KM made one goof in this article, stating that planes burn a lot more fuel on the ascent and the descent. Did anyone think of checking this with Salon's own Patrick Smith? It is true that planes burn tons of fuel (literally) as they muscle their way up to 7 miles above sea level at the maximum power their engines can sustain. The descent, however, is pure Isaac Newton. To oversimplify, the pilot throttles back and lets the plane drop out of the sky. Reduced power equals reduced emissions, end of story.

Try this experiment at home: find something heavy, like a brick or a stone. Lift it over your head. Carry it for a while. Set it down. Which required the most energy? Which required the least?

On another note, I would propose that one way to reduce carbon emissions from air travel would be to eliminate weddings. I'm all for the idea of long vacations with few flights, but we've got 4 weddings to attend this summer, in 4 countries. Not only does that burn a lot of fossil fuel, but it is eating up every day of vacation time for the year. How we would love to take 3 weeks sprawled out on a beach and bobbing around the waves on a zero-emissions inner tube instead!

breach of the law about a "specialized facility"? deaths in iraq of numerous army specialists? an attorney general who plays so dumb about the law that he looks like he belongs in special ed?

isn't it time for a special prosecutor?

Patrick, thanks for the visit to the Hollywood Aero Mock-Ups facility. The interior of an airplane is one of the few things about air travel that Hollywood consistently gets right, but I had always assumed that the studios just had some good set designers put together a fake fuselage. It's nice to know that the real-looking airplanes are really retired airplanes!

I wonder, though, about a couple of annoying little things in airplane cinematography. One is the airplane's pitch, or angle. When you fly, you spend a lot of time at angles other than level, even during the "straight and level" portion of the flight. (You can see this for yourself by looking at the drink on your tray table on your next flight.) Yet passengers in the movies - here I'm talking about scenes like in "Ordinary People" or "Friends", where the characters just happen to be on an airplane, rather than airplane disaster movies where the set seems to be on a rollercoaster - never seem to experience any subtle effects from the motion of the plane. Perhaps it would just be too difficult to film?

The other glitch in airplane scenes is the background noise. Or better put, the lack of background noise. Jet engines put out a lot of decibels, and a lot of that noise is audible in the cabin, especially in coach class over or behind the wings. It affects the way you talk and the way you hear what's going on around you. You lean close to the person next to you when you carry on a conversation. You make hand gestures with the flight attendant when asking for milk in your horrendous coffee, because you know she can't hear every word you say. You DON'T hear the conversations of people more than a few seats away, unless they are incredibly annoying and adjust their volume instead of their position vis-a-vis the person they are talking with. You DO hear the piercing shrieks of the baby several rows away, because babies cry at a much higher frequency than the low drone of jet engines. You don't really hear what the first officer is saying when she (well, usually he, but sometimes she on Air Maroc) is telling you that you've reached cruising altitude and can now see Des Moines out your left window, although strangely you hear every syllable when the purser interrupts your nap to tell you in four languages that you've only got 20 minutes left to buy from the duty free cart. When your plane finally parks at the gate, you might experience momentary physical relief when the engines are switched off and you are freed from the roar of the past several hours. All of this is part of the air travel experience, and it is completely lost on the Hollywood sound stage. I'm not suggesting that filmmakers should inflict the full brunt of a jet engine on their audience, but there could be some symbolic amount of excess background hum, and some change of behavior on the part of the actors to show that they are actually experiencing flight. If you are going to go to the trouble of shooting your film inside a genuine airplane segment, wouldn't it be worthwhile to add just a little audio verisimilitude as well?

Goodness gracious, when did they let Jeff Gannon back into the White House press corps? Or has Karl Rove found a new boy toy?

Let's see here...

On the floor of the Senate, the vice president tells Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. The exact quote, as said by the VP voted for by our most morally self-righteous citizens, was "Go fuck yourself."

Patrick Leahy is from Vermont, one of the most liberal states in the Union. Every time he confronts the administration, his popularity in the state goes up. Right now his approval rating hovers at about 178%.

Leahy has been ranking minority member for the Judiciary Committee for most of the Bush administration, forced to sit by and watch Arlen Specter roll over for the administration time and time again.

Now Leahy is chair of the Judiciary Committee. He has nothing to lose by confronting the administration. Nothing. And, when the vice president had all the power in the world, he used that power to personal invite the senator to go fuck himself.

If you were Pat Leahy, what would you do?

Can you say "subpoena the bastards?" Thought you could.