.
Tarr wasn’t arguing against filling the job — just paying for it. His amendment would have the state seek the voluntary services of an institution of higher learning before opening the coffers.
“We are one of the states that has more institutes of higher learning with greater capacity than any other state.” And yet, Tarr said, “With all that expertise we have the requirement [in the state budget] of hiring a state weatherman.”
The amendment was rejected, so it looks like Tennessee will soon stand alone. Though we likely won’t have someone in place in time to attend the AASC’s 40th annual meeting next month in charming Cape May, N.J.
LA ISLA ELECTRICA
Reporter Rupa Shenoy is currently knee-deep in work for an upcoming multipart series focused on water. We promise that her efforts will eventually pay off in the form of a handful of well-crafted radio stories, but at the moment the series looks like this:
This week, she schlepped out to Deer Island (which, by the way, hasn’t technically been an island since beach erosion from a 1938 hurricane filled in the Shirley Gut that once separated the Island from Winthrop, making it a peninsula). While the focus of her visit was the potential vulnerability of our waste water infrastructure as climate change plays out, she picked up some interesting stats about the energy use on the venerable Harbor Island (peninsula).
Deer Island is of course home to Boston’s biggest waste water treatment facility. In fact, all of the city’s waste water pipes lead to substations that, in turn, send every last dirty drop of it to the treatment plant on Deer Island. It turns out that cleaning our collective sewage is a huge energy suck. The island alone is equipped to handle nearly as much electricity as the entire city of Boston. And when it gets stormy, they use quite a bit of it, too.
“The amount of energy that we could typically use during a heavy rain event could be the equivalent of 40,000 homes,” facility director Dave Duest told Rupa.
To give you a sense of how much that is, the entire city of Cambridge has 44,000 households, according to the 2010 US Census.
YOU’RE NOT GONNA AIR THIS ARE YOU?
This week’s audio scrap also comes from Rupa. Here she is, deep in the bowels of one of those sewage substation in Chelsea, where she came across what she called “one of the worst smells I’ve ever encountered.” As for plant manager Steve Cullen ...
There are some things that nobody should ever have to get that used to.
And that’s all the news that wasn’t fit to print ... until now.
Has something in the news - or something completely random - caught your eye and left you wanting to know more? Email us at curiositydesk@wgbh.org. We may just look into it for you.
