nancynall.com » Popping out.
«
»

Popping out.

Peo­ple tell me I should get Net­flix. They’re always Net­flix­ing some cool movie I can’t find at Block­buster or on my eight mil­lion cable chan­nels. It’s so easy, they say. I was a char­ter mem­ber and wouldn’t go back for anything.

What about the pop-under prob­lem? I ask. They stare blankly.

I can’t sup­port a com­pany that is try­ing to kill me with stealth adver­tis­ing, I say. Sev­eral times a night when I’m work­ing, my lap­top fan shrieks with fury: Too much Flash! My proces­sors can’t take this! I hit F9, which instantly tiles all open win­dows, and find six Net­flix ads, which I then have to close down one by one. Click, click, click, I, hate, Netflix.

There has to be a bet­ter way to do inter­net adver­tis­ing. Dis­pos­ing of the slicks that come with the Sun­day paper is a pain, but it doesn’t feel like an encroach­ment. Also, it doesn’t feel stu­pid. Part of what I sus­pect investors in inter­net com­pa­nies like about the whole busi­ness model is how hands-free it is. Set up a blog entirely with­out human help. Set up your blog to do your blog­ging for you, even. With the right script­ing you can buy a book, par­tic­i­pate in an auc­tion, do all sorts of things with­out any unnec­es­sary face-to-face, or even voice-to-voice con­tact. In the busi­ness world, this is known as effi­ciency, cut­ting those imper­fect human beings out of the pro­duc­tion process. What good are they? Com­put­ers don’t ask for health insurance.

And so it was that I was check­ing the fore­cast the other day, and noticed this:

netads1

Note the line under the green bar: Stay warm on the links. Weather​.com is a vir­tual cav­al­cade of linky good­ness, its main page click­able nine ways from Sun­day, but that one took me aback. For one thing, 22 degrees hardly qual­i­fies as golf weather. For another, every golf course within 100 miles is cov­ered with sev­eral inches of snow. For yet another, even the ones that aren’t cov­ered with snow gen­er­ally aren’t open in the win­ter. Turf can’t repair itself when it’s dor­mant, and it doesn’t pay to staff the pro shop for a hand­ful of lunatics who want to play golf in extreme con­di­tions. Dude, unless you have tick­ets to Florida, the sea­son is over.

But I couldn’t resist. I clicked:

netads2

I was taken to a page of “con­tent” so thin as to make a stan­dard Gan­nett tip box look like a PhD cur­ricu­lum. How to stay warm on the links? Dress in lay­ers. Make sure you spend extra time warm­ing up before you swing. And what tips page could be com­plete with­out this line: And since body heat escapes through your head — Grandma was right about that — wear a wool hat. It’ll help keep your whole body warm. Wow, thanks.

There has to be a bet­ter way to do com­mer­cial mate­r­ial on the web. There bet­ter be. This is worse than junk mail.

Blog­gage:

Sadly, No tracks the per­am­bu­la­tions of the Mis­sion Accom­plished lie, but I’m more inter­ested in the lan­guage issues. “We were try­ing to say some­thing dif­fer­ently,” the pres­i­dent said. Did he mean “dif­fer­ent,” and added the extra syl­la­ble to sound extra-smart? Or does he under­stand that “dif­fer­ently” is an adverb that mod­i­fies “to say”? Your call. And note his lackey’s usage: ““[That’s] why he endears so much loy­alty from peo­ple like myself and oth­ers who had worked for him.” You don’t endear loy­alty, do you? He meant “engen­der,” right?

Steve Jobs does not have a “hor­mone imbal­ance,” he has some­thing “more com­plex,” requir­ing a five-month med­ical leave. Apple stock doesn’t fare well and I don’t blame the mar­ket, for once. Surely Apple is more than Jobs, but how’d you like to hold stock in Martha Stewart’s cor­po­rate entity and dis­cover Martha’s not feel­ing so well? There’s a fine line, in the busi­ness world, between a strong pub­lic face and a cult of per­son­al­ity. The solu­tion: Replace Jobs with “Steve Jobs,” a vir­tual fig­ure cre­ated by Pixar. Orville Reden­bacher and Colonel Sanders have already paved the way.

Another charm­ing essay by Roger Ebert, this one on good­ness on screen.

Minus-one at the moment. Kill me now.

Posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 10:50 am
in Current events, Popculch.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

48 responses to
“Popping out.”

  1. brian stouder said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:38 am

    That WAS a very good Ebert essay; every­one must read it!

    First time I ever heard of the vagus nerve was 21 years ago — it was the day GHWB named Dan Quayle as his running-mate. That very morn­ing, I had a doctor’s appoint­ment to have an ingrown toe­nail fixed. As soon as the doc­tor went to work on it, I felt very ill, and nearly passed out (despite that I couldn’t feel anything)

    I asked him what caused that, and voila — I learned about the vagus nerve

    (later, when I got home and the painkillers wore off  — intro­duc­ing me to a hot pain from my toe — I thought I was delu­sional when I saw the pic­tures of Dan Quayle in shirt sleeves in New Orleans[?] — as the run­ning mate for Bush! Surely Bush knew that Jack Kemp was the man, yes??!! but we digress)

    But indeed, Ebert says much, and says it well

    (big vagus nerve movies for me include [in no par­tic­u­lar order] Walk the Line, Wiz­ard of Oz, Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, Bend it like Beck­ham, Mamma Mia, and many many others!)

  2. Rana said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:43 am

    The things that annoy me par­tic­u­larly about pop-unders are that pop-UP block­ers some­how seem unable to catch them, and the way that they can silently and invis­i­bly accu­mu­late in the way that you describe. I tend to leave the com­puter and pri­mary pro­grams up and run­ning for days on end, hid­ing or sleep­ing them instead of clos­ing and shut­ting them down, so it can be a while before I catch the lurkers.

    On weather​.com — it seems that the major­ity of the weather sites are link/ad happy (Weather Bug espe­cially so). May I rec­om­mend weather​.gov instead?

  3. Mindy said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    That link for Stay Warm on the Links has been there since sum­mer ended. Every morn­ing since Thanks­giv­ing I’ve enjoyed the men­tal pic­ture of golfers cheer­fully tee­ing up in the midst of wind, ice and snow because weather​.com has pro­vided such excel­lent advice. I’m hop­ing the link stays until July so it can look equally stu­pid then.

  4. alex said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:53 am

    I still think the mem­oirs of Levi Cof­fin are my favorite vagus nerve book and will some­day make a great vagus nerve movie.

    And, yes, I hate Net­flix pop-ups too, but not as much as those annoy­ing ads that hover around over the con­tent I’m try­ing to read.

  5. Jenflex said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:56 am

    The idea of “gut feel­ings” is powerful…and I hadn’t thought about the vagus nerve con­nec­tion. The Oprah anec­dote cer­tainly speaks to the lit­eral truth of the idea of the “milk of human kind­ness,” though.

  6. brian stouder said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am

    those annoy­ing ads that hover around over the con­tent I’m try­ing to read.

    Talk about your vis­ceral reac­tions; I HATE THOSE!! (another met­ric that should be ana­lyzed by the Mad-ad-persons is — how many peo­ple will never, ever, ever buy your damned prod­uct or ser­vice — specif­i­cally because of your annoy­ing bar­na­cle ads?)

  7. Rana said on January 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Mindy — did you know that they sell pink golf balls for play­ing in the snow?

    Also — on the sub­ject of micro-content, golf balls, and weather, I bring you Golf Digest on “how weather affects golf balls.”

  8. Jen said on January 15th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    I have been torn between amuse­ment and annoy­ance at the “Stay warm on the links” on weather​.com. On one hand, I agree with Mindy that the visual image of golfers tee­ing up in freez­ing cold win­ter weather is hilar­i­ous. On the other hand, it’s got­ten pretty old.

    I agree with the pop-under ads, but I just can’t hold it against Net­flix. It’s such a cheap, won­der­ful way to get to watch a vari­ety of movies that will never make it to the Podunk, Indi­ana, video store. It’s also a great way to watch TV series.

    Every­one think of my dad, Pilot Joe, today — he’s fly­ing back from Florida and will cer­tainly enjoy the 60 degree tem­per­a­ture drop and the low of –9 degrees tonight, with wind­chills pre­dicted to drop to –30 degrees.

  9. Julie Robinson said on January 15th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    I always want to yell at the com­puter “we already have Net­flix you idiot!”. At $18/month it’s a great alter­na­tive to cable. Or movies at the the­ater; even the dol­lar the­ater is now $3.

    Speak­ing of idiots, did any­one else catch Bush at his farewell press con­fer­ence? He claimed the press “mis­un­der­es­ti­mated” him. No, I think he lived up very well to everyone’s underestimations.

  10. caliban said on January 15th, 2009 at 1:19 pm

    Nancy, golf courses cov­ered in snow are why God made flu­o­res­cent orange Titleists. Win­ter rules, lib­er­ally inter­preted, shave strokes.

    AMC does every­one a ser­vice and presents all 17 episodes of The Pris­oner for free.

    We got a Net­flix sub­scrip­tion for Christ­mas and are plan­ning to watch the bril­liant screen debut of Mal­colm McDow­ell in If…, while the incu­ri­ous jack­ass is smirk­ing his lame last-act ass off the world stage tonight. (Great movie by Lind­say Ander­son that forms a tril­ogy with O Lucky Man and Clock­work Orange. I’ll bet Block­buster doesn’t have the first two, and you sure as the devil won’t ever see any of them on television.)

    Pop-under? What’s that? With Fire­fox browser and the AdBlock Plus add-on, I’m only occa­sion­ally and vaguely aware those things even exist, when a ghostly lit­tle (block) indi­ca­tor appears on the monitor.

  11. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    And how can we talk about the vagus nerve with­out ref­er­enc­ing — http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​G​e​o​r​g​e​_​W​.​_​B​u​s​h​_​p​r​e​t​z​e​l​_​i​n​cident

    I hope to make it hope to read the live­blog­ging of tonight at 8 pm … with pretzels!

  12. John said on January 15th, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    Third film of Anderson’s tril­ogy is Bri­tan­nia Hos­pi­tal with a post Star Wars Mark Hamill in a minor role. I saw all three from Net­Flix over a year ago. One the many rea­sons why I endure the pop-unders and thank Net­Flix every week for the ser­vice they pro­vide cheaply!

  13. Gasman said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    I was amused to see that Bush finally ‘fessed up to the “Mis­sion Accom­plished” ban­ner B.S. At the time, the White House assid­u­ously tried to shift the respon­si­bil­ity for that act to the sailors on board the U.S.S. Abra­ham Lin­coln. They parsed their words very care­fully, but the intent was clearly to evade respon­si­bil­ity for the act alto­gether. Their pathetic attempt to stage a bit of high testos­terone the­ater back­fired and they were embar­rassed. Their response? Same as it was when the Abu Ghraib scadal broke: blame the troops.

    Aside from being liars, arro­gant bas­tards, and moronic incom­pe­tents, this admin­is­tra­tion is heav­ily laden with snivel­ing, cow­ardly lit­tle shits that refuse to take respon­si­bil­ity for any of their actions. These cocks will take credit for the sun­rise, but they deny all respon­si­bil­ity for the eight year pile of chicken shit sit­ting beneath them.

    The sooner the tri­als begin for these rat-bastards, the bet­ter. Let’s start with the rat-bastard from Texas.

  14. Catherine said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

    When I checked weather​.com, in the place where your golf “con­tent” link was, I found “Is Your Air Clean?” I clicked through… yup, air qual­ity mod­er­ate, some fine par­tic­u­lates. Newflash: You live in the LA basin. Try not to breathe.

    The good news was that in the left-hand google-sponsored list­ing was an ad for my local city coun­cil race. Maybe we are slowly get­ting some­where with the web ads.

  15. brian stouder said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Let us pause for a moment.

    inhale

    hold

    hold

    exhale

    The USS Abra­ham Lin­coln (CVN-72) was return­ing to home port, and her mis­sion was accom­plished. In a war, there are any num­ber of mis­sions, and some num­ber of them will be suc­cess­ful; indeed, ESPECIALLY in a futile and pro­tracted war, an infi­nite num­ber of ‘suc­cess­ful mis­sions’ can be exe­cuted, even despite that the war con­tin­ues (even con­tin­ues toward an even­tual defeat)

    The lazy crit­i­cism is (iron­i­cally) cut from the same cloth as Pres­i­dent Bush’s gen­uine error — that is, the (pur­pose­ful, on his part) con­fla­tion of a suc­cess­ful mis­sion with a cel­e­bra­tion of a vic­to­ri­ous war effort.

    Just sayin’…

  16. nancy said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    That expla­na­tion only works if you buy the first lie, i.e., that Bush had noth­ing to do with the ban­ner, that it was entirely a prod­uct of the crew. Now he admits it wasn’t. Sec­ond, remem­ber that when stag­ing a pres­i­den­tial appear­ance, NOTHING IN THE FRAME IS LEFT TO CHANCE. That’s why cer­tain eth­nic mixes are hand-picked to sit in cam­era range, etc. The Rovians put Bush there, with the ban­ner behind his head, to send the mes­sage that hey, we won! Oops.

    I remem­ber Alan’s report of sit­ting in a staff meet­ing at the N-S, plan­ning our “end of the war” pack­age. He said, “Are you kid­ding? We’re going to be there for years!” He was scowled at, crit­i­cized and oth­er­wise shut down. You want to know who Bush’s enablers were? There were ver­sions of that meet­ing all over the coun­try around that time. At least my hus­band wasn’t stu­pid enough to fall for it.

  17. Gasman said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    brian,
    Two words: bull + shit.

  18. Bill White said on January 15th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

    brian stouder wrote: “Surely Bush knew that Jack Kemp was the man, yes??!! but we digress)”

    Ha! I was root­ing for Jack Kemp, too — even put one of his cam­paign stick­ers on my gui­tar. After that my band’s singer some­times intro­duced my solos with “Here’s a gui­tar solo from a Repub­li­can!” Back then that brought Lee Atwa­ter to mind.

    Cripes I’m a geezer.

  19. Julie Robinson said on January 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Even IF any­one really thought that the mis­sion was accom­plished the speech should have been given from the oval office. How many years of my income tax will go towards pay­ing for that trip?

    I’ve always thought Bush believed that his lit­tle mil­i­tary inva­sion was going to play along the script of Gulf War I, in and out in just a few short days. Like his entire pres­i­dency, that was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  20. jcburns said on January 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Brian…Rove and com­pany chore­o­graphed that down to spec­i­fy­ing the camera-friendly arrange­ment of rows of sailors and air­men in col­or­ful jump­suits (not their usual gear in some cases). Lest we forget.

  21. Gasman said on January 15th, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    brian,
    You might want to recon­sider your rather con­cil­ia­tory assess­ment of Bush’s “Mis­sion Accom­plished” stunt. The fol­low­ing is excerpted from Bush’s speech aboard the U.S.S. Abra­ham Lin­coln May 1, 2003:

    http://​www​.cbsnews​.com/​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​0​3​/​0​5​/​0​1​/​i​r​a​q​/​m​a​i​n​5​5​1​9​4​6​.shtml

    “Admi­ral Kelly, Cap­tain Card, offi­cers and sailors of the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln, my fel­low Amer­i­cans: Major com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq have ended. In the Bat­tle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have pre­vailed. And now our coali­tion is engaged in secur­ing and recon­struct­ing that coun­try.”

    It’s quite clear from Bush’s remarks that he was speak­ing not of any “mis­sion” spe­cific to the men and women aboard the Lin­coln. He was indi­cat­ing some sense of final­ity to the blood­shed of Amer­i­can sol­diers in Iraq. Boy, was he omni­scient or what?

    It was a ham-fisted, staged fiasco. Like every­thing else this screwup touched, it was a huge fuster-cluck.

  22. LA Mary said on January 15th, 2009 at 6:44 pm

    “Minus-one at the moment. Kill me now.”

    You can come sleep on my couch. It’s nearly 80 here. Unsea­son­ably warm. Even if this heat wave ends, it will be in the six­ties. There are trees with flow­ers on them. You can sit out­side and sip iced tea.

  23. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 15th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    Just got home, try­ing to wrap my head around the jet land­ing safely in the Hud­son River — JoeK and a few other geeks will appre­ci­ate this link when you look at the pilot’s air­speed … that was sweet, sweet fly­ing of a dead, dead aircraft:

    http://​flightaware​.com/​l​i​v​e​/​f​l​i​g​h​t​/​A​W​E​1​5​4​9​/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​2​0​0​9​0​1​1​5​/​2​0​2​6​Z​/​K​L​G​A​/​K​L​G​A​/​t​r​acklog

  24. Deborah said on January 15th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    –10 here in Chicago right now. That’s the temp not the wind chill. The wind chill is –24. I walked home from the Red­line stop 4 blocks from where I live. I thought my face was going to crack. Went to a friend’s funeral this morn­ing and skipped the ceme­tery visit part. Just couldn’t face stand­ing in the wind. I think my friend would understand.

  25. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 15th, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    My eyes, my eyes — they bur­rrrrrrnnnnnn: http://​www​.tnr​.com/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​e​n​e​r​g​y​/​g​a​l​l​e​r​y​/​p​o​p​u​p​.​h​t​m​l​?​t​o​p​i​c​=​m​o​r​e​+​o​b​a​m​a​+​kitsch

  26. brian stouder said on January 15th, 2009 at 10:53 pm

    –12 here; that’s ‘minus twelve’ — not a wind chill fac­tor, but the air temp.…

    time to go to bed and curl up!

  27. nancy said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    Wow. Five above here in Michigan’s banana belt. That’s a pretty big dis­crep­ancy. Never under­es­ti­mate the power of accu­mu­lated indus­trial tox­ins, still glowin’ after all these years.

  28. brian stouder said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    Hah! The ‘upside’ of Global Warming!

    ‘Night all

    edit: now –13!

  29. Bill said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:24 pm

    Me, too, Brian. My out­door ther­mome­ter reads minus 14.0! We go to Florida in 4 weeks.

  30. MarkH said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:40 pm

    Strictly off-topic, but get this:

    We just expe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant earth­quake here in Jack­son Hole. I’m sit­ting here work­ing late in our pretty stout two-story bank office build­ing and at 9:23PM MST, I mean the thing felt like it was going back and forth on its foun­da­tion for a good 7 – 8 sec­onds. Rat­tled win­dows, shook every­thing on my desk. We get minor ones in the 3+/- range now and then, but this one felt like a 4 – 5, at least. The recent swarms up in Yel­low­stone have been a lit­tle wor­riesome, but are not related to the big one we’ve been warned about here, the Teton fault/uplift, which is about 100 years over­due for major event. No aftershocks…yet.

    And I was just sit­ting here think­ing of you all in that cold, while here, after our sub-zero cold and storms over Christ­mas and New Year’s, it’s been rather balmy: 10 – 15 at night and 35 – 40 today with sun­shine. That weath­ermap pro­file over you guys looks brutal.

    EDIT —  OK, I was close, but way off on the time. Shows hit messes with your head in an event like that: 3.8 @ 9:15PM:

    http://​earth​quake​.usgs​.gov/​e​q​c​e​n​t​e​r​/​r​e​c​e​n​t​e​q​s​w​w​/​Q​u​a​k​e​s​/​u​s​2​0​0​9​b​x​ae.php

  31. Joe Kobiela said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:49 pm

    The pilot of the U.S. Air flight, Chelsy Sul­len­burger, is my new hero. Just amaz­ing. That was pure skill. The crew had one chance and did every­thing right.
    Yes­ter­day I was sun­ning by the pool at 3:00pm, tonight it is show­ing –13, only a 81 degree swing.
    Pilot Joe

  32. MarkH said on January 15th, 2009 at 11:55 pm

    Indeed, that whole story is truly amaz­ing, Joe.

    Say, I got Flight Sim­u­la­tor X for Christ­mas. With all the detail from through­out the world they show in that setup, it woud be inter­est­ing to load up an A320, take off from LaGuardia and try to dupli­cate the event. Joe, don’t the air­lines do this in their flight sim­u­la­tors, load in all the data from an event like that and chal­lenge pilots to save the day?

  33. Joe Kobiela said on January 16th, 2009 at 12:10 am

    They mostly set up the sims to do engine out pro­ce­dures and dif­fer­ent sys­tem failure’s, I would think dur­ing your career you might have a com­plete power fail­ure once or twice in a sim­u­la­tor, and maby one time you would prac­tice a ditch­ing, but I think a dou­ble engine fail­ure with a ditch­ing would be rare. Although now I bet they will prac­tice it every­time.
    Pilot Joe

  34. joodyb said on January 16th, 2009 at 12:29 am

    log­ging –18.9F at MSP right now. no wind.

  35. MarkH said on January 16th, 2009 at 12:33 am

    Joe, do remem­ber the awful Delta DC-10 crash at DFW in 1982? It was attempt­ing a land­ing in a really bad storm, went through a micro­bust over a high­way on final, and slammed to the ground. I saw a doc­u­men­tary on how they took the data recorder from that plane, pro­grammed the whole inci­dent, weather and all into a sim­u­la­tor and chal­lenged cap­tains to han­dle it. They all failed, as I recall, but it was fascinating.

  36. Dexter said on January 16th, 2009 at 1:57 am

    wow! (from The Weather Chan­nel, right now)
    Bryan, OH
    Clear
    –13°F
    Feels Like
    –33°F

  37. moe99 said on January 16th, 2009 at 2:08 am

    Joe – where do you live?

  38. Dexter said on January 16th, 2009 at 2:49 am

    Pilot Joe: Al Haynes is my hero…it’s been twenty years since he landed that air­craft and saved all those lives, fly­ing an air­plane with com­pro­mised hyraulics.
    http://​www​.freere​pub​lic​.com/​f​o​c​u​s​/​f​-​n​e​w​s​/​1​3​9​8​7​5​6​/posts

  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 16th, 2009 at 7:29 am

    All Amer­ica wants to buy Capt. Sul­len­berger a beer — i hope he’s thirsty!

    (Oblig­a­tory obser­va­tion — he’s a Pur­due grad.)

  40. basset said on January 16th, 2009 at 8:04 am

    One below in Nashville this morn­ing, and schools are closed.

    Another awe­some piece of fly­ing:
    http://​www​.wadenel​son​.com/​g​i​m​l​i.html

    (big air­liner in Canada, fuel load mis­cal­cu­lated, ran out in midair, glided down onto an aban­doned air­port that was being used as a race track)

  41. basset said on January 16th, 2009 at 8:13 am

    Capt. Sullenberger’s resume is on Smok­ing Gun:

    http://​www​.thesmok​ing​gun​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​/​y​e​a​r​s​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​1​5​0​9​3​h​e​r​o​2.html

    nine­teen thou­sand flight hours and two master’s degrees…

  42. Connie said on January 16th, 2009 at 8:55 am

    21 below right here right now. Have closed, my main­te­nance crew has been unable to get out to shovel side­walks, due to the cold, antique boil­ers in the down­town build­ing are churn­ing and not keep­ing up. Just stay home.

    Woke up to find my house at 62, expect­ing ser­vice call yet this a.m. Brrr.

  43. Joe Kobiela said on January 16th, 2009 at 8:59 am

    Moe99
    I live in in Auburn In.
    Pilot Joe

  44. MichaelG said on January 16th, 2009 at 9:28 am

    What’s so great is the series of good deci­sions Capt. Sul­len­berger made. Long Island Sound or the River? The river. Just where the water is calm and rel­a­tively shel­tered and there’s a large con­cen­tra­tion of fer­ries, tour boats and what not to pick up sur­vivors. Some really smart think­ing on top of some really great fly­ing. Also he was the last per­son off the air­plane. Sul­len­berger isn’t qual­i­fied to be a NY sen­a­tor. He’s a res­i­dent of Danville, CA.

  45. brian stouder said on January 16th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    Since we don’t knight peo­ple here, he’s cer­tainly a per­son who should (at least) get a Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom (or what­ever they call it)

  46. jcburns said on January 16th, 2009 at 11:40 am

    I agree that the pilot did a great job and saved lives.…I’m almost hes­i­tat­ing to lay the “hero” tag on him because it’s become so deval­ued, what with peo­ple who merely man­aged to get through tough spots being labeled ‘hero’.

    This guy was smart, calm under pres­sure, remem­bered his train­ing, had good luck, and exe­cuted a plan right the first time. I cel­e­brate and applaud him, but I’m search­ing for an even bet­ter word. Either that, or we’ve got to stop call­ing non-heroes heroes.

  47. Dexter said on January 16th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Did you see the ani­ma­tion of the aborted flight pat­tern? It was amazing…the air­craft had to do a com­plete 180 turn to make it to the Hudson…and he set the air­craft smack-dab in the mid­dle of the river.…

  48. Ricardo said on January 17th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

    Some­times the Santa Ana winds in the LA area are not so bad. They came up a week ago and brought in temps in the high 70s and 80s all week long. I had to actu­ally open the bed­room win­dow for a cou­ple of nights this week to be able to sleep under the blan­ket. Now, I’m going out­side to give the dog a bath.

    This weather usu­ally hap­pens once every Jan­u­ary, then it goes back to nor­mal temperatures.

«
»