Tag: airplanes

📰 Design You Haven’t Thought About

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I’m finally past the mapping project for the highway pages, and I’ve posted the theatre reviews for the last weekend. Do you know what that means, boys and girls? It means I can get back to clearing out the accumulated links for news chum (as in, “ready, set, discuss”). This collection all struck me as having to deal with design issues you might not have thought about:

  • Coffee Cup Lids. Have you ever thought about that styrene lid you get on your take-out coffee or tea? Who designed it? What is the meaning of all those symbols. It turns out that there is a new book on the design of the humble lid, and there is even more details in an Atlas Obscura post on the same subject, where they decode the lid.
  • Concrete. If you were to think about what makes our civilization possible, your mind might turn to the humble man-made rock, concrete. It allows us to build in a variety of shapes, it makes our roads and tall buildings possible. But its manufacture comes with a tremendous environmental cost, and it is one of the reasons we are at peak sand today. The manufacture of cement creates loads of greenhouse gases, and the manufacture of concrete traps water and sand in a way that can’t be easily recovered (certainly, the sand).
  • Airline Maps. Consider the humble airline route map in the back of your in-flight magazine. Have you ever thought about how it is designed? How it shows you the detail the airline wants you to see while hiding others? How it conveys messages about the brand itself. Here’s an interesting exploration of the design process behind the creation of the map.
  • DC Metro Stations. When you travel on transit, you probably don’t think about the station design. But that design can tell you a lot about the system, when it was built, and the messages and wayfaring notions the transit operator wants to convey. Just consider all the different station types in Washington DC.
  • Highways and Cities. When you think about the design of highways, what thoughts go through your head? The material the road is made out of? How much easier it will make it for you to get from point A to point B? The fact that it completes a line on a map? But do you ever think about how the design and routing of a freeway can impact a city? Building a highway can divide communities and make racial segregation worse. This isn’t new; think about the “other side of the tracks” distinction. Look at how freeways such as the Harbor divide south-central LA. But that raises the next question: Would removing a highway undo the damage? How might we build these structures so that they do not divide.
  • Batteries. Finally, here’s a questions of A, B, Cs. More properly, I should say AAA, AA, C, and D. Here’s a handy diagram of all types of batteries.

 

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Fly, Fly, Away

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Time to start clearing out some accumulated chum — and non-political chum at that! Here are three airline things that are going away, plus one non-airline thing that may also be disappearing:

And also disappearing:

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Interesting Histories

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Continuing the clearing of some themed groups, here are some interesting histories that I’ve seen come across my feeds of late:

  • LA Theatre. Here’s a complete history of LA Theatre while standing on one foot.  OK, well, it’s not complete (there’s no mention of the LA Civic Light Opera, for example, or the other major large theatres that are no more, like the Huntington Hartford or the Shubert in Century City), but it is a great summary of the current situation with 99 seat theatres and how we got there.
  • Jewish Culinary Tradition. Here’s an article (and a discussion of a cookbook) related to a classic Jewish food tradition: pickling and preservation. A number of the recipes described sound really interesting .
  • Left Turns. If you’re like me, you get … annoyed … at the current crop of drivers that wait behind the limit line to make a left turn, and then do a sweeping arc that almost cuts off the car waiting on the cross street to turn (plus, it means one car per light). If you’re like me, you were taught to pull into the middle of the intersection, and then to do an almost 90 degree turn to go from left lane into left lane. Turns out, left turns have changed over time, and I’m old-school.
  • Old Subway Cars. When your light rail cars die, where do they go? Often, they are dumped in the ocean. Los Angeles did that with some of the Red and Yellow Cars. New York does it with its subway cars. But this isn’t pollution, and here are the pictures to prove it. Rather, it is creating reefs for oceanlife.
  • Tunnels Back In Service. An LADWP tunnel that dates back to 1915 is going back in service.The Los Angeles Daily News reports the tunnel is being refurbished to capture water runoff from the Sierras, which was inundated with snow this winter.The tunnel is part of a larger system, called the Maclay Highline, that runs from “the L.A. Aqueduct Cascades in Sylmar to a group of meadows in Pacoima.” Once restored, the tunnel will carry a significant amount of water—130 acre-feet a day—to the Pacoima Spreading Grounds, where it will filter down into the city aquifer and become drinking water. (One acre-foot can supply two households with water for a year.)

As we’re talking history, here’s another interesting themed historical group, this time focused on air travel:

  • Lockheed L-1011. I remember back in the 1990s flying between LAX and IAD, when I could still occasionally get an L-1011. This was a tri-jet from Lockheed, and was nice and spacious with great overhead space. They have long since disappeared, but one recently took to the skies as part of a ferry to a museum. The refurbished plane will be used as part of a STEM teaching experience.
  • Boeing 747. The Queen of the Skies has been dethroned by someone skinnier and cheaper. The last few 747s for passenger service are coming off the line; airlines are phasing them out of the fleets. There will be a few more for freight service, but like the DC-10, they will be disappearing. The market can not really support such large loads — and the multiple engines and fuel it takes to ferry them. The Airbus A380 is facing similar problems. Airlines want at most two engines, with the planes packed to the gills.
  • Old Airports. Here’s an article on an interesting dilemma: What to do with old municipal airports, such as the one in downtown Detroit? (NYTimes article) Should they be restored for general aviation purposes, and perhaps the occasional commercial craft? Should their land be repurposed for more housing and manufacturing, as was done quite successfully with the old DEN (Denver Stapleton). Repurposing can be temping. Cities such as Detroit will soon run out of wide-open, city-owned spaces that can be offered to companies looking to build manufacturing or other commercial facilities here. A decomissioned airport can provide just the opportunity needed. But others say cities should reinvest in the airports, saying it could be an economic engine as well. (I’ll note similar questions exists for former Air Force bases as well — how is former George AFB working out, San Bernardino?) The article  notes that cities across the nation are reconsidering the value of municipal airports in the era of superjumbo jets and budget cuts. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association estimated the nation loses 50 public-use airports a year. Almost all are general-aviation airports, ones that cater primarily to owners of private planes, and most have operating deficits that the cities must make up for in their budgets. Detroit, for instance, faces a $1.3 million operating loss in the 2017 fiscal year for Coleman Young, which averages just 30 landings a day. The main airport for the region is Detroit Metropolitan, a Delta Air Lines hub about 20 miles west of the city limits.
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Be Careful What You Wish For….

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today’s lunchtime news chum brings two stories where getting what you wanted didn’t quite work out as planned:

  • We Elected A Business Man to run our Government. What Could Go Wrong?

No, I’m not talking about President Trump. Politico Magazine has a detailed analysis of Colorado Springs’ jump into Libertarianism. From the election of a politically-inexperienced Mayor who promised to run the city like a business, to the consequence of the financial crisis. From some initial successes, it was downhill. But the Springs are booming again? Why. A political conservative new Mayor was elected — but this time, one who understood what government is and how it functions.

  • We Wanted a Cheap, Reliable, Air Transportation System Between Domestic Cities. What Could Go Wrong?

The answer is, of course, corporate greed. This is what has led to the Boeing 737 being stretched longer and longer, with more efficient and powerful engines, going longer and longer distances. But there hasn’t been a change in fuselog width or underlying control systems. So we’re just packing more and more in, and squishing everyone closer together.  But don’t panic. The real Boeing 797 may be around the corner. It will be built of new composite materials, but doesn’t look to be a wide-body. Sounds like a 737 with new electronics and a lighter airframe, permitting even more speed and even more distance. How far can you throw a tin can?

 

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A Deeper Message in a Corporate Screwup

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Yesterday, over on Facebook, I posted a link to a friend’s post on the United Passenger Ejection Kerfuffle™, noting that it was “a good examination of the recent United kerfuffle — demonstrating yet again why what you read on a social media snippet-of-outrage(tm) is often not the full story in context.” There were loads of responses, and the debate devolved into everyone pointing out how United had screwed up, how the cops had screwed up, how the airline industry had screwed up, and how it was all Trump’s fault. Well, I made that last bit up, but wouldn’t you :-).

Seriously, however, everyone missed what — to me — was the most important point: A cell phone video is not news. The outrage here — much justified — was mostly generated without knowledge of the full context. That’s not journalism. Journalism investigates the story, attempts to get all sides. Journalism isn’t outrage shared on social media, which often gets facts wrong and rapidly descends into hype and hyperbole.

Contrast the social media outrage with the LA Times Business article on the subject. The Times (or more properly, its corporate sibling the Chicago Tribune) investigates the story. It looks into the full background of what created the situation: an overbooked plane, the need to move airline personnel, the way the contract of carriage works. It looks at how the airline responded. It shows the video wasn’t the whole story, and there was plenty of blame to go around. United (more properly, the less experienced United Express operator), feeling intense time pressure to get its plane and crew in the air,  screwed up the procedure to entice volunteers, randomly select passengers, and to do this all before anyone boarded the aircraft. United (the corporate side) completely bungled the PR response. The Chicago PD, demonstrating the tact they learned at the 1968 Democratic Convention, bungled how they requested the passenger leave the aircraft and the subsequent removal. The passengers bungled their response: everyone put themselves first and no one volunteered, and then they fought back against the removal — yet another demonstration of a “me first” attitude that has infected society. And everyone bungled things by not taking the time to think: it is a flipping five hour drive — the airline could have rented a car and driver, and gotten either its employees or passengers to their destination by the morning when they were needed, likely even before the plane touched down with the delays this created.

This incident demonstrates the worse of what our society has become: a society that doesn’t think, a society that feeds on outrage instead of journalism, a society that uses arcane rules instead of common sense, a mob response against “the man” (corporate leaders and law enforcement) before common sense.

All of this could have been avoided — at much less cost in terms of dollars and PR — if someone had said, “Hey, you know we could get our employees — or the bumped passengers — to their destination for perhaps $300 by renting a Lincoln Towncar and driver, with only a 3 hour delay.” Instead, they spent how much on the volunteer incentives, how much on dealing with negative publicity, and how much on the eventual legal proceedings.

Think first, people.

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The Past, It Is Just History

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I like posts about interesting transitions. I’ve been accumulating the following articles on transitions for a while, so let’s take a walk through memory lane:

  • Earthquake Panorama. The Northridge Earthquake was almost 25 ago. Since then we’ve moved from near Panorama City to Northridge, and almost all the damage has been repaired. But there’s been one building — a blighted high-rise near Roscoe and Van Nuys that has remained standing and unoccupied. Not for much longer, though. Plans have finally been announced for redevelopment of the 1962 Welton Becket designed building. It is going to become housing and retail, with an “open mall” next door. But that’s not all. A large mixed use project on the site of the former Montgomery Ward department store is also in the works, while the recent purchase of the Panorama Mall by Primestor Development has inspired speculation that a major overhaul of the shopping center could be on the way.
  • Albertsons and Sprouts. Talk about a mixed marriage! Evidently, Albertsons and Sprouts are in merger talks. This would be Albertsons (parent of Safeway) buying Sprouts, putting Sprouts in a better pricing tier and meaning more bad news for Whole Paycheck. Here are the details from Bloomberg.
  • Downtown Redevelopment. Panorama City isn’t the only place being redeveloped. There are big plans for Downtown LA, or in newspeak, DTLA. Parker Center would be replaced with a 27-story structure set to include around 713,000 square feet of office space, along with 37,000 square feet of street-level retail. A second office tower would be constructed at the site of the Los Angeles Mall, where one can currently find City Hall power players chowing down on chicken plates and sandwiches from Quizno’s. The project would include 545,000 square feet of office space, 50,000 square feet of retail, and 80,000 square feet of flex space. There is no word on what will happen to the Triforium.
  • New Digs for Valley Outreach. Valley Outreach Synagogue finally has a home. On March 19, in a ceremony 32 years in the making, 400 VOS members attended the grand opening of the Valley Outreach Synagogue and Center for Jewish Life in Calabasas. Formerly a warehouse, the 15,000-square-foot facility, located at 26670 Agoura Road, has a library, a coffee bar, offices and a Meeting and Learning Center. Its high-ceilinged sanctuary seats 500 and features three flat-screens on the walls as well as a Jerusalem limestone-lined ark housing four newly donated Torah scrolls.
  • Dancing the Airport Boogie. Are you ready to dance? Come May, if you fly a number of airlines in/out of LAX, you might need to. There’s going to be a gigantic gate shuffle, with Delta moving to Terminals 2/3, and most of who is in 2 and 3 moving hither and yon. Having been in Delta’s beautiful Terminal 5, the logos and style are going to be out of place for the folks moving in there.
  • Neon Museum Grows. Moving from LAX to LAS, there’s welcome news that the Neon Museum will be growing. They have acquired the ugly building next to them, will be tearing it down, and soon there will be more dead neon signs. Maybe even some new lit ones. Makes me want to go back to Vegas.
  • Remembering TWA. Dead neon is pretty. Dead buildings, less so. But we still have the unfinished Fontainebleau in Vegas, where the Thunderbird used to be. Blame is squarely on Carl Icahn. But that’s not the only thing he killed. He also killed TWA, which was a great airline. I recall many a flight to STL on TW 91. Luckily, there’s a neat TWA museum in Kansas City. It even has a Carl Icahn Voodoo Doll.

 

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The Times, They are a Changin’

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I know, we’re all sick of Trump and news about Trump. So let’s take a breather. Here’s a collection of news chum that shows some other interesting ways that the times are a changin’:

  • Social Media Addiction. The New York Times is reporting that Generation X is more addicted to social media than Millenials. Again, read that headline: the younger kids (Millenials) are LESS addicated than the generation before them (GEN X, Adults 39-49). That, perhaps, explains the greying of Facebook. A Neilsen study found that adults 35 to 49 spend an average of 6 hours 58 minutes a week on social media networks, compared with 6 hours 19 minutes for the younger group. More predictably, adults 50 and over spent significantly less time on the networks: an average of 4 hours 9 minutes a week (and I’m part of this latter group). The report is based on smartphone and tablet use, and it found that in the United States, 97 percent of people 18 to 34, and 94 percent of people 35 to 49, had access to smartphones. Seventy-seven percent of those 50 and older used smartphones, the report found. The 29-page report was based on data from 9,000 smartphone users and 1,300 tablet users across the country from July through September. It also found that Facebook still dominated on mobile, with about 178.2 million unique users in September. It was followed by Instagram, with 91.5 million unique users; Twitter, with 82.2 million unique users; and Pinterest, with 69.6 million users.Snapchat, a favorite of younger users, was sixth on the list, behind the professional networking site LinkedIn.  This raises the next question: if Millenials are using their smartphones so much, and they aren’t on social media, what precisely are they doing? They aren’t making phone calls.
  • Screens on Airplanes. Another New York Times article has an interesting finding regarding screens: we are using our personal screens so much that airlines are phasing out seat-back screens (which saves them a hella-lot of money). With built-in screens, airliners provide passengers with a set menu of content through boxes that power the in-flight entertainment system. The screens appeared in their most primitive form in the late 1980s with a few movies played on a loop. By the early 2000s, they had advanced to allow passengers to make choices on demand. By streaming content over wireless systems, passengers will have a wider array of content and the carriers will not have to maintain screens because passengers will bring their own portable devices on board. For carriers that discontinue the screens, the savings can be significant. By one estimate, in-flight entertainment systems are the biggest expense in outfitting a new plane and can make up 10 percent of the entire cost of an aircraft. The screens and their wiring add weight to the plane, and when fuel prices are high, every pound makes a difference. Another financial incentive: Without the screens, carriers can install slimmer seats, which means they can accommodate more passengers and earn more money. The article makes one other very important comment regarding personal screens: Experts said that if airliners are going to rely on consumer electronics for in-flight entertainment, the carriers should be prepared to offer another amenity: outlets for passengers to charge their devices. Mr. Hoppe said it was “imperative” to have them available in all rows and seats, and “essential” to ensure that each one works.
  • Fashion Rules for Plus Size. Let’s break up the New York Times articles with a change of fashion. A bunch of editors at Buzzfeed decided to break the “fashion rules” for Plus Size women. You know what? They looked great.  This goes to show yet another change that is happening in society: people deciding not to follow arbitrary rules from someone else, and wearing and being what is right for them. More power to them!
  • Intel Dropping Out of Science Fairs. One last New York Times article: it appears that Intel is dropping its sponsorship of Science Fairs. As someone who judges at the California State Science Fair, this is bad news. I see the remarkable things kids do, and it restores my faith in our youth. I originally thought the reason might have to do with Trump — after all, Intel had been meeting with Trump and Trump hates science.  But the reason is due to a more fundamental change: [The traditional science fair’s] regimented routines can seem stodgy at a time when young people are flocking to more freewheeling forums for scientific creativity, like software hackathons and hardware engineering Maker Faires. That is apparently the thinking at Intel, the giant computer chip maker, which is retreating from its longtime sponsorship of science fairs for high school students. It has dropped its support of the National Science Talent Search, and is dropping support of the International Science and Engineering Fair. The article noted that this leads to broader questions about how a top technology company should handle the corporate sponsorship of science, and what is the best way to promote the education of the tech work force of the future. Intel’s move also raises the issue of the role of science fairs in education in the so-called STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. All I know, as a judge, is that these fairs have encouraged some remarkable research by Middle and High School Students.
  • The Cost of Solar. As we keep debating the real costs of hydro-carbon based power, the costs of solar on an industrial scale continue to drop. Eventually, it may be that clean power is so much cheaper that we’ll be able to reserve hydro-carbons for the real thing we need them for: plastics. [And, believe me: if you think about a society without gas for your car is bad, just imagine a world with no plastics — not only no plastic bags and storage containers, but circuit boards, enclosures, insulation for wires, sterile medical devices — we need to save our oil for plastic]. Quoting from the article: Solar has seen remarkable cost declines and is competing in more circumstances with every passing year. But it is not the world’s cheapest source of electricity. Yhe main reason is that there is, at least currently, no such thing as “the world’s cheapest source of electricity,” if that’s taken to mean cheapest, all costs considered, in all places, at all times. No such fairy dust exists; different sources perform differently in different economies and different electricity systems. What can be said about solar is that it is rapidly increasing the range of circumstances under which it can compete on costs, without subsidies. This is a good thing. Together, wind and utility-scale solar are now the cheapest available energy sources in the places that are building the most of them. Utility-scale solar now has a lower total cost of power than natural gas.

 

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Finding the Experts

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Some people play games as a palette cleanser between tasks; I look at the news. In this NPR article about Trump meeting with Airline Executives, the following exchange was quoted:

Trump said his private pilot, “a real expert” and a “smart guy,” has told him that the government has been buying the wrong type of equipment in its years-long effort to upgrade the current control system. He said U.S. airports “used to be the best, now they’re at the bottom of the rung.”

Sigh. Reminds me of an anecdote. Many years ago, there was an on-going interaction between Dr. Dixie Baker (my boss at the time), who had long been working in what then was called computer security (now “cybersecurity”) and Cliff Stoll, who had just published his book “The Cuckoo’s Egg”. Cliff kept insisting he was a security expert, when those of us in the field knew he was a newcomer, a poser, someone who had lucked into a situation to solve. Cliff asked Dixie what it would take to be a security expert — after all, he had published X papers. (I forget the value of X). Dixie’s response: “X+1”.

Trump’s opinion on how to modernize the Air Traffic Control situation is based on his private pilot, a “real expert” and a “smart guy”. Having been through the AAS years and all the issues with FAA modernization: This isn’t going to end well.

Again, from the article:

“You’re going to be so happy with Trump,” the president said.

Oh, where is Stan Freberg when we need him.

Maybe this is the harbinger of the apocalypse. Oh, wait, that’s the next post.

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