A: They can both be held together with duct tape.

This morning I flew from the Central Wisconsin Airport (CWA) to Chicago O’Hare (ORD) on United flight 7103. About halfway through my flight I looked out the window and saw something rather startling. A large piece of what appeared to be duct tape lay across the vertical tip of the right wing. The edges along the top and bottom of the strip of tape were smooth, while the left and right edges were jagged, as if the tape had been cut off a roll. (Just like with real duct tape.)

Even more startling than the duct tape on the wing of my plane was what I could see under it. Although my iPhone’s camera wasn’t able to capture this amount of detail, I could clearly see the indentation of a hole in the wing, under the tape. I’m going to venture a guess that the hole was one inch high and eight inches wide, but it was hard to tell for sure because of its distance from my window.

Wondering if my eyes were playing a trick on me, I asked the couple sitting in the row behind to look out the window and tell me if they noticed anything unusual on the wing of the plane. “Oh my god”, said the woman. “Is that duct tape?”

It was around this time that I looked down at my feet and was reminded of what was holding together my left shoe…

After the plane landed safely in Chicago, I talked to one of the pilots about the wing. He told me that sometimes food delivery trucks or other equipment will bump into airplanes and put holes in them. Until the damage is repaired with a permanent fix, it’s often patched up with “speed tape”, which is also known as “600 mph tape” because apparently that’s the maximum wind speed the tape can endure.

I did some googling, and despite the horrific appearance of an airplane being held together with duct tape, it’s apparently a common and safe practice. Here’s what I found:

• A YouTube clip of an airplane duct tape repair in India
• Speed Tape on Wikipedia
• A Speed Tape Repair Photo
• An Airplane Duct Tape Discussion on Airliners.net

So, the next time you’re on an airplane and see tape holding together the wing, don’t panic. (Unless the tape is scotch tape, in which case you should freak the hell out.)

Brrreeeport.

I get lots of junk mail. A fair amount of my junk mail comes from promotions that my mortgage companies and their partners send my way. I can usually spot junk mail by looking at the envelope, but the sneaky devils at Coldwell Banker Mortgage (aka Cendant Mortgage) like to put their junk mail in the same envelopes as important statements, thus making it more likely to be read. (Of course this also makes their important tax statements more likely to be tossed!)

Never before has junk mail made me laugh like it did today. I received an offer from the Liberty Life Insurance Company who partnered with Coldwell Banker Mortgage to send me an offer I couldn’t refuse…to not laugh at. (Click here for the letter in PDF.) Rather than focusing on why their life insurance is the best, they decided to focus on how mortal I am. They went so far as to include a list of ways in which I might die, including bicycle accidents, choking, pedestrian accidents, falls from ladders, food poisoning, contact with machinery, accidental firearms discharge, forces of nature, drowning, electrocution and fire.

My God! I had never realized there were so many ways in which I might die! I was quite comfortable living an ignorant life of the danger around me until the fine folks at the Liberty Life Insurance Company pointed out the perils of life that may one day do me in. Clearly I need to buy their life insurance. How could I have lived so long without it? Dying without it must be even worse!

I can just picture the boardroom meeting that took place while this letter was being drafted. Did they have a list of ways to die up on a whiteboard? Which suggestions were scratched before the letter was finalized? Tiger attack? (Too unlikely, despite recent events.) Terrorist attack? (Already too overplayed.) How about run over by a steamroller? Yes, that happens too.

The letter continues…

“What are my chances of having a fatal accident?”
Consider these statistics in the United States alone:

• Someone dies in an accident every 5 minutes.
• In just one year, more than 40,000 people died in auto related accidents.
• In that same period, more than 33,000 people died as a result of accidents that happened in their own homes.

On the back of the letter they go on to say:

According to the National Safety Council, an accident claims the life of one American every six minutes. [Notice this is inconsisent with what was said on the front of the letter.] But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. You see it on the evening news and on our roads and highways. It’s a risk we all live with. Now, you can be prepared – with Mortgage Decreasing Accidental Death Insurance from Liberty Life Insurance Company.

And here I thought CNN, MSNBC and Fox News were already doing a good enough job trying to scare people about their imminent deaths. Fear is such a great motivator. Used by governments, hostage takers and cult leaders, I shouldn’t be surprised to see marketers using it now too.

*Sigh* I liked the 1990′s much better when they used sex to sell instead of fear.