Elephant In Exile

Your Weekend Reading:

With all this talk about banning liquids from planes, I can just imagine the nightmare scenario for air marshals. They storm a plane shouting, "Get those mother f'cking shakes off this mother f'cking plane" and a fuzzy purple blob of a passenger sits trembling in panic. He drops his shamrock shake and they open fire. The scene ends in a bloody purple carnage.

All these new security measures make me think of the Sideshow Bob quote, "Ah, when flying was a gentleman's sport...before every Joe Lunchbox could wedge himself behind a tray table and jet off to Raleigh-Durham." I too long for the days when flying was a bit less of a hassle. When the upstairs of a 747 was a groovy lounge and when flight attendants (Stews!) were required to wear little hats. In short, I long for an experience that probably has only ever existed in an Austin Powers Movie. Alas!

So with flying on the brain, here is this week's weekend reading assignments:

The future of flying is batwing and it's all to save the planet
AIRLINE passengers of the future will have to do without window seats and fly in giant batwing aircraft as a result of aviation industry proposals to tackle climate change.

History of Flight
Everything you wanted to know about flight as put together by some federal government commission formed to produce a website on the history of flight.

Airbus: Losing altitude
Delays, redesigns, and a management shakeup have sent the company into a tailspin. Can it pull out of trouble?