Aviation Week Sold

Aviation Week and Space Technology, the long time industry bible was sold by McGraw Hill to Penton Media.  Penton is an aviation publisher with mags such as Air Transport World, Aircraft Bluebook, and Air Charter Guide.  Let's hope this works out better than the Washington Post or Boston Globe sales. 
  Aviation Week is important because of it's savvy staff, who know aircraft, know flying, and know who to talk to in the Pentagon, in Congress, and in industry.  No journalism majors at Aviation Week.  They have an enviable record of revealing what's going on long before anyone else.  It's read in the Air Force, in the airlines, at FAA,  at intelligence agencies world wide, and in the airframe builders.  It's a weekly magazine that costs real money ($375 a year) to subscribe to. 
    Gregory Hamilton, current head of Aviation Week will take over Penton's Aviation Group.  It was an all cash deal, price not disclosed, and should have closed by the first of August.
    I guess Mcgraw Hill's business magazine people just didn't understand  anything that couldn't be expressed in an Excel spread sheet.

More about nose gear

The NSTB has been looking into that ground loop at La Guardia last month.  As in why did the nose gear collapse upon landing?  That ain't supposed to happen, and this is the first time I heard of it happening to a 737.  Or to Southwest, who is a pretty reliable operator.  About all they say is video from bystanders shows the nose gear contacting the runway BEFORE the mains.  That is unusual.  Normal practice is the ease the main wheels down on the runway, and then carefully lower the nose.  Carefully so as not to break anything.
  After the nose gear broke and the plane sat down on it, the gear was jammed up into the bottom of the fuselage, damaging an electronics bay.  Hmm.  Glad I don't have to fix that. 

So now I own a legacy newspaper

So what do I do now?  Both the Boston Globe and the Washington Post have a lotta name recognition, but they have been loosing money for years.  The owners let them go for really cheap, compared to what they sold for 10 years ago.  So what do the new owners do?  Surely they don't want to have their newly purchased toys die on them.
   Let's assume the proud new owners bought to gain social status and access to important people.  The owner of the Washington Post or even the Boston Globe gets invited to all the top notch Washington parties, and get even POTUS to accept their phone calls.  That's gotta be worth something, especially if you own Amazon which could get cut up real bad by federal regulators.  
   So what could be done now that we have owners with bags of money?  The Internet has torpedoed the legacy business mode, the sale of advertising.  Advertisers are going to the Web and doesn't look like they are coming back.  So what to do?   The newsrooms are still generating some decent content, but people don't pay to visit web sites.  So putting the paper on the Web doesn't make money.  The draw from the content isn't strong enough to pull in enough ad revenue to pay the salaries.  Besides, going on the Internet doesn't take much money, and the papers have famous names to draw customers. 
   Me, I think the papers will just continue to slide down the drain.  The new owners have enough money to cover the losses for quite a few years.  It will take a few years to see.                           

  

Al Quada ain't dead yet.

Doesn't matter what Obama says, there is still too much life in Al Quada.  Any outfit that can pull off three big prison raids freeing their fighters, close down US embassies all across the middle east, bomb the Boston marathon, and destabilize the Assad regime in Syria, is still to be reckoned with. 
   We might have killed Osama bin Ladin, but  the organization is still alive and dangerous. 

They don't make teachers like they used to.

After the Connecticut school shooting this winter, suggestions were made to arm teachers.  This idea brought forth gallons of wails and tooth gnashings.  Some said that teachers could not properly handle firearms.  Other's wailed that teachers would never soil their hands by picking up a gun.  Training would be impossible.  and on and on.
   I wonder about this.  I think back on teachers I had years ago.  Miss Shirley, Miss Gaudette, Miss Percy, Mr Convery, Mrs Falby, Mrs Mclauglan.  It's been a lot of years since grade school but these teachers are still clear in my memory.  They were all competent, forceful, and dedicated grownups, in whom we kids stood  in awe.  Should a homicidal maniac turn up one one of their classrooms, they would cope,  a firearm in their hands would do the job nicely.  Since graduating grade school, and serving in USAF in Southeast Asia, and some other dodgy places, I cannot say I ever met anyone who would be a better person to have in a menaced classroom with a gun in hand.  Teachers in my day were calm, courageous and careful.  Much better material than your standard rent-a-cop.
   Any school committee ought to encourage teachers to carry.  For that matter they ought to provide good student proof gun safes in the classroom.    

The Economist thinks petroleum demand will fall.

Clearly the Economist has been quaffing from the Beyond Petroleum tap.  They argue that fracking has given us fantastic amounts of cheap natural gas.  Gas will replace gasoline and diesel to fuel the big stuff, buses, 18 wheelers, garbage trucks, big vehicles with room on board for bulky compressed natural gas tanks. 
   Then they wax eloquent about the improvement in gas mileage over the years.  I suppose.  On the other hand you could buy a diesel Rabbit that got 40 mpg back in the 1970's.  They don't sell those any more.  And a lot of the improvement is just on paper.  For instance the US EPA gives a substantial mpg boost to any vehicle that can run on alcohol. 
   Needless to say, none of the oil companies are forecasting a downturn in demand. 

Sauce for the Goose is sauce for the Gander

TV News has some victims of Obamacare wailing loudly about it.  First we have the Congress and Congressional staffers.  Since they invented Obamacare, and voted it in, it's only fair that they should enjoy the higher costs and reduced care they inflicted on the rest of the country.  Then we have the IRS, so impartial, so fair, and getting a big boost in budget, authority and manpower to ram Obamacare down the throats of the rest of us.  It's only fair that they should be sticking it to themselves as well.