Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
George!
George Harrison would have been 69 years old today.
(photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
Your music and legacy will live forever.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Paul Krugman: Grand Old Planet
Never vote for anyone who is anti-science and anti-education.
(image by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
“That Marco Rubio interview in GQ was just another sign of how the Republican Party prefers to suppress scientific evidence if it contradicts faith.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/krugman-grand-old-planet.html
Standard Right Wing Propaganda: Heroic Red States Support Lazy Blue States
An interesting article on how you can skew your message b y presenting a misleading electoral results map.
This is the right map from 2012 results:
Friday, November 23, 2012
Thursday, November 22, 2012
John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963)
Those of us of a certain age we will never forget Dallas 49 years ago today.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Finally! A left-handed cup!
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Kevin's Handy Tax Table for Innumerate Rich People
"Too many rich people have no idea how income taxes work. They've heard that Obama wants to raise tax rates on people who make more than $250,000, so they're working on ways to keep their income right at $249,000. After all, if they go over the threshold, they'd suddenly have to pay the higher rate, and it would be a net loss. This isn't true, of course."
Take a look:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/11/kevins-handy-tax-table-innumerate-rich-people
Monday, November 19, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Friday, November 16, 2012
Photo of the Day
J3 Piper Cub at the Piper Factory fly-in (Vero Beach) for the company and Cub's 75th Anniversary.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Piper 75th Anniversary
Yesterday I was invited to the Piper Aircraft 75th Anniversary event at the Vero Beach (Florida) airport where the Piper factory is.
It was a fly-in with lots of visiting airplanes. Many Pipers were there, including over 20 of my favorite aircraft, the one which put Piper on the map, the J3 Piper Cub!
We flew in early morning form Miami’s Tamiami airport (KTMB), about 130 miles from Vero Beach Municipal Airport (KVRB) in a friend’s Cessna 182.
It was a wonderful flight. It took a little more than an hour as we had headwinds and our effective ground speed was about 117mph. The return trip had a tailwind so we made a ground speed of 130mph at times.
The flight path took us over the Florida Everglades as you have to fly way west of town to avoid entering the airspace of Miami International (KMIA), Ft. Lauderdale (KFLL) and Palm Beach (KPBI). We had a wonderful view of Lake Okeechobee
The event was a blast. They had a reception in a huge hangar with vendor booths (I bought a Piper Cub hat and T-shirt).
There were speeches by the President of Piper, Mr. Simon Caldecott, and the Director of the American Cancer Society, who received a check from Piper with donations received during the special campaign (they even painted a Piper Malibu pink), in support of October Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
We saw a video of Piper’s history, how it went from the early beginnings by the Taylor Family as the Taylor Brothers Aircraft Manufacturing Company in September 1927, which was then joined by oil industry engineer William T. Piper in 1929. Piper, often called “the Henry Ford of Aviation”, instituted simpler manufacturing methods.
In 1935, Piper bought out C.G. Taylor and in 1937 renamed the company Piper Aircraft Corporation.
We also received a guided tour of the factory (no photography allowed inside). This was a one-hour long tour where we visited almost all the manufacturing and assembly areas. Piper is vertically integrated , producing most of the parts in-house, except tires, avionics instruments and windshields.
It was a great experience to see the machinery and work that goes into building different models of airplanes, from raw parts to flight testing.
I shot lots of images, which are in my gallery. Here are a few of them:
and finally a group picture of the four people that flew in my friend’s Yale Cessna, with a Super Cub on floats as background:
(Alex, Dave, Yale and Rick)