Arab Airbus Crash

A little over a year ago an Airbus airliner was damaged (destroyed?) during a delivery checkout. A friend forwarded an email to me today that contained a story and some pictures. The story blamed the stupidity and arrogance of the Arab crew for the disaster. As much as I would like to believe that story, I thought I would try to verify it. The best explanation I found was on snopes.com, and the most damaging piece of evidence is that the person in the left hand seat (the captain's seat) was a member of the Arab flight crew. That's enough for me, safe here in suburbia. Another nut-job Arab screwing things up.

I remember hearing another story, a long time ago, about involving a jet fighter being sold to Saudia Arabia. Some inconsequential warning light came on in the cockpit during flight, and the Arab pilot panicked and bailed out and the $16 million jet aircraft went into the sea. I imagine if I dig around enough I could probably find the story, and possibly some basis for the story. But the truth or falsity of the story does not really matter.

I suspect that most Moslems and most Arabs are reasonable people. But it only takes one nut-case to paint an entire nation/class/race of people as incompetent/stupid/irrational.

While we are on the subject of race, you might want to read the following paragraph. I found it in my son's homework assignment.

Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played in Human Progress, yet there are differences–subtle, delicate and elusive, though they may be– which have silently but definitely separated men into groups. While these subtle forces have generally followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these. At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist.
If this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history. What, then, is a race? It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. (W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Race” 1897)

So much for hi-brow meditations. Here's some pictures of the wreck. The first one is from airliners.net.

Arab Airbus Crash
Click the link to see the album.

Update April 2019 replaced dead Picasa album with link to Google Drive.

Update April 2019 replaced missing picture. Stupid, selfish Google won't share.

Update June 2019 replaced missing picture AGAIN. I dunno what the problem is.

Not Shoplifting

My wife found one of those theft prevention tags on a new shirt she bought for one of the boys. We were not about to drive 15 miles back to the store just to have them remove this stupid tag, at least not if we could help it. I tried Google, but it didn't really have any good tips.

I finally decided a screwdriver and a hammer would do the trick, and they did. It took three hands. My wife held the device on edge, I held the screwdriver against the seam and applied the hammer. A couple of sharp whacks and it split open. Still had to pry it apart.

Then it was just a matter of pushing the little metal clip to the side, and presto, out came the big ugly tack! I'm including photos to assist anyone else faced with this dilemma, because it seems stores are not really interested in reducing shop lifting, they are only interested in making life more difficult for their customers.

Update December 2016 replaced missing images.

Cigarette Making Machines

High Speed Cigarette Making Machine

After I wrote my last post about this, I got to wondering if there were any machines available that could automatically produce a hundred cigarettes. What I found was a bunch of hand operated devices for making a one cigarette at a time. A little more searching turned up the behemoth in the picture. It weighs 4 tons and can produce 6,000 cigarettes per minute. Who in their right mind needs 6,000 cigarettes a minute? That is like eight million cigarettes a day! Okay, to keep all the smokers in the US supplied with a pack a day, you would need a couple hundred of these machines.

Cigarette Making Machine

Then I found this machine. It looks to be more like what you would need to be able to produce a carton of smokes for customers on a regular basis. I don't know how much the machine costs, so I don't know if you could make a business out of it, but with the exorbitant taxes on cigarettes, I imagine some people will start looking into it. I think the key is to offer a custom cigarette making service. Customer brings their tobacco to the roller who performs the service of putting the customer's tobacco into cigarettes. Selling ready made cigarettes is where the tax man gets you.

Yes, smoking is bad for your health, but some people are going to smoke anyway. Some people are hopelessly addicted, they couldn't quit if their life depended on it. Then there's all the chemicals and radioactive elements in commercial tobacco that you could avoid by getting your cigarettes custom made using organic tobacco.

Update November 2016 fixed bad html.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

We went to see this movie when we were in Iowa. I thought the premise sounded kind of lame, but the whole family was going, so I went along. It was very well done. Not a great movie, but a very pleasant one. I think it was mostly about people being nice to each other, which is not something you see very often. There were a couple of hiccups in the story line, but they were small potatoes compared to overall tenor of the film. I recommend it.

Books

I am reading "The White Lioness" by Henning Mankell, a Swedish murder mystery. It's quite good. It started out a little stilted, but I soon got used to the style. I think that might just be the way Swedes use their language. One paragraph got my attention. The adult daughter is telling her Detective father that all he and mom used to talk about was their house and garden, they never talked about anything outside of their own little world. I was shocked. I cannot imagine such a thing. House and garden are the most boring things on earth. Their biggest impact on my mind is when something breaks, and with a couple of zillion mechanical devices in the house, something is always needing to be fixed.

I started reading "Censoring Science" by Mark Bowen, but it was awful. After I put it down and started reading the Swedish murder mystery, I realized they were written in a sort of similar style. Lots of minutae, detailed descriptions of daily affairs, the kind of the thing I enjoy in fiction, but this is supposed to be fact, and I expect something different from a factual account. Or maybe it was just poorly written. Facts were not presented in a convincing manner, but the story did not even engage me enough to warrant checking up on them. I gave up on it after a dozen pages or so.

I also finished reading "The Ecolitan Enigma" by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Not one of his best books, but it is over ten years old. I think he has improved as a writer since then. A science fiction novel in name, it could easily have been set in present day Earth. The hero is a "James Bond" kind of special agent. For dubious reasons he is sent to do an economic study on a backwater planet. Turns out somebody is plotting interstellar war and chaos on this planet is supposed to provoke a war between two major players, which will leave an opening for the instigator to step in and reap the spoils. The story toddles along until we get to page 277, and then we get this little bit of wisdom:

A couple pages later there is another bit:

"And you will pardon my emphasis on titles, but it is so amusing to see the Avalonian reaction. Accomplishments, and you both boast considerable accomplishments, mean little in Camelot. Only the titles matter, and that, my friends, is why New Avaolon's days are numbered. I should not be so philosophical, but I am so glad you two could spare a moment for a luncheon with brokendown old diplomat."

That sounds a whole lot like President Bush's administration. On the next page we have this:

A note about the quotes. The first and last are pictures I clipped from Google Books. The middle one I had to type, page 279 was not included in the Google "Preview". Sorry the type size in the pictures is so small. I was unable to find a way to insert the full size image.

Update July 2016 replaced missing images (pictures of text).

"Speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon

I really enjoyed this book. Easy to read, it sucked me right in. Did not take long to finish it. Tells the story of a high-functioning autistic man with a special talent for working with computer models that is being utilized by a pharmaceutical company.

His description of himself and what he observes as compared to what normal people observe reminds me a great deal of myself and my wife. I count things and look for patterns in wallpaper and floor tiles. My wife is very much a people person.

I suspect I got burned out on people early on. I used to talk to all kinds of people, but I found that many of the people I talked to were not worth talking to. Angry, resentful, or just plain wacko. I got tired of it, and once I started discriminating against people who were just a waste of time, it became easier to cut off more people.

Update November 2015. Replaced missing picture.

Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino"

Thanks to my wife, we went to movies last night. Being a cheapsake and disliking crowds I tend to overlook new releases. They'll be available on DVD in six months and we can watch it for cheap. So we waffled for a bit, but she finally decided we should go, and I'm glad we did.

What a great film! Clint plays the curmudgeon to a T. Reminded us of my father. A lot. Not the swearing, or the racial epithets, but the whole attitude, the expressions on his face, the grunts and the growls. And boy is he (Clint) old, a lot like my father was. For dealing with some unpleasant issues, it was a surprisingly light hearted movie, with any number of howlingly funny bits. And then there's the fairy tale ending, well a sort of fairy tale. Great movie, but then I've always liked Clint.

In the film, Clint's character is a Polack, and as he bears some resemblence to my father, who was Polish, I wonder if maybe Clint is also Polish.

There was one thing that was notable for it's absence, and that was the predictable retort when someone tells Walt (Clint) that he should quit smoking. It happened a couple of times, and both times I expected Walt to reply, something to the effect, that he was so old that quitting now wouldn't make any difference. But he didn't say anything. I guess that goes with the curmudgeon aspect of his character. He had this exchange so many times there was no point in even acknowledging the comment.

Can you believe this is the best picture I could find of the car? I could only find one picture of the car from the movie, but this picture had Angeline Jolie standing in front of it! Waaaa? She wasn't even in the movie. Movie people are so stupid. I found one other picture of a green Gran Torino, and the background in this one was just trash. Found lots of pictures of the red and white one from "Starsky & Hutch".

Update December 2016 replaced missing image.