American Airlines, my carrier of choice, will finally replace its fleet of awful MD-80s, many of which it inherited from TWA:
The acquisition of 76 Boeing 737-800s through early 2011 represents a doubling of that airplane model flown by Ft Worth-based American.
All the new planes will be based at O'Hare International Airport.
The move also will lead to the eventual retirement of American's McDonnell Douglas MD-80s--a reliable but noisy aircraft that gulps 35 percent more fuel than the 737-800.
American plans to phase out its 280 MD-80s over about 10 years, said Dan Garton, the carrier's executive vice president of marketing.
"All of the new planes will be based at O'Hare..." Sigh. That makes me so happy.
Via Calculated Risk, a really scary graph from the Oregon State government:
Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 12.1 percent in March from 10.7 percent (as revised) in February. The state’s unemployment rate has risen rapidly and substantially over the past nine months, from a rate of 5.9 percent in June 2008. The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent in March, from 8.1 percent in February.
In March, Oregon’s seasonally adjusted nonfarm payroll employment declined by 14,000 jobs, following a drop of 22,800 (as revised) in February.
Industry Payroll Employment (Establishment Survey Data)
In March, five of Oregon’s seven largest private-sector industries recorded substantial seasonally adjusted job declines. The losses were widespread with trade, transportation and utilities down 3,600 jobs and four other major industries each down approximately 2,400 jobs. None of Oregon’s major industries gained a substantial number of Jobs in March.
(Low whistle.)
Can't wait for Illinois' report.
The Chicago Tribune has a photo history of the disaster that shut down Chicago's Loop 17 years ago today. Worth a look.
Emirates A340-500 came centimeters from crashing on takeoff from Melbourne, Australia over the weekend:
The plane -- carrying up to 215,000 liters of highly flammable aviation fuel -- was less than 70 cm off the ground when it crashed through lights almost 200 m from the end of the runway.
...The fully-laden Airbus A340-500 was believed to have been travelling about 280 km/h when it reached the end of the runway without becoming airborne.
At the last minute, the two pilots "rotated" the plane [too steeply] causing its tail to crash into the end of the runway.
Damage to the $220 million plane is so severe that the airline is considering writing it off rather than repairing it.
... Aviation officials said ... Emirates' pilot training and competency standards are almost identical to those in Australia....
I corrected the penultimate paragraph because the reporter seems to believe that "rotating" is an emergency procedure that involves yanking the yoke back hard enough to bounce the tail off the runway. Actually "rotating" just means rotating the airplane on its horizontal axis so the nose points up. Rotating a Cessna 172, for example, is such a subtle maneuver at takeoff speed that non-pilot passengers often wonder how the plane got airborne. What the Emirates pilots did was to pull back so hard that they caused a tail strike. In other words, they panicked, which compounded the problem because the plane's angle of attack seems to have been too steep to generate sufficient lift to take off.
As you pull back on the yoke, the tail of the aircraft is pushed down, which pushes the nose up. This translates speed into lift. It also increases drag, which means pulling back too far slows the plane too much which causes lift to drop. In an airplane the size of a Cessna 172, this can cause a takeoff stall; with an Airbus 340, the plane is so long that the tail scrapes the runway long before the plane stalls. That causes a different kind of drag, of course, and now you're "in the world of physics" as pilots say and no longer flying.
I hope to read follow-up about this when it's available; in particular, I'm wondering what went on in the cockpit at takeoff.
Note that the photo is not of the accident airplane.
After some experimentation, I may have found a setup that works:
It has the added advantage of showing the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center in the background.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a Tribune article about how the U.S. lags the rest of the industrialized world in rail technology. The Economist this week continues the discussion:
There are reasons, however, to be cautious. First, the cost of any one project far exceeds the money available. California, which has the most advanced plan, would connect the state's biggest cities with trains running at more than 200mph. In November Californians approved $9.95 billion of bonds for the project. On top of this, officials hope to get $12 billion-16 billion from Washington. The plan is expected to cost $40 billion in all. But the stimulus contains only $8 billion for the whole country.
Second, many plans would make trains high-speed only in a relative sense. Proposals that are cheaper than California’s are also much slower. A plan for the Chicago-St Louis line, for example, would speed up trains from 79mph to only 110mph. Multiple road crossings require trains to move more slowly than in Europe. Adding to the problem, most passenger trains run on track owned by freight railways. Congestion makes service less reliable.
I'm actually sad to see $2 gasoline again, because I think a couple years of gas prices around $4 (or even $9, like in Europe) would finally give us a decent rail system. So the next time I fly to London I'll take solace in the Heathrow Express when I get there, and try to forget about the Blue Line that brought me to O'Hare. (Though, in fairness to the CTA, in the past two years they have cut the trip from the Loop to O'Hare from an hour and a quarter down to 40 minutes.)
As Parker gets older and less likely to shred things, I'm leaving him alone for a few hours at a time without stuffing him in his crate. Of course, when he's crated, it's easy to put a camera on him. Not so much when he has run of the house.
So, I've tried pointing the camera at places I thought he'd be likely to hang out. His crate, for example:
Yes, that's an empty crate. OK, he doesn't hang out there when I'm gone. Got it.
His bed in the living room, maybe? Well, he did stop by long enough to grab a peanut-butter-stuffed Kong:
After picking up the Kong, though, he went somewhere else, so the ParkerCam showed an empty bed for a couple of hours:
I have a couple other thoughts on where he goes when I'm out, so I'll keep trying to find him. That said, there may be a Heisenberg problem: he may not want to sleep near a whirring laptop. So the ParkerCam may have to suffer for Parker's general comfort.
Moments like these need to be savored. Via Talking Points Memo, the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay group, has announced a new initiative:
Now that activist legislators are legislating from their legislatures to legalize gay marriage, activists are turning up the volume on anti-gay marriage rhetoric.
There's just one, ahem, kink.
In an unintentional but hilarious nod to gay sex chatters everywhere, the National Organization for Marriage has dubbed their campaign "2 Million for Marriage". Or 2M4M.
This initiative comes as the group announces their new P.R. director, ormer U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-MN).
Talk about good news, bad news. I just got an email from amazon.com:
We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on January 27 2009 09:59 PST
(Order# 123-4567890-1234567):
Matthew Fox, et al "Lost: The Complete Fifth Season [Blu-ray]" [Blu-ray]
Estimated arrival date: 12/10/2009
Sigh. I guess I can wait until December. But when will I get my Mad Men Season 2?
Via Bruce Schneier, a demonstrably incompetent police chief in the UK has resigned after mishandling a secret document:
Police were forced to carry out raids on addresses in the north-west of England in broad daylight yesterday, earlier than planned, after [Bob] Quick, the Metropolitan police's assistant commissioner [and senior-most counter-terrorism official], was photographed carrying sensitive documents as he arrived for a meeting in Downing Street.
A white document marked "secret", which carried details of the operation being planned by MI5 and several police forces, was clearly visible to press photographers equipped with telephoto lenses.
Yesterday, realising the existence of the photographs of the document – which included the names of several senior officers, sensitive locations and details about the nature of the overseas threat – the government imposed a "D notice" to restrict the media from revealing the contents of the picture.
The Guardian article has a photo of the document, taken as Quick got out of his car.
Police also revealed that Quick's Windows password was "bob1" and that he routinely leaves his keys in his car "so [he'll know] where to find them."