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So I thought I should begin my first post on here with a nice and gentle introductory sentence, but I realise that pointing out the increased use of computational phylogenetic tools on cultural and particularly linguistic data to the avid readers of this blog is probably a pretty pointless exercise.
There is of course a lot to say about parallels between biological and cultural evolution, and some of the work using computational tools has given us new insights into yet unanswered (and even hitherto unasked!) questions regarding language and language change. But today I'd like to share some thoughts on a particular "application" of phylogenetic tools, the methodology of which I find a bit odd, even though it is arguably the simplest evolutionary analogy of them all: using computational phylogenetics to reconstruct linguistic phylogenies.
The idea looks innocent enough: given a number of taxonomic traits of individuals (languages), the methods produce one or more trees or networks representing a suggested genetic relationship between the individuals which, to use an oversimplification, maximizes overall within-family retention of traits while minimizing independent introduction of the same traits between families/individuals.
While a lot of ink has been spilled over which phylogeny estimation methods are best for language or whether trees are an adequate representation for cultural entities at all, I'd like to draw your attention to a more fundamental issue, namely the nature of the traits or 'characters' underlying all linguistic reconstructions. The proposed benefit of a phylogenetic reconstruction is an optimal evolutionary history over these traits. If the reconstruction is to give us any new insights at all, these traits should be strictly taxonomic, i.e. synchronic. I argue that this does absolutely not hold for language, due to the structural nature of all linguistic traits which have been used for reconstructions so far: phonological, lexical and syntactic.
Among all the sub-disciplines of linguistics, the legacy of structuralism is most noticeable in phonology, and understandably so: phonemes are generally accepted to be exemplar-based clusters which are by themselves meaningless (because non-referential) components out of which meaningful morphemes can be built up. What matters is thus not the concrete realisation of a phoneme, but rather its structural opposition to the other phonemes in a given language's phoneme inventory. Where and how exactly a phoneme is articulated is far less crucial for the role it plays in the particular language, as long as it is sufficiently distinguishable from all other phonemes.
How is this relevant for the discussion at hand? The main point is that phonemes are within-language concepts which do not directly lend themselves to cross-linguistic comparison, synchronically or diachronically. A sound is by no means 'the same' or 'unchanged' in later (or earlier) stages of a language just because the physical articulation might not have changed much. Saying that English /d/ and Dutch /d/ are 'the same' is nonsensical because the very systems through which the two phonemes are defined are not only vastly different from each other, but also vastly different from the original system from which both developed. Saying that Old High German changed a Proto-Germanic /t/ to OHG. /ts/ while Low German languages 'retained' or 'inherited' the Proto-Germanic /t/ is equally misleading, because it's Low German /t/ that we are talking about. In the strictest sense, any cross-linguistic comparison of phonemes is ruled out completely. Using biological terminology, all phonological categories are by definition not homoplastic, and all character states change at every proposed stage of a language. This is not just a matter of pedantry because the sounds will in fact differ in their articulation, leading to the uncertainty of reconstructed sounds with increasing time depth. Overenthusiastically equating phonemes with the four nucleotides found in DNA (as repeatedly done by the likes of Mark Pagel) is superficial and indicates a dramatic misunderstanding of the nature of language, as has been noted and elaborated by many others (e.g. Shanon 1978, Holm 2007).
The fact that the contrastive nature of phonemes is problematic for automated phylogenetic reconstructions based on sound changes seems to be completely ignored by virtually all computational phylogenetic reconstructions I have come across. It is either not acknowledged at all or otherwise quickly swept under the carpet, justified by the claim that phonological changes apparently 'recur' and are thus homoplastic (Nichols & Warnow 2008, p.765). Two questions: firstly, how can a proposed sound change, i.e. a relation between two concrete phonemes of two different languages be more cross-linguistically comparable than the phonemes themselves? And secondly, how can a sound change, i.e. a proposed diachronic relationship between two sounds which obviously implies a diachronic relationship between the two underlying languages be considered a taxonomic feature at all?
It is simply not possible to encode synchronic cross-linguistic sound correspondences without already having a particular genetic relationship for all these sounds in mind, and indeed without explicitly coding this theoretical reconstruction into the linguistic 'characters'. This is particularly evident in the phonological characters used in (Nakhleh et al. 2005) which 'record the occurrence of sound changes in the (pre-)history of the language' (p.172), such as whether the Germanic consonant shifts occurred or not (P16). This is quite obviously not a synchronic feature since it is actually based on a purported earlier state of both languages which is hypothesised before the phylogenetic methods are even put to use.
But if you already have a theory of how a given set of languages are related (and you have one by definition, because otherwise you would only have a set of mutually incomparable features which will be of little use for any phylogenetic reconstruction), then what's the added value of pretending not to have one and feeding an impoverished representation of your already fully reconstructed tree to some algorithm in order to reconstruct your theoretical reconstruction that your features are based on?
If this sounds diffuse to you, rest assured that it is. I will try to make this point more strongly (and hopefully more concisely) in the following section.
There was another good reason to start with phonology, namely the fact that, with the exception of the disputed methodology of mass comparison, virtually all cognacy relations between lexemes are based on their compliance with proposed sound laws. Perhaps even more importantly, the only way in which cognates can be distinguished from later (re-)borrowings is by the absence of otherwise regular sound changes, even when these "sound laws" are not as law-like and exceptionless as we'd like them to be.
This leads to the well-known circularity of the comparative method, where regular sound changes are established based on supposed cognates which exhibit these sound changes. Despite this methodological flaw and the fact that its reliability decays with time depth and the corresponding lack of information on both the pronunciation as well as the meaning of words, it has been producing solid results and reconstructions since the dawn of historical linguistics.
The first point I'd like to make is consequently that, due to their entanglement with a concrete proposed history of sound changes, all phylogenetic traits based on cognate lexemes implicitly encode a specific, already reconstructed phylogenetic tree. This is not a mere question of how you selectively choose a subset of cognates, which obviously has an impact on the resulting reconstructions as well. Every single set of cognacy specifications is nothing but a sample of a particular theoretical model of the genetic relationships among these languages based on regular sound changes. Cognacy is a strictly diachronic concept, which should be evident given the etymology of the word 'cognate' itself. What's even worse, in contrast to using sound changes as traits, this information is now no longer explicitly present, effectively obscuring the tautology. This makes it seem like you were actually inferring a diachronic pattern which was not visible in the 'synchronic' input specification, but this is an illusion. Any phylogenetic tree reconstructed from such traits which contradicts the sound changes on which the traits are based basically refutes the (diachronic) theory based on which the input characters were encoded, but likely it is no more than an artifact of the sampling of a specific set of cognates.
A second point is in order. The obvious effect of sampling different sets of cognates has led many computational phylogenetic studies to 'address' this problem by adopting a sampling strategy from lexicostatistics. This amounts to encoding only 100 or 200 core concepts which are known to be extremely robust against borrowing, also known as Swadesh-lists. Again it is hard to see how you can speak of cognacy in the first place without already having a hypothesis about how precisely the two forms are diachronically related, but my second point is that it is not just the form but also the nature of semantics which calls the foundations of these cross-linguistic comparisons into question.
Here, structuralism strikes back in a more subtle incarnation. While semantic concepts such as those captured by the Swadesh-lists appear to form a relatively stable set of 'traits', lexemes don't organise themselves by mapping to 'universal' concepts, but float about, carving out areas in a highly continuous semantic space, carrying a contrastive, discriminatory function in opposition to 'neighbouring' concepts. The fixation on idealised prototypical concepts which do not correspond to the actual concepts of a language leads to the systematic exclusion of relevant data. The Swadesh-item 'dog' is normally not marked cognate between English (dog) and German (Hund) or Dutch (hond). An English cognate 'hound' does exist though, it has simply attained a more specialised meaning than 'dog' while, ironically, 'dog' has also been borrowed into German (Dogge) serving an equally more specific purpose than general 'Hund'. Such patterns will immediately catch the eye of the trained person entering the characters who can use them to make interesting inferences about a genetic relationship, but they are by definition excluded from the data fed to the computational tools.
Generally, while information gained from tracking Swadesh cognates can be of interest for determining the speed of a 'lexical clock' (the replacement rate of standard vocabulary from a parent to a child language), it is inadequate for establishing a genetic relationship between two languages in the first place. The exact proportion of cognates has no impact on the supposed genetic relatedness of two languages because the identification of cognates itself already implies a concrete hypothesised genetic relation between the two.
Syntactic or 'structural' features have been the basis of some of the most interesting results of computational phylogenetics (e.g. Dunn et al 2011), a trend likely to continue with the availabity of large typological corpora such as the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS). In contrast to fuzzily distributed items such as phonemes, many of these characters like those concerning word order are much more clearly delineated.
This seems to indicate that structural features would lend themselves to cross-linguistic comparison much more easily. But it is actually one of the people behind WALS who has argued against this explicitly (Haspelmath 2010) by emphasising categorial particularism, i.e. that even the most basic formal linguistic categories cannot be equated across languages because the criteria for category assignment are necessarily different in each language. Thus, unless you commit yourself to a framework such as Principles & Parameters, the characters you are dealing with are comparative concepts devised by typologists which are by definition not congruent with the actual functional categories that speakers use to master the language. (NB I think some of the confusion concerning phonological characters stems from the fact that this distinction is not made clear when the same symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet is used to represent concrete phonetic instantiations [t], the phonological /t/ categories of different languages as well as the fuzzy universal concept of a 't-like sound' in general.)
This result is actually less critical than the ones in the two previous sections. There is nothing categorically wrong about basing reconstructions on typological characters, as long as you acknowledge the fact that these features do not actually correspond to real entities within the languages, but are simple indicators of whether there is any element in the language which fulfills the criteria of the comparative concept, although with no guarantee of a 1:1 relationship. But because these features are strictly placed in the domain of linguistic description as opposed to psychological reality, this raises the question of what such characters mean for the results and interpretations of the method. I understand that something similar is done in biological reconstructions based on morphological rather than genetic features. But since the features are not real traits exhibited by the languages you cannot argue that these should be the units of (altered) replication. This reduces the 'reconstruction' to a synchronic clustering/similarity measure with no diachronic dimension, amplified by the fact that most structural characters have few possible values, leading to high rates of chance resemblance (Croft 2008).
In contrast to reconstructions based on sound changes, it is much harder to distinguish between actual 'inheritance' and horizontal transfer of features like word order and other grammatical categories, which are known to diffuse easily either through the influence of a Sprachbund or linguistic substrate. While this is acknowledged in (Dunn et al. 2005), they nevertheless conclude having discovered evidence for genealogical clustering, which I don't see warranted at all. Structural features perform badly at detecting even short-term relationships on established language families (Nichols & Warnow 2008), calling into question the validity of the results for the larger time-depths for which these features were proposed in the first place.
Even though their performance in comparison to the comparative method is questionable, there is nothing wrong with using structural features as long as you acknowledge that the methods are based on features which are not very well-understood diachronically and for which no established linguistic theory of change exists, and also that the mapping of these methods from biology onto linguistics is rather superficial. Such research should consequently also distance itself from any unfounded and misleading 'language-and-the-genetic-code-metaphors' – not opening your abstracts with suggestive sentences like 'Languages, like molecules, document evolutionary history.' would be a good start.
Other indicators for computational phylogenetics
As you can probably tell by now I am more than underwhelmed by the methodology of computational phylogenetic reconstruction applied to linguistic traits, and I hope that my arguments have managed to convince you of some of these problems. On the other hand you might still be wondering why I have put some of my arguments in a rather fierce fashion. Am I just a disgruntled historical linguist fearing for my job, afraid of being replaced by a computer? Firstly, no I'm not, secondly, I want to discuss two more indicators for applying computational phylogenetics to a field, and relate these to the current state of affairs in (historical) linguistics: abundance of data and formal models of altered replication.
One of the prime reasons for the existence and sophisticatedness of the many phylogenetic algorithms today is the amount of data that fields such as molecular genetics have had to handle since the advent of automated DNA sequencing. Such a huge amount of data unmanagable by human beings (and not collected by human hands in the first place) simply cries out for computational tools, because any manual attempts could never be nearly as exhaustive given the combinatorial explosion of the complexity of systematically contrasting and comparing all the data.
How does this compare to the situation in linguistics? Data collection (particularly of the rarest and consequently most interesting 'species') is still a tedious and pain-staking task only performable by trained linguists in the field. Moreover, in the last 50 years, which has seen the biggest growth in scientific research across the board, most of linguistics has been ridden by an obsession with theory over data (Gibson and Fedorenko 2010). This shortcoming is only recently being remedied by the collection of and work with quantitative corpora, both typological as well as developmental. But computational methods coming in as a life-saver in face of an unmanagable amount of linguistic data, systematically collected in a combined effort by a majority of people working in the field? Not quite.
But even the limited linguistic, typological corpora are combinatorially challenging, potentially warranting the use of computational tools. So what could be done to escape the methodological tautology I have argued for? Instead of feeding traits representing already established diachronic histories into the algorithms, the obvious solution would be to use strictly synchronic traits. As I argued these can not be compared cross-linguistically straight away, but this could be addressed by devising algorithms which can establish diachronic correspondences themselves, making use of formal models of probable sound changes.
Such algorithms are indeed under investigation, most commonly based on the Levenshtein distance, the minimum number of changes necessary to transform one word into another. But at least in the current studies known to me this measure systematically ignores the problem of cross-linguistically comparing categories such as phonemes in the first place, simply treating phonetic categories as 'the same' given that they are similar enough in articulation (or, mind-boggingly, in spelling, e.g. Serva & Petroni 2008).
This is obviously no match to the sophisticated probabilistic models of change from molecular genetics, filling no less than six chapters in Felsenstein's 'Inferring phylogenies'. But these methods are not simply transferable to the linguistic domain because they exploit a very specific property of the genetic code, namely that the function of the nucleotides coincides with its material representation (Shanon 1978). All DNA copying happens locally, while linguistic characters (particularly phonemes and morphosyntactic patterns) are 'transferred' by repeated global inference over many linguistic utterances. Even the core phonetic 'alphabet' of a language is not stable but has to be re-inferred by every single language learner, completely unlike the neatly delineated inventory of the genetic code, a fact that is frequently and blissfully overlooked. I am surprised that even someone like William Croft does not point out this fundamental difference between the genetic and linguistic 'alphabets', treating epenthesis, deletion and metathesis as mere combinatorial problems (Croft 2008).
What's even worse about current methods, the Levenshtein distance might even be determined independently for every word under investigation (Serva & Petroni 2008 and others). This amounts to reducing the task of establishing cognates to a simple and unsystematic 'hm, this word does sound a bit like this other word in this other language'-routine, completely ignoring everything we know about the systematicity of sound changes as well as semantic change.
This approach is uncannily similar to the disputed methodology of mass comparison and, not unlike reconstructions using only structural features, lends itself to omnicomparatism, the trend to try to compare and relate the most distant of languages based on a minimal amount of unsystematic evidence, leading to hypothesised relationships which are not only highly disputed but usually also bordering on the non-scientific. I'm not sure that what these questions need are black box algorithms which come up with an 'optimal' evolutionary history, hiding all their assumptions behind anonymous numbers.
It is often stressed that computational techniques are intended to supplement traditional methods, but how can we believe this claim if none of these techniques show any serious interest in the existing methods at all? Why is there a focus on much weaker typological (comparative) features, when there is grammaticalisation theory, a sophisticated framework for investigating the origins of grammatical morphemes and categories, which I did not find a single reference to in any of the articles I looked at?
This lack of interest is complemented by a trend to force biological concepts onto linguistic ones, like Nichols & Warnow 2008 p.788 arguing that 'copying' would be a more 'transparent' term for borrowing – quite on the contrary since it completely obfuscates the fact that loanwords are typically accommodated in the phonology of the target language. These approaches seem to pick the first vague parallels which allow stuffing linguistic data into existing algorithms instead of joining a serious and constructive debate on what the replicating units of language really are, as done by the likes of Croft and Mufwene. All this leads me to the conclusion that many extensions of these phylogenetic methods to language is not done with appropriate care but rather with outright ignorance and fundamental misunderstandings of the target domain.
In this post I have argued that computational phylogenetic 'reconstructions' are not just not giving us any genuinely new reconstructions, they are not even independent evidence for existing reconstructions because the traits which they use are already based on concrete hypothesised evolutionary histories.
Computational reconstruction based on typological features is one way to escape this tautology, and this can obviously complement the existing toolkit, particularly when there is a lack of better theories. By this I mean particularly more general cultural traits, such as the features of different traditions of basket weaving or carpetry design for which we have no other theories of transmission, diffusion and change. But in historical linguistics, sophisticated theories of change based on the understanding of the function of linguistic conventions such as phonemes and a large amount of expertise regarding probable phonetic changes do exist. Computational phylogenetics does not provide comparable insights in this area and, despite claims to the contrary, the approach shows no real interest in understanding or complementing the existing methods.
A more direct solution to the tautology would be the development of formal theories for automatically hypothesizing and evaluating regular sound changes, which are still in their very infancy. Most importantly they are also plagued by a confusion of descriptive categories with comparative concepts, with the crucial difference between the two completely ignored in current work, resulting in a similar methodological flaw.
Other current applications of computational methods to linguistic data, particularly if they were performed on phylogenies reconstructed by other means, are of course also untouched by my criticism: Quantifying the role of global vs. lineage-specific trends of typological features and their correlations (Dunn et al. 2011)? Absolutely! Studying replacement rates to infer something about the nature of language divergence in general (Atkinson et al. 2008) or to test some concrete theories of divergence in particular (Gray & Atkinson 2003)? If you will. But if computational phylogenetics is to produce genuinely new and well-founded linguistic reconstructions it has to (a) avoid the tautology I have tried to point out and consequently (b) develop formal models of sound changes which are a methodologically and qualitatively serious challenge for the established and well-proven methods currently employed in the field.
So why am I writing all this? I am not a stubborn skeptic of computational phylogenetics, panicking at the very thought of "putting history into boxes". I believe that an evolutionary approach can give us valuable new insights into language change and I would of course also embrace computational phylogenetics applied to language if only the underlying methodology was sound. But every single time I come across a phylogenetic study I am in awe over the interpretation of what the encoded characters are, and what the resulting trees are supposed to tell us anew, except that the clustering algorithms developed in machine learning over the past decades do indeed work. Recognised historical linguists proclaim their interest in these methods, criticising them only for their performance rather than their methodological foundations, but I see some fundamental flaws. I am deeply puzzled by some misunderstanding that seems to be going on concerning the nature of the data encoded in these trees, and it seems to be a huge misunderstanding. All throughout this posting I have assumed and tried to show that the misunderstanding is theirs, but some of the discrepancies are so basic that I feel stupid for even pointing them out. Maybe it's me who is misunderstanding something. Maybe the historical linguists, typologists, computer scientists and geneticists creating these studies are perfectly aware of the mismatches between the characters they investigate (although looking at some of the tables listing 'conceptual parallels between biological and linguistic evolution' in various papers I seriously doubt this).
But why is nobody seriously discussing these discrepancies, obvious mismatches and inconsistencies? Am I just imagining them? Are they simply not that bad? Why are they not that bad? Is there something about the original domain of these methods (biology) that I am seriously misguided about? What do comparative and historical linguists really think about them? Are they seen as a quantitative blessing to bring an 'old-fashioned' discipline with antiquated research methods up to cutting-edge research?
I am wondering about all these questions and I would like to invite everyone who has bothered to read this far to share their thoughts or frankly tell me where I have totally missed the point, particularly those of you who are actively developing or working with these methods, as well as comparative linguists in general. The comments section below is open for discussion or, if you prefer, I'd be grateful if you would share your thoughts or feedback by e-mail.
Atkinson, Q., Meade, A., Venditti, C., Greenhill, S., & Pagel, M. (2008). Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts Science, 319 (5863), 588-588 DOI: 10.1126/science.1149683
Croft, W. (2008). Evolutionary Linguistics Annual Review of Anthropology, 37 (1), 219-234 DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.37.081407.085156
Dunn, M., Terrill, A., Reesink, G., Foley, RA., & Levinson, SC. (2005). Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History Science, 309 (5743), 2072-2075 DOI: 10.1126/science.1114615
Dunn M, Greenhill SJ, Levinson SC, & Gray RD (2011). Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals. Nature, 473 (7345), 79-82 PMID: 21490599
Gibson, E., & Fedorenko, E. (2010). Weak quantitative standards in linguistics research Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14 (6), 233-234 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.03.005
Gray, RD., & Atkinson, QD. (2003). Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin Nature, 426 (6965), 435-439 DOI: 10.1038/nature02029
Haspelmath, M. (2010). Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies Language, 86 (3), 663-687 DOI: 10.1353/lan.2010.0021
Holm, HJ (2007). The new arboretum of Indo-European "trees". Can new algorithms reveal the phylogeny and even prehistory of Indo-European? Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 14 (2-3), 167-214 DOI: 10.1080/09296170701378916
Nakhleh, L., Warnow, T., Ringe, D., & Evans, S. (2005). A comparison of phylogenetic reconstruction methods on an Indo-European dataset Transactions of the Philological Society, 103 (2), 171-192 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-968X.2005.00149.x
Nichols, J., & Warnow, T. (2008). Tutorial on Computational Linguistic Phylogeny Language and Linguistics Compass, 2 (5), 760-820 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00082.x
Serva, M., & Petroni, F. (2008). Indo-European languages tree by Levenshtein distance EPL (Europhysics Letters), 81 (6) DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/81/68005
Shanon, Benny (1978). The genetic code and human language Synthese, 39 (3), 401-415 DOI: 10.1007/BF00869557


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Meet Gerard Streator. One night at around 11 p.m., an off-duty cop was out jogging when he spotted the 46-year-old Wisconsin man leaning over an abandoned couch on the side of the road. According to the police report, Streator's hips were "thrusting up and down on the couch." As the cop got closer, he yelled, "what are you doing?" Streator jumped up and fled, but the cop could see that "[Streator's] penis was erect." There was no one else on the couch. As The Smoking Gun puts it:
[The cop] concluded that Streator "had been thrusting his pelvic area against the cushions and trying to sexually gratify himself by rubbing his penis between the two cushions." It is unclear whether the reference to two cushions meant that the couch was, in fact, a love seat.
Streator was was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior; the couch could not be reached for comment.

subset: commoncrawl


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Last Thursday's storm battered parts of Connecticut and took out our electricity for three days. Without which I had time to catch up on my reading. An article in the Connecticut Genealogy News, Vol. 4 No. 2, What to Do With Your Stuff? by Richard G. Tomlinson caught my attention and I hope Mr. Tomlinson doesn't mind if I share the information.
Actually this concern has been raised in our genealogy club from time to time. Members wonder what will become of their research when they are gone. Their children are not interested, nor are other family members. They shudder to think that their precious family files will be thrown in the dumpster. One member, who was diagnosed with cancer, had plans in place to send the genealogy research of his ancestor who had worked on the Erie Canal to a museum in that area. Others suggested designating a historical society or local library to receive their materials and to make sure family members know of this designation.
Mr. Tomlinson's solution is to set up three ring binders for each ancestor. His write-ups are included in the binder as well as vinyl sheets with pockets that hold newspaper clippings, etc. Each binder's spine is clearly labeled. When he has enough research done, he writes up the history and that is shared via CD or hard copy with family members. By following this process he hopes that his material will be organized enough that some local genealogy society, historical society or library might accept his files in the future.
Remember DO NOT carry around original documents – birth, marriage, death certificates, etc. Make a copy to keep in your binder for when you are off on a research trip; leave the original at home.
I would love to know what plans others have for preserving their genealogy research.


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An airline's livery can be dull, stylish, sedate or even amusing. The initial trend saw fuselages left as bare metal with the airline's name so small as to be hardly visibly from a distance. This unalloyed colour scheme evolved to include a horizontal line painted along the row of windows, and then into the predoninantly all-white fuselages, boldly coloured tailplanes and unmissable company name branding that is most common today.
But there have been some glories and gaffs along the way, so I'll take a livery a week and highlight the best and worst moments in plane paint jobs past and present...
I think he's trying to tell us something - the new Beluga XL looks suitably flipperesque. Photo Airbus
Airbus manufactures different parts of its passenger planes across various European countries, and it uses specially designed aircraft to transport large sections of its aircraft from their site of manufacture, to the assembly plants in Toulouse, Hamburg, and Seville.
The problem was solved in 1996 with the use of the Beluga-ST - a strange looking aircraft that was based on the company's A300-600. By grafting an extra large diametre section of fuselage onto the existing base, the bulbous-looking machine was able to carry wings, tailfins, and other fuselage sections.
Now comes the latest version, the Airbus Beluga 'XL', which is based on the skeleton of the company's more modern and advanced A330-200 aircraft, which is six metres longer than the previous Beluga, a metre wider, and can carry six tonnes more weight. And this time Airbus has gone the whole hog and has added Beluga Whale-like eyes and a smile to the front.
Five of these Cetacean themed aircraft are due to enter service and replace the older models. Incidentally, the light-hearted paintjob came about in part by asking the workforce their opinion as to the new Beluga XL branding. The good people working for Airbus opted for anthropomophisation on a grand scale - such a shame Jonny Morris is no longer with us.
The machine is bound to bring a smile to the bean counters too, as the BelugaXL can carry two wings for the new wide body A350 XWB instead of a single one in the previous BelugaST model.
The BelugaXL has cleared the paintshop and has made its debut flight. Photo Airbus
One more thing....Boeing has also addressed the problem of transporting large fuselage and wing sections from plant to plant, and currently uses a modified 747 Jumbo Jet that it calls the Dreamlifter. It looks a lot less cuddly than the Beluga, which might help to explain why Boeing have the below publicity shot on its website.
Nope, I've no idea why there are kiddies involved in this Dreamlifter shot either. Photo Boeing
The evolution of such outsized cargo carriers can be traced from the Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy, which first flew in 1962, and then the Aero Spacelines Super Guppy that entered service in 1965. Both aircraft were based on an extensively modified Boeing Stratocruiser that was used for transporting component's in NASA's Apollo programme.
For obvious reasons it was likely irksome for Airbus to have to use transporters based on its arch rival Boeing's Stratocruiser, and so the Beluga cargo aircraft was based on modifications to the Airbus A300-600. Five were made and have been flying Airbus parts between assembly plants since 1995.
The first Airbus Beluga-ST being loaded with part of an aircraft fuselage. Photo Eric Baur/Flickr
And another thing....as ever, the Soviet response to the problem was completely different. It came in the form of the Myasishchev VM-T. It was based on the Myasishchev Molot bomber and was intended to carry some of the gigantic components of the Buran space vehicles - itself Russia's copy of NASA's Space Shuttle.
The tail plane disappeared in favour of two end-plate tail fins to allow for the plane to carry the most bulky of outsized cargo, which was then bolted to the top of the plane's fuselage. The outlandishly outsized rocket strapped to the top of the aircraft was many times larger than the carrying aircraft's cargo, lending it a dung beatle-style bizarreness.
The Myasishchev VM-T landing at the Baikonur Cosmodrome with its ludicrously large payload
The trademark beak paint-job on the front of every Nok Air 737. Photo Nok Air
Nok is the Thai word for bird, and nobody can accuse Nok Air of being shy with its liveries. Its slogan is 'Smiling across Asia', and the bright yellow beaks are painted on all 33 of its aircraft. The fuselages follows through on the daftness and come in various parrot-like colour schemes.
No, I don't know why Nok has an aircraft with a clown fish fuselage behind the beak either. Photo Nok Air
The airline's major shareholder is Thai Airways, but Nok does its own low cost thing from its base at the old Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok - flying to 26 domestic destinations, plus Yangon, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore. One-way fares start at about 900 THB (£20)
A bevvy of beaks on Nok Air 737's. Photo Nok Air
How can Nok Air work for you?
It's well worth keeping Nok Air in mind for domestic flights within Thailand, or to make a low cost hop across to Vietnam.
Pro's: the fleet is new and the cabins are fresh, with hard-working crews. There are three travel classes - 'Promotion', which has no free baggage allowance for the hold, Nok Eco that has a free baggage allowance of 15kg, and Nok Flexi that has a free 20kg allowance and the maximum flexibility to change dates and routes etc.
All classes can make a free seat selection in advance and get an in flight snack, plus free at the gate and on board WiFi - currently free WiFi is fitted in three aircraft, but the system is being rolled out fleet-wide.
Nok Air crew and beak on an ATR-72. Photo Nok Air
& Cons: the seat pitch and width - at 30 inches and 17.2 inches, isn't great, though fine enough for the airlines' relatively short sectors. Keep in mind that the airline's hub is the old Bangkok Airport to the north of the city and not the newer Suvarnabhumi Airport to the west of the city - fine if you are already in Bangkok, but not a good option for connecting to or from international flights, which mostly use the new airport. There is no frequent flyer club.
Front views of a NokScoot Boeing 777. Photo NokScoot
A few facts: Nok Air was formed in 2004 as a low cost airline, partly owned by Thai Airways. Its fleet is made up of eight Bombardier Dash 8's, two ATR 72 turboprops and 23 Boeing 737-800s. The average fleet age is 6.5 years.
Good to know: just when you thought that airline names couldn't get more silly, Nok has teamed up with Scoot Airlines of Singapore to bring us NokScoot. Oh well, it's a low cost medium to long haul airline formed in 2015 that for now is focussing on routes from Bangkok to China and Taiwan. It has three Boeing 777-200ER's.
Blessing aircraft in order to bring good luck is a Buddhist tradition in Thailand. Photo NokScoot
See Nok Air and NokScoot
Braniff's 'End of the plain plane' campaign began in the early 60s and led to its 'Jelly Bean' livery
Even via grainy old photos, Braniff's 'end of the plain plane' livery remains eye-catching half a century after its launch. It was part of a bold turnaround plan put in place by the airline's then boss, flambouyant Texan Harding Lawrence, and saw the airline adopt a cutting edge approach to its design, uniforms and cabins. And all this at a time when airline colour schemes - such as they were - left the fuselage as silver metal, or painted a stripe or two (called cheatlines) along the row of windows, complimented by drab interiors and dowdy uniforms.
The innovative Braniff branding introduced seven vivid colours to the airline's fleet - including Lemon Yellow, Chocolate Brown and Metallic Purple, and there were flambouyant cabins to match, imported Latin American furniture for its lounges, and avant-garde guard crew uniforms created by Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci.
Emilio Pucci designed Braniff uniforms. Note the 'raindomes' being sported by two of the women
These days hardly a week goes by without an airline announces a new celebtrity designed uniform or a designer endorsed 'look' - think Virgin Atlantic and Vivienne Westwood designed crew uniforms, Finnair and Marimekko designed tablewear, or Air France and it's tie up for its Paris Charles De Gaulle lounges and Alain Ducasse. But Braniff's approach was truly groundbreaking in its day.
Pucci created six complete uniform collections for Braniff between 1965 and 1974 and even designed a bizarre plastic helmet dubbed a 'rain dome'. It was in the days of very few jetties, and so the idea was for hostesses to sport the space-age helmet on the walk between the terminal and the aircraft to avoid wind and rain messing up their big 60s hairdos. But the helmets cracked, were surely impractical, and were quietly dropped. There were even a range of Barbie dolls sporting Braniff uniforms - rain domes included - and Ken was kitted out as a Braniff pilot.
Braniff BAC 1-11s and a Boeing 707 in its 'Jelly Bean' livery
Getting back to the livery, I'd always understood that it was the idea of Braniff's CEO's wife. The story always repeated to me as though she'd made a casual comment during a BBQ, but the real story isn't quite as folksy as it sounds. You see, the airline's CEO Harding Lawrence married Mary Wells, chairman of the Wells, Rich, Greene advertising agency in New York. At the time she was at the top of her game as an advertising guru and one of the best paid women in the US.
Incidentally, Braniff started life as Braniff Airways Inc. It was founded in 1930 by airline entrepreneur Paul Revere Braniff, who later sold it to his brother Tom. Tom died in a flying boat crash in 1954, and his brother of cancer six months later. Lawrence Harding was vice president of Continental Airlines before being appointed as the Braniff CEO. By this time Braniff International Airways was already flying across the US Midwest, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Harding set about growing it from America's 11th largest airline, to its would-be market leader.
A brace of Braniff Boeing 727s
The Braniff makeover that Harding initiated had real substance, and leading architect Alexander Girard was taken on to zhoosh up its materials. Eventually, Girard created some 17,000 Braniff-specific items), and the lounge and ticket office furniture was so desirable that some of the range went on sale in 1967.
Braniff also invested hugely in its 'Terminal of the Future' in its home base airport of Dallas Love Field. The space age terminal was connected to the parking areas by a futuristic 'Jetrail' monorail. The 10 gondolas were slung under rails and ran from the new Braniff terminal to the 'Braniff Remote Parking Terminal'. The system was shut down in 1974, some time after Braniff had relocated to Dallas Fort Worth Airport, and had a last lease of life as a disco, until it was dismantled in 1978.
A mock up of what a Braniff liveried Concorde might have looked like
Braniff even operated Concordes for a time in the late 70s, though the fact that the airline never actually owned a Concorde and that the plane couldn't fly supersonically over US air space, meant that the route from Washington to Dallas was more a gimmick than anything. However, the airline did order three Concorde's in 1966, though the order was cancelled a few years later.
The Big Orange, Braniff 747 takes to the skies, perhaps to the Big Apple
Braniff flew Jumbo Jets to and from London's Gatwick Airport. The route was generally operated by one of the company's orange 747's, and I think I recall adversing along the lines of 'Fly the Big Orange to the Big Apple'.
Crazily vivid interior of a Braniff 'Big Orange'
In case the Big Orange and the other Braniff planes weren't colour overloads in themselves, the airline's cabins echoed the end of the plain plane concept. There were at least seven matching cabin colours.
Braniff approcahed the modern artist Alexander Calder to produce the world's first and largest flying artwork. In fact Calder was comissioned to create three new one-off liveries. The first was painted onto a Douglas DC-8 and called the 'Flying Colorsof South America' in 1973, and this was followed in the USA's centenerry year 1976 by a Boeing 727-200 that Calder patriotically rendered into a red, white and blue 'Flying Colors of the United States'. Somewhat remarkably all Braniff markings - including even the name on the tailplane - were removed from the plane. Calder didn't get the opportunity of finishing the third plane, called the 'Spirit of Mexico', as the artist died in 1976.
Braniff DC-8 sporting its Alexander Calder 'Flying Colors of South America' livery
Braniff had an advert strap line and jingle in 1980 that proclaimed 'We better be better, We're Braniff'. Bold livery excepted, the airline was in some trouble by this time, caused by low load factors, high oil prices, a controversial boss, and an over ambitious expansion. It may sound childish, but then again I was a child at this time - when we played with it at the school bus stop in tones to imply that they were so utterly hopeless that they had 'better be better'.
The company went under on May 12th 1982, after which the ad line was changed at the school bus stop to 'We better be better, we're bankrupt'. But in a world of ever blander livieries - witness the recent unveiling of Lufthansa's new monumentally mediochre livery - pioneering and maverick Braniff made a bold and creative attempt to position the airline at the forefront of deisgn, fashion and art.
Thanks to its revolutionary style and arty execution, Braniff has its followers, even so long after its demise. For some more detailed history on the airline, see Braniff Pages. And for Braniff branded goods - from throws to Christmas tree baubles - yes really, see Braniff Boutique.
ANA's soon-to-be-delivered A380's mocked up as orange, green and blue flying turtles. Photo ANA
ANA created such a splash with its proposed sea turtle livery, that it has today announced two more colours - green and orange. The striking paintjobs will adorn the airline's new Airbus A380s, due to be delivered from Spring 2019. The new aircraft are ANA's first A380s, and will be introduced on the lucrative holiday and honeymoon Tokyo to Honolulu route, before other routes are added later.
It will be the first time that ANA has offered First Class on the route, and the airline has made an effort to customise the cabins too. The total capacity will be 520, with eight first class seats, 56 business class, and 73 in premium economy.
All classes will have access to bar counters, where drinks and snacks will be available, plus at the rear of the main deck ANA has created a room where parents will be able to tend to their babies, and more gernerally passengers can change clothes before arriving at their destination.
It may look a bit Blue Peter, but the winning idea gets a 73m meter canvas to cover in about 1,100kgs of paint. Photo ANA
Chosen from over 2,000 entries to a design competition, the winning motif is a Hawaiian Green Turtle - a symbol of good luck and prosperity on the islands. The turtle is a much loved creature on Hawaii and is called 'Honu' in the local language, and in the super-sized super bold livery, it has been given the corporate blue wash of the ANA colours and called 'Lani' (meaning sky), emerald green called 'Kai' (ocean), and orange called ' Ka La' (sunset).
In tandem ANA will be supporting organisations and activities on Hawaii designed to protect sea turtles. And in a moment of marketing madness, ANA also created a new concept name called "ANA HAWAii". The airline says that 'By flipping the "ii" 180 degrees, it turns into two exclamation points. This symbolizes the numerous excitements that passengers are able to experience including cabin features, and promotions, as well as the grand opening of a new ANA Lounge at Honolulu Airport.' Does anyone else understand that?
How can ANA work for you?
Getting to Japan: ANA has its hubs at Tokyo's Narita and Osaka's Kansai International airports, and operates flights across Japan, and to Japan from Europe, Asia and the USA. It's largely a business focussed airline, with the exception of its Hawaii flights and a few other holiday destinations.
Pro's: ANA was awarded five stars for the fourth consecutive year by the world's leading Airline and Airport review site, SKYTRAX, and was also the launch customer and current biggest operator of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. On board service is very good, and the airline has an especially good business class, with dining on demand - my whim to have a obster curry a little before a morning landing was eccentric, but delicious and memorable.
& Cons: It's not so easy to find cheap fare deals on ANA, as the carrier is gunning for the higher yielding business passenger, rather than holidaymakers.
The frequent flyer club: the ANA Mileage Club has more than 26 million members and thanks to ANA's membership of the Star Alliance, has a large number of airline and other travel partners on which to collect and spend points.
A few facts: ANA was founded in 1952 as a helicopter operator, and has grown into the largest airline in Japan, carrying 47 million passengers in 2017. A big boost came in 1986 when the government of Japan lifted the condition that state owned Japan Air Lines (JAL) be the only carrier allowed to operate international flights.
ANA now flies to 87 international routes and 114 domestic routes with a fleet of around 260 aircraft, with an average age of about 9.5 years. It also owns the regional airline ANA Wings, the low cost carrier Vanilla Air and the charter airline Air Japan. It's also a majority stakeholder in naffly named Peach and Air Do.
For further information see ANA
Not a snowflake on the tail, but a cornflower. One of Belavia's new 737-800s. Photo Belavia
For a very long time, the Belavia livery was a Cold War throwback - closely resembling Aeroflot, but long after even Aeroflot had gone all contemporary and adopted its new red, white, blue, silver and orange paint job. Seeing a Belavia aircraft, with it's aged logo, font, and colour scheme, looked like either something from an old spy film, or an example of a retro livery - where an airline paints one or two aircraft in a nostalgic former livery.
Belavia Tu-154 in the company's familiar, neigh tired old livery. Photo Belavia
With two blue lines along the length of the fuselage - called cheatlines - and an encircled logo on the tailplane, Belavia's old livery even managed to make brand new aircraft look washed up and dated.
Yet things changed when the company introduced its new cool purplish blue and white paint job in 2016. It's a little surprising not to have incorporated the green and red of the national flag into the livery, but the fresh blue chosen is a colour close to the hearts of all Belarusians. The two-tone livery is white and cornflower blue. It's the national flower of Belarus and a strong cultural symbol too, as the cornflower can be seen in fields all over the country, and is a symbol of happiness and longevity.
A Belavia 737-800 getting airborne. Photo Belavia
So the white circular design on the tailfin may look like a snowflake, but it's not.
One more thing...Given the highly controlled economy of Belarus, it's somewhat surprising to discover that the country has become a centre of IT excellence - with Belarusian programmers responsible for the Viber messaging app and the successful multi-player World of Tanks.
The game dates from 2009 and features various tanks and armoured from the Second World War. Amongst other milestones, World of Tanks holds the record for the most number of people playing simultaneously - set in January 2013 with a record breaking 190,541 players. In total some 200 million players have enjoyed a virtual spin in a World of Tanks fighting vehicle.
The dedicated World of Tanks livery appeared on a Belavia Boeing 737-300 in July 2016. 'The Game from Belarus, Enjoyed Worldwide' it says on the fuselage...
World of Tanks livery on a Belavia 737-300. Photo Belavia
How can Belavia work for you?
Getting to Belarus: Belavia has its hubs at Minsk National Airport. It's the national carrier and operates flights across Europe, the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), Georgia, Azerbaijan, Central Asia, Israel, Lebanon and Iran. Incidentally, Belarus introduced a five-day visa-free scheme in 2017, valid for citizens of 80 countries.
Pro's: the Soviet made aircraft that once made up the entire fleet are long gone, and today Belavia operates an all western fleet of 26 aircraft, including 18 Boeing 737's, four Bombardier CRJ's and four Embraers - with two more of the latter on order. The look and feel of the airline is now far from communist era, and the website has been spruced up to include online check-in and the like, and you'll find the perfectly decent 'OnAir' in flight magazine too (though it is mostly in Russuan).
Service has perked up a lot in recent years and the airline still provdes free snacks and hot meals, dependent on flight duration.
An old livery Belavia 737-300 looking like something from the 70s. Photo Belavia
& Cons: Belavia lacks the critical mass of flights and frequencies to be of use for connecting passengers, and isn't in an airline alliance.
Belavia then and now; from parkas and cheatlines to a dapper jacket and video game promotion. Photos Belavia
The frequent flyer club: 'Belavia Leader' is only good for anyone who flies Belavia a lot, as it doesn't have any other airline partners for collecting and spending.
A few facts: Belavia was founded in 1996 as a helicopter operator, when after the collapse of Communism in 1991, the local division of Aeroflot was nationalised and renamed Belavia. In its early days, Belavia operated a mixed fleet of aging Soviet-built aircraft, but for some years now has a western-built fleet of Boeings, Bombardiers and Embraers.
Cue soaring music and some air-to-air shots for the new Belavia livery
For more information see Belavia, Minsk National Airport, and Visit Belarus
Kulula is a South Africa low cost carrier that wears its sense of humour on its fuselage. On the face of it, jibing about the captain being the 'big cheese', numbering the wings 'wing #1' and 'wing#2', and jokingly showing where the black box is kept (with brackets saying 'which is actually orange'), could be a high risk strategy, given the understandably serious nature of flying. But Kulula's irreverence and jocularity is a long established part of the airline's corporate personality, and as such it gets away with it. There is even a dotted outline of a toilet at the rear of the fuselage with a large arrow saying 'Loo (or mile-high club initiation chamber)'.
The tongue-in-cheek 'Flying 100' concept was dreamt up by the airline's in-house design team; a result of a 2010 initiative to 'demystify air travel for our fans'. The airline has encouraged mirth on board too, with lines uttered by cabin crew that include; "Kulula Airlines is pleased to announced that we have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!"; "People, people, we're not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it."; and "Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted."
Kulula has an admirable no-nonsense style and uses clear and simple English throughout. The Website for example, has 'Flying 101' sections that explain in splendidly clear and simple terms, issues such as lost luggage, what taxes and fees make up the ticket price, and why never ever - even in jest - to josh about having a bomb in your bag. Trust me, I've worked at enough airports to know that this happens. Kulula gives a recent example at George airport where the check-in agent asked 'Do you have any sharp objects in your possession? 'No, just a bomb.' replied the passenger, which landed him in isolation, questioning and court, all on the same day.
But a decent sense of humour is the company's trademark. It calls its passengers 'fans' throughout its Website, majors on jokes in its advertising campaigns, and encourages its crews to make humorous passenger announcements. Another quirky addition to Kulula's livery line-up is an aircraft with 'THIS WAY UP' in huge letters on the side of the fuselage, complete with arrows as though on a packing crate containing fragile goods.
The regular Kulula livery is predominantly green, with large letter 'K' on the engines and tailplane, and the addition of a blue dot next to the 'K' at the rear of the fuselage.
How can Kulula work for you?
Getting around South Africa: Kulula flies to Cape Town, George, East London and Durban from Johannesburg, and to Nairobi. The airline uses both Jo'Burg's OR Tambo International and Lanseria airports.
The frequent flyer club: as of March this year, Kulula passengers can earn and spend Avios points, which is the frequent flyer currency of the British Airways Executive Club.
A few facts: the airline is South Africa's first low cost carrier and was formed in 2001. It's actually part of Comair, which has been flying in and around South Africa as a British Airways franchise carrier - meaning that it offers the BA product from BA liveried aircraft and BA uniformed crews, but is a separate airline from BA. Kulula has a fleet of 10 planes, nine of which are new Boeing 737-800s and one is a 737-400.
In 2010 Kulula fell foul of FIFA's mighty lack of a sense of humour when it was forced to pull an advertising campaign. At the time the World Cup was being hosted by South Africa, Kulula had described itself as the 'Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What', which takes place 'Not next year, not last year, but somewhere in between'. Of course this was referring to the FIFA Football World Cup. Another advert announced 'affordable flights to everybody except Sepp Blatter' (the then FIFA president), who was offered a free seat 'for the duration of that thing that is happening right now'.
Below is a silly Top Gun spoof Kalula TV ad.
Hughes Airwest was a California-based airline that operated regional flights in the 1970's. Its owner was the famous businessman (and later perhaps the world's most recluse) Howard Hughes, and its banana-yellow liveried planes were a familiar sight at west coast airports.
The company's strap line was 'Top Banana in the West' and it's banana-themed advertising was enough to thrill me as a kid when I was living in California. I was about seven and living in Palmdale, California, when my parents treated the family to a return Hughes Airwest flight to Los Angeles - it's a journey of under 100 kilometres, so it was more of a treat than anything.
The airline's forerunner was Air West, which came into being in 1968 with the merger of Pacific Air Lines, Bonanza Airlines, and West Coast Airlines, until Howard Hughes - also the owner of TWA (Trans World Airlines)- bought the airline in 1970. The bright yellow paintjob was the brainchild of Mario Armond Zamparelli and first appeared in September 1971.
Zamparelli had a long association with Hughes and created the corporate identity of TWA and Hughes Airwest, plus designed the interiors of many Hughes-owned hotels; including the Desert in and The Sands in Las Vegas.
Nowadays it's become absurdly normal for airlines to be named after fruit - think Peach and Vanilla of Japan, and Mango of South Africa for example - and other banalities like Hop! (a low cost carrier from Air France), Up (part of El Al), Level (a long haul low cost airline owned by IAG), Wizz (Hungarian low cost carrier) and WOW (an Icelandic carrier).
But back in the 70's, airline names generally had a bit more gravitas - many were official national airlines that carried their flags to far off lands, like BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation), QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services), and SABENA (Societé Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne). Their aircraft weren't generally painted in bold and amusing liveries - as with the 'flying bananas' of Hughes Airwest, which evolved an entire bendy fruit corporate universe to match.
Naming an airline after a person goes back further that fruit-based monikers though. Still flying is Austria's Niki, named after its founder, the racing driver Niki Lauder, and of course Ryanair, which was founded by three men, two of whom had the surname 'Ryan'. And before that there was Ansett, an Australian airline named after its founder Reg Ansett; Wardair, a Canadian airline named after its founder Max Ward, and Laker Airways, started by Sir Freddie Laker in 1966.
When I flew Hughes Airwest in the early 70s I travelled on a Fairchild F-27 twin turboprop, but these were phased out before the end of the decade, leaving the airline with Boeing 727s and McDonald Douglas DC-9s.
The livery came about following the crash of flight 706, in which a Hughes Airwest DC-9 suffered a mid air collision with a US Marine Crops F-4B fighter jet. All 49 people on both aircraft were killed. It was decided that a new corporate identity would be a good idea to refresh and reinvent the brand, and so cue the 'flying banana' concept.
It's unclear as to just how far the design agency foresaw the marketing and PR link with bendy fruit at the outset, but for sure the ad men pounced on the slogans and humour of the colour scheme soon enough. Printed and TV adverts used the Top Banana line repeatedly, with the above TV advert being the most bonkers in its banana theme and banana placement. Did those poor crew/extras really have to sing whilst holding a banana?
Even by the fickle standards of the airline industry, Hughes Airwest wasn't long lived, and after slipping up on a disastrous strike by ticket agents - that closed the airline for two months in 1979 - the airline was vulnerable to closure or takeover. The end came just four months after the strike when Hughes Airwest the was bought by Republic Airlines. In time Republic was bought by Northwest Airlines, which was them merged into Delta.
One More Thing...Ronald Reagan chartered Hughes Airwest aircraft to fly him around the US as part of his presidential campaign in 1976. The former Governor of California clocked up some 50,000 miles on Hughes Airwest, visiting 62 cities in 19 states.
Reagan making a banana look like a plane while flying in a plane looking like a banana. Photo Hughesairwest.com
A special promotional flypast of the Vatnajökull Glacier. Photo Icelandair
Following on from Icelandair's earlier Northern Lights livery, the company has come up with another bold and bonkers design - this time the theme is a glacier. Specifically, a Boeing 757-200 into has been transformed into the Vatnajökull plane, a colourful representation of Iceland's (and Europe's) largest glacier mass.
The natural phenomenon that covers over 8,000 sq km (or about 8% of the country's land area) of the country's southeast with an average thckness of ice of 400 metres. The glacier played Siberia in the opening sequence of the 1985 James Bond film 'A View to a Kill', in which Bond (played for the last time by the late Roger Moore) bumped off a cabal of armed villains, before apparently escaping by submarine to Alaska. The glacier was used as a location for the second season of the HBO fantasy TV series, Game of Thrones too.
Icelandair's glacier liveried 757 at Orlando Airport. Photo Orlando Airport
For more information on the plane see http://www.icelandair.co.uk/vatnajokull/.
And for My Bathroom Wall's take on the airline and its Aurora Borealis livery, see My Bathroom Wall
A Boeing 737 sporting the original 'Salmon-Thirty-Salmon' livery of Alaska Airlines. Photo Alaska Airlines
One of the strangest aircraft liveries yet is the 120-ft long Alaskan pink salmon that was painted on the fuselage os a Beoing 737-400 in 2008 by Alaska Airlines. The fishy fuselage was crated in partnership with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and is oficially called - with an inexcusable pun on the type of plane it adorns (namely a Boeing 737), the 'Salmon-Thirty-Salmon'.
It was reprised on a newer aircraft too in 2012, when a slightly bigger plane was painted. This version includes salmon pink lettering on the word 'Alaska' on a fish that is 129 feet long, on a 737-800. It also has a scaly flourish showing fish scales on the winglets.
Fish scales painted onto the winglets of the 737-800 - the upwards flick of the outer wing is 2.4 metres tall. Photo Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines carries nearly 12,500 tons of seafood annually, which represents about half of all Alaskan exports. The fish heads from its home state to markets across the USA, Canada and Mexico. Of course the key when handling perishables is speed, no disruptions, and a consistent temperature throughout the journey.
Side view of the salmon fuselage on the 737-800. Photo Alaska Airlines
A short video showing how the giant salmon was painted onto the side of the plane
How can Alaska Airlines work for you?
Getting to Alaska: Alaska Airlines flies to ten Alaskan destinations from it's hometown hub at Anchroage's Ted Stevens International Airport.
The frequent flyer club: Alaska Airlines isn't a member of an alliance, but does have codeshare agreements with a number of carriers. Its frequent flyer programme is called Mileage Plan.
A few facts: Alaska Airlines can trace its history back to 1932, when Linious "Mac" McGee painted 'McGee Airways' on the side of his Anchorage-based seaplane. By the mid 30s it had merged with Star Air Service to become the largest airline in the state, with 22 aircraft. Aquisitions continued, until the Boeing 727 joined the fleet in the mid-60s. The airline capitalised on the US deregulation of commercial aviation in 1979, and deftly moved to a more low cost model in the 90s.
Alaska Airlines route map. Photo Alaska Airlines
The company has 156 planes - all Boeing 737's - and an average fleet age of nine years. Today the airline flies throughout Alaska, and across much of the western USA - with hubs in Anchorage, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland. It also flies to the Hawaiian Islands, Florida, the north east, Mexico and Cuba.
In December 2016 Alaska Airlines made a bold aquisition of Virgin America, and has announced that the Virgin brand will disappear in favour of Alaskan, probably by 2019. Virgin America had 64 aircraft and flew to 24 destinations in the US at the time of the take over.
One more thing...Livery-wise, Alaska Airlines already has a distinctive paint job, in the form of a stylised Alaskan portrait on the tailplane of each of its planes. It represents the company's roots and is the face of an Eskimo - incidentally the more usual term for the indigenous people in Alaska, as against Inuit used elsewhere.
Alaska Airlines regular livery with an Eskimo face on the tailfin. Photo Alaska Airlines
For further information see Alaska Airlines
The striking Amur Tiger face on the nose of the Rossiya 747
Liveries don't get more striking that this tiger face painted onto the nose of a Rossiya Airlines Boeing 747.
Designed to highlight the plight of the world's endangered species – and specifically here the Amur Tiger – a subspecies of the Siberian or Manchurian Tigers, the livery is in conjunction with the Amur Tiger Center.
The livery first appeared in June 2015 on the front of what was then a Transaero Airlines aircraft, but airlines demise in October 2015 put the survival of the livery in doubt. But Rossiya Airlines – a wholly owned subsidiary of Aeroflot took on all of the airline's 747's and has decided to keep the flying tiger on its jumbo registered EI-XLD.
The Amur tiger is the most northerly subspecies of a tiger (also known as the Siberian or North Chinese tiger). Once found throughout Russia's Far East, northern China and the Korean Peninsula, some 95% of the world's population of the tigers are found in Russia – concentrated in the Primorsky Krai and the southern Khabarovsk Krai. The population plummeted to just 40 animals in the 1940's, but now seems stable at around 540. The greatest threat to the Amur tiger's survival is unsurprisingly humans, with poaching causing around 80% of their deaths.
Rossiya's general livery since 2016 has a 'turbine blade motif, which gets denser towards the tail to 'create a sense of flight and continual motion', apparently.
How to make Rossiya Airline to work for you?
The airline is wholly owned by the Russian government, was formed in 1992, and is based at St Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport. A few years back the Russian government restructured the airline industry and merged Rossiya with Aeroflot and several domestic airlines. The company now operates from St Petersburg to 15 European cities, plus to Russia's south, near and far east.
A few facts: Rossiya has a fleet of 61 all western built aircraft - including Boeing 737's, 747's and 777's, and Airbus A319s and A320s, with an average age of 12.8 years and operates routes to 80 cities in 15 countries.
The aircraft sporting tiger nose is scheduled on the Moscow to Simpheropol, Punta-Cana, Phuket, Bangkok and Goa routes. See more of the 'Tigrolet', as Rossiya calls it, at Rossiya Airlines 'Tigerlet'
One more thing...Rossiya's 747 has a rival - turning heads at the February 2018 Singapore Airshow is the prototype of the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer's E190-E2. Knowing that as a prototype the aircraft will be parked up at various air shows in the course of its duties, Embraer has gone a step further and painted a cockpit windows cover to complete the Tiger face.
The tiger faced E2 prototype, as designed by a junior technician employee
The tiger face joins another Embraer E2 aircraft that has been painted with the face of an eagle. Chief executive of Commercial Aviation at Embraer John Slatterly was dissatisfied with livery proposals from outside agencies, and in fact went with the suggestion of a junior technician employed by the company - Clodoaldo Quintana.
The Golden Eagle E2 prototype having its painted visor fitted. Photo Embraer
Icelandair celebrates its 80th anniversary this year and has long punched above its weight in terms of the creativity of its product, marketing and route network. It's added an innovative themed livery onto one of its Boeing 757 aircraft too, with this striking Northern Lights inspired fuselage.
The Aurora Borealis has become big business in recent years, and seeing the spectral phenomenon is on most people's travelling wish list.
The theme appears in the cabin too, where lighting represents the swirling green and blue hues of the Aurora Borealis
How can Icelandair work for you?
Getting to Iceland: unsurprisingly Icelandair has more flights to Iceland than any other airline. It flies from seven UK airports to the capital city of Reykjavik - including Aberdeen, Birmingham, Glasgow, London Heathrow and Stansted, and Manchester - with Belfast starting on the 1st of June. Other European destinations include Barcelona, Paris and Milan, and there are also nonstop flights from Reykjavik to 18 cites in the US and Canada - Boston, New York and Toronto among them - and the two new North American cities for 2017 are Philadelphia (from May 30th) and Tampa (from September 7th).
Crossing the Atlantic: the airline's route network harnesses the country's geographic position in mid Atlantic; and with Reykjavik a 3-4 hour flight from London, Paris or Copenhagen, and a five hour flight from New York, Boston or Washington, the carrier targets passengers crossing the Atlantic from Europe to the USA and vs. vs. In fact Icelandair flies to 44 cities in 16 countries, which is quite something considering that the total population of Iceland is just 330,000. Icelandair fares from the UK to the US and Canada start from £369 return.
Free stopovers: with many airlines it can cost more to make a stopover on the way to your destination, but for many decades now Icelandair won't charge any extra air fare for stopping over for a few days in Iceland either on the way to the US, on the way back, or both, regardless of how cheap the fare you've paid. For some stopover suggestions see Icelandair stopovers
Pro's: using Icelandair across the Atlantic means you can get to destinations that don't have nonstop flights otherwise - like Anchorage, Halifax and Portland heading west, or Bergen, Hamburg and Trondheim travelling east. Plus if you live in Aberdeen, Belfast or Glasgow say, it makes good sense to shorten the journey time and fly via Reykjavik rather than add mileage by flying south to change planes in London.
Crews are helpful and efficient, Reykjavik airport is a pretty stress free place to change planes, and the airline has 16 shiny new Boeing 737 Max's on order. All Icelandair aircraft are fitted with touch screen seat-back in flight entertainment (IFE) screens.
& Cons: for anyone paying discounted economy fares, the airline feels like a low cost carrier these days, especially now that food and drink has to be paid for by economy class passengers - even on the seven hour Reykjavik-Anchorage sector. Economy Comfort and Economy Comfort Special fares do include a free meal, but are pricier. The company had grand plans to renew its fleet until the global financial crisis of 2008 delayed things rather. So the fleet of Boeing 757 aircraft are narrow-body, with a configuration of three-aisle-three and a seat pitch of 32-33 inches, and are getting rather old in the tooth - the oldest aircraft was delivered to Icelandair in 1998. The company also has three Boeing 767-300ER wide body aircraft.
The frequent flyer club: the Saga Club is a good option if you plan to be flying with Icelandair a lot, otherwise its current lack of an affiliated credit card, and few partner airlines, make the scheme of limited use for the general traveller. However you can earn and spend points on Alaska Airlines and Finnair.
Good to know: the airport is 50 kilometres from the capital at Keflavik. It's as near to being cute as an airport can get - with lots of wood in the decor, small and walkable, and lots of natural light. Changing planes here is usually a breeze. The airport express bus service is hourly and costs from ISK 3,900 return. See Keflavik Airport and Airport Express.
A few facts: Icelandair can trace its roots back to 1937, when a forerunner airline based in Akureyri started flight operations with a seaplane. Another forerunner of Icelandair was called Loftleiðir, which became known as 'the hippie airline', thanks to it carrying budget conscious backpacking Americans to Europe throughout the 1970's. There are currently 30 aircraft in the Icelandair fleet, with an average age of 21.2 years.
For further information see Icelandair Aurora livery, Icelandair, and Visit Iceland. And for Icelandair's latest glacier-inspired livery there's My Bathroom Wall


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LOGGERHEAD TURTLE – Caretta caretta is an oceanic turtle, belonging to the family Cheloniidae.
To see these magnificent creatures make their way up the beach, dig a hole with their flippers, lay their eggs, carefully cover up their nest, camouflage the site and return to the ocean is a rare and special experience, especially in view of the fact that the loggerhead is listed as vulnerable and the leatherback listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.
The loggerhead sea turtle is the world's largest hard-shelled turtle. Adults have an average weight range of 80 to 200 kg (180 to 440 lb) and a length range of 70 to 95 cm (28 to 37 in). The head of the loggerhead is large and square. The shell is dark to yellow-brown and tapers to the rear with a row of five large plates on either side of the central plates. The shell plates on the loggerhead turtle do not overlap. The most obvious difference being the adult males have thicker tails and shorter plastrons than the females. The loggerhead reaches sexual maturity within 17–33 years and has a lifespan of 47–67 years.
The breeding habits of the loggerhead are much the same as those of the leatherback. The females come ashore and lay up to 500 eggs at 15 day intervals. The juveniles then hatch after 60-70 days - Once ready to emerge, the hatchlings cut their way out of the egg with a special egg tooth on the end of their beaks. They will normally rest until nightfall when the temperature of the surface sand drops and then sprint down to the sea. The hatchlings are guided towards the water's edge by the lighter sea horizon.
Once in the ocean, they go on a swimming frenzy in the Agulhas current that lasts for a few days. They are then swept down the east and south coasts of South Africa, most of them ending up in the Southern Indian Ocean where they spend at least three years drifting in the open sea.
During this phase the young sea turtles feed on bluebottles, jellyfish and storm snails that drift on the surface. Following the currents, they are eventually brought back to the coasts where they change their diets. Loggerheads feed on sea organisms that inhabit reefs, i.e. urchins, mussels and crabs.
Females reach nesting maturity between 12 and 20 years, when they return to the beaches where they were born to restart the life cycle. Like the leatherback turtle they nest on the beaches of Northern KwaZulu Natal from November to January. Protection of nesting females has been continuous for thirty seven years and has seen the number of nesting females increase from approximately 200 per season to over 500 in recent years.
Main threats are poaching of eggs during the nesting season and predation by monitor lizards, side striped jackal and ghost crabs. During migrations females are vulnerable to being caught in nets, both fixed and trawl. Current research is looking at the impact of Climate Change on the nest temperature and safety of these turtles. Rising sea level and temperature increase can have severe negative impact on these already endangered species.
Between April and June every year, juvenile loggerhead turtles wash up onto beaches in and around Cape Town. Loggerhead turtles are listed as endangered and are protected by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. This year, due to rough seas and strong winds, the strandings have started even earlier. Two Oceans Aquarium has already received juvenile turtles from as far afield as Knysna and Struisbaai.
Sea turtles are temperate water animals and when they are washed up on Western Cape beaches they are often suffering from hypothermia, dehydration and possibly infection.
(information courtesy of Two Oceans Aquarium)
Research from various websites: Photos + Info


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Growing Power
Growing Power Mission Statement
Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.
Growing Power Vision Statement
Growing Power inspires communities to build sustainable food systems that are equitable and ecologically sound, creating a just world, one food-secure community at a time.
An Urban Manifesto
Peg Fleury's Outpost "Exchange" Article Best Ever
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Healthy Snacks for Working People
Olde City Restoration Guild
LGBT Airbnb Training/Healing Center Network
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Godsil Family Aphorisms for Fun and Profit
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Our Light Pink Ostrich Feather Plumes are used for all sorts of projects! Place them in Eiffel Tower vases (or another tall vase) to build an intriguing and exciting centerpiece display. Our Ostrich Feathers are available in a variety of colors and are fluffy and ready to display!
They are died in rich and vibrant colors that you will be proud to feature in your creations. These are real feathers (not man-made), so they will vary from 29" to 32" in length and are sold as each so you will get 1 feather. The width or spread of the feathers tend to run about 7".
Spads are less expensive and are from the WING portion of the Ostrich. Ours are prime quality ostrich spads. They can be sparse toward the tip because they are immature but are great for table decoration and filler!
Because of frequent damage in return shipping, we regret that this item is not returnable


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BGTG 99 - Ten Years of Essens
Chris left a comment after the previous podcast (anticipating this year's Essen), asking what games were my favorites from past Essens. That was the idea behind this show--my favorites, BGG's favorites, and what seemed liked the favorites at the time (Fairplay ratings). I looked up the past decade of Fairplay rankings, compared it against current BGG rankings, and also figured out my favorites from that same Essen. In addition to BGG, the original German boardgame database Luding was very useful, since it allows searches for a particular Essen year.
My favorites from all these years are mostly "superfillers," but there are some heavier games as long as they aren't particularly long. A few kids' games and card games, too.
What are your favorites from these years?


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Need to slow down production time
Need to slow down production time
Take the car as you want it. If you can afford this car and a new house, just pay the 2.500 USD extra and have things the way you want them :)
I don't believe you will be able to delay until August and keep the current pricing. Even if you wait until the last moment and choose standard air, I bet you will still probably have the car available in May/June. It's all a guess, though. Unfortunately you can't really know. But Tesla will build the car when they choose to and once it's built you have 30 days to pay for it or lose your $5000, so if you finalize you need to accept that.
I'd guess the first cars without air suspension and/or 40kwh models show up end of March / April, so if you remove air suspension and wait until the last minute, I'd guess your car might show up around june/july. You can ask how flexible they are on delivery dates.
Delivery times are shorter than they've ever been. Not your fault. A great time to take delivery is with the summer months ahead of you, but I guess you may have to choose between taking an early delivery and paying the higher price for a later delivery.
If it were me, I'd claim ignorance and try to look like the victim of an early delivery.
PS just signed today. Reserved Nov 2012 CAN 85 KWh Non perf Blue tech pano twin. Excited about March/April delivery!
Try sending them an email asking for scholarly advice. In the few times I have contacted them they have been extremely helpful and honest.
I think you need to start shopping for that new house NOW! LOL
Make sure it has a large garage and you can tell the sellers you'll take the house if they throw in a 14-50 plug.
Couldn't you take your one time deferral and still maintain the price you reserved at?
Ask your wife if she'd prefer you take the $2500 hit or just do what you can to delay the delivery and it comes when it comes.
I doubt she'll say "yeah, let's eat another $2500 on this car to make sure it doesn't come until after my arbitrary deadline".
@steven: there's no such thing as a one time deferral any more (or a 30 day limit to finalize). That was an old policy they abandoned a while ago. Now when invited to finalize you can wait as long as you want, and you are placed in the production queue based on the date you finalize. However, if you reserved under the old prices and wait longer than 4 weeks to finalize your price gets reset to the new price scheme.
@archibald- I like that strategy.
I don't know your situation so, it depends on why she wants you to wait. If you already know how much the house costs and you have money left over for the MS, then go ahead and try to negotiate as @archibaldcrane says.
I could also imagine a situation where you don't know how much the house will cost (or wish to put down a larger down payment), afterwards you may not have the money for the car. Being able to delay so you can recover your $5000 deposit and get off the hook for an $80k+ car if the budget isn't there would definitely be handy.
You've got some soul searching to do in that case, dream car now but potentially smaller house later or dream house with potentially no car. $80k+taxes (remember you claim the $7500 in spring 2014 and you need down payment cash NOW) is nothing to sneeze at, not to mention surprise house costs.
Now that I've put a big downer on your party, here's a new perspective that might make you feel better:
If you're flexible with dropping features, then drop $2500 worth of features to compensate for the $2500 price hike. You get to keep dreaming and sleep in your bed (vs. the doghouse) at the same time.
Good luck.
Go shopping for a supersized garage with attached house. A garage with large attic would work, as the S emits no fumes.
I finalized 12/26/12 thinking we get our car in late February early March. Just got my delivery notice for between January 26th and February 9, 2013. Excited but panic has set in, wasn't planning on coming up the money for another 60 days.
@lov2krz: I'm in the same boat as you (almost). I'm logging in every day looking for the button to change and invite me to configure/finalize hoping that it continues to just say design. I'm on track to have money for this car, but on my timetable not the one that Tesla seems to have been able to crank out.
I'm very happy that they are able to produce fantastic cars at such a rate, but I might have to take up playing the lottery to cover!
Chances are, I'll cancel when my day comes (probably sometime in the next week) and re-up in the spring :-/
With the wait time shortened so much, it's no longer such a big deal to give up your place in line. The end of that development, of course, is that you buy a Model S more or less at your convenience.
That $2500 or more that you will save can go to a brand-new Viking gas stove or some other schnazzy appliance.. That would be quite the bonus!


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Color: White
Interior: Leather
Drive Train: 4WD
Transmission: Automatic
Vin: 1GNSKCE05DR379308
Engine: 5.3L V8 OHV 16V FFV
Mileage: 148,659
Stock #: V1638
Vmark Cars
4406 Lafayette Blvd
I hereby consent to receive text messages from or on behalf of dealer at the mobile phone number I provided above. I understand that I am opting in to receive text messages from dealer or their employees. I include consent to receive phone calls at the mobile phone number I provided. I understand that message and data rates may apply.
Ryan and Kumar made our buying experience awesome. They were very flexible when it came to financing and their warranty options. I sought out to buy a quality used vehicle at a great price, and that's exactly what I found at Vmark Cars! I would absolutely buy another car from them!


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Industries Qualifying Facilities
An owner or operator of a generating facility with a maximum net power production capacity of greater than 1 MW (1000 kW) may obtain QF status by either submitting a self-certification or applying for and obtaining a Commission certification of QF status, and must do so by completing and electronically filing a Form No. 556 with the Commission. The Form No. 556 can be downloaded, electronically completed, saved to your local computer or local network, and then submitted as an attachment to an eFiling submission (using the Commission's online eFiling system). The instructions on the first pages of the Form No. 556 itself contains additional details on how to file using eFiling. There is no fee with self-certifications, but there is a fee associated with applications for Commission certifications (see our Filing Fees schedule).
Order No. 732 does not require facilities with net capacity of 1 MW or less to make a filing with the Commission to claim QF status, although applicants for such facilities may seek certification if they wish to do so. All facilities (including those that are exempted from filing for QF certification because of their smaller size) must meet certain qualifications in order to be a qualifying facility. (See What is a Qualifying Facility?)
The choice of whether to certify a facility through a self-certification or Commission certification is up to the applicant. In some instances, negotiations with a lender or utility purchaser may proceed more smoothly if the facility has been certified by the Commission.
When eFiling a completed Form No. 556 , select one of the following filing types, as appropriate, from the Electric menu when prompted:
- (Fee) Application for Commission Cert. (or recert) as Cogeneration QF
- (Fee) Application for Commission Cert. (or recert) as Small Power QF
- Self-Certification Notice (QF, EG, FC)
- Self-Recertification of Qualifying Facility (QF)
- Supplemental Information or Request (use this selection if you are supplementing or correcting a filing, whether on your own initiative, or at the request of Commission staff)
If you are required to pay a fee, you will be prompted to submit your fee electronically during the electronic filing process. You can pay via credit card or electronic debit from a bank account.
NOTE: QF filings have an associated notice requirement; see the Commission's QF Notice Requirements website for more information.
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Burlesque Is Too Gay to Function
Burlesque, the gayest movie made since Prince of Tides, opens in theaters today and people are so excited! Cher! Christina Aguilera! But should they be? Let's take a look at the not-so-good reviews that have come pouring in.
Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum opens her C- review of the film with a big think:
Earnestly ersatz down to every spangle, dance move, plot turn, and line of hokum dialogue, Burlesque is a showbiz pic for these American Idol times - a time when we agree to pretend that mediocre mimicry of better artists is good enough to keep us entertained. We agree to pretend that quality is in the eye and ear of the undemanding beholder. We agree that life is a cabaret, that camp trumps criticism, and that the sight of 64-year-old Cher in corset, glitter, and full kabuki make-up is its own reward.
Yikes! Burlesque isn't just bad, it's sociologically bad.
Manohla Dargis at the New York Times was disappointed by Xtina's big movie debut:
By all rights it should also be a nice fit for Ms. Aguilera, a graduate of "The Mickey Mouse Club" (where she appeared with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears) and the seasoned music-video star of spectacles like "Dirrty," in which she trampled on poor Walt's grave (and her own bubble-gum persona) by feverishly pumping her hips in peek-a-boo chaps.
Alas, both her moves and her feature-film debut are perversely tame (no spanky-panky here, unlike in "Dirrty"), closer to your grandmother's fan dance than to the neo-burlesque revues that began popping up in the early 1990s
Manohla wants everything dirrty all the time! Did she like Good Night and Good Luck? Yes. But could it have been more dirrty? Yes, of course. Get your head outta the gutter, Dargis!
It sounds like everyone wanted to love the movie, but just couldn't in the end. To wit, Betsy Sharkey's review in the Los Angeles Times:
As much as I love the seductive low rumble that Cher still commands (and I will pay good money to see her in her latest Final Concert Tour, of which I think there have been three thus far), and while I'll take a jolt of Aguilera in the morning over Red Bull every time, any world-class singer knows you don't keep the volume blasting and the beat rocking hard the whole time.
It is a tip they should have shared with their director - one that might have led him to add shadings and nuance, a quiet ballad here and there, a moment or two with no spangle-y things to distract you. But no, "Burlesque" is top-heavy from start to finish. Maybe that's what you do when you have nothing new to say.
Obviously everyone who was going to see this movie before the reviews came out is still going to see it after reading the reviews, because we are a sad and self-torturing bunch. But it would have been nice if the film had been blessed with a little cred. Oh well.
And hey! A few critics actually did like the damn thing. Critics in places like... San Francisco. Duhhhh. Mick LaSalle (you'd have to be named Mick LaSalle to write a review of Burlesque for a San Francisco newspaper) writes in his Chronicle review:
"Burlesque" is irresistible from its first minutes, and over time it creates a whole atmosphere, not only onscreen but within the audience. It's big, perfectly cast and entertaining in every way, but more than that it feels like a generous public event. See it with other people. See it with a crowd.
Girl, we gonna.