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A contest for fuel-efficient small airplanes has a winner: a modified VariEze that gets 45 mpg at over 200 MPH with two people aboard, and nearly 100 mpg at a lower "maximum range" speed. Details from Wired here , Tree Hugger here , and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association last year here...
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Bad news: further evidence that the worldwide GPS system, which is run by the US government and on which everything from airline navigation to iPhone mapping apps relies, is at risk of "browning out." Earlier mention of the problem, back in May, here , based on this government report. Update...
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What is my purpose on Earth? Raising my children? Being as good and supportive a husband to my wife as (the movie version of) Paul Child was to Julia in the new film? Working for world peace and sustainable environmental development and a more humane society? Helping keep my magazine afloat? Yeah yeah...
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What is my purpose on Earth? Raising my children? Being as good and supportive a husband to my wife as (the movie version of) Paul Child was to Julia in the new film? Working for world peace and sustainable environmental development and a more humane society? Helping keep my magazine afloat? Yeah yeah...
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Good . Pilot of a Cirrus SR-22 gets into trouble while flying over North Carolina but has an option. As the Mount Airy News reports , the pilot "...was at 6,000 feet when he declared an emergency, pulled the parachute his plane was equipped with, let go of the control panel and floated to the ground...
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Regarding one of the puzzles of the Air France 447 crash -- how a professional air crew ended up in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm -- an airline pilot writes: As a point of reference I'm an A-320 Captain for NWA (soon to be Delta but happy to be getting a paycheck) with over 12,000 hours....
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I don't talk about it as often as, say, small-plane aviation or, recently, Chinese education , or my doomed quest in Asia for good beer. But for many many years I have been fascinated by the relationship between "pure" acts of thinking - logic, memory, argument, expression, the process...
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... how about the prospect that the GPS system will be the next part of America's neglected infrastructure to be in trouble, with ripple effects on modern commercial life? It is impossible to overstate the importance of GPS to the worldwide modern economy. Trivial recent example: the other night...
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Two days ago I said that I greatly enjoyed my colleague Mark Bowden's article about fighter aces but disagreed with his implication that the F-22 was the way to go for the Air Force or the country. I have heard from many readers since then -- a few supporting the F-22, most against it. I'll start...
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- About China and the US cooperating on environmental/climate issues: Yesterday I mentioned this detailed and valuable report from the Asia Society and Pew. It turns out that Brookings has just done something similar. Summary here , with links to PDF versions in both English and Chinese. Transcript of...
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Via my friend Bruce Williams , an accomplished aviator, flight instructor, and technology guy, I hear that the first-ever, 5000-person cuts Microsoft has just announced in its work force include the team responsible for Microsoft Flight Simulator . Williams himself, who was a major figure on that team...
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One reason math is so satisfying is that it allows you to see order in what is otherwise the randomness of life. For instance, the famous Fibonacci sequence , which shows up in countless natural patterns like this: Math is also satisfying when it helps you understand what parts of life truly are random...
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Time and again I've praised (or eulogized ) DayJet, the radically innovative but now out-of-business air taxi company based in Florida. And I've praised VMware , the still-in-business California company that lets you run Windows and Mac software seamlessly side-by-side on a Mac. Now it turns...