Truth in Pre-flight Announcements

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.

Link (via BoingBoing)

More like this

Just watch the video. My friend recording this for me was too far away to catch what I was saying. Apparently, I was cussing like a sailor and cracking everyone up (you can hear them roaring with laughter in the background). I think I said something along the lines of "WHY DID YOU ALL TELL ME '…
When you peer into a fractal, you're seeing the edge of chaos. If you sift through enough Julia or Mandelbrot sets, you might catch a hint of fractal fever. When you find that point, where order is filtered out of randomness, and glimpse a familiar pattern, you might feel tempted to shout "Eureka…
Sometimes fractured energies in our planet's noosphere can throw people together who, logically, should never meet. There's no rational reason I should count among my friends the particularly reclusive, Cologne-based science fiction writer and critic Mark von Schlegell; but, lo, kismet, I do.…
Everybody (well, mostly everybody) learns in science and physics class the Three Laws of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, meaning that the increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done…

There's more fun to be found at the Link link.

What I couldn't see was a byline. Someone has a deep background to be able to come up with so much good stuff. I suppose it might just be a very white knuckle frequent flyer with an inquiring mind and a morbid sense of humour.

By JohnnieCanuck (not verified) on 14 Sep 2006 #permalink

JohnnieCanuck wrote: "What I couldn't see was a byline."

The Economist eschews bylines. There's a good chance that whoever wrote the article flipped through a copy of James Morrow's novella City of Truth. The main character, Jack Sperry, lives in a city named Veritas and finds himself on the horns of a dilemma when his son falls ill during a stay at Camp Ditch-the-Kids. I was just flipping through the book myself, which was published in 1990, and discovered a similarity to current events. The host of the TV morning show Enduring Another Day, while interviewing the Assistant Secretary of Imperialism, comments that, "So far, over four thousand Veritasian combat troops have died [in the Hegelian Civil War]." The Assistant Secretary responds by saying, "A senseless loss. Our policy is impossible to justify on rational grounds, which is why we started invoking national security and other shibboleths." A review of the book can be found here.

Personally, if a jetliner I am on is headed for an emergency landing, my anti-gravity belt is the last thing I'm going to leave behind.

By Friend Fruit (not verified) on 15 Sep 2006 #permalink