Word: safely
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what's obvious isn't always true. The plane in which John Denver died last week was indeed an experimental aircraft, a model called the Long-EZ. But it would be naive to assume that the airplane was at fault. Not only is the Long-EZ considered solid, safe and relatively easy to fly, but it also requires a pilot's license and medical certificate to operate--and Denver didn't have the latter. His certificate had been yanked by the Federal Aviation Administration after Denver was arrested twice for driving his car while intoxicated...
...plane. Ultralights have to weigh less than 256 lbs. fully fueled and go no faster than about 63 m.p.h., and they can be flown only during daylight hours. You don't need a license to fly one, and you don't need an inspection to make sure it's safe. Many ultralights are elegant and airworthy; the plane featured in last year's movie Fly Away Home is a good example. But if you strapped a snowmobile engine and some plywood wings onto a lawn chair and got it to fly, the FAA couldn't stop...
...designer Burt Rutan, whose Voyager in 1986 became the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. Before any experimental aircraft can take off, an FAA inspector goes over it in excruciating detail to make sure it's airworthy. Flying a Long-EZ isn't as safe as sitting on the couch watching Seinfeld--71 accidents and 28 deaths have been reported since 1983. But that's safer than many homebuilts and comparable to other small planes that are factory built. Besides, many of those Long-EZ accidents were the result of pilot error...
Americans were innocent, in the '50s, we are often told. In the '50s, nice women like Donna Reed waited for their honest, hard-working husbands in modest homes on safe, tree-lines street. Their children learned to ride their bicycles and played games with the neighbor's kids--even after sunset. Trouble lay just under the surface, of course: people had to confront racism, McCarthyism and sexism; they built bomb shelters and thought about the Cold War. For the most part, though, these things remained submerged...
...their exceedingly loyal fans. Not to say this album doesn't beat the hell out of say, Bridges to Babylon, but these babies can't trompe le monde forever. The whole thing just makes me want to listen to their five albums in succession, where the songs are safe and happy in their original context. Part of the reason why neither disc of this set works is that many of the songs work best within their albums' genre. Trompe le Monde, a very punky and loud album, doesn't mix well with Bossanova, full of surf music about aliens...