Olham

Yes, Akronym. As a designer, I always found that you can better copy a simple to build chair which is also great for sitting, than to design a completely new chair nobody had come up with yet - which is uncomfortable. As for cars or aircraft, you should always think about the whole of the design. What is it's purpose? What does it need to fullfill that? What does the driver or pilot need to be able to handle it best? What do the mechanics need to be able to access everything easily, and to exchange parts? Of course, after all these seemingly logical points, come the producers who give the money, and they ask "What does it cost to produce that?" Those guys can easily change a good design idea into a mediocre one, or even crapp.

??? What is KISS?

Here is an interesting article from WIKI about an American pilot of German-Irish origins, who broke the altitude record without oxygen supply with that airplane. He almost got killed doing that, because he went unconscious due to the lack of oxygen. He became conscious again at an alt of only 600 meters (ca. 1800 feet), and although he was almost blind from the lacking effect, he managed to land the craft intact. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_William_Schroeder Strange that there is no Anglo-American page for this.

It does look like an extremely sturdy build. Wonder what it might have weighed...

Is it possibly an airworthy WW1 toy that an incredibly rich sheik gave to his son for his birthday? (Never seen THAT craft!)

Though I live here, I could not recognise some of the places. No wonder, is it?

Among the many Civil War Dead videos, I found this one quite informative - and striking. These must have been the first photographs from battlefields, which could be watched by those who had yet never seen a battle, other than in glorifying war paintings. The naked truth must have struck the people.

Unbelieveable! Damn, humans never fail to irritate me - sometimes I think I must be an alien from outer space.

In such extreme situations, people seem to live in the "here & now" only. No worries about past or future. That is a lot of worries less than we carry around (unnecessarily). Well, basic landmarks the Reichstag, the Brandenburg gate or Hotel Adlon and some others...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmetZQfSMJI

Good point, Jim. Dutch, the whole layout of that series is quite bold and stagily, and as you said, many repetitions. Found this one quite interesting though.

Before they learned the difference, even aces fell.

I guess they would kick me out for being absent-minded, after only 1 or 2 days. Yeah - where communism failed, capitalism managed to make the machines work for us.

Mmuahahahahaaa!!! (Sorry, gents, I should have mentioned it!)

No, that footage was soundless, Hauksbee.

For all MPFC fans who - like me - hadn't seen this before - enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpL12ilpDnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7uMr5b2wXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms9LSh2tDjk

Good taste, I find. BLADE RUNNER is a great movie IMHO. I also hate such stuff like STAR WARS, and never watched much of the ENTERPRISE and DEEP SPACE series - too unrealistic. 12 MONKEYS was a bit complicated IMHO; maybe I should watch it once more. But BRAZIL is a masterpiece, I think - a very bizzare, but also very brilliant piece of cinema! I find it mingles the darkness of 1984 with the humour of Monty Python perfectly! Well, the film is hard in many parts. But not much from the aliens' actions - it's what the humans do. The aliens in DISTRICT 9 are not as bad ass in that film - some of them, like the "engineer" and his little kid, are even really nice guys. No need to be afraid of them. They call them "Shrimps" cause they look like them. Here is the "engineer" and his kid - nothing to be afraid of. As cute as shrimps can be!

Not sure if you like intelligent Sci-Fi films, Jim. This one was a project from a young new film maker from South Africa. He showed bits of his work to Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), who was so amazed that he produced the project, cause he saw, it needed a lot of good CGI work, which was expensive. When you watch more trailers, you may realise, that it is not just an SF movie, but it is about aliens in general, their lives in ghettos, and how we treat them. One of the best films I have seen in the last 10 years. Here is a trailer:

Hey, it's not THAT small, Jim - you forgot "Zu Befehl!", "Vorwärts marsch!" and "Verboten!" In that brilliant Sci-Fi film "District 9" (which plays in Jo-burg) the main character is named van der Merwe. Didn't know that may have meant something funny. .

A typical East Frisian joke, Hauksbee! There are others though, in which the Frisians are the clever ones. Like this one: A hektic little man from Hessen (they always speak in a hektik dialect, which I cannot bring into English) comes running towards an East Frisian fisherman. "Tell me, good man, if I carry on walking there, that direction there - will there then be the harbour?" The East Frisian takes his pipe out of his mouth and answers slowly in his dark voice. "Yes. But it will also be there, if you DON'T walk on." In England, I guess it would be jokes about the Scotsmen? Seems that the Battle of Britain was in our minds a lot, when we were young, Widowmaker. I also drew lots of pictures about it. Even started drawing a comic back then. I was always with the Spitfire pilots. Simply because they were the defenders of their homeland, while the Nazis were the aggressors. And then I also like the whole beautiful appreance of the Spitfire. When the Albatros D.V was my choice for beauty in WW1, then the Spitfire was on first place in WW2 IMHO.

The Pythons were probably the first humour importet to Germany on a bigger scale. Germany had very little humour until then, actually (maybe no wonder after the last 100 years...). Yes - Monty Python were legend among the younger people in the seventies. True, Jim, the East Frisians were a major target for many jokes about them and their ways. Here is one. Two neighbours who live in the same house, but on different floors, meet on the stairs. Asks the one: "You wallpapered your flat two years ago, I think. I wanna do the same now. Your flat is the same size as mine - how many rolls of wallpaper did you buy for yours?" Says the other: "Thirteen rolls." A month later they meet again. Says the one: "That's very strange - we have the same sized flats, but I had seven rolls of wallpaper left over, when I had my work finished?" Says the other: "Exactly the same as I had!"

Had never seen THAT one - the "Crunchy Frog"! Hilarious! (Only a very little one! If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy, would it?!) Try this one for RAF Banter. At the end of the vid you should be able to subscribe to the official MPFC YouTube channel.

I guess you mean this version, Hauksbee? For absurdity, I liked the spam sketch. And another favourite is the "Spanish Inquisition".

I heard that from other Americans - British and American humour must be quite different, I guess? (Not to speak of the German humour...)