...is anything like their aviation program, we have nothing to worry about.

Take that, runway! Who's your daddy now?

("Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your seatbelts on until we've finished bouncing to the gate...")

[From the Nav Log]

[Update at 2 PM EST[

A commenter says that it's a fake. It's still pretty funny, though.

By the way, perhaps Mark Whittington should apply for the job of running the Chinese Space Agency's equivalent of the Public Affairs Office. Given the apparent umbrage he takes when anyone disses their space program, he should at least be getting paid for it.

[Update a little while later]

Mark is apparently as unfamiliar with the meaning of the word "ire" as he is with that of "affront."

Hilarious.

Mark, the fact that you seem to have no sense of humor doesn't mean that my comment wasn't meant to be humorous. I have no "ire" toward the Chinese space program. In fact, that's why you always seem to be so upset with me--because I don't take it seriously enough to have "ire" toward it. I wish you'd make up your mind as to how I'm supposed to view it (or how you're supposed to, for that matter). I also wish you'd quit fantasizing my views on things, and feebly attempting to propagate them to the world. I know that's not going to happen, though.

The video posted is an edited version of a DUTCH BEER COMMERCIAL. Someone has removed the start and ending in an apparently successful attempt to convince people the video is real.

The full version starts with someone filming their scanner in their hand at Schiphol, from which we hear the captain say:

Cabin Crew, prepare for landing.

Then it picks up with the video that was pasted here, with a "TBWAIR" aircraft doing its thing. Note, TBWAIR does not exist.

Then the captain continues...

This is , your captain, speaking. On behalf
of the Dutch crew, I'd like to apologise to the Austrian football
team for the small inconvenience. We wish you a lot of success
against the Dutch football team, thank you.

The end is overlaid with the Heineken logo and "Heel Holland Helpt", roughly translated as "All of Holland helps out".

(http://www.vpmag.com/yssy/viewtopic.php?p=78945&sid=95f34d7f446cd845f3e894ecab516e44)

not as much fun as if it were real, but for the record...

Hunter, sort of takes the sting out of Rand's crack about the Chinese space program. One would think that after the Rathergate faked documents fiasco, he would have checked to see if the video had been faked before using it in that manner. I guess it's another case of someone wanting a story to be true too much.

Gee, Mark, can't take a joke?

What kind of person would have taken my "crack" seriously?

Oh, yeah...

One of the rules of humor, to make it really effective, is that it should be based on fact. That's why the Bush as blithering idiot jokes one hears on late night TV aren't very funny because it's not true. The Clinton as sex crazed maniac jokes, however, are funny because, well, they are true.

There is a joke here, nevertheless, but methinks it is not on the Chinese.

Now, the last crack about me running the PA for the Chinese space program was very droll. They actually would not need nor require my services because (a) their success speaks for itself and (b) I take a dim view of the implications of that success, as all the world knows.

Their success? That'd be the, what, 4 flights in the last few years or so?

Rick, don't you understand? Any month now, they're going to ramp up production and send thousands of the yellow hordes to the moon, to claim it for yellow hordedom. And unlike those wimpy American private enterprisers, they'll have guns!

> Any month now, they're going to ramp up production and send thousands
> of the yellow hordes to the moon, to claim it for yellow hordedom. And unlike
> those wimpy American private enterprisers, they'll have guns!

Unless NASA scientists are there to stop them. Mark is so terrified of Chinese guns that he wants to send *unarmed civilians* to stop them!

Mark's policy is like proclaiming China to be a naval threat, then threatening to send in Jacques Cousteau. Maybe Mark should run the French space program? :-)