How to find your way

From the CFI guy: Using the heading indicator to visualize pattern entry

Sometimes it seems like the most difficult part of a cross country is properly planning and executing the traffic pattern entry at an unfamiliar, non-towered airport. Did you know that you can use the heading indicator to visualize your pattern entry well before you can even see the runway? Let’s pretend that we are on a heading of west, going direct to the airport. After checking the weather, we have determined that runway 32 is the best one to use. Now, how do we enter that pattern?

More…

 

Montreal and the Tamil Tigers

I was in Montreal, walking with my family to a restaurant, when I saw a gathering of people wearing black masks over their faces and carrying red flags with tigers on them. I took a few pictures…

After dinner I noticed that the same group was still there, holding a candlelight vigil for the oppressed Tamils in Sri Lanka. I did some googling and discovered that the Tamil Tigers have a fair amount of support in Montreal.

But the vigils and the money didn’t do much to help the Tigers, who now admit defeat. At Pajamas Media, Richard Fernandez contemplates the spectacle of Westerners fearing that the Tigers might be wiped out:

“Now that their military hopes are dashed, the fear in western capitals is that the Tamil Tigers will again turn to terrorism. If the Tamil leadership goes ahead with their threats of suicide will there be anyone left to negotiate with? ”

At Winds of Change, Armed Liberal asks defense commentators about those supposedly “invincible” guerilla armies…

 

A New Yorker in Belize

Daily life in Caye Caulker, a small coral island (pop. 1,300) off the coast of Belize.

Taxi – The roads are paved with sand and the taxis are all golf carts

Rush-hour traffic…

Fishermen’s Wharf – Pelicans gather to catch a free meal

A Frigate bird tries to steal the catch. Frigates are huge, gliding birds who rule the sky in Caye Caulker. Pelicans are excellent fliers at low altitudes, but they aren’t as speedy or maneuverable. When they got together, we saw some excellent dogfights.

Local game

[Financial district] – View from the roof of the Lazy Lizard – In the evening most of the town gathers at the Lazy Lizard cafe and bar, which offers excellent (and cheap) happy hour rum drinks and a great view of the sunset. There’s also a swimming and snorkeling spot, which is nice as long as you avoid the boats going through the canal.

View from the roof, to the north

Nightlife

 

Wall Street, 2009

Florist’s Window

Graveyard near WTC

He’s not the Soup Nazi, he’s the Soup Man

Taking a photo of the NY Stock Exchange

More photos of Wall St. and the South Street Seaport up on Flickr

 

I thought black holes were – black

Black Hole Creates Spectacular Light Show

A jet of gas spewing from a huge black hole has mysteriously brightened, flaring to 90 times its normal glow.

For seven years the Hubble Space Telescope has been watching the jet, which pours out of the supermassive black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy. It has photographed the strange phenomenon fading and then brightening, with a peak that even outshines M87’s brilliant core.

Scientists have dubbed the enigmatic bright blob HST-1, and are so far at a loss to explain its weird behavior.

“I did not expect the jet in M87 or any other jet powered by accretion onto a black hole to increase in brightness in the way that this jet does,” said astronomer Juan Madrid of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who conducted the Hubble study. “It grew 90 times brighter than normal. But the question is, does this happen to every single jet or active nucleus, or are we seeing some odd behavior from M87?”

Many supermassive black holes have jets of material that spray out perpendicularly from the donut-shaped ring of matter falling onto the black hole. These beams of hot gas are thought to result from magnetic field lines that are twisted by the black hole’s mass, and propel charged particles outward.

But most rays do not appear to blaze up with such extreme intensity as HST-1. Scientists aren’t sure if it is an exceptional case, or if it represents a normal event for black hole jets, which are still not very well understood. In this case, the bright knot of HST-1 is about 214 light-years from the M87 galaxy’s core…

 

Thai fireman dresses as Spiderman to save autistic boy

Cute story:

BANGKOK (AFP) – A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony, police said Tuesday.

Teachers at a special needs school in Bangkok alerted authorities on Monday when an autistic pupil, scared of attending his first day at school, sat out on the third-floor ledge and refused to come inside, a police sergeant told AFP.

Despite teachers’ efforts to beckon the boy inside, he refused to budge until his mother mentioned her son’s love of superheroes, prompting fireman Sonchai Yoosabai to take a novel approach to the problem.

The rescuer dashed back to his fire station and made a quick change into a Spider-Man costume before returning to the boy, he said.

 

It doesn’t seem fair…

..that she had a fantastic career, a handsome husband, two great kids – and then lost it taking a ski-tumble on the bunny slope.

Who doesn’t fall down when they’re learning to ski?

Friends remember Natasha Richardson.

Richardson’s Death Prompts Questions

 

Remembering Ron Silver

Roger Simon’s “In Memoriam: Ron Silver”

Some people have more courage than others.

And still other people have dead on guts that make the rest of us seem like terrified guppies in a sea of cowards.

That was Ron Silver…

 

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56th st

 

Columbia u

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