A US-bound flight from Sydney turned back on Tuesday after a note found on board raised fears of a bomb threat, Australia’s government said. Flight UAL840, carrying 246 passengers and bound for Los Angeles, landed safely back in Sydney airport nearly three hours after take-off. Okay, that’s interesting. I looked up the flight information in SABRE for this flight, and it’s described as a crew issue. ¤QUA/2840/27JUL« UA RESPONSE F:UA840/27JUL MEL/2029CT/OFF 1129A .14E SYD/0503CT/IN 550P 5.00L ‡DPTS CNCLD LAX/0504CT/ARVS CNCLD ‡ETD 100P OT JFK/0504CT/ETA 927P OT SYD/WAS OFF SYD 257P - RETURNED TO FIELD DUE TO CREW SYDLAX/PSGR PROT -…
-
-
She began participating in discussions on a Web site called “Democracy and Freedom,” which is often at odds with the government. By 2001, she opened her own site, much of it dedicated to literature, but she also published some articles calling for more freedom. As cyberspace became her home, she began to defend what the Chinese call netcitizens. Fellow SF fan and netizen Liu Di and I have a lot in common. We write about our interests in science fiction (she’s more interested in books, I’m currently more interested in television and movies). She writes about politics and dabbles in…
-
Just don’t do it. Don’t panic, or the air marshals will be forced to smack you silly. And then you’ll end up as an ignominous dupe on the Urban Legends page… even if you are an otherwise smart journalist. The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves. Oh, and by the way Ms. Ima Responsible Journalist Scaredypants, way to inject your progeny into the story so we all know you’re a…
-
Miss Alli has posted her recap for the third installment of “Berlitz Desperanto On The Go” at TWOP. Expect me to pretend to look busy at work for the next 10 minutes as I read it here.
-
Not only will Al be doing his show, he’ll be a special correspondent for The Majority Report each evening. If you weren’t satisfied with Rush Limbaugh’s coverage of the 2000 Democratic Convention, you’re in luck: this year, there’s an alternative. We promise that our take on things will be different from his. That’s right, he’ll be on MR nightly, with Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder. Should make for some fun conversations if the convention coverage on the major networks starts to drag.
-
At a recent conference, there’s mention that the new version of MT coming out will have dynamic templates – this is a good thing. However, will have to figure out if I’ll still be able to use MT-Amazon in entries – this may not be possible or prudent with the new version. Need to find out more, as I’m in the habit of doing Amazon tags on the fly, rather than in static content. About breaking plugins, they’ve chosen this route because for some plugins it is ridiculous to expect them to work in dynamic templates. He gave me the…
-
You’re driving along, you’ve got cameras in the car, when suddenly you spot something that begs a second look. You go back, take photos, avoid another car that also went back to look again, and pantomime shrugging and “I don’t know either” as you drive past them. You’ve had a “what the hell is that?” moment. We had one today. David and I drove aimlessly, more or less with the object of getting to a beach or park along the shore of Lake Michigan, so we meandered along northwards along Sheridan Road, which is one of those historic byways that…
-
Ther’s a Thai kickboxing movie out called Ong Bak! – the trailer is in Japanese with fantabulous stunts, including Flaming Feets of Whoopass and an exploding tuk-tuk. At one point in the breathless Japanese commentary, you can hear the words “Akushon speedo! (Action Speed!)” I think this is my new favorite phrase. And though I likely won’t see this film, it also plays like a particularly violent episode of Amazing Race – on steroids, crack, and Sterno. There are more links and background information here. Via BoingBoing.
-
The third Star Wars title was announced at Comic-Con (AAAAHHH!): Revenge of the Sith. Yep, and the movie comes out May 2005, the month after Firefly. Next year is going to be big for SF movie fans. A fan quoted in the article expressed satisfaction with the title, noting the similarity of the title and logo to “Return of the Jedi,” the concluding film in the original trilogy. From what I recall, that film was originally titled “Revenge of the Jedi,” but Lucas toned it down, since he was then in the throes of being a namby-pamby parental wimp, who…
-
Yep, we went to see it: The Bourne Supremacy We saw the first film, and I watched it recently on cable, so my memories of the earlier film (and liking for it) were fresh in my mind. As a sequel, the Bourne Supremacy works really well, and it built plot points on foundations only hinted at in the earlier film. However, there was one part of the story that irked me; David said it was essential to set up Bourne’s motivation, but I thought it was the same old Hollywood hackery that happens to action heroes in the first reel.…