Oh, yes. The Cultural Revolution (which was pretty much the opposite of sane) effectively only ended because Mao had the decency to finally kick the bucket, and the Party managed some epic quality quickstep to get things, if not entirely on the rails, at least a lot less off them than they had been under Mao. It's no…

You think that no-one loves Mao, the Great Helmsman who unified the country and threw off the yoke of Japanese imperialism and freed the people from poverty? Who ended the civil war and modernised China? Never mind that much of what Mao did led to vast amounts of people leaping forward to an early grave. The…

Actually, I suspect it would be a battle between Mao and Indira Gandhi (or something along those lines).

Unless you are for some reason committed to the notion of having your onion in rings (e.g. for a salad) it's a lot easier to peal it if you first cut it in half. (Strangely, this is among the top kitchen tips that I ever get to dole out. To me it's something that my mum did when I was a kid, and thus not something all…

But if we assume a toroidal cow, the calculations are going to get much more complex! What next, some kind of atmospheric modelling, too?!

"First, we assume a spherical cow..." And people, too, one suspects.

Indeed. These "you'll plunge the earwax deeper into your ear" -comments just make me think of people trying to clean their ears like in one of those infomercial "look how Sue has difficulty functioning in the real world" -bits.

You are right, the language is Finnish. Additionally, YLE is the Finnish public broadcasting company.

This is the relevant quote:

I think these are the relevant passages (they have a 6 year age difference):

I think that some women have this idea that if only their man would do what they tell them to do things would be easier. (I suspect dating the other kind of lump, the kind that won't do their share of the chores and is also otherwise obnoxious and inconsiderate, might well be one factor in developing that idea.) Of…

Well, there is of course a chance that when he's making decisions it's a case of either not actually making decisions and just drifting into situations (she does write of feeling like being in a captainless ship) or that he's just really, honestly making bad decisions of the "doing the bare minimum" -type (for…

Even if the passenger oxygen masks did deploy, the generators they use only provide enough oxygen for some 15 minutes, which is ample time for the pilots to descend to 3000m where supplemental oxygen is not needed. Problems can arise if for some reason the crew cannot do that, e.g. through incapacitation of some sort.…

Hate to break it to you, but that was a soft, slow speed ditching, and the results really speak for themselves: majority of the passengers survived the initial impact (indeed, the majority of those who died drowned, and of those who died on impact we know that at least some were not secured in their seats), and the…

And, pray tell me, what do you imagine an actual glider to be? You can get as emotional about it as you like, that doesn't change the fact that that "half-million-pounds of thin metal" is still a functioning aeroplane, and yes, if there is a competent pilot in the cockpit the chances of a successful emergency landing…

No, a majority of the passengers who died were killed after the impact, because they drowned. Unlike e.g. AF 447, it was a crash that was extremely likely to have survivors. Also, that's a very, very small debris field that comprises mostly of fairly large segments. It's not a million bits and pieces scattered over a…

Oh, no. When you manage to get your plane to stall and fail to recover from it, it really does come down like that proverbial rock, and that's exactly what the crew of AF447 did. Even a somewhat reasonably competent descent after a flame-out is very different. As I said, gliding on a 777 will get you about half an…

Apples and oranges.

You have to remember that an aeroplane has been specifically designed to fly, and without fuel it's just a very inefficient glider. It won't come down like a rock. IIRC a 777 coming down from the ~10km cruising altitude will glide (depending on the weather etc.) for almost 30 mins and somewhat less than 200km. Sure…

Not trying to defend these yobbos in any way, but I very much doubt that blinding someone, or even causing any permanent damage to someone was ever specifically on their agenda, and all such consequences were very much something they just didn't care about. In a similar vein these are the kind of people who talk about…