Author: Kim du Toit

Flight Of Fancy

Drive Time, Guy Stuff

Back in the day when I played in a band, the various members had some rather interesting hobbies: Drummer Knob collected sports cars (and still does), Guitarists Kevin and Donald collected venomous snakes (the idiots), Keyboards Player Mike had his private pilot license (PPL), Guitarist Marty had his chopper pilot’s license, while Bassist Kim… well, I did a lot of testing of the effects of alcohol on the human body. (The band was my hobby.)

Anyway, Mike also had a two-seater ultralight aircraft, and I went up with him on several occasions. It was great fun, and it looked something like this: essentially, a wing with a”pusher” (rear-facing) motorcycle engine attached.

While I was looking at pics of old planes last week (for the RAF’s centenary), I happened upon something which made me stop and think: “I’d love to have one of those and fly it around.”

This is the Airco DH.2, designed by Geoffrey De Havilland himself (PBUH), and while it’s a little more aircraft than an ultralight (with two wings and a substantial tail assembly), the principle is the same: a “pusher” engine mounted behind the pilot.

I’d just use a modern engine (Honda Gold Wing?) in place of the old underpowered 100 hp Gnôme Monosoupape rotary engine, which had a rather disturbing tendency to lose its cylinders in flight. (And yes, I’d very much like to keep the Lewis machine gun too, thankyouverramush.)

I know the DH.2 is only a single-seater, but then if I wanted to go the extra step and carry a passenger as well, there’s always the Royal Aircraft Factory’s F.E.2b:

…also with the machine gun, of course.

I’m too old for this stuff now, more’s the pity; but let me tell you, given half the chance, I’d do it in a heartbeat anyway — in either aircraft, even without the guns.

Dialing Back The Pussification, One Race At A Time

Entertainment, Pussification Parade

Via Longtime Friend Knob, I see that the F1 grid girls will be on display at Monaco this year:

When Liberty Media announced it would be replacing grid girls with grid kids the owners of Formula 1 were applauded for tackling a dated and sexist tradition.
But not everyone was pleased with Liberty’s decision. Many F1 fans believe the grid girls are a big part of the sport – and the organisers of one of F1’s biggest races seem to agree with this viewpoint.
According to the report the Automobile Club de Monaco (ACM) has reached an agreement with Liberty Media for the grid girls to be at the “glitzy and glamorous” race.
In an interview with newspaper Monaco-Matin, ACM president Michel Boeri said: “The relationship is good with Liberty Media, because they understand that Monaco is not Spa or Monza.”

Actually, the real response should have been that Formula 1 isn’t the faculty lounge at Wellesley College, but I’ll take victory where I can, no matter how small.

On a related note:  I won’t be going to Monaco this year to watch the race with Knob because he won’t be in the country — some crap about he’ll be busy selling some property development off in South Africa at the end of May, like he has his priorities right (not) — so as far as Yer Humble Narrator is concerned, the glitz and glamour of the Monaco GP will have to wait till another year.

Ugh.

For newcomers to this here corner of the Internet, my earlier thoughts on Liberty Media’s stupidity can be found here. And here’s a small sample of what we’ll be missing in all the other F1 races in 2018:

 

I think those pussywhipped fools at Liberty Media need to get a swift kick in the balls… if they have any, that is.

5 Worst Song Performances

Friday Feature, Music, The Worst

The song might have been a good one, but the rendition left a lot to be desired. In ascending order of tunelessness (and no links because projectile vomiting):

  • Whiskey In The Jar — Metallica
  • Danke Schön — Wayne Newton
  • Yesterday — every single person except Paul McCartney who ever tried to sing it
  • Tutti Frutti — Pat Boone

…and OMG, in its own special Hall Of Shame For One:

  • My Way — Frank Sinatra

Look up the performances at your own peril.

 

No Thank You

Business, Culture

There seems to be a consensus that if driverless cars are ever to become universal, then the controlling system will have to be one single one — you can’t have competing, perhaps even incompatible systems fighting over the traffic. In other words, we’d need something like Europe’s Eurocontrol:

Eurocontrol’s Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System compares demand for flights in a particular area with the available capacity.
The system pulls together data such as flight plans, taxiing time, and flight position from numerous sources in multiple countries and collates them.
It can then track planes in real time to manage the number of planes in the air to make sure it doesn’t get too crowded.
Precise monitoring prevents the carefully balanced system from being thrown out by planes with delayed departures or arrivals.
Planes can then be herded into departure and landing slots at airports to keep the thousands of flights in Europe flowing smoothly.
ETFMS also helps plan flight schedules up to a week in advance to help airlines and air traffic controllers plan each day down to the minute.

Uh huh. Then something like this happens:

Up to half of all flights in Europe face delays today after a Europe-wide air traffic control system failed.
Eurocontrol, which runs the system, said that a technical problem means that as many as half a million passengers could be affected, disrupting travellers who went away for the Easter weekend.
‘Today 29,500 flights were expected in the European network. Approximately half of those could have some delay as a result of the system outage,’ Eurocontrol said. The agency said the system would be back up and running tomorrow.
…
The cause had been identified, it said, without saying what it was. The agency said ‘contingency procedures’ were in place to stop the system becoming overloaded but that these would be lifted later this evening.
Eurocontrol added that flight plans from before 11.26am BST were ‘lost’ and asked airlines to refile them.
The agency said it was a ‘technical fault’ and that the system had not been hacked, saying they were now ‘in recovery mode’.

“Lost”, huh? That’s comforting.

Here’s my takeaway. I am never going to submit myself to a driverless car. And I am certainly never going to board a pilot-less aircraft (which, incredibly, has been suggested by various airlines and aircraft manufacturers).

Systems fail occasionally — all systems fail eventually — and I’m not going to be a prisoner of this kind of happenstance, ever, if I can possibly avoid it.

That “Human” Touch

Bad News, Seen On Campus

Apparently some colleges can’t even get it right when it comes to acceptance letters:

Applicants to Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health were the latest anxiety-ridden group of young people to fall victim to an admissions glitch, when, in February 2017, the school accidentally sent offers of admission to 277 students then said the notices were sent in error about an hour later. But those students are just the latest in a string of others who have suffered the same fate. Schools ranging from Carnegie Mellon to Tulane have sent admissions notices in error. In 2009, the University of California-San Diego accidentally told 28,000 students they were admitted to the school, when in fact they were rejected.

Of course, the response from these blundering fools is of the “My bad!” shrugs, along with the inexcusable excuses:

The errors are likely the result of the most mundane of office problems: IT challenges.
“For some places you’re taking relatively young professionals, you’re putting them in roles where they don’t have an enormous amount of experience with business process,” Farrell said. “The other piece is that sometimes the systems on campus, the enterprise management systems, can be very complex and not terribly user-friendly.”

I’m sorry, but we as a society are way past the “Oh, the computer got it wrong” bullshit. I’m not a litigious kind of person, but this looks like a classic case of a huge class-action “pain and suffering” payout. Without some kind of financial penalty, the universities (all of whom include courses on “Computer Science” in their curricula) have absolutely no incentive to fix this situation. So the “complex, unfriendly enterprise management systems” won’t get fixed, nor will the “inexperienced young professionals” get fired; and prospective (fee-paying) students will continue to get shafted. (My suggestion:  every time a person gets a false acceptance letter, that student should be entitled to a full-boat, all-expenses-paid four-year scholarship at the offending college. That, I think, would get someone’s attention.)

All in all, however, this sorry experience will also provide school-leavers with an excellent foretaste of corporate indifference and inefficiency, an experience that should stand them in good stead in their future careers. When their lives can be fucked up by a “mail-merge” mistake, young people will see at firsthand just how unimportant they are to Global MegaCorp Inc. If that doesn’t melt the “snowflake” mentality, nothing will.