Have you seen the trailer for the French documentary entitled “Nos Enfants Nous Accuseront”, made by Jean-Paul Jaud in 2008? You should watch it. It’s about the effects of pesticide-laden foods on children’s health, and the bio (organic) movement in France.
More info is available on the documentary website, at nosenfantsnousaccuseront-lefilm.com.
I put together a short video review of the build quality problems in the 2006 BMW 235i sport sedan. These are things like:
Watch the video on YouTube | blip.tv
As one of the commenters in a BMW forum puts it, it comes down to “BMW’s choice of low quality materials in high wear areas“. That is a wonderfully succinct explanation of the problem.
These things keep breaking down, they get replaced, then they break down again. If BMW would bother to add up all the service costs they incur for repeat repairs to the cockpit, they would realize it would be cheaper to make them better in the first place. This is my plea to them: start building better cars — a bad cockpit ruins the driver experience and takes away from the wonderful handling and performance of a BMW.
At 100 years old, Dr. W. G. Watson is the world’s oldest practicing physician. He’s been working as an OB/GYN doctor since 1947, and everyone in his town knows him. He says he doesn’t go anywhere without seeing one of his patients, some of which he’s followed for over 50 years. And he still makes house calls!
I’m relieved to see that airlines are finally taking action against smelly passengers — by deplaning them. Jazz Air, a Canada Air subsidiary, did just that on 2/6, after wasting 15-20 minutes searching for the source of a sorely offending odor, then finding it to be a filthy man. I applaud them for having the courage to throw the bum off the plane, and suggest all airlines adopt similar policies.
I wrote about this very thing on 2/15, just over a week ago, after returning from a trip where we had to put up with an explosive trifecta of body odor, gas, and lack of manners. Enough is enough.
I don’t think I need to explain why smells such as body odor or gas shouldn’t be tolerated on airplanes — anyone who’s flown knows how cramped and stuffy things can get without any “additional input” from rude people.
Holger Buss and Ingo Busker are two Germans who have created an online community for micro copter fans in late 2006, called, appropriately enough, MikroKopter. Since then, they’ve come up with several micro copter designs, the plans for which they share freely on their site. One of their latest designs is the HexaKopter — an RC mini-helicopter with six propellers.
It is an amazing design, and the thing is incredibly nimble in the air, as you can see in the test flight video. The weight of the helicopter is 1,200 grams, and its max rated payload is 1,000 grams. In the test video, they loaded it with 1,300 grams (a digital camera used to film flight footage, and a 1 liter bottle of soda), and it did just fine. Flight time is up to 30 minutes with a small payload.
You can probably get some amazing aerial photographs and video with the HexaKopter. What can I say, I love German engineering! Kudos to Holger and Ingo!
Raoul Pop 