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EmailWednesday, 3:20 p.m.
If you live on a raft in the middle of the northern Pacific, you may want to take a look out your window about now. Boeing — out to promote its new long-range 777-200LR — is flying one of the jetliners from Hong Kong to London. The route goes over the Pacific, then North America, then the north Atlantic, and on to Heathrow. That’s 12,586 miles, give or take some circling, in about 23 hours. The flight should end early Thursday morning, U.S. time.
(Boeing has put up a heavily-animated site at http://www.777.newairplane.com/. You can track the progress of the plane from it… though if your computer is like mine, it may crash a couple of times. You’ll need the latest free version of Macromedia’s Flash player and enable your browser to display "pop-up" windows to access the site.)
This isn’t exactly Lindbergh flying solo; there are 35 people on board, including Boeing executives and engineers, eight pilots to spell each other at the controls, and a representative from the National Aeronautics Association to make sure any record they set is legit. And there’s a lot more money riding on it than the $25,000 Orteig Prize Lindbergh won.
The audience for this project is a select one — higher-ups at airlines that need long-haul planes. Boeing’s trying to beat out Europe’s Airbus for plane orders; the Airbus 340-500 can only fly 10,380 miles.
Which leads to one last point: in order to claim the record for longest flight by a commercial jetliner, Boeing’s plane is going from Hong Kong to London the long way around. A 23 hour trip is strictly for the books; several airlines already fly the route, going over Asia, in about 13 hours.
–Ned
Space Station Flies Over Eastern U.S. at Night 
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Okay, you invited comments on Intelligent Design and I go to the web address given and get this big runaround and have to click on everything under the sun and finally get to this one.
Can we agree on something? Can we agree that any scientist is going to encounter people who believe in Intelligent Design? So why should the scientist be ignorant of what these people believe?
Can we agree on something else? Can we agree that practically all scientists for whom the Theory of Evolution is a part of their job (High School Biology teachers, College professors, paleontologists on a dig, ect) recieve virtually 100% of their funding from taxpayers? Can we agree that at least 20% of those taxpayers are Evangelical Christians who believe quite strongly in Intelligent Design? 10% of Americans are Blacks and look at the profound impact that 10% has on our laws. 10% are Hispanic and look at the huge impact they have. Here’s a group TWICE the size of either of those two. Shouldn’t their concerns be taken into account? Politicians from both Parties go to Church every Election season. When was the last time one of them went to a science convention? Probably only 5% of the population is as adamantly pro-Evolution as the 20% that is adamantly pro-Creationism. The remaining 75% basically doesn’t give a hoot.
How does including the teaching of Intelligent Design threaten the teaching of Chemistry? Aren’t the elements going to combine the same? What about Physics? Isn’t gravity still going to work the same?
So it’s only Biology. But isn’t the stomache still going to digest food? Won’t sap still flow in the trees? Doesn’t it all boil down to a couple of weeks when Evolution is discussed? Aren’t High School Biology teachers going to encounter parents who believe in Creationism? Is the teacher going to dismiss these parent’s as stupid and ignorant? In that case, shouldn’t school budgets be slashed by the 20% these taxpayers pay so they can send their children to church schools? I wonder how the School Board would recieve that news? You must admit, vouchers taking away 20% of the school budget is the only fair alternative if it’s too much to spend a little time on Intelligent Design.
Posted by: CAllenDoudna | November 9, 2005, 8:04 pm 8:04 pm