Today I Learned

[Gravdigr]

Today I Learned about the Cessna 188 Pacific Rescue, which occurred on Dec 22, 1978.

The Cessna 188 is a single seat "agricultural aircraft". It's a crop duster. And this one was being delivered (flown) to Australia from the U.S.

The pilot became lost over the Pacific ocean due to a malfunctioning Automatic Direction Finder. When he arrived in the vicinity of Norfolk Island, the island wasn't there.

Random note: Wikipedia gives the range of a Cessna 188 as 370 miles.

The only aircraft anywhere near the area was Air New Zealand Flight 103. When the pilot of the DC-10 learned of the predicament, he knew that if they (the crew) didn't do something to help the pilot of the Cessna he would almost certainly die.

How they helped the guy is a short, interesting read.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Wow, those guys really knew what they were doing. I wonder if today's pilots could figure that out?

[Griff]

Wow. Nice work.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Of the country’s nearly 18 million undergraduates, more than 40 percent go to community college, and of those, only 62 percent can afford to go to college full-time. By contrast, a mere 0.4 percent of students in the United States attend one of the Ivies.

The typical student is not the one burnishing a fancy résumé with numerous unpaid internships. It’s just the opposite: Over half of all undergraduates live at home to make their degrees more affordable, and a shocking 40 percent of students work at least 30 hours a week. About 25 percent work full-time and go to school full-time.

The typical college student is also not fresh out of high school. A quarter of undergraduates are older than 25, and about the same number are single parents.

[fargon]

I saw the movie of the week they made of this story.

[DanaC]

Yup.

We've done much the same thing.

Look at the resume of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer - architect and key drivin force of the austerity strategy still playing out, devastating whole sectors of the economy and big chunks of the population as it goes -

Osborne was educated at independent schools: Norland Place School, Colet Court and St Paul's School.[9] In 1990 he was awarded a demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford,[3] where in 1993 he received a 2:1 bachelor's degree in Modern History.[6][10] Whilst there, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club.[11] He also attended Davidson College in North Carolina for a semester, as a Dean Rusk Scholar.[12]
In 1993, Osborne intended to pursue a career in journalism. He was shortlisted for, but failed to gain a place on, The Times' trainee scheme; he also applied to The Economist, where he was interviewed and rejected by Gideon Rachman.[13] In the end, he had to settle for freelance work on the Peterborough diary column of The Daily Telegraph.[14] One of his Oxford friends, journalist George Bridges, alerted Osborne some time later to a research vacancy at Conservative Central Office.[14]
Early political career
Osborne joined the Conservative Research Department in 1994, and became head of its Political Section. One of his first roles was to go to Blackpool and observe the October 1994 Labour Party Conference.[15]
Between 1995 and 1997 he worked as a special adviser to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Douglas Hogg (during the BSE crisis), and in the Political Office at 10 Downing Street. Osborne worked on Prime Minister John Major's campaign team in 1997, in the run-up to the Tories' heavy election defeat that year.[16] After the election, he again considered journalism, approaching The Times to be a leader writer, though nothing came of it.
Between 1997 and 2001 he worked for William Hague, Major's successor as Conservative Party leader, as a speechwriter and political secretary. He helped to prepare Hague for the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions,[16] often playing the role of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Under the subsequent leaderships of Michael Howard and David Cameron, he remained on the Prime Minister's Questions team.

A second rate academic and (at the time) failed journalist whose entire working history prior to becoming Chancellor was as a political assistant/advisor and being a member of parliament. I think he also did a little internship at daddy's company.

He set in place the 1% cap on public sector pay - that is still in place and means nurses, for instance have effectively taken a 15% reduction in wages in real terms over the last 7 years. Told the nation to tighten our collective belts - and thought it would be a great idea for our economy if everybody tightened their belts so much that they had no room left for spending.

Cameron wasn't much more connected to the 'real world', as they say.

and you could pretty much see them getting hard when they stood there all statesmanlike delivering speeches about how they had to be brave enough to make the difficult decisions.



Pretty sure it wasn't always like this. I seem to recall a time when conservative leaders were people who'd had successful business and industry careers, or, if from a more academic background, had a serious grounding in economic theory.


Labour haven't been much better on that score in recent years (though Corbyn is certainly a different case).

[Gravdigr]

Today I learned that some F-18 fighter jets have a false canopy painted on the bottom of the plane to confuse the enemy.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There was an investigation by the New York Academy of Medicine into marijuana, signed in ink by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1945. It was the first American study to declare that the drug wasn’t addictive or dangerous.

[Gravdigr]

TIL that hyraxes are incapable of regurgitation.

Dey don't be urrpin'.

[Griff]

TIL that hyraxes are small, thickset, herbivorous mammals.

[Gravdigr]

TIL that some horses can grow a mustache.



Moar

Living, as I do, in Kentucky, I've seen a horse or two...Never seen one with a mustache.

[Undertoad]

Good catch sir

i did not know that

you couldn't have knocked me over any further than if you'd told me that a pre-fame Bruce Springsteen spent time in a philly diner with newly-famous Billy Joel... and a pre-fame Barry Manilow.

(but it did happen. this account of the tale leaves out important DJ Ed Sciaky, who later recalled that Manilow predicted he'd be the most famous of the bunch. He was arguably wrong, but not far wrong.)

[Gravdigr]

Today I learned that people in prison can still do good things for society.

[BigV]

crazy lookin guy at top of story isn't either person named in story, exactly like every other mugshot in story.

still, kill your baby daughter, you deserve to die.

[monster]

Honda Fits are Impossible to break into.

And very very stupid.