I love this: A cat watching and reacting to Psycho.
Category Archives: General
An Eerie Photo
Going Off The Air
I’m flying to DC this afternoon for eight days of space stuff, culminating with a brief talk on space property rights at the International Astronautical Conference a week from tomorrow. I’ll have my laptop, but not sure how much time I’ll have to post. But be good in comments.
Dustbury
RIP, Charles G. Hill. This is sad; he just retweeted me the other day. He had been blogging half a decade longer than I’d been. He was a pioneer.
Knots
This is useful info. I’ve never been great at it.
Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out”
How it changed jazz.
Yes, a classic album. My sister went to music school in Ann Arbor with his son, Chris.
[Afternoon update]
I had not realized that Joe Morello started out as a violinist. How often does someone go from violin to drums?
[Monday-morning update]
The top 100 jazz albums you should own. With a meditation on the art.
[Bumped]
Bodie
An interesting history of a California ghost town. I went there once, back in the eighties. It’s a long drive on a dirt road, down in the desert east of Yosemite.
Lileks
Writes about the funeral of his father, a WW II vet (among many other things). He was three years younger than mine, who has been gone now for forty years.
Back On The Air
For those wondering why posting has been light, I woke up with a summer head cold on Monday. I spent a lot of yesterday taking it easy and napping, but last night I slept pretty well, and I’m mostly dried up today.
Am I “Able” to Open the Exit-Row Door?
OK, this post reminds me of a conversation I had Friday night on the flight I managed to escape to (not “from,” despite the movie) LA last night.
I’d gotten the ticket with miles, because the last-minute prices to DC were nuts, the only way to do so was to (a) go out of IAD instead of DCA and (b) fly into SNA (John Wayne Airport in Orange County) instead of LAX. Thursday, I asked American if I could change it by going same-day standby, and they said, sure, if you want to burn more miles. So I was resigned to going to Dulles, and flying into Orange County, and Patricia picking me up there, with at least a 45-minute drive each way.
Fortunately, God (or whoever controls the weather) intervened, and my flight from IAD was delayed sufficiently that I missed my connection to SNA, and managed to get reassigned to a flight that went to LAX, with no penalty.
So I’m in an exit row on the flight, and the flight attendant comes by with the usual FAA-required question: “Are you willing and able to assist in opening the door in the case of an emergency?”
I’d been asked this question before in similar situations, but this time, I realized that I couldn’t say “yes” with any honesty. Because I had never actually opened an emergency door. Sure, I’d read the instructions, but had I ever done it? No.
So I said to the flight attendant (because I can occasionally be a pain in the ass from my pedantry, and it had been a long day), “Well, sure, I’m willing, but how can I know that I’m ‘able’? I’ve never done it before.”
There was an American captain sitting next to me, dead heading, and I said, “I’d bet no one in this row, except him, has ever opened an emergency door in an aircraft, so when you ask us if we’re able, there’s no way for us to know.”
The flight attendant is now flustered, and asks if I want to be moved.
“No, I’m sort of kidding, but it’s not a useful question, despite the FAA rules. What you should be asking is if I’m willing and have sufficient strength. I am and do. But none of us know if we are able, and we all hope that we don’t have to find out.”