bookofjoe

Why don't trapped airline passengers Twitter their distress?

Reading about the most recent in-plane hostage fiasco, in Minnesota last weekend aboard Continental Express Flight 2816 from Houston, bound for Minneapolis but instead diverted to Rochester to spend the night on the tarmac, I got to wondering why it was that nobody aboard the plane tweeted about the nightmare as it was happening.

Surely one of the 51 involuntarily imprisoned passengers had a Twitter account, wouldn't you think?

And you know there were plenty of people with BlackBerrys and iPhones.

A stream of real time tweets and photos of the hellish on-board conditions would've started an online TwitterNation buzz that got real loud real fast, such that the passengers would've been released into the relative comfort of the Rochester terminal in a Cory Doctorow second.

Speaking of which, I wonder what he would've done had he been aboard.

Cory?

Bueller?

Anyone?

If you ever fly and don't have a Twitter account, make sure you set one up the moment you finish reading this post.

Because if you don't, and one day you find yourself aboard a stinking, cramped, noisy plane like the unfortunate Continental passengers and countless others like them — according to today's New York Times editorial about the ordeal, "... passengers aboard 278 planes suffered tarmac delays of three hours or more in June alone" — you'll wish you had.

Hold on, let me get my calculator... that's an average of nine flights from hell every single day.

If that doesn't motivate you, well, I've done all I can.

FunFact: "When flight 2816 finally got to Minneapolis about 9:15 a.m., passengers stormed a Continental service desk and were offered a phone number: 1-800-WECARE2."

True.

Photo Circle Cutter

From a website:

• Cuts 3 differerent circle sizes — 2.5", 3.4" and 3.7".

• Includes spare blades

• Easy and safe to use

• Includes 30 photo clips

$14.

Living Pictures — by Mole and Thomas

"Englishman Arthur S. Mole and his American colleague John D. Thomas took these incredible pictures of thousands of soldiers forming icons of American history. Arthur's great nephew Joseph Mole, 70, says: 'In the picture of the Statue of Liberty [above] there are 18,000 men: 12,000 of them in the torch alone, but just 17 at the base. The men at the top of the picture are actually half a mile away from the men at the bottom."

Back story here.

Below,

"The Living Uncle Sam: 19,000 officers and men at Camp Lee, Virginia, January 13, 1919."

Below,

"The Living Emblem of the United States Marines, formed by 100 officers and 9,000 enlisted men at the Marine Barracks, Parris Island, South Carolina."

"It would take a week to get all the outlines right, but just 30 minutes to move all the men into position to take the shot. It must have been amazing to watch."

Below,

"A portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, formed of 21,000 officers and men at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1918."

"When it came to the day of the photograph Arthur would then be able to put all the pieces together, he could say to 157 men 'move there and you can be Woodrow Wilson's ear.'"

Below,

"The Human Liberty Bell, formed by 25,000 officers and men at Camp Dix, New Jersey, 1918."

Below,

"The Human U.S. Shield: 30,000 officers and men at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan, 1918."

"Mole and Thomas' work was the first to use a unique technique to beat the problem of perspective after they devised a clever way of getting so many soldiers in the pictures. Arthur's great nephew Joseph explains: 'Arthur was able to get the image by actually drawing an outline on the lens, he then had the troops place flags in certain positions while he looked through the camera."

Below,

"The Human American Eagle: 12,500 officers, nurses and men at Camp Gordon, Atlanta, Georgia, 1918.

[via The Telegraph and Milena]

Black cards — just the thing for Goth poker night

$16.

[via Heavenly Flames and Design Milk]

'What everyone knows isn't worth knowing'

Best quote of the month.

A favorite of recently deceased securities analyst Andrew Lanyi, who attributed it to Walter Lippman.

Of course, it's a short distance from there to Aristotle Onassis's observation that "The secret of success in business is knowing something no one else knows."

How do you spell "insider trading?"

Transformer Chair

Created by Budapest designer Peter Vardai,

 

it morphs in under 20 seconds.

Intended to be comfortable in both forms.

Carbon fiber frame,

elastic band seat.

Indoor/outdoor.

[via Bill Womack, Yanko Design and designeRoof]

Russia Rules

At least, for the moment at bookofjoe: witness current traffic above.

My ancestral homeland (my mother was born in Novozybkov, my father in Poltava — then part of Russia, now in Ukraine) rocks.

What are they?

Answer here this time tomorrow.