Archive for November 20th, 2008
That’s a reference to Airplane! just so you know.
Co-pilot had breakdown, flight attendant helped land jet
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — An Air Canada co-pilot having a mental breakdown had to be forcibly removed from the cockpit, restrained and sedated, and a flight attendant with flying experience helped the pilot safely make an emergency landing, an Irish investigation concluded Wednesday.
Full Article – Updated with correct link
There’s no mention in the article if the co-pilot ever played center for the Los Angeles Lakers.
And when I read this part of the article, I couldn’t help but think what was going through the heads of the passengers.
The Air Canada pilot then asked flight attendants to find out if any passenger was a qualified pilot.
November 20th, 2008
If you find yourself in a conversation with Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence a few months from now, remember to smile — you’re probably on camera. Today at the 6Sight Imaging Conference in Monterey, Spence will discuss how he’s turning his prosthetic eye into a wireless video camera — and his plan to turn the eyes of George Orwell’s Thought Police back at Big Brother.
Spence, 36, lost vision in his right eye at the age of 11, when he was shooting cow patties in Ireland with his grandfather’s shotgun and the gun backfired. He wore a patch for most of his life, until finally having the eye removed a few years ago and replacing it with a prosthetic. Adding a camera to the prosthetic was the logical next step, said Spence.
Full Article
And if you are interested, he has his own blog.
Maybe I should get a video camera installed in my wife’s glass eye – it will be more material for the blog.
And yes, I know this is the second glass eye post this week. I’ve reached my quota for the month.
November 20th, 2008
Coming up with a great technology product or service is only half the battle these days. Creating a name for said product that is at once cool but not too cool or exclusionary, marketable to both early adopters and a broader audience, and, of course, isn’t already in use and protected by various trademarks and copyright laws is difficult—to say the least.
The makers of these 10 tech products—the iPod, BlackBerry, Firefox, Twitter, Windows 7, ThinkPad, Android, Wikipedia, Mac OS X and the “Big Cats,” and Red Hat Linux—all have displayed certain amounts marketing savvy, common sense and fun-loving spirit in settling on their products’ names. Here are the intriguing, surprising and sometimes predictable accounts of their creation.
Link
November 20th, 2008
Beliefnet has chosen 10 nominees for the Most Inspiring Person of the Year 2008 Award. We need your help in choosing the final winner. You may vote once each day for your favorite candidate. Voting will end on December 5th.
Link
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November 20th, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles commissioner today backed off its denial of a woman’s request for a personalized license plate reading “BE GODS.”
The decision resulted from a lawsuit filed this week by Liz Ferris, who had that same plate on her car for eight or nine years but forgot to renew it on time for 2008. When she submitted a new personalized plate application, the BMV denied her request because of a recent policy change banning any references to religion or a deity on new personalized plates.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008
The Zagat travel guide Wednesday named The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas the No. 1 large hotel in the U.S. and its Fearing’s restaurant No. 1 in hotel dining.
In its 2009 Top U.S. Hotels, Resorts & Spas survey, Zagat rated the hotel, in Dallas’ Uptown, extraordinary to perfect in each category. Travelers described the food served by celebrity chef Dean Fearing as “last-meal worthy†and “haute Texan†cuisine.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008
MIAMI, Nov 19 (Reuters) – An American teen-ager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.
The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long.
The patient, D’Zhana Simmons of South Carolina, said the experience of living for so long with a machine pumping her blood was “scary.”
“You never knew when it would malfunction,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
Full Article
November 20th, 2008