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FLATTERY --- FLAWS
FLIRTING --- FLORIDA --- FLOWERS
FLUTE --- FLYING --- FOG --- FOLLOWERS

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FLATTERY

see "COMMUNICATION" for related links


If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle.
You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment
automatically.
--Alan Ayckbourn (1939— )
English dramatist.
_Round and Round the Garden_ [1975]

-

Meddle not with him that
flattereth with his lips.
--Bible
"Proverbs" 20:19


Wounds from a friend can be trusted,
but an enemy multiplies kisses.
--Bible
--Prov. 27:6 NIV

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Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
--Edmund Burke (1729—1797)
Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters.

-

Some who affect to dislike flattery may yet be
flattered indirectly by a well-seasoned abuse
and ridicule of their rivals.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words;
Addressed to Those Who Think_, 1.83 [1823]


Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
--C.C. Colton (1780—1832)
English clergyman and writer.
_Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words;
Addressed to Those Who Think_ [1820],
Volume 1, Number 217

-

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we
sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
--Denis Diderot (1713—1784)
French writer and philosopher.

Man may content himself with the applause of
the world and the homage paid to his intellect;
but woman's heart has holier idols.
--Augusta Jane Evans (1835—1909)
American novelist.
_Beulah_ [1860]

^^

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)

Holmes's love of flattery continued unabated
into his old age, and he used his hardness
of hearing to indulge it. "I am a trifle deaf
you know," he would say to someone who had
just praised his latest work. "Do you mind
repeating that a little louder."

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.]

^^

Cautious age suspects the flattering form,
and only credits what experience tells.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.

-

Flattery is counterfeit money which, but for
vanity, would have no circulation.
--Fran็ois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_, 158 [1665]


When the vices give us up we flatter
ourselves that we are giving up them.
--Fran็ois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_ [1665]

-

There is no other way of guarding oneself
against flattery than by letting men
understand that they will not offend
you by speaking the truth; but when
everyone can tell you the truth, you
lose their respect.
--Niccol๒ Machiavelli (1469—1527)
Florentine statesman and political philosopher.
_The Prince_ [written 1513] ch. 23

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
--Jack Paar (1918—2004)
American radio and television talk show host.

You can flatter any man by telling him he's
the kind of man who can't be flattered.
--Laurence J. Peter (1919—1990)
Canadian teacher and author.

Whoever has flattered his friend successfully must at
once think himself a knave, and his friend a fool.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
_Thoughts on Various Subjects_
(published with Jonathan Swift.)

DECIUS. Never fear that. If he be so resolved,
I can o'ersway him, for he loves to hear
That unicorns may be betray'd with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers;
But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flattered.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Julius Caesar_ [1599]

Nothing has so much contributed to the
debasement of human relationships as
the idea that friends are won by flattery.
--Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979)
Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular
preacher to appear on television.
_Three to Get Married_ [1951]

I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is,
if he doesn't inhale.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.
Television broadcast [30 March 1952].

'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.
--Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
Anglo-Irish poet and satirist.
_Cadenus and Vanessa_ [1713]

We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow,
To those who love us best.
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850—1919)
American author and poet.
_Life's Scars_

-----

blandish (verb) ['blๆn-dish]
To flatter, to cajole or seduce with kind and
ostensibly affectionate words.
Flattery may be sincere, as may be cajolery but
blandishment is generally taken as insincere,
beguiling flattery. "Wheedle" implies persistent
flattery while cajolery implies flattery against
the staunch resistance of the person being
flattered.

blarney (noun) ['blahr-nee]
Empty words, double-talk, fabrication, nonsense.
Etymology: An eponym from Blarney Village just outside the city of
Cork, Ireland. The world famous Blarney Stone is perched high up in
the battlements of Blarney Castle there. The stone was given to
Cormac McCarthy by Robert the Bruce in 1314 in recognition of his
support in the Battle of Bannockburn, depicted at the very end of
Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart.' Legend would have it be half the Stone
of Scone over which Scottish Kings were crowned.

cajole [kuh-JOHL], transitive verb:
To persuade with flattery, repeated
appeals, or soothing words; to coax.

curry (verb) ['k๊-ree]
To rub down or dress a horse with a currycomb (metal brush);
to coax and cajole personal benefit with flattery.

fulsome [FUL-sum], adjective:
1. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities.
2. Insincere or excessively lavish; especially,
offensive from excess of praise.

inveigle [in-VAY-guhl]; -VEE-, transitive verb:
1. To persuade by ingenuity or flattery; to entice.
2. To obtain by ingenuity or flattery.

kowtow (verb) ['kaw-taw]
1.To prostrate oneself or touch one's head to the ground in
complete submission to someone else
2. To servilely and obsequiously comply with the wishes and
demands of someone or something.

obsequious [ob-SEE-kwee-us], adjective:
Servilely attentive; compliant to excess; fawning.
Ex.: His wealth nevertheless turns the townspeople into groveling,
obsequious sycophants.
--Stephen Holden, "'The Best Man': When She Says 'I Do,' She Means 'Not You',"
_New York Times_ [14 August 1998]

sycophant [SIK-uh-fuhnt], noun:
A person who seeks favor by flattering people
of wealth or influence; a parasite; a toady.

treacle (noun) ['tree-k๊l]
(1) Syrup, especially from the first pressing of sugar cane but
also the molasses left over after the sugar crystals are removed;
(2) sugar-coating, cloying sentiment, sweetness of speech,
especially insincere compliments.

wheedle [HWEE-d'l; WEE-d'l], transitive verb:
1. To entice by soft words or flattery; to coax.
2. To gain or get by flattery or guile.
Synonyms: blarney, cajole, coax, sweet-talk.



FLAWS

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see: "DEFECTS"
see: "FAULTS"
see: "QUIRKS"


We put our best foot forward, but it's the
other one that needs the attention.
--William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924—2006)
American clergyman and peace activist.
_Credo_ [2004], "Life In General"

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.
--Fran็ois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.

Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagans
alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about
the head, and sadly need mending.
--Herman Melville (1819—1891)
American novelist and poet.
_Moby Dick_ [1851] ch. 17, "The Ramadan"

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what
a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things,
feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and
error, the glory and the shame of the universe.
--Blaise Pascal (1623—1662)
French mathematician, physicist, and moralist.
_Pensees_ [1670], Number 434

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.
And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names.
--Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904—1991)
Polish-American novelist who won the 1978
Nobel Prize for Literature.
Interview with Richard Burgin in
_The New York Times Magazine_ [26 November 1978].




FLIRTING

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see: "COURTSHIP"
see: "MEN & WOMEN"
see: "ROMANCE"
see: "SEX"
see: "LOVE & MARRIAGE (OR NOT)" for other related links


A modern writer likens coquettes to those
hunters who do not eat the game which
they have successfully pursued.
--Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835—1915)
English novelist.

^

Dyson, Sir Cyril (1895-?)
British jeweler.

Presenting the graduation prizes at a girls'
school, Dyson found it difficult to think of
something different to say to each girl. As
an attractive seventeen-year-old approached
him across the platform, he could come up
with nothing more original than, 'And what
are you going to do when you leave school?'
With a coy flutter of her eyelids, the girl
replied, 'Well, I *had* thought of going
straight home.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only
rule by which you can form any correct judgment of
them is that they are never what they seem.
--Henry Fielding (1707—1754)
English novelist and dramatist.

God created the coquette as soon as
He had made the fool.
--Victor Hugo (1802—1885)
French poet, dramatist, and novelist.

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
--Dorothy Parker (1893—1967)
American critic and humorist.
"News Item" _Enough Rope_ [1927]



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FLORIDA

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see "PLACES" for related links


The evolution of a tourist into a permanent resident consists
of a struggle to harmonize misconceptions and preconceptions
of Florida with reality. An initial diversion is to mail northward
snapshots of himself reclining under a coconut palm or a beach
umbrella, with the hope that they will be delivered in the midst
of a blizzard. At the same time, the tourist checks weather
reports from the North, and if his home community is having
a mild winter he feels that his Florida trip has been in part a
swindle. Nothing short of ten-foot snowdrifts and burst water-
pipes at home can make his stay in the southland happy and
complete.
--Federal Writers' Project
_Florida, A Guide to the Southernmost State_ [1939]

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I am stopping for two or three days at the 'oldest
city in America' — two or three being none too much
to sit in wonderment at the success with which it
has outlived its age.
--Henry James (1843—1916)
American novelist.
Letter to Edmund Gosse [18 February 1905].

-

"Land in 1920s Florida
Was So Hot, People
Sold Underwater Lots"
By Cynthia Crossen in
_The Wall Street Journal_
August 3, 2005

Gertrude Shelby asked her readers a question in a 1926 issue of Harper's magazine: "Did you ever keep chickens?"

Ms. Shelby, a journalist, was using a metaphor to explain the rapid inflation of property prices in Florida. "Put down a pan full of big scraps, and the hens come running. The first ones grab big pieces and depart rapidly. ... The others see the pieces in the beaks, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That's resale psychology."

In less than a decade, that psychology transformed Florida from an overgrown bog to the epicenter of get-rich-quick schemes. Debarking from a train in Miami in 1925, an English tourist remarked on the city's "tropical bedlam," where sales agents pounced on visitors with noisy promises of "unsurpassed fortune."

"One had been prepared for real-estate madness," the Englishman wrote. "And here it was, in excelsis."

The Florida boom of the 1920s was far from America's first land rush, but it was certainly one of its most colorful, thanks to visionaries and hucksters like George Merrick, Carl Fisher and D.P. Davis. When Mr. Davis's first two island developments near Tampa went on the market in October 1924, people lined up for 40 hours before the sale began. One man chained himself to the door so he wouldn't lose his place. Not only did the entire 875 acres, much of it still underwater, sell out for $18 million, but an additional $8.2 million was returned to eager buyers whose money had arrived too late.

With World War I over, and Calvin Coolidge, the preacher of prosperity, in the White House, ordinary working Americans in 1924 were feeling optimistic and flush. Cars were beginning to become more affordable, and highways were reaching regions largely inaccessible until then. And Florida, like Southern California, had something people from the North and Midwest were willing to pay for: balmy winter weather.

A few foresighted developers already had started converting Florida's climate into cash. But first they had to clear the dense vegetation; drain, dredge, blast and fill; pour concrete; pump sand onto the waterfront; and import flamingos and date palms. They changed the name of Bull Island to Belle Island; Mosquito Inlet was renamed Ponce de Leon Inlet. George Merrick dreamed up a model city called Coral Gables, "wherein nothing would be unlovely."

Carl Fisher took one look at a mangrove stand and imagined Miami Beach. With the extension of the rail line to Miami, some pockets of Florida began to serve as winter playgrounds for the very wealthy.

World War I briefly interrupted the state's budding development, but soon after it ended, stories of the "American Riviera" and its skyrocketing property values began drifting north, assisted by a determined campaign of boosterism. "The only man that doesn't make money in Florida real estate is the man that doesn't own any," one slogan went. George Merrick hired William Jennings Bryan, former presidential candidate, to exhort the virtues of buying Coral Gables property twice a day to visitors. "Miami is the only city in the world," Mr. Bryan said, "where you can tell a lie at breakfast that will come true by evening."

[ . . . ]

The first generation of Florida buyers, like early converts to many speculative frenzies, did very well. A piece of land in Palm Beach that sold for $84,000 in 1915 was assessed 10 years later at almost $5 million. But as the prices inflated, so did the promises. A subdivision called Manhattan Estates was promoted as "not more than three-fourths of a mile from the prosperous and fast-growing city of Nettie."

Nettie did not yet exist.

People bought lots sight unseen — a blueprint stamped "Sold" was more valuable than dollars. In the summer of 1925, people began putting "Not For Sale" signs in front of properties they intended to keep.

Before long, however, Florida began to choke on its own growth. In 1925, more than 2,000 freight cars were waiting to be unloaded in Miami. In August, the single railroad operating to Florida announced it could accept no more freight except fuel, livestock and perishables. Stocks of building materials soon ran out. Then, "two hurricanes showed what a soothing tropic wind could do when it got a running start from the West Indies," as Frederick Lewis Allen put it in his history of the 1920s, "Only Yesterday."

By 1927, those who still had money to gamble left Florida for a safer game: the stock market.



FLOWERS
Click picture to ZOOM

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see: "GARDENS"
see "NATURE" for other related links


One can get as much exultation in losing oneself in
a little thing as a big thing. It is nice to think
how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy!
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906—2001)
American writer and wife of Charles Lindbergh.
_Bring Me a Unicorn_ [1971]

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
_A Fable for Critics_ [1848]

Flowers are for wrapping in cellophane to present as a bouquet;
Flowers are for prize arrangements in vases and silver tea-pots;
Flowers are for plaiting into funeral wreaths.
You can keep your flowers.
Give me weeds.
--Norman Nicholson (1914—1987)
British poet and writer.
"Weeds" [1981]

From my experience of life I believe my personal
motto should be 'Beware of men bearing flowers.'
--Muriel Spark (1918—2006)
British novelist.
_Curriculum Vitae_ [1992]

Roses red and violets blue,
And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forest grew.
--Edmund Spenser (1552/53—1599)
English poet.
_The Faerie Queen_ [1590—1596]

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I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD [1804]
--William Wordsworth (1770—1850)
English poet.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

----

jardiniere (noun) [zhar-dn-'eer or jar-dn-'eer]
(1) A decorative container for plants or flowers;
(2) A stand or box for plants or flowers, such as a window box;
(3) Diced fresh vegetables served as an accompaniment to meat,
as a jardiniere soup.

nosegay [NOHZ-gay], noun:
A bunch of odorous and showy flowers; a bouquet; a posy.
Ex.: There was the glamour of George Pollexfen's horses, racing under his colours
of primrose and violet: the children went to Lissadell races with four horses and
postilions, nosegays of primroses and violets pinned to their coats.
--R. F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life (Vol. 1)



FLUTE

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see "MUSIC" for related links


Specific for the bite of a viper
--Aulus Gellius (130—180)
Latin author and grammarian.
[On flute music.]

The sound of the flute will cure epilepsy
and a sciatic gout.
--Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?)
Greek philosopher and biographer.

Please bring my flute.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822)
English poet.
Letter to his wife, informing her he had eloped with
Mary Goodwin and asking her to join them.

--

Scientists have discovered the oldest playable musical
instrument in the world. It’s a flute carved from a bird’s
wing bone more than 9,000 years ago. The flute was
discovered with other flutes at an ancient burial site
in China.



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FLYING

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see "TRAVEL" for related links
see "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links


The child [Nikola Tesla] . . . perched on the roof
of the barn, clutching the family umbrella and
hyperventilating on the fresh mountain breeze until
his body felt light and the dizziness in his head
convinced him he could fly. Plunging to earth, he
lay unconscious and was carried off to bed by his
mother.
--Margaret Cheney (1921— )
American journalist and author.
_Tesla: Man Out of Time_ [1981] "A Gambling Man"

-

It was just after 10:30 in the morning on December 17,1903, when
Orville Wright, an Ohio inventor and bicycle shop owner, took off into
a near-freezing head wind for a I2-second propeller-driven trip-a I20-
foot voyage that may well have launched the modern age. "Aviation
is the definitive technology of the 20th century," says Tom Crouch,
senior curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian National Air and
Space Museum (NASM) and author of _Wings: A History of
Aviation, from Kites to the Space Age_. "Flight symbolized our
deepest aspirations, like freedom and control of our destiny."

Amid all the celebrations of the long-anticipated centennial,
it might be easy to lose sight of just how amazing those
landmark early flights were. As Dunlop discovered, Wright
aircraft were dangerous. Frail assemblies of wire, wood and
cloth powered by homemade engines, they were reluctant
birds, difficult to steer and easy to crash. In fact, planes based
on the Flyer that Orville Wright coaxed off the ground would
kill dozens of pilots in coming years. Still, the craft embodied
what we recognize today as the basics of flight, and though
aviation has advanced far beyond anything the brothers might
have first imagined - in 2000, airplanes carried more than
three billion passengers - [ . . . ]

From the ancient Greeks, whose mythological tale of
Icarus' wax wings melting when he soared too close to the
sun, to carvings left by the South American Incan civilization
on the walls of its holy Andean citadel of Machu Picchu,
humanity has long been fascinated by the idea of flying.
Renaissance paintings and frescoes of Christ's ascension into
heaven "had a concept of air as a thing to be worked," says
Richard Hallion, a former NASM curator and Air Force historian,
and author of _Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age
from Antiquity through the First World War. "Christ is shown
lifting off like a rocket, and the Apostles all have windblown
garments. Angels have muscular wings in proportion to their
size." Among the most startling early visions of powered
human flight are Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century sketches
of mechanical flapping wings and crude helicopters. Yet
Leonardo's ideas never got off the page.

The first person to apply scientific principles to the problems
of flight was George Cayley, an English baronet known
today as the father of aerial navigation. Born in 1773, he built
the first glider to go aloft with a person aboard — his coachman,
in I853 — and correctly identified lift, drag and thrust as the
main forces to be mastered for powered flight. [ . . . ]

The first hot-air balloon with passengers took to the air
in 1783, when its inventors, the Montgolfier brothers, sent a
sheep, a rooster and a duck soaring for eight minutes in the
sky over Versailles. For the next century, lighter-than-air balloons
and airships, unwieldy or impossible to control, were considered
the only realistic way to get aloft. Meanwhile, inventors kept
struggling with the challenge of powered, heavier-than-air flight.
Some built gliders shaped like moths or bats; others built
massive, steam-powered aircraft that were unflyable; one
such contraption collapsed under its own weight. [. . . ]

Some pioneers were on the right track. The German Otto
Lilienthal built 16 different gliders between 1891 and 1896,
making almost 2,000 flights in the low hills outside Berlin. In
his experiments, he accumulated data on lift and would inspire
the Wright brothers, but his death in 1896 in one of his
own gliders had a dampening effect on aviation. Convinced
that powered flight was a dangerous folly, many Europeans
working on the problem aborted their efforts. [ . . . ]

At first, the airplane's potential beggared the imaginations of
the most progressive scientists. Too expensive for anyone but
rich daredevils and too dangerous for regular commercial use, the
Wrights' machine was laughed off as frivolous; even the brothers
thought that only national governments would have the resources
to build and fly airplanes. "It is doubtful if aeroplanes will
ever cross the ocean," the eminent Harvard astronomer William
Pickering scoffed in 1908, according to Hallion's history. "The
public has greatly overestimated the possibilities of the aeroplane,
imagining that in another generation they will be able to fly over
to London in a day. This is manifestly impossible."

Such disdain chilled U.S. investment in aviation. Between 1908
and 1913, the U.S. government spent only $435,000 on aviation
— less than Germany, France, Chile and even Bulgaria. European
inventors and entrepreneurs were soon building better, faster and
more stable planes than were the Wrights. "The Wright airplane
was superseded by European designs as early as 19IO," [ . . . ]
German, Russian and especially French aviators and inventors
soon dominated the skies, as our vocabulary attests; "aviation,"
"aileron," "fuselage" and "helicopter" all have French origins.
[ . . . ]

At the start of World War I, the airplane had come into its
own as a military and commercial technology. The open-cockpit,
largely wood-and-fabric airplanes jousting in Europe's skies —
planes like the British Sopwith Camel and the German Albatros
— were faster and far more nimble than the Wright Flyer, but
still dangerous. Heroes like Manfred von Richthofen (the "Red
Baron") and America's Eddie Rickenbacker created the mystique
of the fighter ace, but thousands of others perished in the air. In
1917, the life expectancy of a British fighter pilot in a combat
zone [. . . ] was three weeks. [ . . . ]

In the 1920s and '30s, investment by industry and government
fueled innovation. Wood frames and cloth skins gave way to all-
metal designs, which in turn made possible larger, stronger craft,
streamlining, sealed cabins and high-altitude flight. Also important
were reliable flight instruments such as the artificial horizon,
altimeter and directional gyroscope, crucial to flying in poor
weather (and keeping airlines on schedule). By 1932, U.S.
airlines were flying more than 475,000 passengers a year.

In 1935, aviation reached a new peak — and, oddly perhaps,
something of a plateau — with the development of the Douglas
Aircraft Company's DC-3. With 21 seats, all-metal construction,
a streamlined design, retractable landing gear, automatic pilot
and a cruising speed of almost 200 miles per hour, the DC-3 is
considered by many experts the pinnacle of the propeller-driven
plane, and set the pattern for planes we know today.

As new engine designs drove propellers faster and faster —
at their tips, they broke the sound barrier-engineers came up
against baffling aerodynamic properties. Shock waves and
unpredicted turbulence undermined performance. Propellers
lost efficiency and thrust when they neared supersonic speeds.

The man who overcame that limit was not a professional engineer.
Frank Whittle, a machinist's son and Royal Air Force pilot, came
up with the idea for a jet engine while serving as a flight instructor
in the early 1930s. "Whittle was an odd duck pushing an idea
everyone thought was kind of nuts," says historian Roger Bilstein,
author of _Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts_.
"Nobody thought it would work."

Whittle persisted, eventually scraping together the resources
to design a workable jet engine on his own. The concept, at any
rate, is simple: air coming in at the front of the engine is compressed
and combined with fuel, then ignited; the burning mixture roars out
the back of the jet, generating tremendous thrust while passing
through turbines that power the compressors in the front of the
engine.

Whittle's jet engine was first tested in the lab in 1937 and, four
years later, powered a specially designed fighter at an air base
near Gloucester, England. Pilots watching the top-secret test flight
from the side of the damp airfield were baffled. "My God, chaps,
I must be going round the bend," one officer reportedly said later.
"It hadn't got a propeller!"

Meanwhile, a German engineer named Hans von Ohain had
been developing his own jet engine. In 1944, a handful of jet
fighters and bombers, including the Messerschmitt Me 262 —
the world's first operational jet — saw service in the Luftwaffe.
In America, military brass put jets on a back burner, convinced
the war would be won with conventional airplanes, and lots
of them. Diverting resources to work on the unproven jet,
authorities insisted, would be a waste of time. But after the
Allies swept through Germany at the end of the war, they
recruited dozens of German jet and rocket scientists,
including Wernher von Braun, and then took them to the United
States in "Operation Paperclip." The plan laid the groundwork
for decades of U.S.-led innovation, from immediately
useful jet technology to advances in rocketry that would
ultimately make the space program possible.

Jet propulsion technology was the most important thing
in aviation since the Wrights. "The jet wasn't a refinement
of anything, it was a complete breakthrough," says NASM's
Anderson. "A whole second era of aviation was opened up by
Whittle and von Ohain." Yet the jet's inventors never got the
recognition the Wrights enjoyed. Whittle's patents were
appropriated by the British government during the war, and
von Ohain quietly began a new career in I947 — as a U.S. Air
Force propulsion scientist.

Yet it would take years of painstaking work to turn the jet
plane into reliable transportation. In the early days, fighter
jet pilots had a one in four chance of dying in an airplane
accident. Supersonic speeds, at least about 650 mph,
required rethinking conventional notions about aerodynamics,
control and efficiency. The design of the X-I, which broke the
sound barrier over California's Muroc Dry Lake in 1947, was
based on the .50-caliber bullet, an object that engineers knew
went supersonic. It was flown by laconic West Virginian test
pilot Chuck Yeager, a veteran World War II ace who counted
two Messerschmitt 262s among his kills.

The bravery of those test pilots is what we tend to remember
of jet travel's early days. But perhaps more important was the
massive government expenditure on aviation and space research
in the I950s and '60s. By 1959, the aviation industry was one of
the largest employers in America's manufacturing sector, with
more than 80 percent of its sales in the decade and a half after
World War II to the military. America's aviation and space
successes became potent symbols in the cold war, and the
booming aerospace industry got what amounted to a blank
check from the government. After all, as a character in the
movie version of The Right Stuff observed, "No bucks,
no Buck Rogers."

"Government investment in things related to flight drove
a whole broad front of technological development," Crouch
says. "One thing after another developed because it was
somehow related to flight, and governments were spending
money on it." Computers became ubiquitous aviation tools,
from aiding design of complex aircraft to forming global
ticketing networks. The jet engine also took civil aviation to
new heights — and speeds. Boeing introduced a prototype of
the 707 passenger jet in 1954 that could fly more than 600
mph (three times faster than the DC-3). Four years later, Pan
American began regular 707 service from New York to Paris,
ushering in the jet age.

As the hard-won lessons of military test pilots yielded
safer, more stable jet designs, the very shape of the world
began to change. From massive B-52 nuclear bombers capable
of flying nonstop from Omaha to Moscow in 11 hours, to
passenger jets that could cross the Atlantic in 7 hours, the jet
made international travel accessible to almost everyone. Big
passenger jets became common — the 452-passenger Boeing
747 debuted in 1969 — and the number of people who flew
climbed steadily each year.

Supersonic passenger planes were the next obvious frontier.
But with the exceptions of the Soviet Tupolev TU-144, which
first flew in December 1968, and the Concorde, a joint venture
between France and Britain that took off two months later,
supersonic passenger travel would remain largely a novelty.
Both planes were a bust financially. In almost 30 years flying
across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound, the gas-guzzling
Concorde never broke even. Air France ceased regularly
scheduled Concorde service this past May and British Airways
in October. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs and politicians have
continued to float futuristic (and so far impractical) ideas, like
the Orient Express, a massive supersonic transport that would
carry up to 200 passengers from New York to Beijing in two
hours, skipping like a stone across the earth's atmosphere
at Mach 5.

Attaining ever-higher speeds hasn't necessarily been the
highest priority for the military. Since the I970s, military
planners have emphasized maneuverability and stealth. But
the new planes, with smaller, angled wings and control surfaces,
tended to be unstable. That changed with the development
in the I970s of onboard computers, or "fly-by-wire" systems,
in aviation lingo, capable of making thousands of adjustments
per second to rudders and other control surfaces. The
Northrop B-2 stealth bomber and the Lockheed F-II7A
Nighthawk stealth fighter, bizarre matte-black bundles
of strange angles and stubby wings designed to disappear
from enemy radar, seem to defy the laws of aerodynamics
with the help of sophisticated software. The ultimate
fly-by-wire technology, unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs,
are remote-controlled drones, which have already seen
service in the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq. [ . . . ]

--Andrew Curry
"Taking Wing" in _Smithsonian_ [December 2003]

-

-

My particular inner desire to fly the Atlantic alone
was nothing new with me. I had flown Atlantics
before. Every one has his own Atlantics to fly.
Whatever you want very much to do, against the
opposition of tradition, neighborhood opinion,
and so-called 'common sense' — that is an
Atlantic....

I flew the Atlantic because I wanted to ... To want
in one's heart to do a thing, for its own sake; to
enjoy doing it; to concentrate all one's energies
upon it — that is not only the surest guarantee
of success. It is also being true to oneself.

--Amelia Earhart (1897—1937)
American aviator who disappeared
in a flight over the Pacific Ocean.

-

Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two
men each, could not cost more than five ships
of the line; and where is the prince who can
afford so to cover his country with troops for
its defense as that 10,000 men descending
from the clouds might not in many places do
an infinite deal of mischief before a force
could be brought together to repel them?
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
In a letter to Jan Ingenhousz [16 January 1784].

-

Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: What more
could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the
elements I loved. There was science in each curve
of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and
wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of
the exhaust pipe. There was freedom in the unlimited
horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A
pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky.
He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys
and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had
gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff
of the wind. I began to feel that I lived on a
higher plane than the skeptics of the ground;
one that was richer because of its very association
with the element of danger they dreaded, because
it was free of the earth to which they were bound.
In flying, I tasted the wine of the gods of which
they could know nothing. Who valued life more
highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they
loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies
through their antlike days? I decided that if I could
fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it
would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary lifetime.
--Charles Lindbergh (1902—1974)
American aviator.


I saw a fleet of fishing boats. . . .I flew down almost touching the craft
and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They
just stared. Maybe they didn't hear me. Maybe I didn't hear them.
Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool.
--Charles Lindbergh (1902—1974)
American aviator.
In the _New York Times_ [23 May 1927].

-

-

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941)

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sun-lit silence. Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air;
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark nor even eagle flew;
And while, with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-

The visibility was good and the air was clear, and
there is nothing like the air at such altitudes as
that. All the trappings of the world are out and one
is close to the infinite in such air. The throb of
the motor has always seemed to me like the drumming
in one's ears when one takes ether. A flight is a
sort of oblivion. I am happier in a plane than I
ever am on land, I suppose because I was born for
it. I am capable in the air and more alive than I
am on earth. When we die, I hope our souls go to
the air out of the world, up above the cloudbanks
where the sun streaks down on oceans of pink and
gold.
--John P. Marquand (1893—1960)
American novelist.
_Your Turn, Mr. Moto_ [1935]

Darius was clearly of the opinion
That the air is also man's dominion
And that with paddle or fin or pinion,
We soon or late shall navigate
The azure as now we sail the sea.
--J.T. [John Townsend] Trowbridge (1827-1916)
American novelist of books for boys, poet and editor,
_Darius Green and his Flying Machine_ [1910]

-

Success. Four flights Thursday morning. All against twenty-one-
mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average
speed through air thirty-one miles. Longest fifty-nine seconds.
Inform press. Home Christmas.
--Wilbur Wright (1867—1912) & Orville Wright (1871—1948),
Telegram to the Reverend Milton Wright, from Kitty Hawk,
N.C. [17 December 1903].

-

28 Percentage of adults who, if they could have a
single superpower, say they would most like to be
able to read minds, according to a survey for
Activision

15 Percentage who say they would like to be
able to fly

11 Percentage who say they would like to be
able to be invisible

9 Percentage who say they would like to be
able to have super strength

--blurb in _Las Vegas Business Press_ [28 August 2006]

-----

barotrauma (noun)
Pain and possible damage caused to an organ by changes in atmospheric pressure



FOG

.
.

see "NATURE" for related links


The fog comes
on little cat feet,
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
--Carl Sandburg (1878—1967)
American poet.
"Fog" [1916]



Click picture to ZOOM
FOLLOWERS

.
.

see: "CROWD (THE)"
see: "SHEEP"
see "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links


Most people are followers, not leaders. In fact,
the more rapid the methods of communication,
the more numerous will be the imitators.
--Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979)
Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular
preacher to appear on television.
_Thoughts For Daily Living_ [1955]

-----

lackey (noun)
A servile follower.
Synonyms: toady, crawler, sycophant

myrmidon [MUR-muh-don]; noun:
A loyal follower, especially one who executes
orders without question, protest, or pity.
Ety: Members of a warlike Thessalian people who
followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy.
Ex.: Those who created EMU [(European) Economic and
Monetary Union]--mainly politicians and their myrmidons
in the offices and conference rooms of Brussels--portray
a beckoning landscape of wealth, liberty and economic
power that will rival the United States and surpass Asia.
--James O. Jackson,
"The One-Way Bridge,"
_Time_, [11 May 1998]

sequacious (adj.) [see-'kwey-sh๊s]
(1) Inclined to follow rather than lead, conformist,
following others in thought and behavior;
(2) continuing in a consistent direction, as a
line of reasoning.

truckle [TRUHK-uhl], intransitive verb:
To yield or bend obsequiously to the will
of another; to act in a subservient manner.


end page



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