“freedom and napolean units” gets you a star from me. And a plate of freedom fries should we ever meet.

...

Or maybe the guy had mental problems, in which case imprisonment makes little sense and treatment probably will be way cheaper. I’m guessing that empathy isn’t a defining trait of yours, so I’ll go for the economics argument: Do you have any idea how much per day it costs the taxpayers to lock up people?

That was each one weighing at least 80 lbs....

My personal record is 70+ bags, each weighing about 80 lbs., and I knew it’d my fault if the plane went down. That was flying as a courier, though, and it turned out only half the plane was with passengers. Kept the paper ticket with all the luggage tags.

And a DS convertible a la Chapron would be the ultimate.

That was an excellent interpretation, and not at all the way I initially saw the commercial. Guess I must have grown up in a more protected environment than you did.

A friend of mine, who is an airplane mechanic, explained that they don’t do complete overhauls of jet engines, like the do with piston engines. Instead they take the engines apart and decide which parts - usually not all that many - need to be replaced.

Within the London congestion zone, there has been a 20 mph speed limit for three years, which has reduced collisions with serious injury or death by 25%, and accidents involving pedestrians decreased by as much as 63%. No doubt other big cities will have taken notice of this.

Eventually the Brits gave us this one, which looks about as mean as the Short looked cute:

Tall US trucks are more dangerous to pedestrians than any regular car, but imagine this car hitting somebody? Fine if you want fresh air and remove the windshield, roof and doors, but for the love of God do it without making the car as dangerous for others, as something from Mad Max or Death Race 2000.

Could we at least keep it at .08 for the weekends?

In Molvania it is 0.08, and 0.15 on the weekends.

Should’ve read he what wrote before hitting the keyboard. It didn’t say Australia was bigger than the USA, but that it has “massive distances and places full of nothing.” Ever heard of the Australian outback? (rhetorical question. Not even Texas has desolate stretches of roads like that.)

For all its deadly faults, the Tu-104 navigator’s station was cool, in a steampunk-ish kind of way: 

Tu-104 navigator’s station (pure steampunk, 90 years late:

Perhaps only the third ugliest, but the name ‘The Beast of Turin’ was appropriate for this 1911 FIAT with its 28.4 litre 4 cylinder engine.

Citroën GS Birotor. They made a wankel engined Ami too...