Learning To Fly Crash

A student pilot managed to land his aircraft. This would not be news, of course had he landed on the runway in a normal fashion. Instead, he landed his plane directly on top of another plane piloted by his next-door neighbor.

For a learner pilot, it is embarrassing enough that you have brought your plane in to land on top of another aircraft that was on the runway.

But when that other plane belongs to your next-door neighbour, the situation reaches a whole new level of humiliation.

Despite the odds, that is exactly what happened at Roanoke airport near Dallas in Texas when one rookie pilot attempted to touch down.

A perfect three-point landing. Wrong three points, however. Nobody was hurt in the incident, so by one old definition, this was a good landing. I see a great future for the student pilot, however. In modern art!

Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart Now, Baby

A 25-year old Canadian woman will be on probation for the next three years for actually taking a little piece of her lover's heart while engaged in drunken "rough sex."

OTTAWA (Reuters) – A Canadian man who asked his lover to carve a heart-shaped symbol on his chest during a rough sex game almost died when she accidentally pressed too hard and punctured his heart, a newspaper said on Thursday.
 
The Winnipeg Free Press said the 25-year-old woman had been sentenced to three years' probation after she pleaded guilty to assaulting the man in February 2007.

There's kinky and then there's stupid. I kind of think this little incident crosses that line. But the man should be a shoo-in for a runner-up position in the Darwin Awards.

Looking Green

As opposed to actually being green. The Washington Post notes that most of the highly publicized ways of "fighting" climate change are completely useless – or very nearly so. Instead they are more of a fashion statement.

In March of last year, the World Wildlife Fund in Australia teamed up with Leo Burnett, the multinational advertising agency that created the Marlboro Man, to come up with a new environmental campaign called Earth Hour. The idea was to get 2 million residents in Sydney to turn off all the lights in their homes for one hour. The campaign generated wide publicity, but the energy saved was small — the equivalent of taking about five cars off the city's roads for a year.

This year, Earth Hour expanded to dozens of cities around the world. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York were among the U.S. landmarks that went dark. Many corporations signed on to burnish their green credentials. A bar in Phoenix served a drink called an ecotini — organic vodka, green tea and an edible orchid.

But if everyone who participated in Earth Hour had left their lights on and instead switched to mundane, high-efficiency compact fluorescent bulbs, simple calculations show, it might have saved 1,368 times as much energy, because the bulbs would have saved energy all year…..

….."It is very difficult to get people to invest in home insulation and energy efficiency, which are much more effective than putting solar panels on your roof," he said. "Solar panels are popular because you can see you are doing something — and your neighbors can see it, too."

Greenier than thou rules. Style over substance. Just as Al Gore preaches carbon neutrality while consuming vast quantities of energy. The official in charge of the Earth Hour initiative for the WWF admits that the whole thing is designed to manipulate people:

"You are not going to get people to change what people do by engaging their heads; you have to engage their hearts," she said. "You need symbols to spur action. You are not going to get people to take action unless you get them to care about the issue. You are not going to do that by pulling out the U.N. report on blah, blah, blah."

Very nice. It's really about a political agenda.