Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

You need to plan ahead.

Please stick to working on front end UI. You scare me.

I like thinking about this in a sort of hypothetical Sparta. Sparta had two kings from two different royal lines.

Suppose you're one of two kings, and the other royal line experiences some sort of dynastic hiccup. This inevitably happens to everyone.

A popular strategy throughout history is to capitalize on that hiccup by exterminating the existing royal line, or at least driving them out of power so you can take it yourself. As a king, you are ideally positioned to do this. Maybe you can take both thrones and be the double-king. Maybe you can put your cousin on the second throne. Maybe you can put a flunky on the second throne. Maybe you can get rid of the second throne, leaving yourself as sole king.

But once you do that, a precedent has been set. Your line will eventually stumble too, and it is likely to suffer whatever fate befell the other line the first time. Another strategy you have, back when the rival line first shows weakness, is to stake everything you have on your commitment to upholding the Spartan way of life as expressed in the dual kingship. Give rousing speeches on how unthinkable it would be for anything about the current setup to change. Throw all your considerable resources into supporting the king on the other throne, no matter how weak his position might look.

If that sticks, the other line is likely to remember that you were there when they needed you. But even more than that, you've just established that the dual kingship, and the two families who fill it, are an integral part of the culture, never to be questioned. That tradition may ultimately prove more helpful to you than any personal support. And it has such obvious benefits to the other royal line that, going forward, they will likely support it just as strongly as you do.

On this analogy, the problem with disturbing the Airbus / Boeing duopoly isn't that Boeing might start to compete with Airbus, provoking an arms race. The bigger problem is that (as you mention) some other company might start thinking they can make airplanes too, and who knows what could happen then.

I remember in particular a piece Malcolm Gladwell wrote on football and head injuries. ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play )

I am willing to believe that football causes head injuries for other reasons. I am generally against this. So I let a few people know about the piece. I'd also give them a warning: Malcolm Gladwell generally doesn't know what he's talking about, and it's a bad idea to pay attention to what he says. That said, this is an interesting piece by Malcolm Gladwell.

I know this is the wrong thing to do. You can use Malcolm Gladwell's piece to make arguments against football because every argument is more persuasive when Malcolm Gladwell makes it. That's his only skill, but it is very highly developed. The problem is that that's a terrible reason to believe an argument. The Malcolm-Gladwell-sounds-convincing argument can prove anything at all, as long as Malcolm Gladwell wants it to. The correct thing to do as the person being argued at is to completely dismiss whatever he says, because it will sound convincing regardless of whether it's true.