I think, if the world suddenly stopped spinning, that flights from London to the US would not be as short as they routinely are (basically the plane gets extra help from the earth rotating under it).

t Blinks...

t Blinks some more...

No, it doesn't work that way. If it were true, every time you hopped straight up into the air you would land somewhere to the west of where you started. You'd have to be in orbit (or at very least a vacuum) for that to work, and even then I'm not sure it would do it. The ground speed of an aircraft is determined by it's velocity, and the velocities of air masses it flies through, which are independent of the earth's rotation, except for the heating and cooling of the air masses due to the day-night cycle. If a plane is flying into a headwind, it will take longer to get somewhere than if it's flying with a tailwind. The fact that the earth is spinning has nothing to do with it.

There's an article here that explains it better than I can.

Of course, there's also this explanation of why some flights are shorter.

Captain Sheffield .

snerk

Yeah, I was going to mention that. Heh.

Overall, I wasn't particularly drawn in to either show last night, although, always a pleasure to see Thor. And I do enjoy the McKay/Sheppard repartee. I see they're trying to do something about Teyla's hair. Don't think they've quite succeeded yet.

I found myslef incredibly distracted during Atlantis because the blond, curly-haired woman annoyed the crap out of me; she was just unwarrentedly surly. And her father didn't look old enough to be her father. And I am supposed to like Colm Meany's characters, or, at least, his TV Sci-Fi characters (I dont want to fence him in, you understand).

I think I might have been in a mood.

No... I think that episode was just totally OFF. Exactly the sort of crap that I was worried we were going to see when I heard about the spinoff being created.

As far as I can tell, the Atlantis folk are dumb. My theory would have been that Weir's not dumb, but why are you sending such lame teams out to do important things like negotiate for food?

That wasn't the ep that TVTome thought was showing last night, so now I'm spoiled for two weeks from now, I guess.

I didn't care much one way or another for this ep. It wasn't as repelling to me as the one where they mess with the Lost Boys.

I don't get the Jenni deception. They pretend to be Amish above surface and military downstairs, excpet for when they parade around in the dumb uniforms upstairs and everyone still gets to carry large guns?

Good luck with that.

Oh, oh, oh. That's the other thing that made me laugh. When woman who annoyed me and her father take Teyla and Rainbow down to the bunker ... they make them wait outside a dressing room while they put on their downstairs clothes? Silly.

I found myslef incredibly distracted during Atlantis because the blond, curly-haired woman annoyed the crap out of me; she was just unwarrentedly surly.

I wouldn't've minded the surliness if the actress could have, you know, acted. But, well, not so much.

I liked it in general, though. I'll forgive a lot for good Sheppard-McKay snark.

I may have to watch again, as I wasn't thining of the apparent ages of the people and didn't look too closely at the apparent ages of the characters.

In real life I guess he could have been her father, some people do not look old enough to be parents of 18-20 year olds at 40.

However, since parents in TV and movies are often at least two generations older than their children, it seems to create a different set of expectations.

At 51, Colm Meaney is almost old enough to be the grandfather of an adult child.

It would have to be one of those 17 year old, having a kid who at 17 had a kid, things, though...

Surly chick made me think she just wished she could be Eowyn.