Donnerstag die Gedanken

• Oh boy!  It's not everyday that the NTSB reopens a 56 year old CAB crash investigation.  I would have expected that they'd have announced this at the beginning of February, but clearly, the public's fascination will not fade away.  Whether much new can be determined this long after is open to conjecture, but apparently the agency's position is that'll be the day when it doesn't matter anymore.
• I think I once read in a book about industrial engineering that a contributory factor to the crash was that, while the capable pilot (711 flight hrs. 128 in-type) had instrument training, it was with conventional artificial horizon instrumentation.  The aircraft he was flying that night was equipped with a Sperry gyro which depicted in a reversed perspective from those in which he'd been mentored, so, under IFR conditions, whatever corrective actions he attempted vis-a-vis the Beechcraft's attitude may have been the opposite of what should've been done.
• It wouldn't have helped that the Bonanza is a very sleek airframe (especially so for its time) - if you point it in the wrong direction, it will go there in a hurry.

Unretouched by Ted Turner...

• Last night I was texting back and forth with oldest son about motorcycles - this is one I thought was the bees' knees when I was a teenager, though I didn't actually own one.  It had a dual range gear box, so you could ride it as a commuter or as a trail bike.  It'd probably be a bit underpowered for me today, by modern standards.
• This one's not dual-range, but would be a fun rat-rod bike:

• A woman dug up her father to see if the will was in his casket.  Sure, if it's not in the safe deposit box, a cookie jar, a fake Miller Lite can, or in a Trailways locker, where else could it be, right?
• It wasn't there.
• The guy who invented K-cups wishes he hadn't.  I agree with him.  They're an over-engineered solution to a non-problem.  They're expensive at about 50 cents for an 8 oz. serving, and the coffee, in my experience, is so-so.  My family doc's office has a machine that uses a little plastic or foil pouch - looks kinda like the new baby food container - that's a bit better.  But really, these cups are producing mountains of trash.  A downsized hotel room coffeemaker coffee disk, packaged in a Twinings-type foil envelope, could work just as well with less waste, for people who are challenged at measuring coffee.
• I drink a fair amount of the stuff, but am not too picky.  At home, lots of times I'll make a mini-pot (it says 4 cups but I think that's really 20 oz. total), not quite two real cups like normal people drink.  If I want more, it's 'camp coffee' - leave the existing grounds in the filter and shovel a tablespoon or so of new coffee grounds on top, add water.
• When I've wrung out all the caffeinated goodness I can, I toss the spent grounds in the back yard, because I'm a recyclist.
• If you assume this next is about some Kyoto students who decided to explore caves, shame on you.  It does kinda look like fun.  And it would be less punishing than the mud run middle son and his mom attended a couple of years ago near Hillsboro on a day that brought near-freezing weather.
• I'm not a fan, but two or more bloggers I follow seem to believe this is a swell idea.  So whether it's my thing or not, it appears to be on its way.

Available at your local newsstand.

• If it becomes legal, will the Cheech & Chong Christmas story, and SNL Jarrett's Room sketches still seem as funny?
• I've said before that I'm intrigued by the small-house movement.  Here's some folks that took theirs on the road.
• I sent that to my sons.  Oldest replied that if that family hasn't upgraded the head bolts on that 6.0, their 'mobile' home might not be, explaining that apparently Dearborn reconfigured the engine for its F-series line in a way not anticipated by Navistar's engineers, chiefly by adding EPA compliance doo-dads, that caused the head bolts to stretch, with mayhem ensuing in many cases.
• Wonder if that was the same issue experienced by RPM?