Not saying this is the WORST GAFFE EVER, but does Romney not understand about the pressurized cabin?
Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction.
“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem.”
Maybe he was kidding. Maybe air pressure is a librul myth like evolution and global warming.
Felinious Wench
I really don’t think he was kidding. I’ve seen no capacity for kidding from him yet.
raven
Fly his ass in a slick with his feet on the skids.
Sly
How did air pressure get there, pinhead?
schrodinger's cat
Physics is a liberal conspiracy. Gravitation is just a theory. Jesus will save you if jump out of a building.
Ruckus
You are trying to give mittshit too much credit. He really is this stupid.
He doesn’t understand pressurization and he doesn’t understand fire.
And he has the sense of humor of a milk truck.
Mnemosyne
I’m guessing Romney doesn’t watch “Mythbusters,” which has covered airplanes and airline myths pretty extensively, but fortunately there is a presidental candidate running this year who does.
hoppipolla
not just a Hüsker Dü reference, a Candy Apple Grey reference. you’re a deep one, DougJ. poor Money Boo-Boo, he’s had sycophants around him all his adult life, telling him he’s a Brilliant Leader for so long he’s come to believe it. plus he has no shame filter to stop him from saying something appalling every time he opens his yap.
BGinCHI
Wait, he wants there to be more oxygen during a fire?
Man, that dude really hates his wife.
ranchandsyrup
With politico and others outlining mitt’s transition activities, it is irresponsible not to speculate that he’ll name the insane clown possee as science advisors. After they figure out how magnets work, on to air pressure and such.
Maude
Yeah, let’s get some air on that flame. Lordy he is stupid.
Linda Featheringill
In the terms of the board game “Clue,” I suggest that Mr. Romney is suffering from at least the early stages of an organic cerebral deterioration.
I’ll bet you $10,000 that he knew the answer to that a few years ago.
eric
ha. laugh all you want libtards. just because your candidate cannot afford to buy a plane with electronic windows, dont get on Mitt.
eemom
Maybe he should just not talk at all between now and Election Day. I mean his handlers have got to be considering that option.
MattR
Not to mention the effects of oxygen on a fire.
I assume there is also some separate source for the plane’s oxygen masks which would not have been affected by the fire and they would have been deployed if it beecame necessary.
scav
I’m sure they meant to get a trend on twitter all along, right? All publicity is good publicity and this is outreach to the k001 kidz, rgt? Do planes go tweet? Do their flaps flap?
cunning, cunning.
Violet
Makes it easier to see the dog on top of the plane if the windows open.
Ruckus
I see by the evidence presented that there are more people on this blog smart enough to be president than the republicans could find to run.
schrodinger's cat
I need some help:
OT: Can anyone of the html programers, website designers suggest a book for html, css stuff? I have some background in programming (C++) but I haven’t done it in a while. Something with more substance than the Idiots Guide series but less complicated than the O’ Reilly books.
Thanks!
Linda Featheringill
When Amir Khalid asked a day or two ago what we thought Mitt’s next big gaff would be, I never would have thought it would be something like this.
This is just as dumb as Akin’s theories on the workings of lady parts.
Loneoak
It’s class privilege. Ann had to live through something uncomfortable and scary. That does not happen to someone of her station, laws of physics and limits of human biology be damned. Ipso facto galt ad absurdum, windows on planes should be open-able.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Now, everybody knows to attach the crate to the plane roof you need an open window on each side to run the strap through. Duh. Just like transporting a mattress on I-5.
wrb
Mitt can’t fly unless he puts his magic undies on the outside.
eemom
@Linda Featheringill:
I actually remember asking my father why you couldn’t open the windows on an airplane when I was 10.
And, although I am generally not the brightest light on the tree when it comes to technical matters, I am proud to say I have kept a firm grip on the information ever since.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: I don’t trust Mythbusters after they claimed that cans of soda wont explode if left in a car. I’ve seen firsthand the damage that is done when they do explode (not to mention how pissed your father gets when you return his car with soda stains all over the back seat, door and ceiling on the driver’s side)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Somebody check to make sure James Fallows doesn’t stroke out over this, he’s really into aviation.
schrodinger's cat
@BGinCHI: Heh may be that’s why he sends her out to campaign so much, uses her sparingly so that he doesn’t get too tired of her.
trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
Eye bee taking a class at the local college this fall and the main text is “Murach’s HTML5 and CSS3.”
You might could give it a look–it’s very thick. Helpful to me is the text is on left-hand pages with examples on the right, appealing to both your verbal and visual learners.
Ruckus
@eemom:
At ten you were more mature than mittshit is today. I can tell by the fact that you asked a question instead of assuming something stupid.
trollhattan
@MattR:
“Back in the day” VW beetles occasionally had their rear windows blow out on hot days because the passenger compartments were sealed–or at least that’s what we were told (e.g., Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”). I at least saw the aftermath of several such burstings.
Brachiator
It’s not a gaffe. Nobody cares. Normal people will register his concern for his wife and overlook the part where he just sounds like a confused old man.
@Loneoak:
I read this as, “it’s glass privilege.”
A paneful pun.
And even if they don’t open, the windows are the right height.
Amir Khalid
This is all very unfair. You know perfectly well that Mitt Romney is a man of faith, not of science — and he is most definitely not a man of knowledge.
wesindc
Wow, I think by now the popcorn supply in the US has drastically declined due to several factors; Mitt’s campaign and the drought (of course we all know is caused by ancient Dinosaur farts). This campaign is like a the Mr Toad’s wild ride from Disneyland. Twists and turns and silly. Can’t wait for the debates when Obama gives Mr. Thurston…sorry Romney a nice dirty sanchez, but doubt it will show with the spray tan.
wonkie
Daily Kos has a hilarious series of tweets in responnse to this. One of my faves:
If you get sucked out the window during the flight, just go to the emergency room.
schrodinger's cat
@Brachiator: It makes Mittens sound like he doesn’t understand grade-school level physics. Is he trying to win the Palin demographic, or is he really that clueless?
Narcissus
Maybe they’ve just decided to overload us with gaffe after gaffe so nobody can focus on one thing.
Amir Khalid
@Linda Featheringill:
I’ve also suggested scoring them out of 10, like gymnastics routines at the Olympics.
schrodinger's cat
@trollhattan: Kthx! I will look it up.
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: If you don’t mind waiting a bit, I have a good library-at home. I believe the name is sitepoint. http://www.sitepoint.com/ in fact, looking at the covers on the site, I am 99% sure that it is. They have podcasts, webinars and a great range of books on these subjects. Including UI, which is what I’m hoping will restart my career. Hope that helps.
Redshift
@trollhattan: That seems unlikely.
Popular Mechanics, I think, once ran a letter asking whether it was dangerous to run your car’s ventilation system on “recirculate” for too long, because you would run out of oxygen.
Their answer? Yes, and if you run it blowing in outside air, your car will explode.
Jay in Oregon
@schrodinger’s cat:
I prefer to call it “Intelligent falling”, myself.
Tony J
The trolls are already fanning out across the interwebs pushing the “He was worried about his wife, you partisan rubber-neckers!” line, along with “Of course he knows about aircraft windows. He was joking, duh!”. Sure, they cancel each other out, but you can’t expect them to find consistancy until the winger blogs they read pass on the official story, which will almost certainly be option 2.
I mean, it has to be a joke, right? ‘Backdraft’ came out years ago.
dmsilev
@Linda Featheringill:
I *told* him at the time that Mitt would come up with something that nobody could have predicted.
Can we have a new tag of “Mitt Romney’s Daily Gaffe” or similar?
jl
Real men open their mouths and suck it up at 40 thou.
…or, maybe that did not come out right.
Here is a Romney birther, or something, scandal for you.
Is Mitt really Henry Spencer from Eraserhead? (And just thinking about that film creeps me out)
MITT ROMNEY ISN’T TELLING US EXACTLY HOW HE WILL RUIN THE HOUSING SECTOR
http://wonkette.com/485024/mitt-romney-isnt-telling-us-exactly-how-he-will-ruin-the-housing-sector
Edit: On second thought, that pic of Romney could just be him flying across country with the windows open. So, never mind. Romney/Eraserhead scandal is NOT GO,
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid: Rating them is good, but only if we take the modern scoring method and account for degree of difficulty. This one scores well on that scale; not only has he expressed a lack of knowledge of grade-school science, but also apparently expressed a desire for his wife to be burned in a fire.
Redshift
I think it’s a different flavor than W of what Molly Ivins phrased “not stupid, but willfully ignorant and proud of it.”
In Mitt’s case, he’s not ignorant about everything, but he has that CEO assumption that he’s always the smartest person in the room, even when there’s no justification for it. So sure, if he’d thought it through, he’s probably smart enough to remember that the plane is pressurized, and it’s not a good idea to let passengers open the windows even if it might occasionally be convenient when you’re on the ground.
His flaw (well, one of them) is that he doesn’t bother to think it through, because he’s sure he knows more than you without thinking about it. So the first thought, which is that it would have been great for Queen Ann to get some fresh air, leads directly to the assumption that since nobody who builds or operates planes could possibly be as smart as him, they must not have thought about this really obvious idea that came to him.
No, it’s not really a gaffe, because it’s not going to change anyone’s opinion. But it is revealing all the same, and, like the accumulation of events that led to Jerry Ford being thought of (unfairly) as a dimwitted clumsy oaf, it could help solidify the impression that he’s condescending dick with a propensity for shooting off his mouth about things he knows nothing about.
trollhattan
@Redshift:
Heh.
I best recall the beetle’s ironic gas-chamber heater, which, being effectively part of the exhaust system, could pull exhaust inside when the heat exchanger rusted through.
That smell was the simulation of heat.
lol
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s a website but I’ve found w3schools pretty useful for getting the basics of a wide variety of web development type stuff. Might help you get a feel for your skill level before grabbing a book.
Redshift
@dmsilev:
Perhaps “Mitt Romney’s Most Recent Gaffe” would be more forward-looking. As the election draws closer and the pressure ratchets up, I wouldn’t want to be locked into the assumption that he won’t have more than one a day.
Litlebritdifrnt
The Romneyplane hashtag on Twitter today was hilarious my favorite, “two right wings”.
Brachiator
@schrodinger’s cat:
Do they even teach physics in grade school?
The average mook would get confused by this. Hell, I half expected somebody here to say, “yeah, getting sucked out a plane is real dangerous. Like in Goldfinger.”
I love to pile on Mittens as much as anyone, but this ain’t much of a gaffe. It has no significant political relevance.
ETA: A reference here to Backdraft. If it’s in the movies, it must be true.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
I’d give this one a purely subjective 7.5 to 8.0.
RinaX
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve used the Apress stuff with success when I needed to brush up on new things. Here’s one of their older titles:
http://www.apress.com/9781590597477
There’s an updated version coming out next month that you might want to get the most up to date stuff.
http://www.apress.com/9781430228745
You might want to see if you can find them in a bookstore to get a feel of these books. I always found them pretty readable for tech manuals.
Back on topic, there was a period where I feared that Mitt had used up all of his gaffe potential over the summer and that he might be able to pull it together and fool people into believing he’s competent as the election drew closer. Not so much now.
MCA1
Here’s the only charitable explanation I can come up with: he meant, when saying “I don’t know why they don’t do that” to skip backwards over the prior sentence about rolling down the windows, and was instead referring to the “there’s no way to get outside air into the cabin.”
So, translated to non-gaffespeak, “I think it would be a good idea for engineers to figure out a way to pull in some outside air and pressurize it and then get it into passengers for ventilation in case of a fire in the cabin.”
Of course, that misses the fact that there already exists such an innovation, in the form of the little yellow oxygen mask for which you see a demonstration before every commercial airline flight you take. It’s not an engineering requirement that they only drop in the case of a loss of pressure. But that’s a less dumb thing to say than that he actually thinks it would be a good idea to be able to open the window in case the guy next to you farts too much on a long flight.
Redshift
@lol: I agree, that’s a good place to start. (I’ve never had to get much beyond that level, but I don’t do a lot of HTML.) And once you start to get the hang of CSS, be sure to check out CSS Zen Garden for an amazing demonstration of the things you can do with CSS if you use it right (and lots of great examples to draw on even if you’re doing something less fancy.)
AnotherBruce
Einstein was right, stupid is infinite.
My theory is that a lot of money doesn’t necessarily make one stupid, it only makes it easier to get away with being stupid.
gwangung
@Brachiator:
Yeah, but any competent campaigner would make a joke about it and turn it around to his advantage.
Of course…this is Mittens. And the fun is watching him stew in his own juices over something he could easily fix…
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
I’m guessing they did their test at their location in the Bay Area and not, say, Death Valley in late August.
Send ’em a message on their message boards — they’re usually pretty amenable to re-testing things if you can explain why you think they got it wrong.
(I also wonder if aluminum can standards have changed between when you exploded your soda and when they did their test, but I can’t remember if you’re one of the local whippersnappers or middle-aged like me.)
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
My guess is Willard only took the minimum required science and math because those “don’t help you make massive amounts of money.” Meaning the ones he did take, he resented and only retained long enough to pass the tests.
I don’t think I’d trust him to replace a light switch or check the water chemistry in my fish pond.
schrodinger's cat
@Redshift: I knows basic html I need some help with CSS and I has no idear whut PHP is. I have downloaded some open source templates for websites and am trying to tweak them.
Thanks everyone for great suggestions. I lubs the BJ hive mind and of course Tunch.
Corner Store Operator
Don’t worry Glenn Reynolds has this covered. He’s talking up Jill Stein in USA Today and he has “mixed views on her positions.” HAHAHAHAHA
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-09-23/jill-stein-green-party-presidential/57837680/1
GxB
@BGinCHI: Finally, Mitt has something in common with the average American.
Scary thing is, Mitt was the “smart” one in the primaries. The doofus thinks cold fusion can be the answer to our long term energy needs.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: Approaching 38 too rapidly. Cans exploded the weekend after Memorial Day 1992 in Wildwood, NJ. I have alwyas wondered if it was just the heat that did it or if it was related to being cooled and heated repeatedly over a couple nights (in my defense, we thought all the cans sitting on the back wiindowsill were empty. Had we known they had soda we would have mixed them with rum) I am pretty sure one of the guys I drove down with sent something to the Mythbusters when that episode came out a few years ago.
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid:
Mitt’s gaffs:
I’d definitely give the airplane windows an 8. :-)
Tja
I’m sure Goldfinger never saw “Goldfinger” either.
Ash Can
@Violet:
Hey, show some respect — that’s Congressman Ryan to you.
(This was shamelessly and brazenly stolen from commenter Targetpractice at LGF.)
jake the snake
Was Goldfinger the 007 film that the bad guy (Oddjob?) got
sucked out the the airplane window? I suppose that movie was too risque for a good Mormon boy like Mitt.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Hey, that’s what makes him Reaganesque!
Seriously, though, he comes across as a guy who’s never flown on a commercial jet, which is yet another example of his out-of-touchness. It’s not the world’s worst gaffe, but it sure contributes to the image most people already have of him, and that ain’t good news for Mittens.
LanceThruster
Important man orders submersible with screen doors. Sub presumed lost with all hands.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
This wouldn’t make him much different from the average American.
The average citizen at leasts respects science a lot more than the average wingnut. But there ain’t a whole lot of science literacy in the US, and while I’m sure that Obama is miles ahead of Mittens on this, Romney is probably representative of most politicians in both parties.
MattR
@jake the snake: So I am guessing no “Snakes on a Plane” and probably not “Drop Zone”, but he is running for president so he has to have seen “Executive Decision”
LanceThruster
Does Mittens think that AF1 doesn’t have roll down windows because those dirty Dems spent it all on freeloaders and moochers?
Was his campaign bus a short bus or a long one?
It’s quite posible old helmet hair needs to wear one all the time (and possibly have his immediate surroundings “baby proofed” to pad any sharp edges).
LanceThruster
Q: If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?
A: If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?
Delia
One of my favorite Nietzsche aphorisms is “Power makes stupid.” I think Mitt was made for it.
Another Halocene Human
@Redshift: Mitt Romney IS Dilbert’s Pointy-Haired Boss.
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
My guess would be that it was the repeated cooling and heating that weakened the metal and caused it to fail, but IANAMB (I am not a MythBuster).
LanceThruster
Finally Rmoney speaking truthfully about something.
“I don’t know why…[fill in blank]” explains an awful lot about what comes out of his mouth.
LanceThruster
@Another Halocene Human:
I hope Pres. Obama treats him like Dogbert’s IT Support in the debates.
Mouse cursor is at the edge of the display screen? Try moving your desk closer to the wall.
LanceThruster
@eemom:
I liked Bill Cosby’s bit about jumping up in a plane or elevator crash just before hitting the ground.
I mean…it could work, no?
FlipYrWhig
I can’t believe I was actually doing “work” the day DougJ used a Hüsker reference in a post title. Pffft.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
RE: Normal people will register his concern for his wife and overlook the part where he just sounds like a confused old man.
The windows in private jets may be the right height, but aerodynamics ain’t any different from what operates on any kind of aircraft.
I’m not seeing how flying commercial would make Mittens any more conversant with science.
And it’s his attitude toward life and the world, not merely his money that makes him out of touch. He seems to have gone out of his way to make choices that would guarantee that he was insulated. His own father chose a different path.
g
What’s missing due to being overshadowed by the general hilarity here is the fact that Mitt was ony concerned about Ann – presumably, she wasn’t the only person on the plane. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about the other people riding with her.
jill
@trollhattan:
oh yes, I remember my vw bugs that I loved so. It was always a difficult choice, whether to risk carbon monoxide poisoning or hypothermia. Good times…
PurpleGirl
@MattR: The oxygen masks are attached to oxygen generators, canisters which typically process about 12 minutes worth of oxygen. It is enough for the pilot to hopefully get the airplane down to a low enough altitude that they don’t need the pressurized oxygen.
(I regularly like to watch those shows on National Geographic about air emergencies and crashes. Last Friday morning they had several on, including one which involved pressurization of the plane’s cabin.)
Shawn in ShowMe
Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the nation’s greatest popularizer of science but advising a special ed case like Mitt would be a little below his pay grade. What’s Beakman doing these days?
LanceThruster
@Linda Featheringill:
Good observation. All the victim needs to do is close the baby window during a legitimate rape and…problem solved!
Mike G
@ranchandsyrup:
In in the spirit of true Rethug willful-ignorance ideology, he’ll name Bill O’Reilly as head of NOAA:
O’REILLY: I’ll tell you why [religion’s] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.
SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out?
O’REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can’t explain that.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/bill-oreilly-thinks-tides-are-proof-
LanceThruster
@Shawn in ShowMe:
I remember feeling a little put off by Mr. Wizard hectoring the children when they didn’t have the correct answer after he supposedly led them to the proper conclusion (what kid in front of a TV camera might not have the occasional brain freeze?) in a given demonstration.
Maybe Mr. Mittens himself was traumatized by various purveyors of science who to this day insist that there is only ONE correct answer.
delosgatos
Well, of course you should be able to roll down the windows. How else can you hose off the dog strapped to the top of the plane?
LanceThruster
@Mike G:
It is clearly seen that you cannot argue with such logic.
Magic Panda
@FlipYrWhig: You get extra credit for the Hüsker Dü reference with your handle, though.
FlipYrWhig
@LanceThruster: If it’s a legitimate loss of cabin pressure, the plane body has ways of shutting that whole thing down. Or it would, if not for all those pesky regulations.
Shalimar
Fine, he doesn’t know why the windows in an airplane won’t open. I assume there are lots and lots of people who don’t, probably far more than one would guess. What I don’t understand is why he wouldn’t do the normal thing and keep his mouth shut about something he clearly knows nothing about. With all the brilliant people who have been in the aviation field over the last 110 years, even if you don’t know the answer, you have to assume there is a very good one and you’re not coming up with a question no one has thought of.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
I don’t know about this gaffe. Now if he said that this incident pointed to the need for increased oversight of commercial chartered jets to improve their safety during flights. Well that would have been a gaffe.
Ruckus
@jill:
I must have had a defective bug. I never felt anything like air warmer than the outside air from any so called heater. Certainly nothing that would defrost the window.
PurpleGirl
@Brachiator: I’m not seeing how flying commercial would make Mittens any more conversant with science.
Presumably if he rode commercial jets he would hear the flight attendants’ little lecture about how to use the oxygen masks should they deploy. I don’t remember what else they say in the speeches but he’s at least hear that.
Carl Nyberg
I actually think this is a pretty major revelation about the thinking of Mitt Romney.
He was upset because his wife experience discomfort (her eyes water) and was potentially at some risk.
This is understandable (at least the part about her being at risk).
But then Romney jumps to the conclusion that the thousands of people who have participated in designing, testing and building aircraft never thought of having a window that opens.
Really, Mitt? Do you think you have more insight about aircraft design than the people who have gotten advanced degrees? Than the people that have worked for NASA? Than the various people who have spent their whole careers in various countries designing and building aircraft?
Mitt, you think you’re flash insight is better than the total wisdom of all the people who have worked on aircraft in the public and private sector? Does that really make sense?
Yes, I studied engineering. And yes, I got to take fluid dynamics twice.
I’m OK with a politician not knowing details of engineering I know.
But what I’m not OK with is a politician who casually dismisses the collective wisdom of people who do have more technical knowledge than s/he does.
I’m thankful that as a junior officer in the Navy, I had to learn to make judgments about when an idea I had was impractical for technical or human reasons and when an excuse was being given to maintain the status quo.
What this statement reveals is that Romney’s massive ego will cause him to make poor judgments because he doesn’t respect the collective wisdom of others that aren’t capable/driven/smart enough to make as much money as he did.
So, to me this is a catastrophic gaffe that should cause a large swath of the electorate to doubt Romney’s ability to make reasonable judgments as President.
tone
@Redshift:
But he actually says “I don’t know why they don’t do that -it’s a real problem”.
Wow.it’s a real problem.
wow.
Carl Nyberg
It would be pretty amusing to give Romney the Seamus treatment of flying him an hour or so on a plane where the cabin was not pressurized or heated and the cockpit was pressurized and heated.
That might cause wisdom. Might not too.
MattR
@Carl Nyberg: The moral he’d learn is that he needs to get his pilot’s license and buy a plane so he can sit in the warm cockpit.
Kilkee
@MattR: They said that? I’m also proof that indeed they do, and it doesn’t have to be 18 hours of Saharan sun, either.
Bago
My read is that he was shaken up by the whole “my wife was on a plane that was on fire” and was just tossing shit out there without thinking about it. Of course this is the 3 A.M. Phone call moment, and forgetting how fire works is a bit… Troubling.
Bago
@schrodinger’s cat: Quick and dirty HTML.
XML is a tree with children nodes.
The nodes are called elements, and they have attributes, name value pairs that you can assign values to. Consider them members of a class.
HTML is an implementation of XML where the element names are parsed by browsers in agreed upon ways. Tags like head and body mean certain things.
CSS is pretty much a class definition for attributes.
You write the base markup around the content, but add an attribute that it belongs to a named class.
The CSS is a series of definitions with names, so element gets tagged with the fact that it needs to import its attribute settings from class “foo” from CSS “bar”.
This way you can tweak font sizes and whatnot on the whole page by tweaking the CSS. You don’t have to touch the content, as the CSS is separate.
A division of labor kind of thing.
El Cid
@Bago: Well, maybe that’s because he’s been forwarded an e-mail which assures him that there are tons of scientists and citizen-scientists who refuse to give in to the myth of oxygenic burning.
Lots of fires have happened in the Urf’s history, and government scientists who want grants maybe need to understand that we breathe oxygen, and shouldn’t demonize it.
delosgatos
@Bago:
Forgetting how fire works – bad.
Forgetting how oxygen works – bad.
Forgetting how fire and oxygen work at 20,000 feet – priceless.
El Cid
@Carl Nyberg: My guess is that the plane probably had oxygen tanks for emergency medical aid, if necessary. That’s my guess when it comes to a plane flown for the family of one of the two major party Presidential candidates and accompanied by the Secret Service.
Delia
@Carl Nyberg:
Very amusing, yes. Cause wisdom in a 65 year old arrogant SOB who’s shown no sign of it so far? Not so much.
mcd410x
At 20,000 feet, the partial pressure of oxygen is half what it is at 0 feet. Opening the window would, in effect, suppress the fire by half.
Which is why a person needs supplemental oxygen at that altitude.
BC
Well, duh, why don’t they just teach the Mrs. Romney how to parachute out of the plane and she can take personal responsibility for herself in the event there is another fire rather than waiting for the soci*alist fire department to come and rescue her. This is the “severe conservative” way of doing things.
BC
@Bago: Yes, a bit too much panic and not a great deal of thought. Same as we had after 9/11, when all our leaders in Washington seemed to lose their heads.
Bill D.
@LanceThruster:
Funny how it’s now called a mouse cursor. Wouldn’t it be great if they came up with a simple name to distinguish this cursor from the other one… like maybe pointer? Just a thought… ;-)
pseudonymous in nc
Fallows is actually quite gentle on Romney, and suggests that Mittens is not particularly set with being one of the jet-set, i.e. he hates flying and especially all the air travel that is now required during a campaign.
So for once, I’ll be gentle too.
Gex
@schrodinger’s cat: Not sure if you saw my reply on the other post, but I’ve enjoyed the Head First series. They’ll teach you more than Idiots and they’re more user friendly for getting through the material.
LanceThruster
@Bill D.:
Sure. Get rid of mouse cursor one day, the next it’s no more PC computer, PIN number, or ATM machine. Where will it all end?!?
Where?
Gex
@Gex: The title is HTML with CSS & XHTML.
karen marie
@MattR: They clearly didn’t try it in Arizona. It’s happened to my nephew more than once.
graves007
It’s obvious why they don’t open. It’s because of the failed policies of Barack Obama.
John Mc.
OMFG. Long time lurker, first time commentor, the thing Doug J. has with song lyrics struck a chord (I think it’s a C) I cannot resist. That line from “Crystal” has been running through my head all day, along with “folding money in your resume”. You rule Doug. Thanks
John Mc.
For your listening pleasure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmGMlTi_-Ro
John Mc.
@Magic Panda: YES
Bill D.
@LanceThruster:
The point you’re missing is that so many people misused the term cursor to also mean pointer that the wrong usage became “correct”, leaving us with two different things being described by the same word. This results in additional explanation being required to keep things straight. Hence my point that the original usage was simply a whole lot easier – two words, each with one meaning (in the context of a computer’s user interface), and no extra words required to keep things straight.
Maybe we can abolish the word chair and call those things sitting tables. Same concept.