Flying Boats

I've had a bit of a thing about flying boats for some time. It was one of the topics I did some serious research into preparatory to writing an article on it, when I first began writing for publication, back in 1988 or thereabouts. I eventually published an article online on the topic, many years after I couldn't find a home for the original piece.

I actually went on a flying boat - or rather, it was called a 'float plane' - last year while I was on holiday in Taupo. Once it's up in the air, of course, it's no different to any other kind of plane (though the original flying boats certainly were different) but it's the getting off the water and landing (if that's the word) again that's the interesting part.

And talking about research (see paragraph one) I came across this note in the Te Ara Enclyclopedia today while looking up information on Orakei: The first flying boat to be flown in the southern hemisphere took off from Bastion Point on New Year’s Day, 1915. It was designed and built by pioneering aviators Leonard and Vivian Walsh, with the help of their sisters and an engineer. Later in the year the Walsh brothers opened a flying school on the Mission Bay foreshore, training 100 pilots for the war in Europe. Flying boats were an important part of the Waitemata scene until 1989.

Until 1989! Flying boats were barely visible after the 1950s, according to some sources.

On another topic altogether (typical of the style of this blog) I've just been looking at a site that's advertising itself as one of a number of online Elementary schools. The site in the link will take you to a kind of overview of online schools, which is okay, but they also feature on this page something called 'infographics.' These are kind of like those posters they used to have up on classroom walls so that the kids could absorb the information day by day (especially at those times when the teacher was being excessively boring).

However, what slightly amazed me were some of the topics. For instance: 16 Things about Hugh Hefner; Stats on Prostitution; A Gun for Everyone; The Brief Guide to Boogers; A Passion for Beards; Striptease....

To be fair, the infographic on prostitution is not salacious: it shows concern for the fact that huge numbers of women are forced into prostitution everywhere in the world, and that many suffer badly as a result. It also discusses trafficking. The Gun poster is subtlely critical of the excessive number of guns in the US.

But the Hugh Hefner one is something I wouldn't want on the wall of any classroom where my kids were studying, and the striptease one is no better. Neither of these take any sort of moral stance; they're written as though Hugh Hefner's lifestyle was in some way admirable, and equally, the striptease one comes across as though it (and its variants, such as poledancing) were a pretty okay thing. (Have you noticed how many programmes on TV now feature a scene in a club where poledancing is going on, often right up beside the characters who are discussing the latest bit of the plot.)

I wonder why anyone thinks this is somehow educational? Think I'll go back to flying boats - at least there are no moral issues with them....

Photo of RNZAF PBY-5 Catalina XX-T - taken about 1945 - place on Flickr.com by 'Adelaide Archivist.'

On again off again relationship

So our famous Mr Jackson is going to be involved with The Hobbit after all. And with a sequel. A sequel to The Hobbit? What, a story squashed in between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring?
Seemingly Mr Jackson won’t be directing the movies, but will be an executive producer instead, along with his wife, Fran Walsh. Peter’s too busy with other projects to give his attention to the directing of the movies.
It’ll be interesting to know who’ll write the scripts. In the LOTR, of course, Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens were scriptwriters. Jackson filled practically every other role at times, and even Walsh did a bit of directing. But if they’re too busy to do the script, that leaves the thing wide open to a different kind of movie altogether from the LOTR trilogy. Which could be disastrous.
New Line, who are involved again, have already had a fairly large thumbs-down on the first of the Philip Pullman trilogy. Some speculate that the other two stories in that series won’t even be filmed, which might be why they decided to make friends with Jackson again after the long tiff that’s been going on.

More on words - and hotels

In the course of writing the previous post I came across the delightful Dr Grammar site – or rather, I should say, the FAQ section of it, which focuses on the mistakes people use in everyday writing, and aims to clarify the problems and assist those who need assistance to get things right. Dr Grammar died in 2003, but his site lives on (only the ‘Ask a Question’ section, not surprisingly, is no longer available). Dr Grammar’s real name was Jim HiDuke (yup) and he took a rather less than obvious course towards a love of language, having grown up in street gangs.
His concern was for the increasing illiteracy of modern students, and he’s quoted as saying: "More and more students arrive at colleges and universities less-than-prepared for the amount and type of writing required, regardless of the courses they take. This led to many questions about language, usage, and proper attribution of sources from the World Wide Web."
There are a heap of resources on the site, and links to all sorts of other word-interest places. You could spend several days exploring this one, and you can even hear the redoubtable Dr Grammar introduce himself, albeit briefly.
The Bill Walsh he quotes is the author of Lapsing into a Comma, a curmudgeon’s guide to the many things that can go wrong in print – and how to avoid them. Bill has his own blog, of course – who of any importance doesn’t? – and it focuses on copy editors and their needs.
BTW, I mentioned two hotels in my last post. You can find more information on them, too. Corstorphine House, and Claremont House.