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I was in Toronto last week, and virtually everyone I know in that city has a Wii. You’d never know there was a shortage, the way these guys play the market.

shaver briefly mentioned Wii Sports, but he didn’t tell you how virtually every other reviewer of Wii Sports wouldn’t know fun if it reached into their pants. These people who don’t “get” Golf, or think that Parkinson’s Boxing is the bee’s knees, I don’t know what games they were playing.

He also didn’t tell you that he has the best short game in the Wii Golf world, or that I bowled a 212 less than twelve hours after the two of us effectively split three bottles of Chelsea’s new year champagne. We learned that evening that a slice of reheated pizza, a ginger ale, and an Advil mean that you can wake up the next morning afternoon almost completely unscathed. That’s a tip, kids, you’ll want to write that down.

But beyond the simple intuitiveness of the controls, the fact that you’re really exerting yourself (unless you’re a fucking toolbox) in mimicry of the actual sport makes it feel like a goddamn triumph when you succeed. I couldn’t golf to save the entire Western world, but I will totally card a five under par on the Wii’s front nine, and I will feel like I am Tiger Woods reincarnated in a way that mouse-clicking just doesn’t replicate.

That the 747 is my favourite airliner is no closely-guarded secret, and it’s not a difficult affinity to defend: the 747 literally created and sustained the intercontinental travel market that we know and enjoy today. Its safety, range, and capacity were all unprecedented in 1970, and for the most part are still as unique as its silhouette.

The 747 offers a spaciousness and configurability that changed the entire economics for both passenger service and the air freight industry. If you’re fortunate enough to sit upstairs, you almost can’t believe how high off the ground you are. Parked at the gate you can see clear across the apron over those puny single-aisle, single-deck jets.

At any rate, 747 is the story of designing and building this wonder, written by the leader of the engineering team, and it was so completely fascinating that I had to buy a copy for shaver, too. It doesn’t assume any specialized knowledge of engineering or piloting, but it does communicate just how monumental and unknown the challenge was at the time. I was also amazed, particularly in light of what seem to be endless A380 slips, to discover how little time the Boeing team had from conception to delivery.

The reviews from industry peers and other Boeing employees seem to indicate that the author is a pretty straight shooter. He certainly doesn’t hide the fact that he was given the job while the 747 was still very much second-fiddle inside Boeing, with the world expecting supersonic aircraft to dominate. President Reagan gave him a couple votes of confidence when he was awarded the Medal of Technology and asked to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident.

Even if you’re not as in-love with the 747 as I am, it is easy to recommend for anyone interested in airliners or the birth of modern international travel.

In related news, much ink has been spilled recently about a February 2005 flight in which a British Airways 747 suffered an engine fire immediately after takeoff from LAX, and after some consideration the captain elected to continue the flight to London. Retired 747 captain John Deakin has written his take on the event, including a lot of well-reasoned commentary about why he would make exactly the same choice that the BA crew made.

Having read 747, I can appreciate this even more: engine failures were indeed extremely common on that first generation of P&W engines, and the 747 was designed to handle them — even explosive uncontained failures of the kind that brought down United 232 (itself a fascinating story). The fact is that a three-engine flight in a 747, even after an engine fire, even over an ocean, is simply a non-event. Design genius indeed.

Do any Boston-area pilots read this?

Bob Adelizzi, engaging speaker and long-time Boston air traffic controller, will be hosting a pilot/controller forum along with a KBVY tower controller on January 24 in Danvers, MA.

FAAS held a similar event with Bob and a KBED tower controller last month, and it was excellent. While I certainly got a lot out of it as a new pilot, it sounded like the experienced corporate and charter pilots did too.

Given that the KBED meeting was standing-room-only, you may want to register sooner rather than later (free, as usual). More information and online registration on the FAASafety web site.

Oh jesus, Martin. Are you serious? No dishwasher, this entire time?

I’ve said it before, and it rings as true as ever: I would sooner buy a house without a roof than without a dishwasher.

Also, if you want an emphasis on gameplay — the way we fondly remember the Nintendo of our youth — I think you should go buy a Wii. If you don’t like it, you can send it to Cambridge, we have a shortage.

Do you or someone you love have the Garmin City Navigator map pack for Australia? I am on the fence about whether to buy it — it costs about as much as an entire black-market kidney — so I’d like to hear from a real user first.

For the last few days I’ve been living on Perth time, trying to out-fox the upcoming jet lag with the help of a clock widget set to Australia/Perth — but something isn’t adding up.

When I double-checked my flights, my math was always an hour off. And I slowly realized that when I used the world clock web sites, I got a different answer than when I used the OS X widget.

It turns out — I could not have dreamed this up — that in late November the Western Australia parliament passed a bill providing for a three-year trial of daylight saving time — starting twelve days later.

I like DST as much as the next guy — probably much more, in fact, because I prefer to have more light at the end of the day — but this is completely insane. With just 12 days’ notice, every device with a clock required an urgent patch, and needless to say neither Mac OS nor my blackberry made the cut.

Lesson 1: the WA parliament is a house of baboons.

The US EPA describes the UV Index as a scale from 0 - 11+. They also note that “in some parts of the United States, the UV Index rarely or never reaches [level 6]”

I don’t think the UV Index in Perth has been below 13 since I arrived. It’s peaking at 18 today in Mareeba.

Residents are advised to stay inside unless you wear sunscreen or are very, very hairy. Experts recommend a class 9, or “Robin Williams”, level of hair coverage.

ASRS is a program operated by NASA to collect and understand safety reports submitted by the entire aviation community (pilots, controllers, crew, and mechanics; private and commercial). The program was born after an airliner flew into a Virginia mountaintop because of a misunderstood ATC clearance. The crazy thing is, a United crew had had the exact same misunderstanding a few weeks earlier, nearly hit the same mountain, and reported it up the chain of command.

United issued a warning to all of its pilots, but there was no system for sharing information with the entire community. Thus, ASRS.

There are two aspects of the ASRS that I think the non-flying community might find particularly interesting.

First, from a privacy standpoint: all submissions are held in strict confidence, and NASA have been utterly successful (as far as anyone knows) at protecting the identities of the 715,000+ submitters to date. Unless you describe an accident (in which case it goes to the NTSB/FAA) or a crime (ditto the DOJ/FAA), they mail the part of the form with your identifying information back to you as soon as they have a chance to ask questions.

Interestingly, there was a similar system in New Zealand until someone’s identity was divulged. The system ground completely to a halt.

Second, the act of making an ASRS report grants you immunity from an FAA enforcement action in most cases. If there wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t criminal in nature, nothing you write can be used against you. And if it was unintentional, non-criminal, filed within ten days, etc, it can shield you from an FAA fine or license revocation once per five years. This must dramatically improve the quality and volume of their reports.

I think this is great. Anecdotal evidence already suggests that aviation has a macho culture in which people are reluctant to admit mistakes; this kind of shield, in the interest of greater safety for everyone, is probably exactly what was needed.

Tom’s of Maine has some excellent toothpaste flavours, such as cinnamint and apricot.

Do not buy this product.

Cinnamint and cinnamon-clove, however, have nearly identical packaging. Let this be a lesson to you.

Cinnamon-clove toothpaste is perhaps the most foul substance that has ever passed these lips in either direction. I would rather use vegemite toothpaste, or vaseline, before this vile concoction.

John writes about Starbucks in China, and his experience in Shanghai matches mine in Beijing almost exactly. We’d often duck in to have little meetings away from the office, and although I recall them being less full two and three years ago, they were definitely charging Western prices.

They were also the places where I was most likely to hear a Westerner speaking (to my ears, anyway) fluent Mandarin. It was unique enough that it seemed quite bizarre to see and hear that language emerge apparently effortlessly from a Western face.

The part that stuck with me, though, is that before long I began to see bits of Starbucks all over town. Half of the times that I’d order coffee or tea anywhere else, it would arrive with Starbucks sugar packets or Starbucks napkins. Every once in a while I’d see this light pilfering applied to something bigger, like a Starbucks mug smuggled into the arsenal of another restaurant.

With Chinese characteristics?

According to my records I’ve been in the Calgary airport 27 times since 2001, and Jacob’s modern description really takes me back.

International Arrivals Placard, idiocy on plastic, July 2002, artist unknown

This sign poses more questions than it answers.