SUPER-SIZE IT
One of the New York Times' blogs, The Lede, notes that the Airbus 380 super-jumbo is making it's maiden flight to the U.S. today, with flights into New York's JFK and Los Angeles's LAX airports. Here's how "The Lede" describes it:
"The home of the quadruple cheeseburger and the world’s tallest thermometer is about to meet the next giant of the skies: The Airbus A380.
Easily surpassing the Boeing 747 in the tale of the tape, she’s as tall as a seven-story building, wider than 70 vehicles parked end-to-end, as heavy as 500 Volkswagen Golfs and big enough to carry 35 million ping pong balls.
Those last two facts were gamely tossed out by Airbus’s chief salesman, John J. Leahy, during last month’s test flight over the Pyrenees. The Times reporter on the flight, Mark Landler, stopped three paragraphs into his story to sum it up more succinctly. “This thing is big,” he wrote.
So what better way to kick-start the American tour by simultaneously landing one on each coast? That’s scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Eastern time."
Regular readers know that I'm a serious aircraft geek, who's long-loved the Boeing 747, and has looked forward to the Airbus 380 with a bit of a "show me" attitude.
Nevertheless, one can't but help be impressed with the immensity of this thing. The NY Times blog even had a link to a YouTube video (can you believe the Times linking to YouTube??). Here's how they introduced the video:
"YouTube magic cuts manufacturing time down to 7 minutes and 14 seconds. The visuals and gripping soundtrack really hammer home the central point: This thing is big."
It is a cool video, even if you're not an aircraft geek. My favorite part was when they tested the landing gear on this monster in fast-motion.
I am looking forward to seeing this beast in real life.
P.S. On a separate note, who'd have thought that in a couple of years after the blogging explosion to mainstream adoption, that bloggers, who previously linked and commented on stories in the mainstream media, would soon be linking to blogs BY the mainstream media, who in turn would link to regular blog posts on the broader web, be they textual, audio, or video as in this case?
This "blogging thing" has come full-circle.
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