Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

February 22, 2021 • 6:30 am

We are predicted to have freeze-thaw cycles every day for the next week, when the temperature goes above freezing during the day but mostly below at night. What this means is ICE FORMATION on the streets and sidewalks. First, the predictions for this week in Fahrenheit and Celsius respectively:

Yesterday afternoon was warm, but then it snowed a tad last night and the temperatures dipped below freezing. When I walked out of my building door this morning, I stepped straight onto the sidewalk, my legs flew out in front of me, and I landed flat on my back. OOF!  But though I’m old, I’m also tough, and no harm was done.

The sidewalks all the way to work were covered with a thin sheet of ice; no walking on them was possible. So I hied myself into the street. The streets were covered with ice, too, but there was a thin center strip of snow where the car tires don’t touch the road and melt the snow, so I gingerly picked my way to work down that center. It’s dire today, and there will be a lot of falls and accidents.  Here’s one street.  I walked on the thin, crenulated strip of snow in the middle, for treacherous ice lay on either side.

Welcome to the new week: Monday, February 22, 2021: National Margarita Day. I like them okay, but I prefer a good daiquiri. It’s also National Sweet Potato Day, George Washington‘s Birthday, Walking the D*g Day, Be Humble Day (theologians love this one), and National Wildlife Day.

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot) honors Zitkála-Šá (1876-1938; Lakota for “Red Bird”), a Native American polymath and activist. Wikipedia describes her as

. . . a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist. She wrote several works chronicling her struggles with cultural identity and the pull between the majority culture she was educated within and her Dakota culture into which she was born and raised. Her later books were among the first works to bring traditional Native American stories to a widespread white English-speaking readership, and she has been noted as one of the most influential Native American activists of the 20th century.

Working with American musician William F. Hanson, Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera. It was composed in romantic musical style, and based on Sioux and Ute cultural themes

With her violin in 1898 at 22:

News of the Day:

By now many of you have heard of the ginormous electricity bills that some Texans, who subscribed to private energy firms, have been saddled with after the winter storms. One poor schmo got a montly bill of $16,752, which was taken directly out of his bank account. That’s 200 times what he normally pays! He’s had to dip into his retirement savings to pay the bill. The mayor of Houston, one of the hardest hit cities, has called for Texas to pay these astronomical bills. That seems fair. (h/t Jez)

Preliminary investigations of the blown-out engine of United Boeing 777 plane that was trying to fly from Denver to Hawaii show that one or two fan blades might have broken off. An expert on last night’s NBC Evening News, however, says that such an event would not have caused the engine cowling to break off. In the meantime, United, the only carrier that uses this type of engine in the U.S., has grounded some of its 777s for inspection.

The New York Times, in its “movie’ section (?), has published a timeline of the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow case in which Allen was accused, years ago, of molesting his 7-year old adopted daughter Dylan. There’s never been enough evidence to convict or even try Allen, especially in light of other claims that Mia Farrow, enraged at Woody’s affair with Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi, coached Dylan with her accusation. The new timeline doesn’t add much to what we know already, and I’m not sure why the NYT is even doing this story, except that a new HBO “docuseries,” Allen v. Farrow, has been released. NPR says it paints a damning picture of Woody Allen but adds this:

What Allen v. Farrow doesn’t have: original interviews with Allen or anyone close to the family who might take his side. That includes Mia Farrow’s two children who have spoken in support of Allen — adopted son Moses Farrow, who has accused his mother of abuse, and Mia Farrow’s daughter who became Allen’s wife in 1997, Soon-Yi Previn. (The series notes that Allen and Soon-Yi didn’t respond to interview requests and Moses declined to participate.)

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. 498,650, an increase of about 1,200 deaths over yesterday’s figure We are likely to exceed half a million deaths within two days. The reported world death toll stands 2,479,067, an increase of about 5,600 deaths over yesterday’s total. The death rate continues to drop worldwide.

Stuff that happened on February 22 these things:

  • 1371 – Robert II becomes King of Scotland, beginning the Stuart dynasty.
  • 1632 – Ferdinando II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the dedicatee, receives the first printed copy of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems .
  • 1797 – The last Invasion of Britain begins near Fishguard, Wales.

The Brits who guarded the fish were ready, though, and fought off the French in two days.

  • 1819 – By the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars.
  • 1862 – Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861.
  • 1942 – World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as the Japanese victory becomes inevitable.
  • 1943 – World War II: Members of the White Rose resistance, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst are executed in Nazi Germany.

See below for more information. These resisters are heroes—imagine opposing the Nazis as a German in 1943! They were caught throwing leaflets into a lobby from the floors above, and executed on the same day that the Nazi kangaroo court found them guilty.  Here are Sophia and Hans (right):

From Alabama Chainin Journal:

In February of 1943, the [White Rose group] was apprehended when leaving pamphlets in suitcases all across the University of Munich. Sophie took to a balcony that overlooked a courtyard and scattered reams of flyers as students exited classes. Her action was witnessed by the school’s janitor, who reported Sophie and Hans to the Gestapo. After being interrogated for nearly 24 hours, Sophie emerged from questioning with a broken leg but a steely spirit. She was quoted as saying, “I’ll make no bargain with the Nazis.”

The students’ hearing began a mere four days after their arrest and, because all pled guilty, they were not allowed to testify. Still, Sophie did not sit quietly throughout the proceedings. She interrupted the judge throughout, with statements like: “Somebody had to make a start! What we said and wrote are what many people are thinking. They just don’t dare say it out loud!” and “You know the war is lost. Why don’t you have the courage to face it?”

She was allowed one official statement: “Time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely un-Christian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up to a righteous cause? I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences.” She and her fellow defendants were sentenced to death by execution, which was carried out within hours of the decision. On the back of Sophie’s indictment, she wrote the word “Freedom”. Her reported last words were, “Die Sonne scheint noch”—”The sun still shines.”

You can hear those words in the video clip below:

  • 2011 – New Zealand’s second deadliest earthquake strikes Christchurch, killing 185 people.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1732 – George Washington, American general and politician, 1st President of the United States (d. 1799)
  • 1788 – Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher and author (d. 1860)

Here’s the lugubrious and pessimistic old philosopher:

  • 1819 – James Russell Lowell, American poet and critic (d. 1891)
  • 1857 – Heinrich Hertz, German physicist, philosopher, and academic (d. 1894)
  • 1892 – Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet and playwright (d. 1950)
“My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!”
  • 1914 – Renato Dulbecco, Italian-American virologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2012)
  • 1925 – Edward Gorey, American illustrator and poet (d. 2000)

Gorey was a well known ailurophile, and reader Jon sent a lovely photo attesting to that:

Those who began pining for the fjords on February 22 include:

Sopie Scholl and her “conspirators” Probst and brother Hans were guillotined with the day after she’d been found guilty of treason. Here’s a tribute to her from the Auschwitz Memorial (h/t Mtthew).

Here’s a fairly accurate video of her last farewell to her brother and Probst, the pronouncement of her sentence, and her immediate execution (no gore). From the movie “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days” (2005). The full film is free on YouTube. This ending is very moving.

  • 1965 – Felix Frankfurter, Austrian-American lawyer and jurist (b. 1882)
  • 1980 – Oskar Kokoschka, Austrian painter, poet and playwright (b. 1886)

Here’s Kokoshka’s “Katze” (“Cat”), 1910:

  • 1987 – Andy Warhol, American painter and photographer (b. 1928)
  • 2002 – Chuck Jones, American animator, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1912)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is prognosticating:

Hili: If I see correctly, tomorrow will be the next weekday.
A: It’s possible.
In Polish:
Hili: Jeśli dobrze widzę, to jutro będzie kolejny dzień tygodnia.
Ja: To jest możliwe

And in nearby Wloclawek, Leon is hibernating, which is why we haven’t had a monologue from him in a while.

Leon: Is it spring yet?

In Polish: Czyżby już wiosna?

x

From Barry.

From Facebook:

From Nicole:

 

From Titania. Coca-Cola has obviously been learning from Robin DiAngelo:

A tweet from Isabelle, who points out that this woman is worth $850 million, yet she’s kvetching about oppression by The Patriarchy:

Ginger K. asks, “Why would anybody throw a book in the trash?” Good question.

A tweet from Barry. What a great video!

Tweets from Matthew. Look at this demon cat!

I was glad to hear that the Perseverance Rover is okay and that its silence didn’t mean that something was wrong. Here’s NASA’s explanation along with some photos (one of the rover’s tire):

Look at these beautiful Mandarin ducks (Aix galericulata)—the prettiest duck species in the world. The sexual dimorphism is extreme. If you want more, go to the YouTube video.

62 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)”

  1. Re Woody Allen, HBO has a new four-part documentary out about the Allen/Farrow battles so that is probably the hook for the NYT’s timeline. It’s worth noting that Soon-Yi is the adoptive child of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn, and not of Woody.

    Reply

        1. The argument is that the child recorded testimony at the time, saying she had been touched by him, & that child psychologist(s) who have seen that find it convincing related to what they see in other children who were assaulted.

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  4. Glad you made it into your office safely! And I am really glad you didn’t injure yourself or hit your head too! Yikes! We’ve had several periods of similar glare ice this winter (and we still walk carefully). Minnesota did not used to be prone to ice storms. Things have changed: Climate warming.

    Happily, today it is sunny (already) and it is supposed to hit 40°F (4°C)! For the first time since perhaps November (IIRC). 🙂

    Reply

    1. Yes. Please be careful to control your balance…usually called stability 1 condition in engineering parlance. No large or unbalanced motion of your center of gravity. I spent the winter of 66-67 at michigan state university and having come from temperate coastal virginia had to learn to walk on ice for daily 0800 classes a mile across campus. I wore tennis shoes (today would be running shoes) because they seemed to give good grip and tactile cues if i were about to slip.

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      1. I’ve been tromping around on the property mostly in a heavy pair of work boots with the picks’ attached. About 10 weeks ago we got a really heavy ‘warm’ rain, then instant hard freeze, which left a thickness of ice on the ground much worse than almost any freezing rain ever does.

        Those are too heavy to really hike in, and so I got some nice light winter boots by ‘Yukon’. It seems that, as long as they don’t come off because of construction method, the bottoms of the boots are much better on sheer ice than the usual hiking boot bottoms in recent decades–not quite as rigid.

        But it’s still better to get those sort of make-believe crampons for this stuff.

        I took a tumble a couple of days ago when an older wooden step broke, but landed in 4 feet of snow. I’ve also learned this winter that years of muscle memory for nordic ski balance, on the leg with my new hip, had to be re-learned by hours of just doing it. That leg seemed to have its own mind about where it wanted to go, maybe like an octopus’ arm. The hip itself is perfect.

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      2. Mountaineering history is full of people getting caught on a climb by freezing rain, and resorting to putting their (spare) socks on the outside of their boots, to give a better grip. That’s from back in the days when “rubber soles” were made from exuded tree sap and boots had metal hob-, clinker- and tricouni- nails hammered into the soles to grip rock. Modern “sticky” plastic sole compositions are literally incomparable.

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        1. Back in spring 1981, I had a student and girlfriend get caught halfway up Hai Ling Peak (AKA Chinaman’s Peak then insensitively). That’s the southeast gap where Rundle ends. They took a long time deciding whether descent or ascent was better. Descended to Canmore, where I picked them up.

          We, with my sister had hiked up a little closer to Calgary in warm windless sunshine that day. It took about 3 minutes it seemed to change to 70 kph wind blowing heavy rain sideways at that altitude. But freezing rain another 1000 feet up. So I drove twice back-and-forth between Cochrane and Banff that day, but was glad a couple, whose main experience had been rock cuts on highways in Ontario, were still alive.

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          1. That’s why your mountain rucksack contains your waterproof/ windproofs, and can double up as a bivvi bag (unless you carry a 2-body bag separately).
            “Being prepared” isn’t just for girl guides about boy scouts.

    2. It seems someone should be throwing some salt / deice compound outside the entry on the sidewalk. People can really get hurt in weather like that even with proper shoes. Throwing sand on it will help.

      It will be interesting to see what the final conclusion is with the jet engine. Any defective metal in the compressor blades or turbine may be involved. Boeing is certainly having a string of bad issues, however this would actually be more on the manufacturer, I believe Pratt & Whitney.

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      1. Yes, it was Pratt & Whitney. Supposedly, the engine in question is the only one with hollow blades, though I thought that was common in modern jet engines. I believe one of the main job of the cowling is to contain a fan breakage. Clearly that didn’t work here. Nor did it work for that incident a few years ago when a blade went through the cabin skin, creating a hole through which a passenger got sucked out.

        In the news this morning there’s another engine failure incident. This time with a 747 and a Raytheon engine.

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        1. Yes, I think they are reaching the limits of their technology with these very large engines. All competing for the best fuel efficiency and most thrust. For two engines to do what use to take four not that many years ago.

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          1. Perhaps they need to go back to three engines. My first airplane flight ever was when a high school friend and I flew from Burbank to San Diego and back on a 727.

          2. No, twins are designed for a full engine departure.

            More engines = More potential failure points. Fewer engines is more reliable (with obvious lower specification limits!). There are mountains of data on this.

          4. The engine manufacturers continue to improve their designs.

            It’s highly unlikely anyone will build a twin larger than the 777. For mission design reasons. The industry has learned the lesson of the A380.

      2. Commercial jet airplanes are designed for fan burst and turbine burst events. (I worked as a structural engineer in aerospace (Part 25 transports) for 20 years: For a manufacturer, the regulator, and an operator.)

        Please, everyone, think on this: The engine (maybe 10m from the passenger cabin, at most) had a catastrophic failure. From what I’ve heard and the wreckage I’ve seen in the news (appears to be the leading edge of the engine nacelle fairing), my guess is a fan disk failure. But it’s unclear so far.

        A half-ton assembly, spinning very fast (a LOT of energy) rips itself apart on a flying airplane.
        And the result?: No one injured, plane lands safely.

        That, my friends, is a well-designed airplane.

        We know one thing: Parts are going to fail on airplanes. The design needs to account for this, as much as possible (practical).

        The root cause (which Pratt, Boeing, the FAA, and the NTSB will find) could be many things. If, as I suspect, it was a fan disk failure, the cause was almost certainly a fatigue failure of a single blade. The cause of that fatigue failure could be many things: A piece of foreign material ingested into the engine that nicked the blade, causing a stress concentration, for instance. Or a flaw in the machined part or the raw forging it was machined from. Or a tool mark caused during maintenance.

        Once one blade fails, the disk usually disintegrates pretty fast. The chunks of the failed blade trash the others and the asymmetry rips the thing apart.

        The risks are controlled using preventative maintenance (inspections, repairs).

        The fan disc is surrounded by a containment structure, usually a band of Kevlar composite strong enough to contain a burst. For a turbine bust, housing containment is usually not practical (too much energy, too high a velocity). For turbine burst, the designers usually rely on the wing box to block the burst (wing engines) or position the engine to prevent knock-on effects (e.g. Engine 3 on DC-10, with the turbine far enough aft for the burst pattern to miss (the vital parts of) the airplane. And of course, the fuel system, controls, etc. must survive the burst.

        These types of airplanes are also designed for continuing to a safe emergency landing in the event of a the complete departure of an engine.

        Reply

        1. Reminds of the following stupid, and probably no longer culturally acceptable, joke:

          Paddy is on a flight, when the pilot makes an announcement over the tannoy.

          “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid our starboard engine has overheated and failed. There is no cause for alarm; the plane is designed to fly safely with one engine, but unfortunately our arrival will be delayed by 30 minutes.”

          “Oim in deep trouble, to be sure,” Paddy says to the guy in the neighbouring seat, “My wife is meeting me at the airport, and she has a terrible temper!”

          A little later, the pilot announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am very deeply sorry to say that our remaining engine has failed.”

          “Bejesus!”, says Paddy, “We’ll be up here all night, and Herself will give me earache for a week!”

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          2. Reminds me of flying out of Donegal airport one day. Amongst other things, I was assigned to “babysit” an academic (a palynologist – didn’t ther get mentioned here recently? “Bug-washers”.) on his first trip to an actual drilling rig.
            He wasn’t terribly impressed by the pilot’s instrument console bursting into flames with a flash and a bang just as the helicopter was clutching the engines into the rotor. Rapid decamp from the passenger cabin followed by much milling around as the fire was put out and a new budgie was ordered into the country.
            Next day, he knocked me up in my room to ask for help getting back into his immersion suit (like I said – first trip, not 300th) . He was somewhat nonplussed to discover that I was putting on a diver’s thermal suit under my street clothes under my immersion suit. “Oh, it’s so that I’ll definitely remain conscious if we go into the water. Getting a S&R aircraft to this location means we won’t get picked up in less than 3 hours, and I’ve got to look after you if we do go in.”
            Oddly, I never saw him on another rig. Since he saved the client company on the upside of 10 M£, I’m sure they wanted him to work others of their wells.

        2. Yes most of the twin engine aircraft are designed to continue to fly and make emergency landings. However that does not usually include during take off. If one engine is lost during take off it generally not going to make it. Also, regardless of the safety designed bad things do happen. Not long ago an engine exploded on a 737 I believe and parts hit the fuselage, knocking out a window and sucked a woman out of the plane. Several years ago the third engine on one of those DC-10s I believe it was, came apart and knocked out all the hydraulics on the plane. It made a crash landing at the Sioux City airport.

          Reply

          1. Engine loss at takeoff (maximum weight, take-off thrust, which is not maximum thrust but not too far off of it) is a design requirement for all Part 25 airplanes (commercial jets as most people know them).

            The DC-10 showed an error in the design. The hydraulics routing in the tail left them vulnerable to a turbine burst. The design intent was to place the turbine on the #3 engine so far aft that a turbine burst would miss anything vital. Not quite achieved.

            Cabin depressurizations (and vertical accelerations due to turbulence) are excellent reasons to follow that rule of keeping your seat belt fastened all the time you are in your seat. A window loss would be considered a safe depressurization. The floor didn’t fail. The airplane lands safely.

            The pressurized fuselage is designed to fail in flaps, not allowing the failure crack to propagate to a dangerous size. (Aloha flight 243 was an example of what can happen with inadequate maintenance allows lots of damage to accumulate over time.)

            Here’s an uncontained pressure vessel failure (test): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHP1JeyiKZw

            This was a bomb test (in the wake of the Lockerbie crash). They used 1 pound of plastic explosive. First test (not shown) was unpressurized. A little poof and a small hole in the side of the airplane. Pressurized: You see the results in the video. Almost all of the damage is done by the compressed air in the fuselage (stored energy). The fuselage failure stops just forward of the wing because the fuselage is very stout there to react the wing loading into the fuselage.

            At the time this testing was done, I was working on bomb-survivability for commercial airplanes. There have been a remarkable (to me at the time) number of bombs exploded in commercial airplanes in fliight.

          2. Here’s an uncontained pressure vessel failure (test): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHP1JeyiKZw

            Oh. Nasty. Decapitation – in the aerospace sense.

            Almost all of the damage is done by the compressed air in the fuselage (stored energy).

            Which is why, if at all possible, you do pressure testing using water (or some other low-compressibility fluid) as the pressure transmitting medium.
            The multiple-cycle pressure testing on the Comet airliner test-body was done by putting the whole body into an open-top water tank, sealing the leaks around the wings, then filling the fuselage with water and pumping it up. Being shortly after WW2, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used an ex-WD “stirrup pump” to do the pressurisation. I’m not sure that there was filming of the actual failure cycle, when the nice square window corner fatigued out. It wouldn’t have been very dramatic, and the interesting stuff would have needed a lot of underwater cameras, or a lot of viewports into the tank. And wouldn’t have been terribly useful in any case.
            I wonder if the airframe was put back into service? As they retrofitted the rest of the fleet – which was still flying into the 1990s, if not 2000s – I don’t see any good reason why not.

        3. I’ve just seen better photos. Not a full fan burst. In fact, I don’t see any missing fan blades. Also, fire well aft on the engine. Looks more like a turbine burst. Hard to tell yet. So much was still attached to the airplane, I have a high confidence that they will figure it out.

          No injuries, safe landing: Good piloting, good design. Well done.

          Reply

          1. safe landing

            Defined as : one that most people walk away from. (Potentially includes major laundry bills.)

      3. Any defective metal in the compressor blades or turbine may be involved.

        Don’t forget the vital part played by maintenance. One inadequately cleaned air channel in the rotor – ducting air from the interstage to blow through the fan blades – and “poof” : exploded engine.
        Engines blow up all the time. Which is why the casings are designed to contain rotor disintegration. And destroying an engine is a necessary part of gaining “type approval” for an engine model.
        While cooling my heels in Cotonou and doing the export paperwork for the rock samples, there was a crew from IIRC Lufthansa staying in the same hotel. They were stripping an engine to determine the cause of a less serious failure (engine flamed out just after take off ; safe shutdown ; abort and go around – a routine failure). Which was really encouraging. 4 of the crew were engineers to take the engine apart and one was dedicated to nothing but examining the maintenance records and comparing them with the actual components inside it. Every serial number ; every bolt through a go/no-go tester for that nominal thread. Then package the engine for return to manufacturer – I forget which one.
        4 weeks later, when my paperwork and the well was finally done, we (various people from the rig, and myself) were admiring the lightning show before loading onto the plane home … which was struck by lightning in the ascent phase and aborted to Abuja, for us to twiddle thumbs for 24 hours waiting on a relief plane. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh happy-happiness.
        Flying is relatively safe – but it’s not zero risk.

        Reply

        1. Your experience is a good example of a properly run (Lufthansa — you bet!) quality system.

          The one checking the paperwork was probably a “Quality Engineer” or the Lufthansa equivalent — there to ensure compliance.

          As I have told many people, there isn’t a single screw or rivet or any other component on a commercial transport airplane that hasn’t been analyzed by engineers.

          Flying isn’t “relatively” safe. It’s the safest transport system ever devised. Zero risk doesn’t exist.

          Commercial flying is literally (last time I checked the data) 10,000 times safer than driving an automobile on US roads.

          Reply

          1. The one checking the paperwork was probably a “Quality Engineer” or the Lufthansa equivalent — there to ensure compliance.

            Not sure. They were all third parties – from a Dublin company, IIRC.

            Flying isn’t “relatively” safe. It’s the safest transport system ever devised.

            I thought that electrical trains in undersea tunnels get slightly lower in the deaths-per-million-passenger-kilometre stakes, but it’s a close run thing in the statistics of small numbers.
            Arguably a better measure is deaths per journey, because most major incidents take place during take off or landing, and not in the intervening thousands of kilometres. Or hundreds of kilometres – as the Aloha Air (?) “convertible” airliner incident short-hopping between Hawaiian islands pointed out.

            Zero risk doesn’t exist.

            Agreed. There hasn’t been an aircraft brought down by a meteorite strike on the airframe.
            Yet.

            Commercial flying is literally (last time I checked the data) 10,000 times safer than driving an automobile on US roads.

            I’m not sure if it is true, but I have heard it said that more Americans died in 2002 because they drove A to B instead of flying, than died in the September-11th attacks. It certainly sounds reasonably plausible.

        2. Also remember that there are approximately 150,000 (pre-COVID) commercial airplane flights worldwide per day. The numbers add up really fast.

          Average miles per flight is around 500 (which is usually accomplished is around an hour). Average number of passengers somewhere in the 150-200 range.

          This means something north of 10 billion seat-miles per day. And this is for scheduled commercial flights.

          The operator I used to work for flew around 1500 scheduled flights every day, year round. Just one, medium-sized US operator.

          Reply

        3. Engines blow up all the time. Which is why the casings are designed to contain rotor disintegration. And destroying an engine is a necessary part of gaining “type approval” for an engine model.

          I get what you’re saying; but I state it this way: Engine failures are a known, expected event and the airplane is designed to survive this.

          The fan case or cowling is generally designed to contain a fan failure (certain QTY of blades). IIRC this is an airworthiness requirement (not just good design by the manufacturers). Typically, turbine bursts cannot be contained (within practical structural designs). Other strategies are used: Survivability (and prevent the burst from striking the passenger cabin).

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          1. I averaged about one major event (engine failure, close approach requiring evasive action, in-flight fire, smouldering or oil leak into the passenger cabin) every 4 to 5 years. But that was in general aviation, and largely in helicopters, not scheduled fixed-wing transports for the general public. I also had to demonstrate competence in underwater evacuation every 2 to 4 years – it varied. And use of emergency escape diving apparatus in some countries (derived from submarine escape sets).

  5. For me the true test for aches and pains usually hits ~48 hours after the event. You might consider purchasing a pair of Yak-Traks. They really do the job, are inexpensive and easily fit over any size shoe/boot.

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  8. I wonder if Scholl had her leg broken how she was able to walk? I suppose the bastards who murdered her led long happy lives. Funny how so many leading Nazis were only a few years in prison, yet now there is a sudden urgency to pursue marginal functionaries in concentration camps.

    But while her action was heroic, & tragic, & moving, was it vainglorious? Could she not have done more good by being more careful & surviving? Maybe she never thought it through? 😢

    I hate bloody Nazis…

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    1. Not quite long and happy for some. Roland Freisler, the infamous Nazi judge and legal theorist who condemned the White Rose group to death, was killed in an Allied bombing raid in 1945. Sometimes justice does emerge by happenstance from this indifferent universe…

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        1. Freisler considered American Jim Crow racist legislation “primitive” for failing to provide a legal definition of the term black or negro person.

          Didn’t each state have their own definition – one part in 8 in one state, “one drop” in another state?

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  9. I see that the Supreme Court just ruled against Trump:

    Supreme court rejects Trump’s request to shield tax returns from Manhattan DA
    The supreme court has rejected Donald Trump’s request to block New York prosecutors from gaining access to his tax returns.

    In a one-sentence unsigned order, the court ruled that it would not step in to prevent the Manhattan district attorney’s office from obtaining eight years of Trump’s financial documents from his accounting firm.

    Reply

    1. To his dying day, Trump will remain utterly baffled that the people whom he did the favor of getting them onto the Supreme Court didn’t return the favor, first during the post-election lawsuit-blizzard farce and now this. He just cannot seem to get his mind around how the law is meant to work, and *does* for the most part work.

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      1. Clearly he intends to fix that problem in his second term. Along with that pesky – is it the 42nd amendment? 41st? The one limiting to two terms in the top jobs.
        Then he’ll have to get to work on establishing the hereditary transfer of power – since the electoral system obviously can’t be relied upon to give the correct result.

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          1. I’m not wishing for it – but I wouldn’t put it outside the realm of possibility. Remember, 70-plus million Americans voted for Trump, and America is a democracy. At the moment.

  10. … this woman [Madonna] is worth $850 million, yet she’s kvetching about oppression by The Patriarchy …

    Madge has always played the provocateur. I’m not sure her plaints here are any more authentic than the Brit accent she acquired back when she was married to director Guy Ritchie and living in Blighty.

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  11. “By now many of you have heard of the ginormous electricity bills that some Texans, who subscribed to private energy firms, have been saddled with after the winter storms.”

    At least some of these bills are a result of signing contracts with power companies who base their rates solely on going energy market price. They save money when the bulk energy prices are low but eat it if they go up, as they did dramatically in the last couple of weeks. Basically, they decided to go without insurance and are paying the price. I’m not sure if this is true for all the Texans that got high bills though.

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    1. To be dumb enough to continue empowering those Texas politicians makes it hard to be surprised, or even sympathetic, that such people are also dumb enough to tie their electricity bills to the fortunes of a bunch of multi-millionaires playing some kind of poker with their financial fate—all in the service of piratical capitalism and of a PR machine which endangers the entire human race with climate change lies.

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  12. “Ginger K. asks, ‘Why would anybody throw a book in the trash?’ Good question.”

    I have put books in the recycling bin when they were in very bad condition, falling apart and missing their cover and multiple pages.
    I also trashed a book on Ottoman History that was very badly translated and written from a Turkish nationalist standpoint; it consistently whitewashed facts I knew from other history books. Had I been at home I would have put the book in recycling but my irritation was so great I threw it into a garbage can on the way to work. I hope no trashmen collected it!

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    1. If you look it up on a CDC website about expected deaths versus actual deaths, for the year 2020, the difference is just about exactly 36% more than reported Covid deaths. About 6 months ago some preliminary figures had got me to guess that the difference between reported Covid deaths in US and the excess over predictions would be between 30% and 35%.

      So if you define ‘deaths due to Covid’ by [deaths that would not have happened had Covid not happened], the present figure for deaths due to Covid is far closer to 680,000 than to 500,000.

      That is not to say there is necessarily any conspiracy to suppress the death figures, though that would be far from surprising (e.g. Cuomo, de Santis). Mainly it’s just not that easy to get accurate numbers, even for something so definite as death causes.

      So US anyway is way over 2000 deaths per million population, of which I would place the blame for at least 700 of them directly on the Mass Murder’s shoulders. At least 230,000 Donald deaths.

      The impeachments’ (perfectly good) reasons for tossing him are pathetic when compared to that.

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