Just don't mention clear air turbulence

The Airbus A380, 'flying villages' and the future of flight - International Herald Tribune

The arrival of the Airbus A380 has received rave reviews and generated much interest (with beds on board naturally leading us into Richard Branson-esque mile high club talk yet again,) but it has also encouraged silly talk of new mega-size airplanes being places where people will be encouraged to stand and walk around:

Virgin Atlantic (which has ordered six A380s, with delivery delayed until 2013) says it plans to offer such amenities as a fitness center, a casino, beauty salons, bars and restaurants, and a family area.

"We want to give passengers the choice to move around in this plane," a Virgin spokeswoman said. "The idea of sacrificing seats for space is something we have done with Upper Class on our 747s, with a bar and lounge area."

Either Boeing or Airbus (I've misplaced the link) has an interactive guide showing couples standing having a cocktail at the bar.

Yeah sure. So what about the routine advice you get now from (I think) all airlines that when you are seated you should keep your seatbelt on?

It's surely not at all safe to actually encourage passengers to mill around bars, gyms or "family areas", and I reckon its basically dishonest PR to pretend this will be become the norm.

Here's a passage from CASA that is relevant:

In-flight turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to passengers and crew. ....

From 1981 through 1997 there were 342 reports of turbulence affecting major air carriers. Three passengers died, two of these fatalities were not wearing their seat belt while the sign was on. 80 suffered serious injuries, 73 of these passengers were also not wearing their seat belts.

Just give me more leg room in economy and I will be happy to stay seated as long as I can.

Who would take a holiday there?

Dubai and rape: French youth tells his story - International Herald Tribune

A pretty appalling story about Dubai and its criminal legal system.

Weird science time again...

[0710.3395] If LHC is a Mini-Time-Machines Factory, Can We Notice?

Readers may recall that the Large Hadron Collider (due to start up next year) might, or might not, create large numbers of mini black holes, which might or might not decay completely, perhaps leaving remnants the exact nature of which seem not entirely understood. It might also create strangelets and other exotic things, like Saturn shaped black hole rings, about which the good people at CERN keep saying "don't you worry about that, citizens of Earth."

This is a new one, it seems: there have been a couple of papers recently saying that it might also create twisted bits of space- time which will effectively be tiny time machines.

I haven't read the paper above carefully yet, but its general gist seems to be that such time machines may be hard to detect as they are also expected to evaporate, but maybe they will cause some effect which will be detectable. (Hopefully, expanding to swallow the earth and sending it back to the big bang will not be one of them.)

All very interesting, if you are interested in this sort of thing.

By the way, I have been told via private email from someone who knows a bit more about this that CERN has agreed to do some more safety review stuff. Can't say that I have seen this confirmed anywhere on the Web, though.

The movie few are waiting for

X-Files stars, crew reunite for secretive sequel | Entertainment | Television | Reuters

Who knows, maybe it will be OK. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

Now, this gives me a good excuse to intone the magic words "Gillian Anderson, Gillian Anderson, Gillian Anderson", and if I throw in the phrase "infamous nude sex scene", hey presto my miserable Friday visitor figures should improve.

Palin on tour

Michael Palin will be in Brisbane for a talk at City Hall next Thursday 8 Nov at 6.30pm.

This seems to be a pretty well kept secret by Dymocks, who are running the event. There might be $20 tickets available still; I have to wait for the booking person to ring me back today after she has counted them up on her abacus, or whatever she has to do.

Geoff: message received, will see if I can get one for you too.

Allergic to Cats

The show Cats is the lamest, most tedious excuse for a musical ever written or performed. (But I should point out that I have never seen anything of Starlight Express, which may be even more awful.)

Its box office popularity seems to be the ultimate success of marketing over quality in the history of musicals.

The only conceivably worse concept for a musical would be one based on horses. (Please, don't tell me if it has been done.)

Wait a minute: come to think of it, a musical performed by a cast of 30 two-person pantomime horses might be better than Cats.

OK, it's good to get that opinion off my chest after 20 years. It's what's blogging was designed for, isn't it?

Tibetans are special

How Tibetans Enjoy the High Life: Scientific American

Here's an interesting story on how it is that Tibetans manage to live in such thin air:

The Tibetans increase their blood flow by producing prodigious amounts of nitric oxide in the linings of the blood vessels. This gas diffuses into the blood and forms nitrite and nitrate, which cause the arteries and capillaries to expand and deliver oxygen-bearing blood to the rest of the body more rapidly than normal. ... Also, the nitric oxide by-products circulating in Tibetan blood are 10 times greater.

In fact, the Tibetan levels of these nitrites and nitrates are higher than those in patients suffering from a bacterial blood infection—septic shock—and the blood flows are typical of people suffering from high blood pressure. Yet, they have no ill effects in Tibetans. "We don't see an increase in vascular resistance," Beall says. The Tibetans also appear to have higher levels of antioxidants in their bodies, perhaps to help reduce the risk of putting so much nitric oxide—a free radical—into their bloodstreams.

The curious thing is (which, incidentally, I haven't seen mentioned in any of the versions of this story about Tibetans, but just was my own recollection) is that nitric oxide has an important role in penile erections.

Is Viagra not needed in Tibet?

Build your own rocket plane

North American X-15 Downloadable Cardmodel

Found via Air & Space Magazine, which is full of articles this month about the X-15.

Absinthetinence

Comedy Central: Shows - The Colbert Report

At the website, go and scroll down the video list and check out the video of Colbert's Absinthetinence pledge (it's currently the third one down.)

It is very funny comedy writing.

There is something good natured about the frequent silliness of Colbert Report, I reckon, which is missing from the general sourness of The Daily Show.

UPDATE: here's what I presume will be a more permanent link to the clip.

China, food, safety etc

774 arrests in China over safety - International Herald Tribune

Doesn't China have ways of dealing with this problem other than via arrest?

Who cares?

Panasonic Introduces Next-Generation Blu-ray Disc Player

I may be proved wrong, but Blu Ray seems a clear case of a technology that is so far ahead of market interest, it's seems nearly pointless to bother putting more out there. (At least until they can be made cheaper.)

Pretty obvious

Male preference could have negative impact

New studies commissioned by the U.N. Population Fund predicted that as males outnumber females, because of pre-natal testing to determine the sex of fetuses and subsequent abortions of unwanted females, a surge in sexual violence and trafficking of women could occur.

News for your accountant

Monkeys reveal brain is hard-wired for counting - life - 30 October 2007 - New Scientist

While monkeys might not yet have mastered calculus, recent studies have shown that they can learn understand some basic aspects of arithmetic and, in a rare case, multiplication.

Andreas Nieder at the University of Tübingen in Germany and colleagues trained two rhesus monkeys to count by showing them various numbers of dots on a screen followed by Arabic numerals....

"Although monkeys don't have language they can understand a symbol and what it refers to," she explains.

Nieder, meanwhile, believes that the monkeys can count to far higher numbers. "I'm convinced that they could go to infinity," he says.

There must be a joke to be made somehow, or a funny passage in a faux Douglas Adams book, about the very idea of a roomful of monkeys counting to infinity. Go to it, comedy writers.

Last political post for today

I'm posting so much about politics lately I'm starting to bore myself.

But before I search the Web for something else, did you see Howard's remarkably relaxed and cheery performance on Lateline last night? It was in stark contrast to another stressed looking performance on 7.30 Report the night before, although I still say that Kerry O'Brien is coming out with much stronger aggression in his interviews with Howard compared to Rudd.

(I clearly remember Kerry looking increasingly downcast on the election night coverage in 2004 as the extent of the loss by Labor became apparent. He will be positively suicidal if Howard scrapes back in this time.)

I also just heard Malcolm Turnbull on AM sounding very, very chipper too.

It's amazing how quickly the mood can swing in election campaigns.

UPDATE: funny how I posted last week about the government in England getting all wobbly over a 20% renewable energy commitment by 2020 and now Kevin Rudd decides to commit Australia to the same figure. If England, with some years of the commitment behind it, is saying it doesn't look achievable, I would be very surprised if it is here too.

Sadly missing from Australian politics

Indonesian president releases album - Music - Entertainment - theage.com.au

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has found a new use for his presidential pen, composing an album of 10 heartfelt songs for release across the nation this week.

My Longing for You, a 50-minute album released on compact disc, features pop songs written by the president and performed by prominent Indonesian singers.

The cover shows Yudhoyono clutching an acoustic guitar, his solemn face looming over a line-up of musicians who perform songs such as The Sun is Shining, A Song Under the Moonlight, The Power of God and Good Luck in Your Struggle.

Forget leaders debates, and the worm, what we need is the Election-vision Song Contest. You might think Labor has the advantage, what with Peter Garrett on board, but he would have a hell of a lot of trouble working out his lyrics at the moment.

In fact, I can imagine Kevin storming on stage and ripping the microphone out of his hand, while he launches into an amended version.