There have been a lot of beautiful liveries employed by airlines all over the world and if I had to choose one as a favorite, I suppose it would be the older Frontier with the different animals on each tail. I worked at CAE in Montreal for 23 years before moving out to California 6 years ago to marry the woman I now call my better half. During that period I had plenty of time to talk to our test pilots and techs who flew and tuned the flight simulators that we manufactured. I lost track of the number of different jobs I worked on for different airline customers, and got a first hand look at the evolution of aircraft paint jobs over those 23 years because I was lucky enough to have our office windows overlooking runway 24L at Dorval (now Pierre Elliot Trudeau) Airport.

Apart from every commercial aircraft you can think of, I watched Lancasters and Mustangs and Spitfires fly past that window over the airport on their way to air shows in Ottawa. I watched the French Prime Minister's motorcade drive up Ryan Avenue to take him to the private area where he boarded the Concorde, and then watched that puppy take off. Talk about loud. I watched some really big Antonov stop off at the Bombardier plant every now and again to drop off parts, and then take off again while we held our breaths wondering if it was EVER going to get it's nose up. I watched NASA's 747 fly over with the shuttle strapped to it's back. I watched a Canadair water bomber lift off on 6R (coming towards us instead of the other way), bank left, and promptly cartwheel into the grassy area between the runway and the Air Canada Maintenance base. The pilot walked away.

I've got a lot of good memories about that time in my life, but one of the best ones I have was triggered by a photo you referenced in your article: the Northwest DC-10. In September of 2000, I flew out from Montreal to San Francisco for the first time to meet my future wife, whom I had been courting long distance. It was a single-hop flight passing through Minneapolis/St.Paul and I was thrilled when I got on a DC-10 in Minneapolis, because I had never flown on one before (apart from a flight sim we had built for VIASA). I was sitting in a rear starboard window seat just about where the "NW" is in the photograph. Nervous enough as I was about meeting my wife for the first time, I was getting more and more irritated at the loud-mouthed shmuck behind me who wouldn't shut up the whole flight while he explained the functioning of the aircraft (and everything else in the universe) to his wife. I really felt sorry for his wife though when, on final approach to SFO, he pointed down at the San Mateo bridge and authoritavely informed her: "Yup... and there's the Golden Gate bridge". I forgot to mention that the flight was packed. Jammed to the rafters... and that has some bearing on the climax to this tale. My wife was waiting at the end of the jetway for me. I didn't know that, but there you go. She was sitting down because she didn't think her knees were going to allow her to stand there waiting for me, she being that kind of nervous too. Well, it took forever to empty that plane. And I being seated in the area as far from the exit as could be, was one of the last ones to get off. The way my wife tells the story, a group of people would get off the plane, and then nothing..."Oh lord... he's not coming". And THEN... a crowd of people getting off, and then nothing... "Oh gawd... he's not coming". But wait !... a group of people ... nothing... "he's not coming..." and then... one guy in a white shirt and blue jeans with a goofy smile on his face... "YOU'RE HERE ! YOU'RE HERE !".

So... thanks for the photo of the Northwest DC-10. I don't know if it's the same one I flew when I came to meet my wife for the first time, but I'm going to pretend it is, and I've downloaded it just to look at from time to time and remember. And now she can see from the photo how far I had to walk to get off the damn thing and that I wasn't just being lackadaisical about meeting her :-).

jebldmm - Diane's better half.

The republican party has been lobbing "sound-bite" bombs at us for years, and we've been cowering in a trench. It's about time we developed some sound-bites of our own, and "the president is putting more troops in harm's way" is a damn good bite. It's concise, on target, and, most importantly, painfully accurate.

If I interpret what Mr. D'Souza is saying correctly, all we have to do to be safe from terrorism is... exactly what the religious right wants us to do. We ban abortion and homosexuality and live clean, decent lives and they won't want to attack us anymore. The biggest problem is that on 9/11, there weren't massive attacks on abortion clinics, the ACLU, and San Francisco. The terrorists hit exactly the targets they wanted - our greatest symbols of war and of business. Mr. D'Souza's analyss would be funny if it weren't a bit frightening. Exactly how far are conservatives willing to go to use the threat of terrorism to accomplish their political goals? And how delusional are their followers if they are willing to listen to this kind of nonsense without rebelling?