Salon's Patrick Smith on Ask the pilot

How much turbulence can a typical 20-year-old passenger jet take before something really important breaks? And what actually goes on in the flight deck during a crazy wind-whipped landing? Do the pilots sweat bullets?

What you experience during your wind-whipped arrival is probably nothing too exciting on the flight deck. Just as you don't suddenly grab the wheel in a white-knuckle panic when your car drives over a gravel road, pilots don't sweat during in-flight bumpiness. Airplanes are inherently stable, wanting to return to their original spot in space when disturbed by a jolt of turbulence. Thus, the crew is not wrestling with the beast as much as simply riding it out. The crew or the autopilot may be flying a particular approach, but either way there's usually not much tension up front. A crosswind landing is a matter of routine -- a little extra input on the controls to allow for the "sideways" touchdown that is, in fact, the properly coordinated technique. And a firm touchdown is not necessarily a bad landing.

Ishkur's guide to electronic music

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Very funny Shockwave Flash movie Yes and No, a dyseducational road movie about driving. Pretty universal, I'd say.
Found on Zannah's #!/usr/bin/girl

NYT: Japanese Father and Son Share a Liver and a Political Rivalry

Yohei and Taro Kono are one of the most prominent father-son pairs in Japanese politics, but that has never prevented them from disagreeing in public. In fact, they once battled over the thing that most unites them: legalizing surgical transplants.

In a harrowing account of his illness in a recent opinion column in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, Yohei Kono described how, with his skin turning black as his liver failed under the effects of a 30-year-old hepatitis C infection, he firmly rejected his son's offer of an organ donation.

I remember Taro when he went to Georgetown and stayed with us (he's family) a lot when I was a kid. It's interesting to see the NYTimes covering this aspect of politics.

NYTimes: A Rift Among Bloggers

"The Weblog world before Sept. 11 was mostly inward-looking Û mostly tech people talking about tech things," said Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee who publishes InstaPundit.com, a popular site in the war blog camp that attracts about 19,000 readers on weekdays. "After 9/11 we got a whole generation of Weblogs that were outward-looking" and written for a general audience, he said.

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JapanToday: Man killed by umbrella for not using honorifics

This is absolutely, horrifically idiotic.

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NYTimes: 2 Tinkerers Say They've Found a Cheap Way to Broadband

Their secret weapon is a technology known as a "software-designed radio," which has permitted them to create an inexpensive repeater antenna that can be attached to the outside of a customer's home. The device, which the Etherlinx executives said they believe can be built in quantity for less than $150 each, would communicate with a central antenna and then convert the signals into the industry-standard Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, signal for reception inside the home.

Jamie sent me news about a new 3CD mix set from Tom Middleton "The Sound of the Cosmos" on Hooj Choons and I finally tracked it down today.

Tom says: 'I'm thrilled that Hooj are releasing my ambitious eclectic triple CD selection...I couldn't bare to leave off so many beautiful tracks or edit them down to a single CD, so take your pick from Deep, Electro, Breakstep - key mixed Soulful, Sexy, Jazz, House - or the lovers guide to Chillout. With this comp you can have it large with your mates in the frontroom, small with your parents in the kitchen, then have it off with your lover in the bedroom. It's music for life with a feel good factor turned up to 11.'

It is phenomenal! Tom is one of my favorite DJs/producers of all time and was the one who introduced me to deep house with his phenomenal mix CD on Mixer "A Jedi's Night Out". He's a BBC radio DJ among other things, and I'd love a chance to hear him spin live someday.

Here's me lavishing praise on Tom a few years ago on the acid-jazz mailing list ;)

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NYT: How to Lose $850 Million Û and Not Really Care

Lenk says he made $982,000 in four years at eToys, including a ''stay incentive'' near the end intended to keep top management in place and make the company more attractive for sale. That's less than he figures he would have made at Disney or elsewhere in corporate America. For six months after the I.P.O., he and other inside investors were prohibited by the underwriting agreement with Goldman, Sachs from selling. After that, Lenk twice entered into agreements to secure more money for the company that locked him up again.

Sounds like one of the few who didn't loose sight of reality even in the midst of the madness.

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Nobel prize-winning economist (ex-World Bank and Clinton cabinet; current Columbia professor) Joseph Stiglitz has a new book out that I want to check out.

NYT Book review: An Ivory Tower Embrace of Views in the Streets

NYT Q&A: Think Global

ABCNews: Mr. Rogers Causes Stir at Dartmouth

"It's like Barney the dinosaur speaking at our graduation," said history major Michael Weiss. "We're 22 years old and we're getting lectured by a guy who plays with puppets for a living."

Dartmouth seniors obviously haven't gotten out into the REAL WORLD and therefore can't appreciate that Fred Rogers is a much better role model than corrupt corporate CEOs, dysfunctional government leaders, as well as some of the past Dartmouth commencement speakers.

No one is perfect, but a man who spent his lifetime educating children all over the world, including probably the majority of Dartmouth students, is a man to be awed by and honored with respect and deference. Albright, Reich, Mitchell, Clinton, all have their skeletons and negatives. What can you say bad about Fred Rogers? He's only done good for parents and children.

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NYT: Editorial/Op-Ed - Anita Hill on "Insider Women With Outsider Values"

I think the increase in the number of women in positions of prominence, coupled with the tension that can develop between insider status and outsider values, brings us to this point. A similar phenomenon is at work when women and men complain about discrimination in the workplace. And like those who have had to challenge workplace bias, Ms. Rowley and Ms. Watkins differed from their superiors in their notions of appropriate institutional conduct. Similarly, Ms. Rowley and Ms. Watkins ultimately found that their chances for bringing change to their workplaces existed only outside those workplaces.

NYT: She Has a Knife and She Knows How to Use It

Women, who have long since claimed their place preparing European and American cuisines, are slowly entering the once exclusively male domain of sushi-making. In New York City, at least six women, including Ms. Ogawa and Ms. Suzuki, are at work slicing tuna into perfect rosy rectangles and molding lightly vinegared rice just so. In Los Angeles, about nine women are making sushi. In Japan, figures are hard to come by, but it is clear that the number of women who are sushi chefs is on the rise there, too.

"I think there are at least 200 women sushi chefs in Japan," said Toshio Suzuki, the owner-chef of Sushi Zen in Midtown. He has trained two women as sushi chefs, Takako Yoneyama, 52, the owner of Taka in Greenwich Village, and Miho Tanaka, 43, at Sushi a Go-Go near Lincoln Center.

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NYT: The Corn Dog's Japanese Cousin

Actually, it's breaded fried pork on a stick, kushikatsu, which may come as close as possible to a Japanese equivalent of the corn dog. And yet, with all due respect to corn dogs, a pork cutlet on a skewer, covered in delicate Japanese bread crumbs, might revolutionize the food concessions at amusement parks, Nascar races and other corn dog bastions.

speed humps (a.k.a. "topes" in Spanish)