Bill Whittle is apparently working on a new book: An American Civilization. I like Bill - he needs an editor, but he also produces stuff like this:

One Echo Foxtrot, roger. Do you wish to continue the approach?

No sir. What I’d really like is for someone to get a really big f***ing ladder and get us out of this mess.

"Affirmative, One Echo Foxtrot will continue inbound on the ILS to Burbank."

One Echo Foxtrot, roger.

It’s much, much later that I wonder how and why the human animal – which when you get right down to it should really only need enough brainpower to make a sharp stick to throw at a gazelle – has enough reserve neuron connections to build a civilization so complex that a hairless ape like myself can chase a set of white needles across a four-inch instrument, while hurtling blind a mile up in the air at 150 knots without leaving nail and bite marks on the plexiglass. But, somehow, that’s what I did....

How many people were there with me that day? Not just the obvious two – Dana and Craig, whose support kept my monkey brain in the back of my head to return to throw pooh another day. How many guys were watching me on radar, keeping me separated from far, far better men and women who do this in their sleep up there? How many people did it take to make the instruments, to mine the silica for the glass, to tap the rubber for the wires? Who laid the asphalt on the runways, who built the filaments in the approach strobes, and who attached the ceramic tips to my spark plugs? And how many millions of other unseen connections had to be made to allow me to do, routinely, and on a middle-class salary, what billions of dead men and women would have given a lifetime to taste – just once. In those few minutes I just told you of, I stood on the shoulders of millions of my brothers and sisters, not the least of which were two sons of a preacher from Dayton, Ohio – now long dead but with me in spirit every day. I was atop a pyramid of dedication, hard work, ingenuity and progress, following rules written in the blood of the stupid and the brave and the unlucky.

I had tossed myself a mile into the air and landed safe in this Web of Trust."

If you've read Winds for a while, you may recall Bill's bit about The Great Pharaoh Cheops at the 7-Eleven Store. He extends and expands upon that theme in The Web of Trust - what we and our ancestors have built, enjoying so easily... and so often without due consideration and gratitude.

Something we may yet lose, if we prove unequal to its legacy.