Weekly Readings

Here are a few articles, videos and pictures that I have found interesting over the past week or so.

Life in Afghanistan goes on for many locals, despite the turmoil around them. This interesting picture taken from a U.S. Army medevac helicopter there serves as evidence of that. See the rest at The Frame photo blog.

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press comes this story about Berthold A. Chastain. Chastain was killed when his B-24 crashed in 1943 and his remains have finally been returned to his hometown. It is always touching and somewhat sad when a family is finally able to gain some closure in this way.

 

This video of Space Shuttle Columbia’s second flight in 1981 was brought to my attention through a post on Flight Blogger. 8 years ago this past Tuesday, on February 1, 2003, Columbia broke up over the skies of Texas. Astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon were all lost in the accident.

Ever wanted to design your own Airliner livery? Now you can, courtesy of the same parent site (Flightglobal, a great source for blogs and aviation news if you have never visited) that the above article and video above came from. Flight Blog tells you how here, via a contest that Alaska Airlines is running. The aircraft is a 737-700 and the contest ends February 15^th.

And finally, on a lighter note…Hear that song slowly building in the background? It’s Danger Zone from Top Gun. Defense News reports that a Chinese state broadcast tried to pass off footage from the movie as actual video of Chinese Air Force maneuvers. The footage was quickly identified by vigilant internet users. Read the whole story here.