Far be it from me to criticize other people (ho ho ho!), but last night I was watching a documentary on the STILL uncompleted Airbus 380, and it seems to me the Airbus guys have the single least efficient assembly process, ever.

Seriously.

Some parts are built in England. Some France. Some in Timbuktu. All need to be shipped to the Northern ports of France, and then TRUCKED all the way to Toulouse, France, half-way across the country. During this transit process, the parts need to travel down English canals and under bridges giving them about 1.5 feet of clearance. These aren't just any bridges. Several of them are historical, monumental types of bridges which actually happen to connect one side of town to the other. So if the water rises, I guess the people who live in these towns are just SOL.

Once in France, the parts need to travel on trucks the size of a small airplane, themself, just to make it to the factory where all the parts are assembled. These trucks take up the entire width of the road (both lanes), drive incredibly slowly, and are going to be stacked several trucks deep. Which means that, once in full production, these plane parts will routinely (weekly) jack up the French highways. This is not to mention that the route takes the trucks directly through a small village where clearance on either side of the trucks is about 20 inches. Not a lot of room for error. Also, that's 20 inches from people's bedroom windows. These trucks are big, loud, and mounted with huge "look out I'm a truck" lights. And this is going to happen once a week.

What was not mentioned in the TLC program I watched, but was mentioned on NPR, is that in order to routinely move these boats down the canals in England, they're going to want to dredge these canals. Which the environmentalists are having a fit over (I can't remember why), and the tax payers will have to foot the bill for. Further, they're not really sure that too many airports actually have runways long enough to accomodate this flying monstrosity, and at least one of the airports they're targeting using would need to extend it's runway into protected wetlands or something at the end of the runway. Brilliant!

Now the Airbus 380 is an amazing piece of engineering. It makes the double decker 747s look like tinkertoys. It's a fully realized double decker jumbo jet seating around 600 people (someone check these numbers for me...), and with a wingspan of 261 feet. That's in the nieghborhood of 85 yards. That's longer than virtually any quarterback can throw, and longer than any field goal kick I can think of. And it's actually pretty damn fuel efficient for it's size.

There are definitely going to be some growing pains as this thing gets off the ground. I'm just wondering what the hell was going thru the minds at Airbus when they decided THIS was how they were going to build and assemble the damn thing.

They clearly have not taken any Six Sigma training.

Oh, while it was Denby who sent the link of Ashcroft belting out his tune, she credits Ryan "Ted"/ "Ryan 2" Weston with the location of the clip.

Ryan can be seen performing with his band, Black Before Red, on a fairly regular basis in the greater Austin area. They're really good. Check them out.

Donald Duck turns 70 today.

Hurray for Donald! As one of the three mainstays of Disney Cartoons, Donald remains steadfast as a true piece of Americana, and his cartoons still work as well today as they did when they first debuted.

I need to find the Donald cartoon where it's snowing and he and his nephews have a snow-fort arms race. I think it's simply titled Donald's Snow Fight, but it's one of my favorite Donald shorts.

Happy B-Day, Donald!



thanks to Randy for the link...

there's nothing like contradictory real-life experience to shake your faith in television.

Granted, most of my life is now vicariously lived through television (who lives in a pineapple under the sea...? Why, I think it might be me...), but every once in a while I have an honest-to-God real life experience.

So last night I was watching Mythbusters on Discovery (part of the line-up of shows which have come to overwhelm my prime-time viewing habits). Mythbusters essentially takes urban legends and puts them to the test to see if they could happen. Two special effects professionals try to recreate the scenario as closely as possible, and then try to see if the scenario could have ever really happened. THey are usually assisted by this kind of spacey folklore expert they dug up form the local university.

Anyway, they'll take a story like "Peeing on the 3rd rail will kill you," and then test the hypothesis.

Last night they tested whether or not a soda can may blow up if left in a hot car, and, bizarrely, they concluded this was a myth, and could not happen.

Bullshit.

In 1994 my pal RIchard and I borrowed his grandmother's enormous Town Car for a trip down to Astroworld. In order to get into Astroworld more cheaply, we wanted to hand in empty Coke cans with coupons printed on the back. So, en route, I drank a ton of soda. But not ALL of the soda.

Four days later, we'd forgotten to take the soda out of the car, and in the heat of a Houston summer... BLAMMO!!! Richard's grandma's car was coated in Coke which dried to a fine sheen on her leather interior.

In 1998, I was PA for the last Don't Mess with Texas commercial. We shot on several different locations around Austin, and part of my job was carting Cokes around town for the crew to enjoy during breaks.

It was unusually hot that June (I remember wilting, standing in an alfalfa field while some actor couldn't finish the line "It's just a little cigarette butt..!" THe shot was NEVER USED.). The last day of the shoot, I got into my car and discovered a few cokes had exploded inside my car, coating the interior with sugar and carmel coloring. While my car smelled terrific, it took a while to clean it. And then I stuck a Coke covered tape into my tape-deck, effectively ruining the deck.

The flaw in the Mythbusters experiment was that they put a Coke into a toaster over, and believed the oven had to reach 300 degrees before the Coke would explode. I don't think they gave the soda in the can enough time to heat up, so it's not as if the soda in the can ALSO reached 300 degrees before it blew. There was simply no measure of the liquid's temperature inside of the can. I'm also no scientist, but I do know how a solar convection oven works. I mean, you can literally roast a turkey in an aluminum and glass box if you leave it in the sun long enough, so tell me again why can't you properly heat a Coke in yoru car?

Anyway, the rapid heat change of the oven was also not indicative of the actual conditions of the car, nor the curve of how long it would take to heat liquid versus air. Come on. I wasn't even in honors level science classes for chemistry or physics, and I know this.

Apparently the Mythbusters guys, based in San Francisco, do not think it gets hotter than 85 degrees on a summer day (equating to 100 degrees in a car). To that, my friends, I say "HA!" As any of us from the rest of the country know, if it's 110 degrees outside (as it already is here in Sunny Phoenix), it's more like 160 degrees in your car. Hot enough to make you expire in pretty short order, anyway. Hot enough that you should know better than to leave any compressed gasses, aerosols, etc... in your car if it's going to sit in the sun.

Anyway, my faith in the Mythbusters' experiments is now forever shaken. I shall forever be left wondering whether or not the conditions of any and all of their experiments are not properly controlled.

Texas Story

A man walked into the produce section of his local
supermarket and asked to buy a half head of lettuce. The
boy working in that department told him that they only sold whole heads of lettuce. The man was insistent that the boy ask his manager about the matter.

Walking into the back room, the boy said to the manager,
"Some asshole wants to buy a half head of lettuce." As he finished his sentence, he turned to find the man standing right behind him, so he added, "And this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half."

The manager approved the deal and the man went on his way
Later the manager said to the boy, "I was impressed with
the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier. We
like people who think on their feet here. Where are you
from, son?"

"Texas, sir." the boy replied.

"Well, why did you leave Texas?" the manager asked. The boy said "Sir, there's nothing but whores and football players down there."

"Really?" said the manager. "My wife is from Texas.

"No kidding ?" replied the boy. "Who'd she play for?"

You never saw that bespectacled bore, Reno, bringing the house down like this...

You know, kind of puts Dean's "YEEEAAAAAAGGHHHH!!!!" into perspective.

Really, this could give me enough ammo to last until next Thursday. Instead, I open the forum.

But I can't close without this... And I mean it, with all sincerity...

Let the Mighty Eagle of your talent soar, Mr. Ashcroft. Let it soar.

thanks to Denby for the link...

2 good bits of news courtesy of the Superman Homepage.

1) Looks like Cartoon Network has confirmed production on a "Krypto the Superdog" TV show. The show doesn't follow the comics too well, but who cares..? KRYPTO IS GETTING HIS OWN SHOW!!!!

Krypto is essentially the Kryptonian equivalent of Laika the Cosmonaut Dog. In the 1950's Superman Comics, Superman's Dad supposedly sent Krypto in a test rocket to earth, but the rocket was knocked off course by a rock or something. Anyway, Krypto DID eventually make it to Earth, and became one of the five or six most powerful beings on earth.

Krypto wasn't around in the comics for years and years, but he returned around 2001 with a squeaky clean new origin story, devoid of animal experimentation. Hurray for Krypto getting a show, no matter how short-lived or silly.

(***note: I haven't seen ANY concept art for this show. Hopefully we'll see some soon. The pic on the Superman page is old Krypto art from the 50's.***)

2) JAKKS Pacific is going to produce several TV games based on DC Comics properties. I have two of the Jakks games now (who needs a PS2?). Essentially, the Jakks TV games consist of a joystick with all the games built into the handle. You just plug into the RCA plugs on your TV, switch to the right input on your TV, and you're in business (provided you have 4 AA batteries).

There are going to be Superman, Batman, and Justice League games. Should be fun (and wayyy cheaper than buying a PS2, memory card and a game).