Some pretty awesome hyperlinks, as usual, from Kottke on the SR-71 Blackbird.

A short appreciation of the SR-71 Blackbird, an airplane that was literally faster than a speeding bullet.

“It wasn’t like any other airplane,” he told me. It was terrifying, exciting, intense and humbling every time you flew. Each mission was designed to fly at a certain speed; you always knew the airplane had more. It was like driving to work in a double-A fuel dragster.”

The skin of the plane’s fuselage was a whopping 85% titanium, which was purchased, during the Cold War, from the Soviet Union.

See also SR-71 Disintegrates Around Pilot During Flight Test:

Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. I learned later the time from event onset to catastrophic departure from controlled flight was only 2-3 sec. Still trying to communicate with Jim, I blacked out, succumbing to extremely high g-forces. The SR-71 then literally disintegrated around us. From that point, I was just along for the ride.

A website, 100abandonedhouses.com, with stunning photographs of abandoned houses in Detroit, shot with an old Hasselblad. Web developer and freelance photographer Kevin Bauman:

The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. I actually began photographing abandonment in Detroit in the mid 90’s as a creative outlet, and as a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of my home town. I had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded by such affluence.

(via treehugger)

It’s a shock it took this long but this is very good news, indeed: 37signals now offers SSL connections on Basecamp. From the SVN blog:

SSL was initially positioned as an upgrade driver to higher plans. And while we don’t know what percentage of people considered SSL a key reason for upgrading, we believe everyone is entitled the best security we can offer. There shouldn’t be first class or second class customers when it comes to security. It doesn’t matter if Customer A is paying us $149 and Customer B is not paying us at all — they are all customers and their data is equally important.

This is the first step in our renewed focus on being a better corporate citizen. We plan on rolling out similar SSL upgrades across our entire product line (Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire). We’re also examining additional good citizen initiatives beyond security. Profit will be considered (we are a business, after all), but it won’t always come first.

In just a matter of weeks, two Airbus jets have crashed into the ocean taking hundreds of passengers with them to the bottom. This news is probably enough to make you think twice before you step on your next flight on an Airbus. But, the entire Airbus fleet — more than 5400 planes in service globally — is much safer than you think.

Former CNN anchor Miles O’Brien:

In July 2008, Airbus’ bitter rival Boeing released a “Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents” from the dawn of the jet age in 1959 through 2007.

At the time of the study, the A330 still had a flawless record: no fatal accidents in the course of a million departures. A month ago, Air France 447 changed that record – but the airliner remains very safe statistically.

Over the years Airbus A300’s have had three crashes that caused deaths. That equates to a rate of .47 airplanes lost per million departures. The A320 series has had eight fatal crashes – or .23 hulls per million departures. And the A340 has never had a fatal crash.

The record is not as good for the A310 – the model of airplane that plunged into the sea trying to land at the capital of the Comoros Islands – Moroni. It has crashed and killed people eight times now (six times on the event horizon of the Boeing study). That equates to a fatal accident rate of 1.42 airplanes for every million departures.

The infamous – and much maligned – DC-10 crashed with fatalities a dozen times for a rate of 1.36 fatal crashes per million departures.