Comments on: What really happened …

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:39:23 +0000

thanks, jre, that’s clarifying.

not a central prop and an anomalous side-prop. instead, two symmetrical props offset from the midline and pushed forward on long cones.

oh god, now it’s looking like jane russell.

By: jre

jre — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:24:24 +0000

Wikimedia's image of Avion 3 appears to be the source of the more colorful (if brain-hurting) landscape with orbiting server. Here is why it looks so goofy in 3/4 frontal view.

By: RobNYNY1957

RobNYNY1957 — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:40:53 +0000

The upper photograph is a heavily retouched picture of a steam-powered airplane designed and allegedly flown 300 meters by a French inventor, Clement Ader, in 1897, six years before the Wright Brothers’ flight in 1903. Witnesses to the event, on the other hand, said that all of the wheels may have left the ground for a moment as it trundled across a field, but nothing like controlled flight was attained.

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:06:23 +0000

and it’s no easy thing, mopping up a wake, either. i’m not sure seven maids with seven mops could do it in seven years.

unless it’s an irish wake, in which case it needs to be sopped up. or perhaps it’s an italian wake that’s all mobbed up. wake me when it’s over.

By: Salient

Salient — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:56:51 +0000

salient failed to make salient point, however, which is that there is no way that this airplane originally had a left propeller without a right.

Well, I had to leave something for the scholars in my wake to mop up, didn’t I? :)

By: kid bitzer

kid bitzer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:41:30 +0000

like salient, i was struck by the additional and asymmetrical propeller on the left wing of the upper craft.

ow! it hurts being struck by a propeller, even when, so far as i can tell, it is not connected to any engine.

salient failed to make salient point, however, which is that there is no way that this airplane originally had a left propeller without a right. this drawing has been photo-shopped. either a propeller has been added to the left wing, or a propeller has been deleted from the right wing. check the shadows! check the kerning!

By: jholbo

jholbo — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:02:40 +0000

The Flickr set says that particular picture of the internet was mailed in 1925, using a 2 penny stamp. It’s sorta funny: H.G. Wells made this complaint about “Metropolis” (1927). He said that all the airplane designs were out of date. What’s interesting to me about the postcard is that it’s pre-”Metropolis”, but looks a lot like it. (Not that there wasn’t a lot of that stuff going around.

By: bob

bob — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:38:36 +0000

Your ‘City of the Future’ is clearly not ‘circa 1925’ – the aeroplanes mark it as pre-WWI. A decade makes a big difference.

By: ajay

ajay — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:13:08 +0000

You can tell that Holbo’s been pondering how to get one up on Cory Doctorow ever since he heard about Doctorow’s balloon.

By: jholbo

jholbo — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:08:00 +0000

That’s the hell of it, walt. You want to have implicit contempt for the unemployed because that’s so la-de-dah uppercrust. But the lousy rotters are so thick skulled you just have to let it show. Have you ever tried to be explicitly implicitly contemptuous of the unemployed? It’s a full-time job, I’m telling you.

By: Salient

Salient — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:07:48 +0000

Now get back to work! All of you!

No. I am going to spend the rest of the day contemplating the location of the ancillary propeller on your (bat)mobile server.

By: Walt

Walt — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:46:11 +0000

I knew this blog had a lot of implicit contempt for the unemployed, but I never expected to see it demonstrated so openly.