engadget posed an interesting idea. CNN carried a live feed of the JetBlue "crash" (it wasn't *really* a crash,) yesterday and all JetBlue planes carry in-seat DirecTV. So, you could theoretically sit there and watch, live on CNN as your horribly disabled plane hits the runway. Engadget says that the JetBlue crew actually turned off the DirecTV feed a few minutes before landing, but considering that they were circling for 3 hours burning fuel that meanst that for all or most of that time people could theoretically have been watching CNN with the talking heads and the phone/satellite calls from "aviation experts" that hopefully are telling you — and the rest of the world — that your not all about to die. Definitely an intersting thing. Makes me wonder what would have happened if a JetBlue plane had been hijacked on 9/11. Well, probably the hijackers would have just shut off the DirecTV — they knew enough to shut off the airphones.
I would like to imbue all the people who are going to spit at this next bit with some information. I'm sitting here about a block from Ground Zero typing this. So, please, can all bumpkins from Texas who have never seen Ground Zero but for CNN (or more likely Fox News) refrain from commenting.
I was reading about this mornings NYTimes and there is some serious idiocy going on about the ground zero memorial. Not the cultural heritage museam that everyone is decrying as defaming american values (are those the same values that we exhibited during slavery — the internment of japanese americans during WWII — I have no problem defaming them) but the actual silhouette memorial. The piece in the NYTimes is basically a Metro Section front-page article that does a botched job of articulating some crap about how "we can't decide how much capacity the memorial will need until we determine how big the draw will be, and we can't determine the draw until we determine the content the memorial will hold, and we can't determine what kind of content to put in there until we determine the capacity". You know, I would really like to think that at some point people have figured this out. Because for all it's emotinal significance the memorail as an architectural project is no different than a museam or a starbucks or a friggen Wal-Mart. There must be some kind of formula that helps you decide this. The piece also addresses the fact that in the most recent designs 2 of the four ramps into the silhouette structure were removed leaving 2 per silhouette. This allows for an improved space planning and eliminates confusion. However, some groups are just sicking their heads further up their asses while shouting that "NO! we think that the memorial should have as many entrances as possible." Isn't this something that we should leave up to the architects and the people who actually know this stuff? I am not one of them, and i'm sure you might say that confusion is a moot point — just put up a giant up arrow and a giant down arrow, but I have always found that the best products require no instructions to use properly. In the end it's just some idiotic group that's trying to create controversy and get exactly what they got — prime placement in the NYTimes.