A (formerly) Far East located, politically focused, Blog with attention also paid to the finer things in life: Women, Beer, Women, Travel, Women, Adventure, Golf, and did I mention women?
Japan Airline’s last “Classic Jumbo Jet” took to the skies on July 30 on its final flight, ending an era of the Boeing 747 Classic type of aircraft in the company’s fleet. The 747-300, operated by a 3-man flight crew, will fly from Honolulu to Tokyo (Narita) and thereafter retire after 26 years of reliable service to the airline group.
In the mid-1960s, unprecedented development in technology and the availability of large-thrust engines led to the creation of the giant 747, beginning with the 747-100, the first in the 747 Classics series which also includes the -200 and -300 models. JAL first took delivery of a 747-100 in 1970, and was the launch customer of the 747-100SR in 1973. For its ever-expanding international network at the time, JAL owned the largest fleet of 747 Classics in 1984, and from 1987 through to 1989, it held the record number of 65 such aircraft – a figure that still stands as the most number of Classics owned by any one airline at a time.
Decommissioning the Group’s remaining 6 Classics – of which the earliest was delivered in November 1983, attests to the Group’s steady progress towards downsizing its fleet and operating more fuel-efficient aircraft such as Boeing 777.
I for one am not happy to see this. The 777 may be a better aircraft, but its not any roomier IMHO. Furhtermore, in general, the 747 was always easier to upgrade on-it had more business class seats. Plus, unlike its stingy American counterparts, I got courtesy upgrades on JAL-twice out of Hawaii as a matter of fact. To say the service was better than what I would have gotten on an American carrier goes without saying.
I had to drive to Montgomery today. 3 hours down and three hours back. Spent all of 2+45 in the city itself. Came back and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Now I’m awake and probably won’t be able to go to sleep at a normal hour.
Today highlighted again to me-what is wrong with this country transportation wise. If there had been a decent train system running between Shopping Mall and there-like they have in Japan-I could have been to city center in 1+20. Gotten my business done and been back before 2 PM.
Instead I fought cops and cars getting around Birmingham on the way back. And-God bless ‘em-Alabama actually has a decent speed limit of 70 miles an hour. Not like the homo’s in Virgina with their no radar detectors and 55 mile an hour ("55 means 55") BS. It still takes too long.
If I had been king of the world-I would have directed a "stimulus" probably a lot differently. In fact I would not have called it a stimulus at all-but a correction of spending priorities. There would have been no wild rush to get it through Congress, which is one of the problems I would probably have if I were ever in such a position. I’d want to impose my will on them and have no arguement in response.
However, what I would have done would have been to plus up spending on things that will make a difference in the long run, and serve to generate continuing jobs in the long run. That’s where the republicans never got it. Tax cuts, especially tax cuts only for the rich, don’t accomplish that.
Me? I would have increased defense spending on "stuff" like ships. I would also have poured some money into a high speed train system that would help America redefine what getting from point A to B means. And the more I live here (which hopefully won’t be any longer than next year) I would start it in the South.
Alabama would be a great test case. You could run a high speed train line from Nashville to Mobile. The cities actually line up nicely and it would split the state like a fishbone. Feeder lines come come in from east to west in each of the major cities. Feeder bus lines and decent taxt service could feed the feeder lines-or they could have decent parking. Using already proven bullet train technology, I would have been able to be whisked from Shopping Mall to Montegomery at 275 kilometers per hour.
Would it take time to build and would it be expensive-yep. However over the long haul it would dramatically change the way people look at this state.
However it will remain-like the idea of going back to the moon, mocked daily by the Saturn V rocket rising above Interstate 565- a pipe dream. People are too busy arguing about things that have never been said, and worry about whether the president of the United States is really a citizen. Or enhancing national glory for Muslims who don’t give a rat’s ass about what we want.
The money is there. It just needs to be re-directed.
But it won’t.
So I drive 6+30 hours at an abysmal speed. I’m like Sammy Haggar, I can’t do it.
Somehow, the words make much more sense now. And here I thought it was just the ramblings of an incoherent b*tch.
Speaking of incoherency-take note of the long, painful slide Sarah Palin took to get there. She used to be able to put sentences together. Then she discovered how to use a dog whistle.
It’s like Peggy Noonan, Jack London, and William Faulkner wandered into the woods with three buttons of peyote and one typewriter, and only this speech emerged.
This spring and summer the S.O. has taken to gardening in a big way. She has cultivated probably every available square inch of our small little yard for flower beds, hanging flowers, and she had me build her a planter to put next to the patio. I shudder-because the day will come when I make her choose between flowers or returning to the good life back on the right side of the international dateline. With each turn of the spade she is getting ever more "dug in".
However, one of the things I like about the S.O. is that she can marvel with the earnestness of a child at the simple things in life. She’s a smart woman-don’t get me wrong ( after all she likes me-she must be pretty smart)-but she sees things that are simple in a very different light than I do.
Which led us this weekend-after I played golf on Saturday- in search of a hummingbird feeder. She had seen one at an adjoining house-and so she just had to have one.
Now hanging from a pole in the back yard is the hummingbird feeder. For the last two days running she has been "stalking" them sitting on the back porch waiting for the right moment to get a picture of them. I was shocked at how quickly they descended on us once we put the feeder out:
I’ll give the S.O. her due-she’s done a nice job making a place for birds and flowers. How about if I give you the tour?
Have been working against two deadlines-one at work and one for the course I am taking. Earned Value Metrics, ROI, ROS calculations, contract terminations.
In other words things that are total and complete bullshit.
What I should have been studying- is a hands on laboratory on learning the proper methods for Filipina clitoral stimulation. THAT’s not happening anytime soon. Tell me life is fair. I beg to differ.
But its done. The next segment is the way a class should be taught-in a classroom at a location different from the one I am living in. Any excuse to travel is a good one these days.
I wish I could make sense of the whole health care debate. However I cannot. I do think the President is right to take it on-however I am convinced that thanks to the ineptitude of the current Congress, on both sides of the aisle, the effort is doomed to failure.
Which is just what the insurance companies-who really do need to be kicked in the balls-want.
Now I am slightly jaded on the issue at this particular juncture, having spent almost a month trying to undo a mess with the S.O. ‘s health insurance(which I am paying for)-what with the company arbitrarily trying to drop her from coverage for a whole host of chicken-sh*t reasons owing to the fact that she is a legal alien residing in the United States. Which I had to prove to them-again.
Sure, I’m not keen on the idea of government running the health care system. However, people are only kidding themselves if they think health care is not already rationed in many ways. The top insurance executives were called before Congress-not one of them said that they would stop denying coverage for anything but ability to pay.
So tell me why I should be sympathetic to them?
Or why I should not feel that people should be compelled to buy health insurance and companies should be compelled to provide it for their full time employees.
Health care reform is not going to pass this year. When do we fix it? And yes, I think proper health care is-if not a right-something that should be available to all.
Sarah Palin is a private citizen again. Boo F-ing who. If it had been a man who up and quit with 18 months to go-ask me how much sympathy he would get. And please, don’t say Obama quit because its not true. Palin could have served out her term and still built up her campaign chest. Happens all the time.
But she thinks she is different. When in reality, she is just another pushy woman who thinks the world revolves around her. Shut up and cook my dinner!
Spike pointed out that Monocle Magazine once again lists their 25 most liveable cities in the world. Now that’s a pretty subjective thing-because it all depends on your criteria. I mean, after all Shopping Mall could be considered "liveable" if: 1) you really liked the whole Southern Suburban existence, 2) Had a wife that you actually liked and made life pleasant and 3) could deal with the fact that there is no night life and what they call night life requires driving to get to. ( With the attendant road nazi threat on the way home). For those reasons and a lot more Shopping Mall ain’t making any list of great cities anytime soon. Here however is the list the Monocle folks came up with. ( Ones I’ve been to are highlighted in green.)
Zurich Copenhagen Tokyo Munich
Helsinki
Stockholm Vienna Paris
Melbourne
Berlin Honolulu
Madrid
Sydney
Vancouver Barcelona
Fukuoka
Oslo Singapore
Montreal
Auckland Amsterdam Kyoto
Hamburg
Geneva
Lisbon
Personally, I think the list is too Euro centric-and I’m not so sure I’d put Hamburg or Paris in the list-but they do have it right in that not any American cities deserve to be on a such a list. Liveability is not a virtue of American cities and that’s not going to change anytime soon. Two reasons: crime and NO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. At least not any that is worth a damn. And Honolulu? Nice place to visit-not so sure I’d want to live there.
On the other hand, I could live in just about any of the other ones-provided I had an income stream. No surprise, my top pick would be Singapore. I’d love to visit Stockholm though. I read an article in the Economist that pointed out that, high tax rate or no, things actually do work in Sweden. The problem is "Sweden’s big state works because it is Swedish, not because it is big" . Try to bring it over here? We’d screw it up royally.
Because we can.
But for the most part-I’d agree with most of that list. Notice there are no Chinese cities on the list? I’m not surprised. Even that Hong Kong is not there-and I love Hong Kong.
Meanwhile in Japan-they must be preparing for a new round of Filipina nurses and other service industry pioneers to pick up the slack for Japan’s declining birthrate. What’s the best way to prepare for the Tagalog onslaught?
Problems with Palestinians or no-I sure would like to go back there.
I’ve been to Israel five times. Twice, I made the circuit of driving the entire country-once as the guest of an Israeli Naval officer and once by myself , with some squadron mates at various times-I broke the trip up using Haifa and Tel Aviv as staging bases of sorts. My operational HQ was here. Went to Masada, the West Bank ( with my Israeli friend and his trusty M-16), Sea of Galilee, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jersualem, and Beersheba.
We used to joke that there must be something in the water in Israel-lots of women with big breasts.
Minshutou ( Democratic Party of Japan) is ahead in the polls for the parlimentary elections in August. The young man in the video proposes marriage to the woman. The young man promises that he can make her happy, so why not switch. He goes on to promise free expressway fees and support for education, child care, and elderly citizens. When asked how he will pay for all of this, the man snaps at the woman saying he’ll think about the details after they’re married. Assuming he has a birth certificate-smooth sailing eh?
This is a Jimintou (LDP) commercial on their web site.
Today is July 20th. Only proper to write about the moon landings, right? Its being written over at plenty of blogs this day-and its is an anniversary of a great achievement. Except-as Tom Wolfe points out in a well written essay, its also the begining of the end of the glory days for NASA and the American space program. Because for me, the key question about today is not: "Celebrating that we went to the moon", but more for being reminded-painfully I hope-of the question that should have been haunting the United States since about 1975:
Why did we stop going there?
Wolfe sums it up:
It was no ordinary dead-and-be-done-with-it death. It was full-blown purgatory, purgatory being the holding pen for recently deceased but still restless souls awaiting judgment by a Higher Authority.
Like many another youngster at that time, or maybe retro-youngster in my case, I was fascinated by the astronauts after Apollo 11. I even dared to dream of writing a book about them someday. If anyone had told me in July 1969 that the sound of Neil Armstrong’s small step plus mankind’s big one was the shuffle of pallbearers at graveside, I would have averted my eyes and shaken my head in pity. Poor guy’s bucket’s got a hole in it.
Why, putting a man on the Moon was just the beginning, the prelude, the prologue! The Moon was nothing but a little satellite of Earth. The great adventure was going to be the exploration of the planets … Mars first, then Venus, then Pluto. Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus? NASA would figure out their slots in the schedule in due course. In any case, we Americans wouldn’t stop until we had explored the entire solar system. And after that … the galaxies beyond.
That was certainly the way I felt-especially when I bamboozled my mother into letting me watch 2001, A Space Odyssey by my 12 year old lonesome, while she went shopping at Kaufman’s and Gimble’s. ( It was a different time). I was confident by the year 2001 we would have bases on the moon, and space stations rotating high above us in orbit. Man would have been to Mars or would have been shortly getting ready to. That faster than the speed of light thing? An inconvenience to be gotten around in due course.
But after 1972, we only went to, wait for it, low earth orbit. And while there is no doubt that they have accomplished some solid scientific work and the program has been a great bridge from super power confrontation in space, to a multi-national effort. All great stuff-but ask yourself: Is this really the best mankind can do?
The answer better be a resounding HELL NO! There is a lot we could be doing-and even if we had two tracked the effort, going to the moon once a year while still working the shuttle, it would have at least kept our ‘hand in the game so to speak.
"But there are so many problems on earth that need looking after.
Yes, there are. And no one has to convince me that there is a horrible mismatch between the things the country -or the world for that matter-is spending money on, vs what it should be spending money on.
As Jesus reminded us, the poor will be with you always, but Mars only being 56 million miles away, only happens every 60 years or so.
"But we don’t have the money-and Obama is spending whatever money we do have left".
That may or may not be true-but its still all a matter of scale, isn’t it? NASA’s annual budget is only 17.3 billion dollars a year. We blow more than that on worthless Arabs in less than three months. Even if NASA got a plus of up of just one month’s worth of that money-leaving one still 6 billion a month to blow on Arabs-think of what they could do in addition? I’m not even going to mention how much we spend on a whole bunch of other things even closer to home.
Space travel is a bargain actually, compared to the other things we waste money on.And unlike so many other things we are "stimulating" actually creates a ripple wave of jobs.
That is just one reason to support manned space exploration.
I will tell you what, commit the US to going back to the moon before 2012-doable with current technology, ( especially considering that the Ares rocket is nothing more than Apollo on steroids).-and I’ll concede that health care for all may be a bridge too far, this year or any year.
Setting aside the money though-there is a second point that Wolfe makes and its crucial: America lost its will to be optimistic about the future.
Even Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator, did not spend his persuasive talents on firing America back to the stars. ( Something I never really understood-what a great message about "bringing America back".)
America had a lot of problems in 1969 too-problems that make today’s un-comforts look small in comparison. But we were, as a nation paused and proud of ourselves on this one special day today.
I truly don’t think there has been a moment like it since then. Some have come close-but the slow but sure steady drip, drip, drip, of our descent into a type of national polity where, "You’re wrong, I’m right! Fuck you and fuck the guy you voted for-he’s one step above the anti-Christ!"-that certainly has not helped us get serious about moving mankind away from a time of war to a time of, if not peace, at least a renewed exploration.
I’m not optimistic we can get that back. No matter who’s in Congress or the White House. The damage is just too great.
And the blame for that lies not with Democrats or Republicans. It lies with a death of a national will to achieve. In the end we only have ourselves to blame. I’m sure I’ll get beat up for that last statement-Jimmy Carter learned the hard way about telling people what they don’t want to hear-but I know in my heart its true. We are capable of doing more-and doing it faster than 40 years. Regardless of who is office.
We can actually solve a lot of our own problems and lead the world on a great quest-if we would only believe in it.
I won’t live to see the current crisis of confidence resolve itself, I’m afraid. But I sure would like to live long enough to see more footprints on the moon.
Because its a great week when Tiger doesn’t make the cut and Tom Watson makes it to a play off.
TURNBERRY, Scotland — Tom Watson squandered a chance to become golf’s oldest major champion. The 59-year-old missed an 8-foot putt on the 72nd hole of the British Open, then lost a four-hole playoff to Stewart Cink.
Cink won his first major title, but this one will be remembered as the one that Watson let get away when he had a historic victory in his grasp.
He looked his age after a bogey on the last hole of regulation left him tied with Cink at 2-under 278. Watson bogeyed the first playoff hole and fell apart at the third, the par-5 17th.
An errant tee shot, two whacks to get out of the rough, and three putts left him with a double-bogey 7. It was over.
Sure Watson should have won it, but that’s not the point. The point is he was around for the finish and at 59-that’s a great thing in and of itself. Golf is just that way-and it only takes a couple of blow up shots to bring you back to earth.
People who bought Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm for their Kindle were surprised to discover that it had disappeared from their devices overnight. It turns out the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version, and Amazon caved into their demand to sneak into people’s electronic libraries and take back the book at the publisher’s request.
Makes me wonder what else they are digging into when that little device synchs up with the Amazon mothership.
To those of us of a certain age-who now have to confront the daily morass that is the news media these days-not having Walter Cronkite on the scene is just a tremendous loss.
Walter Cronkite was unique man- a died in the wool print journalist who made the transition to TV. He reported the major events of the 20th century and while he obviously had strong opinions on the issues of the day (s) he was not the opinionated hacks we see on the networks today. (Especially on the sewer that is Fox news these days- I wonder what Mr Cronkite had to say about Glenn Beck).
Its a tremendous loss for the country.
Watch this interview with him about his famous editorial about Vietnam, given at the height of the Tet offensive:
They don’t make journalists like that anymore. And the new age of TV won’t create anyone like him. Guess I’m lucky to say I got to see him and the folks he trained.
But not busy enough to notice that Gundam is at Odaiba in Tokyo:
P.S. when I first met the S.O-we had a couple of very romantic dates in Odaiba. On my dresser-snuggled in Pooh-san- is a picture of one of them. It keeps me from losing my temper when she drags me out for garden stuff.
Middle of the road kind of guy. Love living in Asia and will be back there as soon as I can. I lived 8 and a half grand and glorious years in Asia traveling from one end to the other and generally having a really good time. Despite my best efforts to stay, I was "Quantum Leaped" to a 3 and 1/2 year exile in the USA to pay for my sins - suffering through the lunacy that is life in the American South. I am now back overseas, living the expat life again, working my way around the world- taking the long way home to Asia via the path of living in Germany. Like Dr. Samuel Beckett, I am hoping my next leap will be the leap that brings me home to Asia. Always on the lookout for my next ex-wife.
