So the standard question is "What's your favorite Christmas movie?" My standard answer was Die Hard until it became In Bruges which I like much more.
These responses are funny because they're not really Christmas movies in the sense most people mean. And yet both qualify by actually taking place at Christmas.
This confusion is amusing, but I can fix it. As my gift to you this season, I present the Christmas Hierarchical Ring Index System Tracking Movies And Stories (CHRISTMAS; since this is still indevelopment, I call the current version eXperimental Movie Arrangement System, or XMAS).
This is a story about complex systems failing obscurely.
On November 4, 2010, an Airbus A380 (that's their new double-decker superjumbo) blew an engine while in mid-air. That is something that happens, but this one was an impressive and quite rare uncontained turbine failure, which is a euphemism for "blew up bigtime." Bits of the turbine disc cut into the wing, damaging several systems and making a huge headache for the aircrew, who performed admirably and landed the plane without serious incident or any injuries.
As many of you know, I am a right-wing kook. I do not tend to favor left-leaning policies, though I have a greater tolerance for mushy-headed distributivist tendencies than I usually let on.
That said, both the provincial NDP and Liberal parties here in BC have gone through sudden leadership turnovers this Fall. A bit of dirty laundry was aired during the Liberal's veangance for Glencoe, but the NDP disclosed a lot more of their internal workings in the process of disposing of Carol James.
My friend Dave works at BC Hydro, and offered to take me for a ride in one of the odder company cars around: a Mitsubishi i MiEV. This isn't the first electric vehicle (EV) on the market, by a long shot, and technically the i MiEV isn't even on the market. But it's a little taste of a highly probable future.
