admin

You want PR nightmare? Cuz this is how you get PR nightmare.

 AARRRGH, aircraft, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  24 Responses »
Apr 102017
 

So, a United Airlines flight was overbooked, and they needed to stuff four more UA employees on the flight so they could be where they needed to be. This is an irritating and unavoidable fact of the current system. One could obviously argue that overbooking should be banned, but for now, it’s still a thing. Anyway, United offered the passengers bribes to take a later flight, but they weren’t able to get enough volunteers. So, they boarded the plane anyway and *then* decided to randomly select some poor saps to yank off the plane. Well, one guy didn’t want to go. So what did United do? They called the cops. Which, strictly speaking, is the legal course… once they told the passenger that he was no longer on that flight, and he refused to leave, he was technically trespassing. But what did the cops do? They beat him so bad he was yakking up blood and they had to take *everyone* off the plane in order to clean up the mess.

Yeah. I’m thinking what we have here is an insta-millionaire in the making. The situation is, one one level, entirely of United’s making…. *they* are the ones who overbooked the flight. And anyone who has flown in the last, oh, sixteen or so years knows it’s an excruciating nightmare; you just want to get it over with, so it’s understandable that the passenger didn’t want to get pulled off a flight he was already seated on. But we’re in an era when every other passenger will be filming anything unusual on  plane… and a passenger beaten so badly he’s literally begging for death while spewing blood all over? Yeah, that’s what’s called “bad optics.” Crack open that checkbook and start scribbling zeros.

One is left to wonder just what would have happened if other passengers had leaped to this guys defense. Now, *maybe* he was being a jackass, and initiated physical combat with the government employees who gave him a pounding. *Maybe* he had this coming. But you know… *maybe* you shouldn’t have violent thugs as minor functionaries for the Feds, and *maybe* airlines shouldn’t overbook. If it comes to a lawsuit and goes to court, and if it turns out that this was just a guy who wanted to go home (he apparently claimed he was a doctor who had patients to see), then I’d recommend this settlement: find out how much United Airlines saves annually by overbooking rather than underbooking. Then double it, and demand that. And then demand an equal amount from the law enforcement agency that did the actual thrashing.

So not only is *this* guy turned off United Airlines, so is probably everyone who was on that plane. I know I sure s hell wouldn’t want to pay money to a company who could at the drop of a hat make me a trespasser, then set goons upon me. Hell, this is why I don’t fly anymore. I’d much rather drive 1500 miles than fly it.

All that said, imagine another competing airline sees this story, and they decide to reverse course on the last couple decades in aviation trends. Instead of less legroom, they reduce the number of seats and give you more. Instead of overbooking, they intentionally underbook, then make the last empty seats available at a discount in the last few minutes. And then they run a series of TV ads showing this incident in glorious technicolor, saying “Don’t fly United, cuz this might happen. Fly with us! We’re more comfortable and hardly ever beat paying customers into bloody pulps in front of small children going on vacation.” Seems like that’d be a winning ad campaign.

 Posted by at 4:29 pm

The man can belt out a tune

 art, awesomeness, history, Hmm..., youtube  4 Responses »
Apr 092017
 

Remember Dee Snider? He was famous for approximately fifteen minutes, more than thirty years ago… first as the lead singer of Twisted Sister, then, more importantly, for smacking Al Gore around on the floor of the Senate. Together with Frank Zappa and – it’s still hard to believe – John Denver – Snider stood up to Tipper Gore’s prudish “Parents Music Resource Council” inspired Senate hearing and argued in favor of freedom of speech. Since then… well, time has not been kind to the vast majority of the metal and hair bands of the 1980’s. The early 90’s came along, grunge and Nirvana came along, and what had seemed so dominant just a few years before vanished in a puff of occult and overly made-up smoke.

So imagine my surprise when I listened to Snider’s relatively recent remake of his most famous song, “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” He’s in his sixties now… and he sounds better now than Way Back Then. Sure, he looks like hell, but he did back then, too.

 Posted by at 2:04 am

That Settles That

 aircraft, art, awesomeness, Hmm..., humor, youtube  5 Responses »
Apr 082017
 

In general I’m opposed to remaking movies that were done right the first time. And most of the time remakes stink. But every now and then a remake comes along that is at least OK. One such was “Flight of the Phoenix.” The original didn’t need to be remade. A lot of people don’t like the 2004 remake, but I think it’s reasonably good. But there was one scene that pushed it past the finish line for me. Our Heroes have crashed in the Gobi desert, far from rescue and essentially doomed unless they can get themselves out. Fortunately, they have among them Elliot (Giovanni Ribisi), an aerospace engineer who knows how to turn their wrecked twin-engined C-119 into a functional single engine aircraft. Problem: they’ve just tangled with armed local nomads who have a demonstrated history of shooting at them and stealing their stuff. So after a brief gun battle, some of Our Heroes stagger back to camp dragging an injured enemy with them.What does a group with extremely limited supplies in an extreme environment do with a captured and grievously injured enemy combatant? It looks like we’re in or a lot of arguing and perhaps even fighting among Our Heroes… until Elliot steps in.

Elliot is a good engineer, but is slightly lacking in tact. But under the circumstances… tact is a minor concern. He is depicted as either an Aspie or a sociopath; my vote would go for Aspie. In either event, he quickly does the math, draws the logical conclusion and performs the needed tasks. It was a thing of beauty. Few have been the times I laughed that loud in a theater.

 Posted by at 9:55 pm

“You’re not helping”

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Hmm..., Meh., news, politics, russian empire, ಠ_ಠ  8 Responses »
Apr 082017
 

Anybody else ever notice how common headlines like this are? “He was an activist for X, and it turns out he was actually…”

He lobbied for gay rights and opposed Trump — now Seattle’s mayor is accused of sexually assaulting minors

And because why not, the world ain’t half weird enough:

It’s now illegal in Russia to share an image of Putin as a gay clown

And on the subject of Russia… if you still have a LiveJournal account, it’s time to close it out. LJ was sold to the Russians years ago and in December the servers moved to Russia; you are now subject to Russias laws regarding censorship and control over the internet. You are not allowed to post political discussions without first getting LJ’s approval (i.e. the Russian government), and if you have more than 3,000 views per day you’re supposed to register as a media outlet.

Russian-Owned LiveJournal Bans Political Talk, Adds Risk of Spying

 

 Posted by at 9:22 pm

YouTubers worth watching: Generation Tech

 art, awesomeness, Hmm..., humor, science fiction, youtube, YouTubers worth watching  18 Responses »
Apr 072017
 

“Generation Tech” is the YouTube channel of the very best kind of nerd: the kind who over-analyzes Star Wars and tries to apply logic and rationality to it. Some people think it’s silly to try to make popular science fiction or fantasy franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings or the last eight years of the White House make sense, but I find it to be a good way to exercise the brain. With Star Wars, things are complicated by decades of officially licensed novels and comic books and the like that are now officially considered non-canonical, but which still slip into the new canon (witness Grand Admiral Thrawn now being wholly canonical).

Still, some interesting conclusions can be drawn by taking some widely separated, and almost certainly unrelated, hints (hints that were never meant to be linked together by the various authors) and drag them kicking and screaming into some sort of grand unified nerd theory. For example, several details hint at the idea that Emperor Palpatine wasn’t just a simple one-dimensional Bad Guy. Instead… early on in his career he had visions of the galaxy being invaded by an extremely dangerous foe, one that the hidebound Galactic Republic would have been utterly incapable of fighting off. So his obsession with building up a remarkably pointless military (honestly, who was the Imperial navy, with those tens of thousands of star Destroyers supposed to fight?) wasn’t just a pointless obsession, but was a buildup to prepare the galaxy for incoming foes. The Death Stars turn out in this scenario to not be one-off weapons of internal suppression (though that’s what most of the people involved with them thought them to be), but basically the first of a new class of really big battleship to fight off the incoming world-sized enemy ships. There are rumors that this scenario just might ply out in the future Star Wars flicks, presumably the Episodes 10-12 trilogy.

And then there’s the question of “how does a regular schmoe take on a Jedi?” And the answer is the same that I thought up decades ago: shotguns.

Let’s face it: there are few enough situations where “shotgun” is the wrong answer. But against some self-important magical jackass with a laser sword, a shotgun would be extra-handy. Sure, they can use their Force-powers to accurately place their blades to reflect an incoming blaster bolt, which will bounce right off. But what happens to a chunk of lead, copper, steel, or depleted uranium flying at a Jedis face if said Jedi intercepts it with a light saber? He *might* vaporize the projectile. And I’m not sure than an ounce of uranium *vapor* heading at his face it going to be a whole lot safer for him. Not mentioned in the video: grenade launchers. Shoot projectiles at the Jedi that are designed to explode when struck with a light saber… and at no other time. Maybe he can hurl them back at you with the Force, but big whoop. If they go *kerblam* if he uses his blade on them, then he’s got a grenade going off at arms length.

 Posted by at 1:43 pm

Bad news from TRAPPIST-1

 AARRRGH, Hmm..., news, science  6 Responses »
Apr 072017
 

TRAPPIST-1’s Fatal Flaw Could Ruin Our Hopes of Finding Life There

Short form: 80 straight days of close examination of the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 showed 42 sizable solar flare events. Solar flares on a red dwarf are generally *relatively* more spectacular than they are on a larger star like the Sun… and the planets are far, far closer. The end result is that the X-ray flash from the flares can fry the planetary surfaces and strip their atmospheres.

So the chances of Earth-like conditions just took a bit of a tumble. On the other hand, these sort of flares probably wouldn’t mean much to a Europa-like world… colder than Earth, a deep planetary ocean frozen over on the surface but with kilometers of water underneath. How such a world might exist in a system like this is a bit of a head-scratcher, though. Europa keeps its ocean liquid due to tidal forcing from orbiting Jupiter; the planets of TRAPPIST-1 orbit far further from their star, and the tidal forces would be substantially lower.

 Posted by at 11:33 am

So…anything going on in the world?

 AARRRGH, news, politics, science  2 Responses »
Apr 072017
 

CNN keeps yapping some non-story about “blah blah blah cruise missiles blah blah blah…”

I’m sure it’s fine. Everything is fine.

 

Meanwhile…

Discovery! Atmosphere Spotted on Nearly Earth-Size Exoplanet in First

The planet Gliese 1132 b is “only” 39 light years away, has a radius of 1.4 Earth and a mass of 1.6 Earths (surface gravity should be about  82% of Earths). Sounds great, right? Small problem: it’s real close to its red dwarf star. Orbits once every 1.6 days and gets 19 times the solar radiation as Earth, so it’s less a clone of Earth than a clone of Venus. But it seems to actually be a steamy Venus as astronomers detected water vapor and methane in the atmosphere. So… maybe the old ideas about Venus being a swamp planet loaded with dinosaurs and such might be kinda right… just off by 39 lightyears.

 Posted by at 4:13 am

Ponderable: afterlife proven

 blather, Crazy, Hmm..., religion  12 Responses »
Apr 062017
 

A few days ago I watched the movie “The Discovery.” It was based on an interesting idea… a scientist played by Robert Redford has scientifically proven to everyones satisfaction that there is, in fact, an afterlife (it’s pretty vague on just how this proof was demonstrated). What the proof does *not* include is any sort of definition on what that afterlife entails… heaven, hell, reincarnation, limbo… nada. Even so, in the several years since the discovery was announced, a major problem has hit society: millions of suicides. Now that people no longer have a doubt about an afterlife, a whole lot of ’em just decide to check out.

Unfortunately, “The Discovery” commits the worst cinematic sin: it was dull.

Still, it’s an interesting idea. How would society respond to proof that there was an afterlife? Three options seem most interesting to me:

A: The afterlife remains an unknown. That’s just it!  We don’t know! Maaaaybe something bad… maaaaybe something good!  I guess we’ll never know!

B: Everybody goes to Hell. Yog Sothoth awaits us all.

C: Everybody goes to Heaven.

What would happen in society at large with each?

With B, I can expect to see near-universal panic. There would be some people who wouldn’t panic… the people who were *already* convinced they were going to Hell. A lot of these people would be nightmares… together with the people who were only holding back their darker impulses because of the fear of Hell, they would rip and tear their way through society, now that they know that it doesn’t matter what they do – or don’t do. As for everybody else, there would be those who’d just sorta try to ignore it. There’d be those who would devote their efforts to life extension… suddenly, attempts to create immortality, or at least practical cryogenic suspension, wouldn’t seem so crackpot.

With C, some things would be the same as B. People restrained in their actions by a fear of damnation, if they knew that no matter how bad they were they still get to go to heaven, would suddenly go bonkers. But where in B most people would try to avoid death at all costs, if it was universally acknowledged that the afterlife is better than this life, it seems to me the population would plummet rather precipitously rather quickly. If life sucks *even* *a* *little,* then the promise of an assured paradise is impossible to ignore.

But Option A is one I can’t really predict. I think most people believe in an afterlife *now,* but there is enough doubt about whether it’s real, and worry about negative afterlives, that it keeps the believers from offing themselves. Additionally, most religions have proscriptions against suicide; if I understand Christianity correctly, suicide is generally a direct pipeline to damnation. Of course, some other, crappier religions offer up the idea that committing suicide while blowing yourself to smithereens is a direct pipeline to paradise; and the results are that regions under control of such religions are generally pretty awful.

Personally, I highly doubt that  scientific proof of an afterlife will come down the line anytime soon. Partially because I can’t see how such a proof could be accomplished; mostly because I doubt the existence of an afterlife. But it’s interesting to consider.

 Posted by at 3:30 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries