Beijing to JFK flight on Air China. The business class was comfortable enough, except for the seemingly well groomed and respectable Chinese man who sat next to me. He kept himself fully occupied reading research papers and underlining stuff in the most serious and spectacled way. All very dignified and somber. Yet, every five minutes or so, a rancid smell of fish, garlic and onions would emanate from his direction.
It’s not too hard to spot nasty farters in business class. In coach, it’s easy to fart. I have done it thousands of times, with impunity, myself. I even have the audacity to sit up straight after each one, look around at my neighbors indignantly, wrinkle my nose disgustedly, raise an eyebrow, shake my head and simultaneously fluff another one. It’s too crowded to ever pin-point the source of the odor. But in biz class, there’s only ONE neighbor. The other ones are 4 to 5 feet away. The smell itself taps you on the shoulder and says “Hey buddy, I just got here, from your left, fresh out of this Chinese guy’s ass! WA’AS GOIN’ OON?”
“Of course you realize, this means war!” I declared to myself, using Bugs Bunny’s words. But I am not so crude to implicate myself among people who are wearing Air China red slippers and drinking free cheap Champaign. I have a long standing strategy in these matters. Thick, biz-class blankets! Oh yes, they muffle and have a timed-release sort of effect. They diffuse the odor so that it’s nearly impossible to pin-point its origin. So I pull the blanket over me and let him have it over and over. The war goes on for 20-30 minutes, but he is too strong an opponent and soon I am overpowered by his sharp, un-blanketed fish-garlic scent. I roll over, as far away from him as possible and face the window.
The flight goes directly over the North Pole. Huge icebergs slowly start to appear, giving way to continuous ice with magnificent cracks, and crevices. I snap a few pictures, mesmerized by the other-worldly sights. Hard to believe people used to die to get here. Now the hoards of passengers have the windows shuttered closed and are farting in their blankets during this momentous journey. I am the only one who keeps opening his shutter, taking a peek and a snapshot and wanting to yell, “OH MY GOD, THE FRIGGING NORTH POLE! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?”
I notice on the “moving map” that we are quite far north and there are still cracks in the ice. I shake my head and mumble something to my gassy neighbor about the global warming and the cracks in the ice this far north. He makes a sound like “hmmpph…so you believe in global warming?!” I am surprised at the question. I tell him “It’s not a religion. Just look at the evidence outside the window!”
We strike up a short conversation. He says he works in the Chinese government, as an “academic/scientist” attending a conference on the environment in Washington DC. And no siree, he don’t believe in no global warming neither: quite the open minded thinker. “It’s all OK. Manufacturers should produce and there is no such thing as greenhouse gases and no climate change. All cyclical and normal.” Then we talked about my work: Electric Cars. “Aha, I understand now why you push this global warming thing, of course you have an interest in selling Electric Cars.” I explain to him how that was the effect and not the cause of my beliefs.
He asked a peculiar question: “why couldn’t cars just have generators on them to generate electricity from the wheels as they were turning?” I said “well, that’s regenerative braking, we do that to take energy out and slow down the car.” He said “no, no braking, don’t slow down! Just use that electricity to drive.” This ticked me off worse than the global warming blasphemy. Is this guy for real? IS THIS FRIGGING QUASI-SCIENTIST-OPEN-BLANKET FARTER FOR REAL? I hollered on the inside.
I curled my lips, the way I do, raised one eye brow, as I do, and said pointedly“do you even have a college degree?! I mean in that environmental science thing that you practice, do you ‘believe’ in the the laws of physics, thermodynamics?” He was set aback and said yes of course he was a high level academic with high education. He argued his case more vehemently that someday they could generate energy from the moving wheels of a car. He mentioned that in fact he was going to look into getting a Chinese government grant to study this. And like all advocates of the perpetual motion machines, he shook his head as if saying “ay, these stupid engineers just don’t know how to do it.”
With that odd exchange, the conversation fizzled out and I rolled over in my semi-comfy seat and stared out of the window. It’s sometimes hard to explain to the morons the simplest laws of physics. It’s hard to explain how things can remain in motion with no force acting on them. Aristotle thought force kept things in motion, and he was no moron (notwithstanding his theories on the planets, basic elements, ether, gravity and many others that kept us in the dark ages for a thousand years). It’s hard to explain why you can’t hook up a generator to a motor and have it run forever and take some extra energy out to light a light bulb or drive a car to boot. I shuddered at the thought of this guy representing a big polluting country like China in a conference on the environment who doesn’t understand that you cannot create energy.
Then I chuckled to myself at a possible skit on a Sesame Street-like show a thousand years from now, which would go something like this:
Jinky (an animatronic stuffed Zoranian Sea Elk):
Did you know that in the dark ages of science, engineers thought that perpetual motion machines were a myth? They thought it would NEVER be possible to makes cars that required no energy at all. Can you believe that Foozle?
Foozle (A live pair of talking boobs): Oh, Jinky, they must have been really stupid.
Jinky: No Foozle, not stupid, just ignorant and closed-minded. Until a wise Chinese environmental scientist obtained a grant from the Chinese government and did it.
Now on to the photos
What’s all the fuss? Siberia doesn’t look so bad.
Well, it looks a little worse now.
The “moving map” never moved. It was bolted firmly to the back of the seat in front of me.
Over the North Pole, yet no signs of Santa.
Sun over the horizon at high noon
There are cracks in the “it’s all good, drill baby, drill” theory.
Over Greenland. A Brit with a dry sense of humor must have named Iceland and Greenland. “Let’s swap these two buggers around. The wankers going to green land will see nothing but ice. Jolly good fun!” I think I’ll edit the Wikipedia entries on these two countries and add this gem of a tidbit. I’ll call the guy Sir Isaac Foozleton.
Sorry, no photos of the fart wars between Santa’s little farters!
