The In-Sect - history

November 1999: Sunbathing in our backyard two things came to my mind simultaneously as the first snowflakes tumbled to the ground. The first thing: The 21st century will just suck! There will be no sexy personal robot slave for me! No hovering computer with language recognition that looks like a brain. No flying car! The year 2000 and no flying car – can you imagine this? (And robots are still as dumb as a stump, all they can do is mowing! Language recognition still does not work and Artificial Intelligence is far away, Mr. Minsky.)

Why is there no flying car? We are developing it for 90 years now, starting with Glenn Curtiss’ Autoplane of 1917. And Robert Fulton’s Airphibian, Theodore Hall’s ConVair AutoPlane and Henry Smolinski’s AVE Mizar followed, but none of this vehicles made it into production.

Currently there are many different companies trying to market their roadable aircrafts. I’ll give you a little overview:

Terrafugia “The Transition”

Fuel Consumption: 4.5 gph Range: 460 miles, Speed 115 mph, Price $148,000, Available: Late 2009
This one is affordable and looks like it will really be delivered, but it looks ridiculously in ground mode. www.terrafugia.com

La Biche “FSC-1”

Fuel Consumption: 23 gph, Range: 975 miles, Speed: 250 mph, Price $175,000, Available: Not before 2008!
I like the fact that this baby mutates from car to plane in 30 seconds when you push a button! The problem: Looks cool as a car, but like an ugly duckling in plane mode. www.labicheaerospace.com/

Volante Aircraft “Volante”

Fuel Consumption: Range: 650 miles Speed: 150 mph Price:? Available:?
This one carries its wings in a trailer and will only be a homebuilding kit. But at least it already exists and flies! www.volanteaircraft.com

Moller “M400 Skycar”

Fuel Consumption: 20 mpg Range: 750 miles Speed: 275 mph Price: $750,000 Available: 2009
VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) is cool, but you’ll need a “powered lift” pilot’s licence to fly this Ethanol gulper! BTW: If I had that much money, I’d buy myself a village. www.moller.com/

AFA “Sokol A400”

Fuel Consumption:? Range: 500 miles Speed: 150 mph Price:? Available: Not before 2011!
Telescopic wings are a cool gadget ! One problem: Four can drive with it but only two can fly. And hoofing it is not sci-fi! www.afaco.com/

Macro Industries “Skyrider X2R

Fuel Consumption:? Range: 800 miles Speed: 288 mph Price: $500,000 Available: Not before 2012!
Plus: VTOL Minus: Not even a prototype ready and it looks like an Isetta! www.macroindustries.com/

Actually there are some reasons why the sky is not filled with flying cars. Flying is not easy – it’s not only the fact that you got to control an additional dimension, but there is metereology and navigation, too. To me it seems like even trained molluscs can get a driver’s licence here in Germany. Imagine all those dogmatics and cholerics flying!

The second thing that came to my mind: It’s really frakking cold – why do you sunbath in November, you moron?

Tex Avery has any number of masterworks to his name, of course, but the one linked above holds a special place in my heart.

It’s not only Funny (yup, with a capital F) in its own right, it’s also, by now, testament to the speed at which language changes – watch it and count all the expressions that have fallen out of use since 1951, even when they were sparklin’ new and ‘edgy’ back then.

I think it’s high time to have an updated version of this for today’s idiom – in fact, I almost wonder that I couldn’t yet find anything of that sort on YouTube.

visual aid

This is the perfect Icelandic saga, both in language as well as content – just a lot more concise than most of them.

Not really uttered by German Kaiser Wilhelm, but I bet he felt like it sometimes

Normally, you wouldn’t imagine Hollywood as the kind of place where screams are in short supply. Between studio board meetings, producers being informed of returns and actors sharing the same dressing room, collecting an overabundance of screaming samples doesn’t sound like much of a problem.

And yet, there are some screams that just never fade away. Take the famous ‘Wilhelm scream’ for example: originally recorded for “Distant Drums” in 1951, this short but aggravated statement has since been used and re-used in countless films, including the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and LOTR franchises. Increasingly, it seems to be used not only for its own merits, but also on account of its long and renowned history – and as a nod to movie fans who recognize it in all of its various guises.

A short history of the scream, with audio samples, can be found here, and this article has a video clip featuring a compilation of Wilhelm screams.

Remember the good old days, when outfit and attitude (pictured above) alone where sufficient to clearly identify yourself as goth?

Alas, those days are gone – statistics prove that, nowadays, goths are confused for emos with depressing regularity. (Depressing, that is, to any member of either group who wasn’t depressed to begin with.) I see only one hope for goths to survive as a distinctive subculture: immediate re-adoption of the Gothic language.

For too long, goths relied solely on the linguistic idiosyncrasies of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice stitched together to set themselves apart in their manner of speaking – with the Gothic language, they’ll finally dispose of an idiom that is completely hermetic to outsiders.

You can start off your studies on the subject with some handy everyday phrases, before moving on to more comprehensive lessons or a more scholarly resource. (That last bit comes courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin, where, coincidentally, there’s supposed to be a couple of great goth clubs.)

You think I’m confusing something, here? Well, at least I’m not the first one.

Sequoia trees live about 2000 years and only for 100 years men started to drive through them with cars. The tallest tree of all is Hyperion measuring 115.55 m, making him the world’s tallest living thing. At the website of Alameda, CA you can find dozens of postcards of the most popular drivethroughs through the times. It’s really interesting to compare them. (But the whole collection is worth a click.)
Drive Thru Redwood Tree Postcards.