Oppositelock

Oblig. link to the story about the fastest guys in the desert. https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

I love advertising from the first half of the 20th century. I recently stumbled upon Willys-Overland’s WWII ads featuring artwork by James Sessions: https://oppositelock.kinja.com/willys-ads-wwii-1841716141

Not the same plane, but this reminded me of the amusing "my planes faster than yours" ground speed check of the Blackbird pilot. https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041/amp

Every time I see a story on mission control I always search for the ground speed check story[0]. Probably one of my favourite pieces of writing and a really cool story. Never fails to lift my mood. I particularly like how he describes how air traffic controllers voices are modeled on the Housten Centre voice. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

This thread is lacking the Blackbird ground speed check. https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041?_gl=1*1…

There is a few really great stories about the SR-71 on the internet, many out of the book "Sled Driver". I would not (as it is customary on other parts of the internet) leave the full copy-pasta here, but I do recommend the "air speed check) story (to be found e.g. at https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 ) and the low fly-by (e.g. at https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-sr-71-blackbirds-most-spectacula…

Note: this is just a general guess. But my money is on this just being a military test—some SR71-like replacement (probably air-breathing, maybe even unmanned). It's not really out of the question, but a big hole in this idea is that merging with general air traffic is usually a no-no even by military standards. Anyways, on a somewhat unrelated note, it just reminds me of this[0] story, for anyone even remotely interested in flight. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

> "Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are all doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress." I find something very entertaining when I hear stories of pilots/air traffic controllers communications during emergencies/exciting situations that are extremely calm. It reminds me of the classic SR-71 Blackbird "Speed Check" story. Edit: For those unfamiliar, the story is here http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

My favorite story about the SR-71 being badass: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

The story: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 Merry Christmas to everyone who hasn't read it yet.

Hilarious context, for those who haven't read it yet: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

Speaking of the SR-71, you guys should all read the heavily reposted stories about it. It's such an amazing plane. While it's not flying in the sky anymore, it deserves to fly in our imagination every time somebody speaks about it. http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041

Not sure if it'll help, since I don't have any teaching experience, but coming at this from the perspective of a student, thinking of what your students might be thinking given what they're saying: First, "not dry" doesn't necessarily mean "not prepared" or "spontaneous". Consider things like the SR-71 story [1] or the unprotected VNC endpoints presentation [2]. Second, keep in mind what you can give students that they can't get from a textbook or another lecture that they find on youtube. The best professors I had weren't the ones that could quote the textbook; the best professors I had were the ones that could provide context for the textbook, or tell stories that illustrated important edge cases or institutional knowledge that isn't written in any textbook. There's a huge amount of wisdom that could never be "professional" enough to make it into a textbook but is nevertheless fantastic for helping a student understand or remember the material. For example, consider the "Things I Won't Work With" series; would never get past a textbook review committee, but absolutely riveting on top of the information transfer. Third, and finally, how these relate to helping students absorb knowledge. Consider spaced repetition and the method of loci [4] and what they mean about how the human brain forms knowledge: People remember networks of knowledge, not single facts. That's why I cite war stories above - giving students a story to wrap around an idea lets them link to it from…

If you know exactly where the problem lies, then I agree that in some cases a conference call might not help. However, more often than not, part of the challenge in large-impact outages is figuring out what's going on and where the problem actually lies. In a microservices or SOA architecture, services can layer on top of other services, that call more services, that put messages in a queue for handling by yet another service, etc., belonging to different teams. Unwinding this to identify the problem is something that's much faster with a phone call. "Connecting the dots", especially across teams. A technical discussion within a team is likely to take place by chat. I've participated in a number of tech conference calls over the years, and I've always been impressed with the professionalism: the discussion is calm and focused on identifying the problem and recovering. I think folks strive for the "cool radio voice", the Houston Center Voice like was described in the SR-71 Ultimate Ground Speed Check story: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 > Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the " Houston Center voice." I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country's space program and listening to the calm and…

I don't think you're right there at all. Taking your specific example, a '95 Golf got about 24mpg (combined cycle). Today, the 2 liter gasoline engine gets ~36 combined. That's despite the '95 golf having a curb weight of around 2,500lbs, and the 2015 being over 3,000lbs. Don't forget that since the '90s, European and USA crash safety legislation has caused very large increases in vehicle mass. Airbags, collapsing structures, side impact beams, rollover protection all are required now. And finally (though you didn't mention this), the crappy visibility of today's cars is directly as a result of increases in crash safety standards: poor visibility is a function of thick A, B, and C pillars; they are thicker today because cars have to stand up to more. Edit to add: This video shows a 50+ year old Chevy Bel Air in a head on, offset collision with a modern Chevrolet grey box. No analysis, and I'm not putting it here to add weight to any point, but it does show that we have made some progress. http://oppositelock.kinja.com/classic-car-vs-modern-car-safety-1642008…

Yes, I’ve seen it. Comparatively very few people in the US tow with cars compared to the rest of the world. For two reasons: 1. Pickups are comparatively very popular in the US. 2. The US has more stringent regulations for towing than the rest of the world; a vehicle rated to tow 2000lbs in EU often is rated to tow nothing at all in the US. [0] 0: https://oppositelock.kinja.com/tow-me-down-1609112611

With the exception of RMS Queen Mary 2 (Cunard Line: 2004-present), the ocean liner is nearly extinct. https://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-last-surviving-transatlantic-ocean-…

First I've heard of the suggestion that the cost of a car should be 50% of annual pay. To me that's insane, but then again I view my car as an appliance[0]. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/i-used-to-take-it-as-a-given-that-an-in…

Seriously, there are worse cities than LA. Toronto has arguably the worst traffic in North America [0] [0] - http://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-busiest-highway-in-north-america-155…

And would stall well above 130 knots. FWIW here's a story by a former SR-71 driver that makes it clear that the plane isn't capable of flying that slowly. http://oppositelock.kinja.com/what-was-the-slowest-you-ever-flew-in-th…

That was called a 'Tall Wagon' in its day: http://oppositelock.kinja.com/tall-wagons-ranked-1690577814 Convergent evolution has replaced many SUVs with 'crossovers', which are basically the same thing, without the word cursed word 'wagon', tainted in many Baby Boomers' minds as a symbol of stodgy parenthood.

3rd party repairers have the ability to do this for you because they have BMW-compatible programmers. Because BMW must release make that possible for them. By law. It's also there for a reason: the charging system needs to be told that the battery was changed and what type of battery it was changed to. Otherwise it charges it the wrong way. Unlike Apple batteries, the car batteries are dumb and can't tell the car about themselves. The warning light won't come on just because you replaced a battery. It'll come on a few days later if you replaced a battery and didn't tell the system about it so now the battery is performing poorly because it was being charged incorrectly. 3rd party manufacturers, by law, have access to the programming tools required to do this for you. Apple holds the equivalent of these programming tools away from everyone and aggressively sues anyone that manages to obtain them or reverse engineer them. I guess a better analogy would have been '3rd party repair shops installs genuine BMW battery but is unable to register it because the tools to do so are held hostage'. https://oppositelock.kinja.com/replacing-bmw-batteries-yes-it-is-ridic…