Warp Speed, WheelTug, and Oysters March 30, 2017March 30, 2017 Sorry, Cap’n Kirk: not gonna happen. We’ll get to Mars; but beyond our solar system? The BBC explains why we’ll never reach, let alone exceed, the speed of light. But we’ve gotten pretty good at 600 miles an hour, if not 186,282 miles per second. Glenn: “The 737 is the #1 selling passenger plane in the world. Did you ever wonder how Boeing produces over forty 737 airplanes a month? The train arrives with the main body in the morning. This 3½ minute video is fascinating. Enjoy!” ☞ And one day, they’ll all be equipped with WheelTug and we’ll save 20 minutes on every flight not having to wait for a tug to back up, boarding and deplaning from both front AND rear doors. (Click here if you might be in Singapore May 23-24 for IATA’s second e-taxi conference. I wrote about the first one, here.) “Keep away from oysters / whatever you do and / just for the hell of it / you can be a celibate, too.” So ran the line from a song in HPT 121, Harvard’s 1969 Hasty Pudding Theatrical, “Bottoms Up,” wherefrom I came to learn that oysters are thought to be an aphrodisiac. Thanks to Upworthy for this encouraging tale. While some of tomorrow’s unemployed truck drivers may be installing solar roofs, others may be farming oysters. Which, it turns out, is good for wild oysters, as well. Check it out. How can you not be excited by all this? Artie: “Needless to say, I was intrigued by the article you linked to Tuesday (about the Russian mob), but I’m very reluctant to share information from sources that I don’t know to be reliable. Your introduction, “If this report is to be believed,” is not exactly a ringing endorsement, so I have to ask, Are you familiar with them? and Do you have reason to believe them?” ☞ Yes and yes. I shouldn’t have struck such a skeptical tone. Jonathan Z. Larsen is indeed a respected journalist who goes back a long way, having headed TIME’s Saigon bureau, edited New Times Magazine, and more. I’ve met Russ Baker and contributed a dollar or two to his work. That doesn’t make them infallible. But they are serious investigative journalists whose alarming report should be taken seriously.