There's no ignoring the sound made by the motors on the Goodyear blimp. They whine like a super-sized insect, and whenever the unmistakable buzzing floats over our hill beside Santa Monica airport, somebody yells "blimp!" and we all dash outside to look. For this reason I read all of David Samuels' story in this week's New Yorker about sailing above Los Angeles with a new pilot trying to win his airship wings. It's not online, but worth finding if you want to know what goes on behind the scenes of the "thinking man's craft." One thing Samuels found: most of the pilots are partially deaf.

"Watching the sun set over the Pacific while floating in a Goodyear blimp is like being suspended inside the world's largest lava lamp."