December 2008

From Wired.com: Pilots Complain the A380 Is Too Quiet for Sleeping

The last thing you’d expect to hear from anyone who’s flown recently is that planes are too quiet. But that’s exactly what Airbus is hearing from pilots who say the A380 super-jumbo makes so little noise they’re having trouble getting to sleep.

Emirates airline pilots say the four engines propelling the long-haul jets are so quiet they can hear every crying baby, snoring passenger and flushing toilet, making it all but impossible to nod off during their breaks. The problems are unique to the A380, which Airbus boasts is significantly quieter than anything else in the sky. We took a ride aboard Emirate’s super-luxe A380, and it is indeed whisper-quiet. Emirates never expected that to be a problem.

“We’re getting lots of complaints,” Capt. Ed Davidson, the airline’s senior vice president for fleets, told Flight Global. “On our other aircraft, the engines drown out the cabin noise. [On the A380] the pilots sleep with earplugs, but the cabin noise goes straight through them.”

I don’t think that being too quiet was a problem that engineers thought about when designing the A380.

For a limited time, Amazon’s offering three Christmas MP3 downloads from Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.  The songs are Greensleeves, Fur Elise, and O Tannenbaum. 

If you like jazz and Christmas music, you should have the complete album.  It’s great Christmas party music!

Visit my Things I like Store for the free downloads.

Another “too cool” product from VAT19.com

From the description:

Your package features twenty-five Gummy Bear soaps that are the same size, shape, and smell as the real candy treat. You will receive five each of lime, cherry, lemon, orange, and pineapple-scented Gummy Bears. If you have the time, line them up in rows to create your very own little Gummy Bear army. Hey, we had fun doing it.

Buy it VAT19: Mini Gummy Bear Soap
See also- Giant Gummy Bear on a Stick

From The Washington Post: Obama or an Obama-Impersonator? Ros-Lehtinen Flubs the Call

Twice on Wednesday, President-elect Barack Obama tried to reach across the partisan divide with a phone call to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida.

And twice, according to her office, she hung up on him.

She “thought it was a hoax,” an aide to the congresswoman said.
…
A third party then sought to intervene. Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and someone Ros-Lehtinen knows well, called and told her he “needed to speak with her urgently.” She got on the line — but demanded that Berman recount a story “only both of them would know,” which the congressman did.

He then told her what had just happened — “that she had, indeed, hung up on the president-elect,” according to her office statement.

An amusing story.

SI.com: Sportsman of the Year: Michael Phelps

Those seeking sustenance flocked to Phelps’s favorite greasy spoon, Pete’s Grille, where his traditional pretraining breakfast was offered during the Olympics as a $19.95 special: a three-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast with powdered sugar, three chocolate-chip pancakes and three fried-egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions and mayo. “Usually it was a group of people who’d order it,” says Dave Stahl, the owner of Pete’s Grille. “The one guy who tried it by himself complained of pretty serious stomach pain.”

Michael Phelps is a superstar but still manages to seem like a pretty normal person.

From NYTimes.com: Ford Says It Can Get By if Rivals Survive

If the company does access the loans, it said Mr. Mulally’s salary, which amounted to $21 million last year, would be reduced to $1 a year. Last month, when he and the chief executives from G.M. and Chrysler were asked whether they would be willing to eliminate their own pay, Mr. Mulally had been the most resistant.

The three men also had been criticized for flying corporate jets to Washington to ask for financial assistance. This week, Mr. Mulally plans to drive a Ford Escape hybrid sport-utility vehicle to Washington to testify a second time before Congress, and Ford said in its submission that it now plans to sell all five of its corporate jets.

This totally misses the point of what the criticism was about.  If the CEO’s are coming to Washington to beg for public money, they should show that they understand that it’s not business as usual and show some frugality in their spending ways.  Driving to Washington is a total publicity stunt.

I guess if all three CEO’s were carpooling in the same Ford Escape hybrid that might be a little better.

From the Wall Street Journal: America’s Other Auto Industry

These are the 12 “foreign,” or so-called transplant, producers making cars across America’s South and Midwest. Toyota, BMW, Kia and others now make 54% of the cars Americans buy. The internationals also employ some 113,000 Americans, compared with 239,000 at U.S.-owned carmakers, and several times that number indirectly.

The international car makers aren’t cheering for Detroit’s collapse. Their own production would be hit if such large suppliers as the automotive interior maker Lear were to go down with a GM or Chrysler. They fear, as well, a protectionist backlash. But by the same token, a government lifeline for Detroit punishes these other companies and their American employees for making better business decisions.

The root of this other industry’s success is no secret. In fact, Detroit has already adopted some of its efficiency and employment strategies, though not yet enough. To put it concisely, the transplants operate under conditions imposed by the free market. Detroit lives on Fantasy Island.

This what makes bailouts such a problematic issue.  Is it fair for the government to step in to help companies that have made bad decisions or have a poor business model? 

Saw this commercial while watching football this weekend.  It’s a section of a road in California where you hear the Lone Ranger Theme Song from grooves that Honda cut into the road.  It was designed for the length of the Honda Civic, but it evidently worked for other cars.  It’s since been paved over because of complaints of people who lived nearby.

From Wired: Hi Ho Honda! Civic Musical Road Plays Lone Ranger Theme Song