Since Perigee is nearing the end of its 90-day Kindle Select period, this seemed like an opportune time to reflect on what I’ve learned so far about self-publishing.
(Crickets chirping)
Wow, it’s quiet in here… Continue reading “The View So Far”
Sneak Preview: TERMINAL VELOCITY
If you’re wondering what happens to the main characters from Perigee, here are the sequel’s opening pages. I’ll drop in a few more select scenes at random over the next several weeks.
Happy Easter
Yeah, I’m late posting but it’s been a long day. Long weekend, too. I just cooked my first Easter dinner all by my lonesome, as the wife was busy whittling down our tax bill. She was amazingly successful, so perhaps I should cook more often.
Spent the first part of the weekend at my brother-in-law’s, and watched some of Passion of the Christ before it was time to hit the road for home. Mel Gibson caught a lot of flak for that movie (wrongfully) and for his personal behavior later on (rightfully). In the meantime, an awful lot of churches got themselves worked up into a lather when it first came to theaters and were awfully quick to hitch themselves to the Mel bandwagon. A few drunken tirades later, and we all learned that what Hollywood giveth, TMZ taketh away.
An unfortunate object lesson in placing too much faith in one person. And of all people, we Christians should know better. There is only one who we can put our faith in who will not disappoint or leave us high and dry, and today we celebrate His resurrection.
Another thing that movie reminded me of: however unpleasant it was to watch, it’s an accurate portrayal of Jesus’ scourge and crucifixion. What was already an unpleasant way to die was made it all the worse for Him. Our kids saw it for the first time, and it made them think.
Not much more to say but that. If you believe, wonderful. If you don’t, please consider that which God did for you that we honor today.
Need for Speed
If you follow aeronautics, this is a significant development. Plus the pictures are really cool.
Economics aside, noise is the single biggest impediment to building a new supersonic airliner. The reason you never saw Concorde zipping across our skies is that nobody wants sonic booms trailing across their country on a regular basis (especially Boeing, since they didn’t have their own SST ready at the time). And yeah, that’s a lot of windows to replace in any case. But if these guys have really been able to shrink the noise footprint and solve the pressure drag problems, then we could see a lot more progress on the SST front. But even given this breakthrough, I suspect that it makes a lot more sense as a small business jet than a higher-capacity airliner.
The next biggest impediment is air traffic management: really fast bizjets like the Citation X (.92 Mach, almost sonic) still have to downshift into the same arrival traffic as pokey old 737s. For really busy areas (think NY or SoCal), this tends to happen a lot farther away from the destination than most people realize – several hundred miles in some cases. It’d be like driving an Indy racer full-blast down the interstate, then having to merge into the off ramp to sit in traffic behind a minivan for the last hour of your trip. Ick.
Regardless, I guarantee you there will be plenty of bizjet owners clamoring for one of these if they ever make it into production. I’ll need sell a lot more of these to pick up one of my own, though.
Once and Future Past
The Atlantic recently posted a couple of really nice photo essays on the space program. The piece on decommissioning the space shuttles isn’t too surprising; that’s a big and fairly recent deal. The Gemini story is more surprising, as it happened nearly 50 years ago and is generally only thought about by space geeks like me.
Gemini was the gateway drug that hooked me on the space program, maybe because they were the first missions I was conscious of. I remember being fascinated by the big silver rocket with the little two-man tin can on top. And spacemen were cool. How could I not be drawn to something that looked just like my favorite G.I. Joe? Continue reading “Once and Future Past”
Shh…Be Vewy Quiet…
…the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon is performing. Watch and enjoy the nation’s finest.
Wings in Spaaace!
From the USA Today of space news, space.com, a nicely illustrated story on the (non) evolution of space plane designs. I say “non” because precious dadgum few of them have ever made it to the cutting-metal stage.
Come to think of it, we’re going to need a new expression, being in the age of composites. But “baking plastic” just doesn’t have the same cachet, does it? Continue reading “Wings in Spaaace!”
ATB! OMG! AOG! WTF? LOL…
A quick note for you text-addicts who don’t recognize aviation-speak: “ATB” means “air turn-back” and “AOG” is “airplane on ground”, otherwise known as “we broke it”.
So, a couple of the super-jumbo A380s had some problems recently. Yawn.
No one will ever mistake me for an Airbus apologist – if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going – but in all fairness to the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys™, these incidents are not the big deals they’re being made out to be. And both are contingencies that we prepare and train pilots for (the wing cracks are another story entirely). Continue reading “ATB! OMG! AOG! WTF? LOL…”
Saturday Night Beer-Fueled Gun Rant
Ooh boy, I’ve had a whopping three Sam Adams Lights¹ and a bag of Jalapeno Combos, so look out world! Continue reading “Saturday Night Beer-Fueled Gun Rant”
Nothing to See Here, Move Along…
P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” Keeping that in mind, ever notice how all of the really scary news remains out of sight until it just can’t be concealed anymore? Then it all pops up at once like crabgrass in your back yard…
Like the huge new Big Brother-ish NSA data collection center. If it’s transmitted, they’ll not only read it; they’ll store it for future reference. Combined with the CIA’s excitement about spying on people through their TV sets (I mean, really…did they just flat lift the idea from 1984?). It makes you wonder if anything is truly private anymore. Continue reading “Nothing to See Here, Move Along…”
The Chiles Files 