Wednesday What We’re Reading (Sep. 25, 2019)

Alphabetic shorthand report: still slower than ordinary English handwriting, because thinking about letters takes a long time.

I have a short day and a full day’s amount of work to do in it, so less commentary than usual today.

Defense

Science and Technology

Sport

Guns and Competition Shooting

Grab Bag


  1. I think the only one remaining is ‘fear of flying’. 

5 thoughts on “Wednesday What We’re Reading (Sep. 25, 2019)

  1. Kilo Sierra

    If I didn’t drop a link to that 737Max article, I had meant to…

    The one point that the author either failed to address (or decided it was more flight-crew centric – and left out other factors); was that Boeing wanted to introduce a whole-new airplane… but the airlines wanted none of that – they wanted an aircraft that would be effectively grandfathered into the same certification that the first 737 received. As a new certification would require all new training (and thus $).

    Not saying that Boeing as the designer/builder should be given a pass, but that the airline industry as whole drove Boeing into slapping more and more crap onto an airframe not meant for those things (and the software fixes to ‘fix’ things found during flight testing).

    And let’s be honest, if Boeing said nope – sorry you’re not getting a 737max, but how about this NSAPA (new single aisle pax aircraft)… Boeing would be broke and Airbus would have a huge order backlog (which would start to either incur pressures to expand production / cut corners)…

    Reply
  2. Agammamon

    “A curious mechanism to get fuel to unimproved beaches”

    Neat. If those pictures are what I think they are – Chesapeake in Oman in 2008, then that’s my team putting all that in the water. We were sent out there to install the OPDS (Offshore Petrolium Discharge System) off the coast of Oman in order to provide access to fuel to Masirah Island and the Omani base there (used by us for ‘contingency operations) after their fuel pier was damaged.

    My part was second-in-charge of the team that positioned the SALM and laid out the pipeline from the SALM to the shore with the assistance of UCT-1 divers.

    We used this system because OPDS was being dismantled – the Omani operation was, IIRC, the last complete OPDS system existing.

    Reply
  3. Agammamon

    The way the linked article describes that hand grenade its less ‘make a door where there wasn’t one’ and more ‘make this house disappear’

    Reply
    1. Fishbreath Post author

      It’s “what we’re reading,” but it’s usually only me writing them, so I freely admit to any inaccuracies in summaries of parvusimperator’s links. 😛

      Welcome to the commentariat!

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