Patrick is writing about us! Me and the thousands of airliner geeks that hang out at airliners.net, and subscribe to Airliner World (and even Airports of the World). We listen to channel 9, and some of us even prefer to fly on United for that reason. We know about Passur’s Airport Monitor (and wish it was available at our local airport). We have been known to kibitz at PPruNe. We probably have one or two (or two hundred!) models from Dragon Wings, Gemini Jets, or Herpa on our bookshelves. We loved Pushing Tin, and when we watched United 93 we were humbled and impressed by the way that it captured the gestalt of commercial flying and the heroism of the moment – but we were also distracted by the anachronistic details. We all have our favourite photographs of airliners, as well as our personal stories.
Thanks, Patrick.
Month: April 2007
Baghdad's most often quoted blogger is leaving Iraq
Riverbend and her family have decided to leave:
It’s difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.
As Juan Cole points out, even leaving is not without risk:
Worse, Iraqis who want to come to the US as refugees seeking asylum often face a catch-22 of being defined as terrorists because they have been victimized. For instance, if a family had a member kidnapped, and payed ransom, and then fled to Jordan and applied to come to the US, their having paid the ransom would be considered a form of material support to terrorism and they would be excluded!
What's happened to "The Happy Heretic"?
Anyone know what happened to The Happy Heretic, the blog by Judith Hayes. She’s the author of the book by the same name, and of the great quotation: “If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.” The domain name is (still) reserved, but the site is down, or perhaps just unreachable.
"Is this [an unconvincing and thoroughly distracting replica of] a dagger that I see before me?"
Dust and despair from the end of the 60s
Prompted by Charlie‘s comment on my posting about science fiction books, I’ve been reading some Ursula Le Guin. Having really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness, I immediately started in on The Dispossessed. That was three weeks ago; I just finished it tonight. Barely. Willing myself to complete it. Trying to summon up a little curiosity about how it might end.
I know it’s supposed to be a masterpiece, but these flat passages about these desiccated people on their minimalist world failed to grab me. (For hardscrabble life on the edge, give me Steinbeck any day.) And the more I read, the more I felt that these characters were all simply stereotypes representing facets of the sociopolitical debate that seized so many at the end of the 60s, from Paris to Berkeley. When the helicopter-borne troops moved in, and the strikers were hunted through the city, I could practically see the footnotes about Paris ’68 and Kent State. And the future, for all concerned, was so damned bleak that I almost gave up on it.
Oh, well. Can’t win them all. What next, I wonder? I’d like to find the first book in a nice space-opera series, with just the right kind of cynical… oh, wait: that’s DVDs. OK: give me something like Feersum Endjinn, or a new Neal Stephenson (but with an editor, please – not like the undisciplined ramblings of the Baroque Cycle).
Sam and Andy – it's a wrap!
From Sam Harris’s final contribution to his debate with Andrew Sullivan at Beliefnet:
You want to have things both ways: your faith is reasonable but not in the least bound by reason; it is a matter of utter certainty, yet leavened by humility and doubt; you are still searching for the truth, but your belief in God is immune to any conceivable challenge from the world of evidence. I trust you will ascribe these antinomies to the paradox of faith; but, to my eye, they remain mere contradictions, dressed up in velvet.
Indeed.
A picture saves me a thousand words
I was planning to write a long blog piece about how Google, Wikipedia, and eBay have changed how we remember things.
The tentative title was “Nostalgia really isn’t like it used to be”, and I was going to illustrate the point by explaining how a few minutes remembering what it was like to clean out the ashes from the coal-fired boiler in the kitchen (c.1956) had eventually, and serendipitously, led me to post a successful bid on eBay for a Mainline model of a class 45 diesel locomotive (D49, “The Manchester Regiment”).
But then I saw that xkcd had already captured the essence of the situation, so I don’t have to.
Mathematics, motion, music
The whitney music box. Plug in your headphones, and enjoy. I think my favourite variation is no.16.
[From Megan at Andrew Sullivan’s place.]
VA Tech, atheism, and the loathsome D'Souza
Random 10
OK, GoodMathBadMath shamed me into doing my duty. Hello, iTunes, whatcha got for me today?
- “Voodoo City” by Black 47 (from Home of the Brave)
- “Had to Cry Today” by Blind Faith (from Blind Faith)
- “The Test That Stumped Them All” by Dream Theater (from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence)
- “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (from The Best Of O.M.D.)
- “KDX 125” by the Pet Shop Boys (from Relentless)
- “Begonia Seduction Scene” by Porcupine Tree (from On the Sunday of Life)
- “Melatonin” by Radiohead (from Airbag/How Am I Driving?)
- “A good thing” by Saint Etienne (from Tales From Turnpike House)
- “Baby’s Callin’ Me Home” by the Steve Miller Band (from Children of the Future)
- “Beyond the Invisible” by Enigma (from Love, Sensuality, Devotion)