Attaturk found this little gem over at Wonkette:

Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous…”

It isn’t quite as dangerous as the decompression of a modern passenger aircraft at cruising altitudes. Some of the effects can be extremely nasty.

There are very good reasons why aircrews eat bland food before flying, know what Beano does, take Sudafed prior to flights, and never drink carbonated beverages before or during flights. Water is your friend on long flights.

If the pilot had released the oxygen masks to help people avoid smoke inhalation, there would have been a definite risk of making the fire much worse. There are no valves on those masks, and people wearing petroleum-based make-up have a risk of getting burned by the interaction with oxygen. The Apollo One crew died in an oxygen fire ignited by a spark in the electrical circuits that surrounded them.

The pilot got the plane to the ground as soon as he could so the fire could be extinguished and the passengers evacuated. The on-board fire extinguishers are usually not good for living things, so they are used rarely and only in extreme emergencies. Most of those used for electrical fires work by depriving the fire of oxygen, which is not good for the passengers.

CEOs tend not to inform themselves about issues before they make their decisions – the facts would just slow down the process.

Note: I have personally been through several explosive decompressions. Don’t try this at home, and don’t attempt pressure breathing – trust me, you wouldn’t like it.

If you enter “Revert back to iOS 5 from iOS 6” into Google you get 938,000 hits, several of which on the front page explain the procedure in detail.

Apparently the newest iPhone operating system has eliminated some features that use Google services like Maps and YouTube, and the replacements are not ready for prime-time. Users are not happy.

I understand why Apple doesn’t want Google benefiting from its products, but a lot of people do depend on Google resources, and this may be a deal-breaker, especially among people in urban areas.

Position: 32.2N 29.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [280°] near 7 mph [11 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 55 mph [ 90 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 185 miles [295 km].
Minimum central pressure: 996 mb ↑.

Currently about 415 miles [ 670 km] South-Southwest of the Azores.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]