Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...
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Pilots Arms

Next time you have the opportunity look at your pilot's arms. The arms are not strong in an obvious sense. You would think that the particular part of the hero-body that with literal single-handedness guides hundreds of tons of metal and humanity would be well-formed, masculine and muscular. In fact, these very arms countering fears of passengers actually appear weak, almost stick-like. The elbow seems to drop from the shoulder unsupported, without the expected thigh-sized bicep. The short sleeve appears large and underfilled. There are tendons strongly connected from the core without strenght, but filled with confidence and grace.

In place of muscle there are highly developed nerves in the elbow and shoulder that firmly connect with the brain and the art of flight.

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grammachickens said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
8:23 AM
grammachickens said…
It is not the arms but "the brain and the art of flight". Remember you are not just a little bird about to soar but only a heavy, unwinged human with technology.

http://www.sportpilot.org/magazine/feature/2006%20-%2010%20October%20-%20Lessons%20Learned%20-%20A%20Modern%20Icarus.pdf

Is the pilot an artist?

"In the specific domain of technique and invention, the dominating opposition is between the notions of straightness and circularity or sinuosity. Like every good carpenter, Daedalus guides his plane straight. When he begins the first flight, he adheres strictly to the rules of navigation: he flies with his eyes fixed on the constellations -- Bootes, Ursa Major, Orion's Sword -- which are the reference points of the sailor. The essential rule he sets down for Icarus is that of the straight route, halfway between the high and the low, The failure and drowning of Icarus, a bad pilot, comes from ignoring this rule.
But the carpenter-pilot who has mastery over straightness also knows how to weave undulating nets and draw curves.
The last antithesis is already present in Daedalus's genealogy: the one who has manual dexterity is characterized essentially by his intellectual qualities. The narration of the adventures of the artisan puts the accent on the form of mentality that he must prove: an inventive subtlety rich in ruses and stratagems."

http://books.google.com/books?id=ANC8Cwuk46sC&printsec=frontcover
8:54 AM
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Expidite the expidited

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