Tag Archives: Awe

Miss the 747

City of Everett I still miss the Boeing 747. And I am not sure if there is some rationale behind it or if it is just youth sentiment. As for me the Boeing 747 is still somehow the most remarkable aircraft ever built, together with of course the Concorde. And why I am not sure about the rationale is because I found out that there have been more aircraft with the ‘hump’ that is so typical for the Boeing 747. But the rationale I guess is that the Boeing 747 was the plane that made mass travel around the word possible. And it was the biggest passenger plane for commercial use and stayed that for quite some time, even though it is now surpassed by the Airbus A380. And yes, the hump and the spiral staircase made it of course also very unique, together with the fact that it is still used as Air Force One.

And yes, I am still emotional related to the Boeing 747 and especially the City of Everett, the first prototype that has ever flown and that was also in service for a very long time. And I was shocked quite a while ago that the Boeing 747 is just an old, aging aircraft that is slowly being taken out of service, or even fast now, even though there has been a more modern version developed right now.

Anyhow, I have written about this before I guess, some good memories. And yes the Boeing 747 was even the aircraft I made my first flight with, so that also makes it special. Nothing more to say, but a great aircraft that deserves its place in aircraft history.

Photo: “Boeing 747 prototype” by Fawcett5 – Uploaded by Denniss. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons – original file

Caesar

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Well, I got an e-mail pointing to Caesar and the subject kind of interested me: forgiveness. As recently I have been hearing the word forgive quite a lot, so the Universe must want to tell me something. But I don’t want to talk about forgiveness, I just was struck by the word Caesar, as it made me think of leadership and of the game Caesar as that was a game I liked a lot and consider playing again lately.

And this whole thing made me think of how things are connected and how we build on everything that we and people before us have built. As recently I am very interested in submarine cables, and my research opens a whole new world to me. And yes, I know for example the name TAT-1, but I didn’t know it had been taken out of service, even though it could still be operational. And while for us right now it is so common to be able to communicate with virtually anyone anywhere, even without being connected with wires, it is not that long ago that communication over e.g. the Atlantic Ocean was not even possible. And I guess it was even much more recent that communication over the Pacific Ocean became possible.

So what a strange world it is, and how fast did it change over especially the last century. And the change even seems to go faster and faster, although I don’t fully agree with that, as it seems the penetration of computers and internet the last two or three decades or so is about the same time span as it took for the automobile to become popular and common to the world.

And yes, I am wondering what would be next. Connecting directly to computers and the internet, so we all become part of, yes, what? But we are already connected, not directly, but things like Facebook make already that there is some kind of virtual world existing already.

Well, strange and amazing these things. Or just awesome?

Applause

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I just saw the news conference of the prime minister of Malaysia making a statement about where Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 ended up. And I was very emotional just before the statement, when of course the news people made the story bigger and bigger and built some kind of climax. But my emotions were not of sadness or something, but of admiration, in the first place for the Malaysians, who in the last few weeks were confronted with something big, something that has never happened before, something that nobody could have prepared for, something that would already be big for a large Western country and somehow managed to handle all of this, handled all of this in a very professional way. And while thinking now my emotions were also emotions of sadness, as the Malaysians have been criticized so much. And I truly believe they didn’t and don’t deserve any criticism as I think they handled this whole situation very well, especially checking and rechecking facts before making statements while at the same time internally changing their investigation as the last few days we saw their search move to the area they made a statement about today.

And also applause for all those people involved in this search, where I have the feeling something like this has never been done before. So many countries and institutions in some kind of worldwide search for something lost. And for the people coordinating all this, presumably, again, the Malaysians. How in heavens name would someone be able to set up some kind of project team to organize this type of search in a month, let alone in days or weeks.

Well, nothing much more to say right now but:

Applause for the Malaysians.