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Monday, July 9, 2007

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing have unveiled their new 787 Dreamliner at their Everett Factory near Seattle, Washington, in the United States. Sunday was chosen as its date matches the aircraft’s designation number when written in the American format, 7/8/07.

The event was attended by 15,000 people including employees, customers, suppliers and officials from government and the local community.

Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes said, “This has been a wonderful and exciting day to celebrate this breakthrough airplane with our customers, employees, supplier partners and our communities.”

The mid-sized 787 will seat between 210 and 330 passengers, and will be the first commercial airliner of a mostly carbon fibre composites construction. Boeing claims that the resulting reduction of weight compared to the traditional aluminium will offer enhanced fuel efficiency, benefiting both operators and the environment. According to the company, the 787 Dreamliner will use 20 percent less fuel per passenger than similarly sized aircraft.

On Saturday, Boeing announced 35 new orders from German airline Air Berlin and ALAFCO Aviation Lease & Finance of Kuwait, bringing the total to 677 orders from 47 customers. At the list price, these orders are worth US$5.62 billion.

The first flight is expected to take place in August or September of this year, with the first customer, All Nippon Airways, due to receive their first aircraft in May 2008.

The 787 illustrates the differing strategies adopted by Boeing and Airbus whose double-decker A380 first flew in April 2005 and is expected to enter service later this year. Whereas the Airbus A380 is aimed at flying large passenger numbers between major hubs, the Dreamliner is targeted at smaller airports where Boeing predicts will be an area of growth in the industry.

Earlier in the day, Boeing received a congratulatory letter from Airbus. The company president and CEO Louis Gallois said, “Today is a great day in aviation history. For, whenever such a milestone is reached in our industry, it always is a reflection of hard work by dedicated people inspired by the wonder of flight. Even if tomorrow Airbus will get back to the business of competing vigorously, today is Boeing’s day — a day to celebrate the 787.”

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Monday, March 6, 2006

The 78th Academy Awards were hosted by Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Crash won the Best Picture award, a surprise for many predictors. Co-producer Cathy Schulman commented “[thank you for] embracing our film, about love and about tolerance, about truth. Thank you to the people all around the world who have been touched by this message. And we are humbled by the other nominees in this category. You have made this year one of the most breathtaking, and stunning, maverick years in American cinema, thank you.”

Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco also won best original screenplay for Crash.

Directed and co-produced by Canadian Paul Haggis, film distribution rights were purchased for just USD$3 million by Lions Gate Films. Noted film critic Roger Ebert called it his favourite picture of 2005, and the picture made many North American “10 best” lists.

Backstage, Best Director winner Ang Lee commented to the press on how Brokeback Mountain refreshed his will to direct. “Before I get into making this movie, I was very tired from two very ambitious work, The Hulk and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I almost wanted to retire. I felt I had enough, I hit the bottom, sort of like my mid life crisis or something, and this movie teach me how to look at myself, how to manage myself in movie making again, enjoying making them, and the movie was shot very simple, nothing special, but most important, it taught me again, it’s about human emotions, drama and acting.”

Foreign Language Film winner Gavin Hood (Tsotsi) commented that he felt the Oscar win would “change the way South Africans view their moviemaking… hopefully it means that people will keep investing in our local stories, because this gives investors a little more confidence and what we want more than anything else is that people and human emotion is universal and we’re more alike than we think we are around the world… we’re actually so similar as human beings inside.”

Tsotsi was the People’s Choice Award winner at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, while Crash debuted at the fest in 2004. Capote and Brokeback Mountain both played at the festival days after debuting at the Telluride Film Festival. TIFF’s winners often go on to win Best Picture or Best Foreign Language Film; Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), American Beauty, and Whale Rider are such examples.

Stewart’s humor fell short of expectation for most North American film and television critics who commented on the broadcast.

At one point, Stewart jokingly chastised Hollywood for being “out of touch” with mainstream American values. Actor George Clooney later responded to this notion, saying, “We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood. It’s probably a good thing. We’re the ones that talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered. And we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. We bring up subjects. This group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud of this Academy, of this community. I’m proud to be out of touch.”

Thursday, August 6, 2009

American film director John Hughes, noted for such movies as Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, died Thursday due to a heart attack.

A statement, released by his representative, said that he experienced the heart attack while on a morning stroll in Manhattan, New York. Hughes was born on February 18, 1950 in Michigan. He started his career as an advertising copywriter in Chicago. By the end of the 1970s he was a frequent contributor to the National Lampoon magazine.

In the 1990s, he made the Home Alone series, which became a box office sensation and turned Macaulay Culkin into a star.

In recent years, Hughes stepped back from the movie industry to spend more time with his family. He is survived by his wife of 39 years, Nancy, two sons and four grandchildren.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

On the opening day of the 2008 Young Designers’ Exhibition (May 15), the Council for Cultural Affairs of Executive Yuan announced the first-ever “Wow! Taiwan Design Competition” at the Taipei World Trade Center. It will take place in conjunction with the main show (2008 YODEX). The winners from the Professional and Student classes were announced and awarded in an ceremony yesterday.

According to official information from the Taiwan Design Center (TDC), this first-ever design competition was designed for local participants to construct creative products with internationalizations and traditional cultures, and market them worldwide.

“EasTea / WesTea” and “Window & Box” also won the championship in the professional and student groups in this competition.

Saturday, May 7, 2005

Testing began on a chemical reactor at the Newport Chemical Depot near Terre Haute, Indiana on Friday morning. If successful, the reactor will be put to use destroying the large VX nerve gas stockpiles stored at the facility over the course of the next two years. After the disposal project experienced several delays, the facility announced it would begin pumping VX into a completed disposal unit for testing. The unit consists of a chemical reactor in which the VX will be mixed with water and sodium hydroxide, heated to 194°F while mixed with paddles. The resulting chemical, called hydrolysate, is chemically similar to commercial drain cleaners and has similar properties. If the test is successfully completed , the unit will continue processing the VX until the entire stockpile has been neutralized, a process projected to take two years. Administrators expect to complete testing on May 10, 2005.

According to the controversial plan, the finished waste product would be shipped to New Jersey for final reprocessing. The inert chemical would then be emptied into the Delaware River where natural attenuation would occur.

Residents near the proposed river disposal site in New Jersey oppose this idea. The contractor for the final component of this disposal would be the DuPont Corporation.

NCD is a bulk chemical storage and destruction facility in west central Indiana, thirty miles north of Terre Haute. Originally founded during World War II to produce RDX, a conventional explosive, it later became a site for chemical weapons manufacturing during the Cold War. It is now used to securely store and gradually neutralize part of the US stockpile of VX.

VX was manufactured by the U.S. in the 1950s and 60’s as a deterrent to possible Soviet Union use. It was never deployed, and the manufacture was halted in 1969 after an order signed by then-president Richard Nixon.

In 1999, the Army announced it awarded a disposal contract to Parsons Infrastructure & Technology, Inc., a business unit of Parsons Corporation. Some 220 civilian Parsons employees work at the facility, which is supervised by an Army officer reporting to the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, and a board of civilian government overseers called the Indiana Citizens’ Advisory Commission, some of whose members are appointed by the state governor.

Security at the facility is controversial. A private security service, supplemented by a complement of Indiana National Guard soldiers, guarded the facility until April 14, 2005, when the soldiers were withdrawn. An Indianapolis television station has questioned security measures in some of its special reports.

Thursday, January 13, 2005File:Huygen probe-decent nasa.jpg

The Huygens Probe will enter theatmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon,Titan, on January 14 at approximately 9 a.m.UTC.

The 318 kg probe will hit the Titan atmosphere at 6 kilometers per second. For the next 2.5 hours, Huygens will slow its descent and begin data transmission from on-board scientific packages to the Cassini Orbiter for relay to Earth. It will touch down on the Titan surface at approximately 11:30 a.m. UTC. The probe will continue data transmission for three to 30 minutes, providing it survives the descent and landing.

NASA launched Cassini-Huygens, the largest interplanetary space craft ever built,on October 15, 1997. The craft arrived at Saturn orbit in July of 2004. It is the fourth craft to visit Saturn and the first to orbit the planet.

On December 25, 2004, the Cassini Orbiter released the Huygens Probe. The probe then began a 20-day trip to Titan.

Experiments on board the Huygens Probe are designed to examine chemical reactions in the atmosphere, the source of Titan’s abundant methane gas, the existence of oceans, and the presenceof complex organic compounds.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The probe was named after Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan in 1655.

The Cassini orbiter was named for Jean-Dominique Cassini, who discovered other moons of Saturn and the gap between Saturn’s rings known as the Cassini Division.