Night Flight

This is just a beautiful time lapse out the window of a cross country flight.

Sorry I can't figure out how to bring it to you here. So go visit the creator's flickr page to enjoy.

(via kottke)

Hudson River Runway

In case you haven't had your fill yet of watching video of the ditching in the Hudson River and the subsequent rescue of the passengers and crew here is a Coast Guard security camera that actually captured the plane landing in the river.

The plane comes in as a splash on the left hand side of the frame at about 2:02, as the camera zooms in moments later you can see that people are already getting out of the plane.



(video from Live Leak via TPM)

There was a nice bit of commentary this morning on NPR naming the rest of the flight crew and attendants and reminding everyone that a big part of the reason they're there is to keep us safe, handing out peanuts is sort of ancillary to the real job.

Welcome to DC (unless you're a prostitute)

Yep you read that right. Jason Gregg sent that photo into DCist this afternoon so no hooking from 4th-5th and Eye to L NW.

That website listed on the sign doesn't go anywhere these days but DCist found this great DC Police page on PFS's.

Waste Away

Need to kill that last half hour until quittin' time?

Visit pretty loaded, and watch the flash loaders float by, you'll be lucky if you ever get up from your desk...

(of course it's via kottke)

The Chair Recognizes...

So I'm taking Principles of Microeconomics in an effort to better myself (really I'll need it for the grad school program I'm hoping to get in to) and damn if I don't feel like Stringer Bell.



I know the sign on the door and the movie label say macro but they are mistaken, you could look it up.

I'm loving me some elasticity.

After all I do have the floor...

America Thru Her Streets

Or all streets as it's creator Ben Fry calls this map like image.

Believe it or not only named streets were laid down (no other features or boundaries were drawn) to create what you see here...


(via, who else, Kottke)

And Some People Have Blogs

Stanley Fish had a bad trip with the AT&T folks last month, and then he wrote all about it.

Seems that among the standard issues, chief among them the system lacking any iota of common sense and the difficulty in getting to talk to the correct person, Professor Fish tried to help AT&T with their grammar, which is terrible and apparently institutionalized.

Which reminds me of the episode of This American Life that documented one of the crew members' battle with Verizon over a phone bill that included Verizon claiming that they didn't have individual numbers at their desks among other malarkey. In the end they got everything straightened out but it left you wondering what you could do if you didn't work for a nationally syndicated radio show.

I wonder if the rise of blogging and the internets generally have had or will have any effect on customer service?

Comcast Must Die seems to have been pretty effective at least.

(despite my best efforts I was unable to locate the episode of This American Life in question. While google searches turned up other online references to said episode searching the TAL site for verizon and for 'phone bill' returned no hits. If you want to subscribe to the podcast the site is useful, if you want to look through the archives, well they don't really have them organized at all.)

Job Security

image from businesspundit.com

Apparently he also likes to eat sushi with both hands

I ate a lot of tuna and other fish while I was on Saipan (it probably averaged out to about once a day for a month) and I actually did get just paranoid enough to look up the symptoms of mercury poisoning. I never felt bad though and all the fish tasted great.

Jermey Piven wasn't so lucky. Last month he had to leave the Broadway show he was in to, as director David Mamet put it, pursue a new career as a thermometer.

It is cold and flu season after all...