Category: Misc

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The pilot accused of trying crash a plane tells his story

From Mike Baker for the New York Times: “In the minutes before he boarded an Alaska Airlines flight home, Joseph Emerson, a pilot for the airline, texted his wife and said he missed her. The flight was full, and Emerson was off duty, so he settled into the cockpit jump seat. Then he appeared to grow agitated, the other pilots told the authorities, and suddenly reached up and yanked two fire-suppression handles, which are designed to cut the fuel supply and shut down both engines. In his first interview since the incident, Mr. Emerson said he was overcome with a growing conviction that he was only imagining the journey and needed to take drastic action to bring the dream to an end.”

Jay Leno owns a car that will run on almost any fuel, including tequila and perfume

From Lianne Turner for CNN: “Among the cars that Jay Leno has collected is a Chrysler Turbine car, of which only 50 were built in the early 1960s, which could run on any fuel except leaded gasoline. “When they drove it to Mexico it drove on tequila, when they took it out to France they burned Chanel No. 5 – any liquid that you could burn with oxygen you could run this car on,” said Leno. “It is essentially a jet engine. But when this car came out in the early 60s nobody really cared about alternative fuels because fuel cost 26 cents per gallon. It was extremely expensive to produce and it wasn’t really that much faster than a V8 and it would have cost a lot more to produce.”

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Angel

A poem by Leila Chatti, which I found via Matt Bogle’s excellent newsletter Pome:

After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice. It says You deserve that which has happened to you. It says I see what you do with your long, terrene hands. Maundering through the banalities of my life, it follows, speaking, as if from a frosty bag of peas in the freezer aisle, speaking, while I am on my knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, trying to love a man. Its speech is disquieting company, but company nonetheless—a TV left on and turned low. It desperately wants my attention but is polite, which is its defining weakness. Sometimes I catch it stirring out of the corner of my eye—a glint at the end of my cat’s whiskers, a spangle on the ceiling of indiscernible source. More often, though, it looks like me, only a little off, like my reflection in the pregnant belly of a spoon. In fact, when I speak to it, I use my own name. I’m not sure if it minds. It repeats instead its refrain. It says God has plans for you. It says I didn’t say they were good.After a month of asking, suddenly, a voice. It says You deserve that which has happened to you. It says I see what you do with your long, terrene hands. Maundering through the banalities of my life, it follows, speaking, as if from a frosty bag of peas in the freezer aisle, speaking, while I am on my knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, trying to love a man. Its speech is disquieting company, but company nonetheless—a TV left on and turned low. It desperately wants my attention but is polite, which is its defining weakness. Sometimes I catch it stirring out of the corner of my eye—a glint at the end of my cat’s whiskers, a spangle on the ceiling of indiscernible source. More often, though, it looks like me, only a little off, like my reflection in the pregnant belly of a spoon. In fact, when I speak to it, I use my own name. I’m not sure if it minds. It repeats instead its refrain. It says God has plans for you. It says I didn’t say they were good.