This is why, after one crack at it, I won’t be doing a lot of small-airplane flying in China any more. Here is how a Cirrus SR-22 got fueled up at the main airport in Changsha, capital of Hunan province. (Man in the truck is Peter Claeys, intrepid Cirrus salesman for China. Other men, including the luckless one working the siphon, are involved in local aviation.)
More on “free flight”, here.
Amazingly small original Mini Cooper.
Interesting words from Newt Gingrich:
The country is at a crossroads, a different kind of place from where we’ve been before. The special interests seem more reactionary and entrenched than ever, the bureaucracies much larger. We need to marshal the courage to change, and we need to understand what needs changing.
Two books guide my thoughts these days. One is ” Testimony: France in the Twenty-first Century,” by the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The second is American: ” The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression,” by Amity Shlaes. Together they form a map for the crossroads.
France has a reputation as a country averse to change. But President Sarkozy translated his general exhortation about the need to change and the importance of work into a simple and direct policy proposal: All overtime will be tax-free.
A friend is heading home on leave from Iraq today. I thought I’d write him a note—then I decided to publish it here:
Dear _____, I am at an uncharacteristic loss for words. Hence, I don’t know what to say other than “Thank you.” As we both know, the war is a contentious issue here in the Homeland. Many think we must indeed stay the course; at least as many think the war is a reckless, counterproductive disaster.
Classic barge: The Oldsmobile 98 Convertible.
According to studies done on shopping carts, more than 60 percent of them are harboring coliform bacteria (the sort more often associated with public toilet seats). “These bacteria may be coming from raw foods or from children who sit in the carts,” says Chuck Gerba, Ph.D., a microbiologist at University of Arizona. “Just think about the fact that a few minutes ago, some kid’s bottom was where you are now putting your broccoli.” According to studies done by Gerba and his colleagues at University of Arizona, shopping carts had more bacteria than other surfaces they tested—even more than escalators, public phones and public bathrooms. To avoid picking up nasty bacteria, Gerba recommends using sanitizing wipes to clean off cart handles and seats, and to wash your hands after you finish shopping.
The moral of “Ratatouille” is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O’Toole. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” Mr. Ego muses. “But a great artist can come from anywhere.”
Quite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, “Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
Its sensibility, implicit in Mr. Ego’s aphorism, is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals. Like “The Incredibles,” Mr. Bird’s earlier film for Pixar, “Ratatouille” celebrates the passionate, sometimes aggressive pursuit of excellence, an impulse it also exemplifies.
The hero (and perhaps Mr. Bird’s alter ego) is Remy (Patton Oswalt), a young rat who lives somewhere in the French countryside and conceives a passion for fine cooking. Raised by garbage-eaters, he is drawn toward a more exalted notion of food by the sensitivity of his own palate and by the example of Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), a famous chef who insists — more in the manner of Julia Child than of his real-life haute cuisine counterparts — that “anyone can cook.”
I was impressed with this film on many levels, especially the incredible attention to details. Bird’s framing of Ego was superb. Go! Brad Bird directs (he also lead the Incredibles).
Given the mass hysteria, it’s probably not so good to be Denny Strigl this week. He’s the COO at Verizon quoted with pride about turning down the iPhone deal (Verizon turned down iPhone’s advances.)
The reason you need to care about this: Almost everyone is like Denny.
Most innovative business people who dream of bizdev imagine that they can be just like Steve Jobs. Come up with a super idea, a useful service, a great gizmo and go to an industry leader. Sign lots of NDAs and go to lots of meetings. Demand that they change their ways in order to make your wonderful innovation a game changer, something that will fix their broken industry and make you both a lot of money.
But then there’s another set of personal details that have made their way online, and these documents are much more worrisome. Property deeds, marriage and divorce records, court files, motor-vehicle information and tax documents are increasingly being digitized, and contain a wealth of information that few of us would want online: Social Security numbers, birth dates, maiden names and images of our signatures. Local governments have rushed to put those documents online for a decade or so, often without scrubbing them of such information. And that’s made them potentially fertile ground for busybodies, stalkers and identity thieves.
Betty “BJ” Ostergren, a 58-year-old from outside Richmond, Va., has made it her mission to alert people to the dangers of public records online. Ms. Ostergren is feisty bordering on ferocious: Her tactics include mailing letters to people alerting them that their personal information is online and posting copies of public documents (or links to them) displaying the personal information of circuit-court clerks and other politicians, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. (See her Web site, the Virginia Watchdog, here; this Washington Post profile of her is also a good read.)
