Month: January 2001
Never ask for the chicken when the cart comes around
“The large bird ingestion test shall be conducted using one bird of a weight determined from Table 1 aimed at the most critical exposed location on the first stage rotor blades and ingested at a bird speed of 200-knots for engines to be installed on airplanes, or the maximum airspeed for normal rotorcraft flight operations…
This music wasn’t ready back in 1973, but it’s exactly the right vintage now
“Winnipeg is a Siberia, a skagway, a vast plain of ice. Its only hill is a mountain of garbage
Whither the glorified unrecoverable innocence of England?
“What with the homogenizing effects of globalization on the one hand and the loss of their empire on the other, the English have become more and more like other people and less like what used to be themselves. The inveterately high-minded, do-gooding English spinster, as well as the buttoned-up pukka sahib, are pretty much gone…
The Devil came down to Soho: Not a homeless shelter, but a hotel and caf
“I understand that many of the people present had lived in the neighborhood for years
Boxes are little industrial miracles; boxes are fun to crawl around in
“So that phrase—Thinking out of the box—it’s supposed to connote, presumably, a need to think ‘fresh,’ think ‘new,’ think, dare we say, ‘different,’ yes? But, um, no. Seeing as how most good ideas don’t spring forth from thin air, after all; standing on the shoulders of giants and all that. Leaves me cold. So I’m…
Watching the movie is like a checklist of all the bad things you
“Travolta: always a hack. Always a bad, bad actor. He had a certain ignorant charisma in ‘Saturday Night Fever’
C’est La Vie, Que Sera Sera and You Can’t Always Get What You Want, all in one
“Because the fact is, you are uncool, and no matter what you think, you never will be cool, because feeling awkward is part of the trip. Nobody ever really gets over it, they just cover it up. Your uncoolness is just especially exposed now, but I promise, it won’t always feel like your whole body…
A week of study in the US equals a year in Europe and Japan, they joke
“My aunt, in Hanoi for the first time, was afraid of having her picture taken. She said: ‘No, no!’ and turned her face away if someone tried to take a picture of her. I had arranged to telephone a cousin who lives in the country. But when she went to the telephone in her commune,…
Liddy tells a good story for a standing-room-only courthouse crowd
“It was easy for me to play the villain, because that way I didn’t have to act.”
A perfectly good opportunity for building another road nearly gone to waste
“From a conservation perspective, this parkway is a heartbreak. For people who care about efficient government, this road is heartbreak. The people who thought this up should get a lot of credit because it is a brilliant circumvention of good environmental and governmental policy.” “