flying quotes

Quotations about Flying I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? - it is the same the angels breathe. ~Mark Twain, "Roughing It" You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky. ~Amelia Earhart How strange is this combination of proximity and separation. That ground - seconds away - thousands of miles away. ~Charles A. Lindbergh There is an art, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. ~Orson Welles Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. ~Gil Stern Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history. ~James Dickey O! for a horse with wings! ~William Shakespeare, Cymbeline The butterfly is a flying flower... ~Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination. ~Wilbur Wright The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one. ~Wendell Willkie Once you have learned to fly your plane, it is far less fatiguing to fly than it is to drive a car. You don't have to watch every second for cats, dogs, children, lights, road signs, ladies with baby carriages and citizens who drive out in the middle of the block against the lights.... Nobody who has not been up in the sky on a glorious morning can possibly imagine the way a pilot feels in free heaven. ~William T. Piper Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death. ~Alexander Chase, "Perspectives," 1966 Flying without feathers is not easy; my wings have no feathers. ~Titus Maccius Plautus Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin. ~K.O. Eckland, "Footprints On Clouds" He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. ~Friedrich Nietzsche The bluebird carries the sky on his back. ~Henry David Thoreau If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport. ~George Winters The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul. ~Walter Raleigh Angels can fly because they carry no burdens. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994 Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 Pilots are a rare kind of human. They leave the ordinary surface of the word, to purify their soul in the sky, and they come down to earth, only after receiving the communion of the infinite. ~Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau The desire to reach for the sky runs deep in our human psyche. ~Cesar Pelli Why fly? Simple. I'm not happy unless there's some room between me and the ground. ~Richard Bach I never liked riding in helicopters because there's a fair probability that the bottom part will get going around as fast as the top part. ~John Wittenborn In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours - one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport. ~Neil McElroy When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. ~Leonardo Da Vinci (Thanks, Tommy) The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together. ~Bill Gates Given angel's wings, where might you fly? In what sweet heaven might you find your love? Unwilling to be bound, where might you move, Lost between the wonder and the why?... ~Nicholas Gordon, poemsforfree.com Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own. ~Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington When you think about flying, it's nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you're sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn't make any sense. ~David Letterman I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on. ~Jean Kerr, "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall," The Snake Has All the Lines, 1958 I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam. ~Richard Bach If black boxes survive air crashes, why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff? ~George Carlin Those who gave away their wings are sad not to see them fly. ~Antonio Porchia,Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport.... ~Amy Johnson My soul is in the sky. ~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream I always thought that my airplane conveyed a silent sermon. To the earthbound observer, its silhouette was the shape of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. ~E.R. Trimble The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly. ~G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy" Now I know why they tell you to put your head between your knees on crash landings. You think you're going to kiss your ass good-bye. ~Terry Hanson There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further. ~Werner von Braun Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway. ~Mary Kay Ash Spread your wings and let the fairy in you fly! ~Author Unknown If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I? ~E.Y. Harburg The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air. ~Wilbur Wright

November green

November green, originally uploaded by Kym Fielke.

that's me under the yellow wing :) - thanks kym fielke!

Cobra

OH YEAH...............................

back again

Well maybe I wont delete this blog. - The reason I'm back from Wordpress? Google.

Google are doing amazing things with Documents and Spreadsheets. google sites and a range of other useful online tools form the Google labs. ....and..... blogger just happens to be owned by Google.

Google is starting to integrate some of these tools and services together. so it makes sense to use the blog tool that seemlessly integrates into the tools that I already use everyday.

That's why.

But Blogger does have its downsides - its full of rubbish blogs, porn, and is usually banned in company firewalls. So its a double edged sword. For the moment I'll post infrequenstly to both this blog and the wordpress one.

seeya on my new blog

This blog has gradually fallen into disuse - by me - and so to try something new i have shifted to : -

pgpete.wordpress.com


i hope you flow me there.

thanks!

Pete

i told you so.

In Nov 10 2005, I blogged that I believed that global waming was real ( here )

my belief has been supported by the UN etc. but its a hollow victory. I wish I was wrong.

Its interesting that it was one of the few posts on this blog that caused comment and replies.

The other part of that posting was about the vitriol I found in blogs - and now that the cathy sierra debacle is topical it reminds me that hate mail/ blog phenomenon was going on long before .......

cyber-bullying - what to do?

In the wake of the Cathy Sierra cyber-bullying errrr... event. A lesser, but pertinent situation arose in the EDNA forums.

These forums are for people interested in online education ( the bit I'm referrring to is for vocational education and training. )

Unofrtunately while many were feeling quite sensitive to the issue of cyber -bullying a heated email exchange on the forum wnet nasty - which drew comments from many people in Australia about what can an online facilitator do when something like this happens.

Here is an excerpt from an email discussion I sent about the issue. : -

I had a look at the "web2.0 resources links" thread. From what I
could see the damage being done was from one guy
mouthing off.

I've seen his type before - (forgive me for pigeon-holing) but he's just a guy with poor people skills who's managed to wrap himself up into the technology and he now thinks the technology is more important than the people using it.

W3C compliance is a standard to make things easier for people , but he is using the guilt of non compliance to make people feel small and unthinking.

His verbal attacks reveal more about him - he drops a list of his credentials - indicating that he feels that he is not taken seriously - or that he is not given the prestige that he thinks he deserves.

He uses a form of discourse that looks like an attack to the gentle folk of EDNA forums - yet it is probably an acceptable discourse on some forums ( eg linux
) which are a mecca to nerdophiles who communicate in this manner.

I wonder why a clash of cultures like this hasnt happened sooner - I've come accross sites that push qualifications in "online learning" - but they almost wholly focus on the technical aspects of creating the online tools rather than the human aspect of teaching and learning online.

I applaud that jacinta tried to get him to modify his discourse - but it will take a whole lot more than a couple of posts to "educate" this guy - his verbal attacks
are really about his insecurities.


Getting back to EDNA - I think that EDNA has to have stronger moderation if they wish to promote a sharing-and-caring culture, but considering this type of problem occurs when you get any bunch of people together, it would be better to use it as a learning experience for all the budding online facilitators that are on EDNA.

Lastly -
we havent seen the offline emails that might have been sent to the victims of this abuse - the moderators of EDNA may have sent emails of support to the people that were targets of the abuse and hopefully these supportive emails would have helped them put this guy's rant into perspective.

We areall probably a little over-sensitive about cyber-bullying at the
moment. it only happens rarely lets make sure online facilitators have strategies in place to deal with it when it happens.