About the Daily Diatribe

The Daily Diatribe is the personal soap box of Carl Martin Andersen.

I find myself writing regularly on Internet chat forums and I decided to make my own “Blog” (whatever the heck that is!)

Growing up in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota USA in a family of Scandavavian descent not too many generations separated from the old country gave me a unique perspective on life and the world.  I attended public schools where I didn’t do much homework and played football and track, but not that well. I later attended the University of Minnesota where I also excelled at not excelling.

I’ve spent a total of about seven years serving the people of the United States in the federal government, both in and out of uniform.  The rest I’d say I spent most of it as an “Aviation Practitioner” which is a term I use because I’ve spent more than my fair share of time figuring out where exactly I fit in business of defying gravity.  It’s been said that at some point a pilot must make a decision about growing up and becoming a professional aviator.  Trouble is, you can’t always do both!

Along the way, I’ve been a flight instructor, helped develop and deliver the first training curriculum for Predator UAV crews, flown cargo, air taxi, airlines a couple times, corporate flight departments, cloud seeding, and most recently as captain of a corporate jet.  Of my 51 years, I’ve spent over ten of them in Asia, Thailand mostly, along with Indonesia and China. I spent about six months in Europe (France and Belgium) in the Army in the early 1980’s and have lived in South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and California along with my native Minnesota. I speak fluent Thai, average Chinese (Mandarin), and I’m still working on English.

I’m interested in economics, particularly the Austrian school, which believes in honest monetary systems, politics as they pertain to the owners manual we received with our country aka The Constitution of the United States, various conspiracies (as they are called by those uncomfortable with seeking truth), and aviation both practical and historical. I have two sons, Erik (14) and Nathan (12). Erik after the Viking and Nathan after Nathan Hale.  So far both seem to be aptly named.

The idea for The Daily Diatribe was born around 2001 or 2002, when I had just begun my first stint as an Airline Pilot with Mesaba Airlines. Our union, The Airline Pilots Association or “ALPA” was engaged in a protracted labor dispute with airline management. I found myself writing posts on the ALPA online forum translating for my colleagues some of the misinformation the airline management was feeding us. For example, we were being told that the airline was losing money and had to be supported by our “parent” airline, Northwest, in order to survive.  Since we were busy flying mostly full airplanes and being paid less than Metro Transit bus drivers (a good number of First Officers on Food Stamps!), it was clear there was something the company wasn’t telling us. It just didn’t make sense. I wrote an article for the Redliner, our local ALPA Magazine, explaining how it was possible to make one very productive company in a group appear to lose money through the bookkeeping magic of “income splitting.”

Over time, I began to write regular articles commenting on different aspects of the negotiations and the actions taken by the airline management, and found myself with a small following of readers who started asking me, “When is the next ‘diatribe’ coming out?” Even though it was more like the “Monthly Monologue” or at best the “Weekly Whine” it came to be known as “The Daily Diatribe” and the name stuck.

The whole point of communication, in my mind, is learning and the most important things I’ve learned have come through discussions with others.

Please check in with your comments so we can all keep learning.

Thanks for reading.

 cma