As Air France pilots fought for control, the doomed A330 dropped 38,000 feet, rolling left to right, its engines flat out but its wings unable to grab enough air to keep flying.

Aviation industry sources told Reuters that this action went against the normal procedures which call for the nose to be lowered in response to an alert that the plane was about to lose lift or, in technical parlance, 'stall'.

"A stall is the moment at which a plane stops flying and starts falling," ... "why did the pilot flying (the aircraft) appear to continue to pull the nose up[?]"

It isn't too hard to see that the world economy is stalling. Belarus has devalued their currency, Greece is near default, Spain has massive unemployment, Pakistan can barely keep the lights on, third world countries can't even afford food and water. In the US jobs aren't really coming back, housing isn't really coming back, car sales aren't really coming back, and the Wall Street Journal lets an oped writer call it stagflation instead of whatever new sort of -flation it is. But we continue to try to pull the nose up. We continue tax cuts to the rich, the financial sector creates more commodity bubbles, even with food, the Fed issues ever more debt, we're mired in expensive resource wars but the media assures us that business will continue as usual if we keep believing.

Here are the animated walkthroughs prepared by college teams for the 2011 Solar Decathlon, to be held in Washington DC from Sept 23rd through Oct 2nd. I put the animations that kept my interest first, and the ones that were less interesting farther down.

Team New Jersey I like the assembly presentation of this one, the design, and the integration of music into the video.

I thought I knew the basic facts about Open Carry until I scanned this oped the other day:

Gun control that won't

Wozzes pose at the Toray Pan Pacific Open

At Roland Garros, the big match of the day (for me) was world #1 Caroline Wozniacki vs world #192 Aleksandra Wozniak. No word on whether Steve Wozniak was watching from the stands (and I don't think they are closely related).

Several automotive blogs -  Autoblog Green, Green Car Congress and GreenPowerTrain, below - have recently cited an announcement from battery maker PowerGenix:

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviewed Harry Belafonte on Monday, and Belafonte cited Eleanor Roosevelt as the source of the story that Goodman told us at the Enoch Pratt Free Library last year:

I liked this short ...

Last week, lots of experts were predicting that lower oil prices would lead to lower fuel prices at the pumps this summer. I wondered about that because Tom Whipple had noted that gasoline stocks were very low. The Kansas City Star takes the fuel stocks story a bit further: 

In Djokovic Rules and Djokovic Still Rules, I've already described how well I think Djokovic is playing this year. Many media pages, like the Wall Street Journal article below, are now devoted to the gluten-free diet he adopted last year - before the streak.

Novak Djokovic defeated Rafael Nadal 6-4, 6-4 in the final of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome, aka the Italian Open, stretching his unbeaten streak to 39 matches and seven titles, but more importantly, beating Nadal in consecutive red clay court matches. It was a tough, high quality match, well-played by both men. 

In Peak Oil Elasticity, Tom Whipple wonders why $4.00 fuel hasn't made Americans cut back our driving all that much: 

A Peak Oil special from Catalyst on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 

Since this is "Ding dong, bin Laden is dead" day, I'll note that we still have the same problems with energy depletion and financial shenanigans and unemployment that we had yesterday. Perhaps killing OBL will gain Obama some slack with people spending $50 to fill their compact cars. But for how long?

Sheesh, they just broke into normal TV programming (Mythbusters) to advise us to seek shelter. A tornado in Baltimore? The worst seems to be around Alabama, but The Weather Channel says this could be the greatest outbreak of tornadoes in American history.

[NOAA Alert text deleted]

This climate change stuff is getting too real.

2nd Update: On The Takeaway this morning, they said it was the worst outbreak of tornadoes in 40 years.

I read once that the original Phoebe Snow was a media creation. Railroads were trying to show that diesels were much cleaner than coal, so they invented this ephemeral socialite named Phoebe Snow who could travel the rails wearing white, and emerge unsoiled by soot. The name carried to an Erie Lackawanna passenger train, and Phoebe Ann Laub borrowed it for the stage.