May 20 - a good day for yard work. Everyone needs a nice wheelbarrow like this one. Read our piece on how wheelbarrows work, here.
Fake but accurate? This story turns out to be apocryphal, but it sure was believable: Iran will require that Jews be identifiable by their clothing.
Illegal immigrants - good slide show from the border.
Becoming a Legal citizen - it's a big deal. NYT
Tom Friedman's 6-month time frame. I guess many of us have seen it the same way. FAIR
Ned Lamont - Connecticut's own John Murtha. Funny piece on his Kos commercial at RWN. Ned is a great guy, but he's way wrong on this one.
Those darn basic Christian tenements. We listen to actors? From Cannes, via My Vast ...:
“If we have offended any Christians I would ask them to forgive us, which seems to be one of the main tenements in the New Testament,” actor Paul Bettany, who plays Silas in the film, said with a smile during an interview with CNN’s Brooke Anderson at Cannes Tuesday.
Why doesn't the RC Church demand that Mexico improve conditions for its people? All they do is demand things for illegals, and ignore Mexico. Any reason? Sensible Mom has an opinion.
Phin welcomes a permanent underclass of manual laborers. Well....,
Round-up is good stuff, safe, and useful. So says Synthstuff. Glad to hear it.
The University of New Jersey at Durham. Never knew it was called that.
Talking out of school, and the next "Prep"? A new book, based on Horace Mann. Whole piece at NY Sun:
As a graduate of the Deerfield Academy, a boarding school in Massachusetts, Mr. Trees is no stranger to the world of the wealthy. He also received a degree from Princeton and a doctorate in history from the University of Virginia. The onslaught of tell-all books about the children who reside in the city's wealthiest zip codes and the people who educate them has some schools now talking about asking teachers to sign nondisclosure forms.
Milberg Weiss gets hit, hard. Couldn't happen to nicer people. Cap'n Ed.
More on the Big Airplane: From the final edition of Airline News Weekly, an article on the first A380 landing at London Heathrow:
“Although modifications are required at airports for handling the A380, Airbus believes that by 2010, 66 airports worldwide will be ready for the aircraft.
“At Heathrow, around £450m ($845m) was spent in upgrading existing facilities to accommodate the A380, with £105m ($197m) spent on the new Pier 6 which can handle up to four A380s and 2,200 passengers simultaneously. The current runways and taxiways have also been modified including the construction of new taxiways and upgraded runway lighting.”
Does anyone want to guess how much money the US might want to spend to help Airbus succeed?
Boeing projects that long-term airline passenger demand will grow at a compound rate of 4.8% through 2024, and air cargo to grow at a 6.2% rate. Airbus substantially agrees, and concluded that a much larger airplane must be built to serve that growth, and thus the A380, which they hope that 66 airports will each spend the necessary $850 million to support.
At a conference Boeing sponsored in New York on May 9, Boeing stated that since 1985, the air travel growth rate has been 5.8% a year, but that the average seats per airplane has grown only 2% over the entire period. Since 1990, the average airplane size has actually decreased. As Boeing says, “Airlines have met air travel growth with higher frequencies and more nonstops.” [linking more city pairs]. For example, Boeing points out that in 2004, US-China air travel linked 17 city pairs with 313 flights per week. Their forecast is that by 2024, 58 city pairs will have nonstop service with 860 flights a week. Even inside China itself, there were 170 city pairs linked in 1990, growing to 605 in 2000 and to 706 in 2005, and during that period the average airplane size dropped from 157 seats in 1990 to 154 seats in 2005. Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner series with 242-280 seats and a 8,000 nautical mile range will be able to link any US or EU city with any Chinese city. To get to Atlanta from Wuhan, you will be able to fly nonstop; it will not be necessary to fly to Beijing and be shoveled into an A380 with 554 other passengers and then clear customs and immigration in LA with those same 554 travelers before staggering onto the final leg to Atlanta.
This is a multi-billion dollar bet by each manufacturer – which side would you bet on?