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"A beautiful plane is a plane that flies well. Here at BREITLING, we share the same philosophy. It is expressed through a single-minded commitment to building ultra-efficient wrist instruments for the most demanding professionals. Our chronographs meet the highest criteria of sturdiness and functionality, and we submit all our movements to the merciless tests of the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute. One simply does not become an aviation supplier by chance."

Man, just keeping a straight face while I typed that last paragraph was difficult. Have been reading, and (yes, i'm bored) rereading some Newsweeks recently, and have discovered that apparently readers of this esteemed journal constitute a significant market for the makers of watches. Did I say watches? I meant wrist-instruments. Or chronographs. [snicker]

That snippet above is an ad for a "Breitling" brand chronograph [still snickering], but it is far from the only one jammed into this piece-of-junk-that-pass-for-reporting. Most of the ads are pretty ridiculous, and while Brad Pitt has a nice face, that doesn't mean I'm pleased to see it on the back of nearly EVERY ISSUE. Selling a 'TagHeuer' brand chronograph. "What are you made of?" he asks, smiling coyly at someone off-camera (Angelina? is that you?!).

Some of the ads are hilarious, some simply confusing. Breitling has another brand watch, somehow (?!) modeled on a Bentley (??!!), that has so many dials and numbers it seems to mask rather well what the actual flipping time is. And, just in case you've forgotten, it lets you know what month it is, how the moon and stars are alighned, and as if month weren't enough (I'll admit even I get tripped up around the starts of new months), what season it is. Sheesh.

What got a fellow volunteer and myself most perplexed was the Breitling ad (the somehow-airplane-related one) which sells a watch that, upon close inspection, features a 'tachymetre.' Ignore the goofy British spelling, and read that word again. Huh? We were fairly startled by the presence of this, um, seemingly redundant chronographical function. Allow me to clarify the source of our confusion through a few simple definitions courtesy of www.dictionary.com:

ta·chom·e·ter (t-km-tr, t-)n.
An instrument used to measure the rotations per minute of a rotating shaft.

ta·chym·e·ter (t-km-tr, t-)n.
A surveying instrument used for the rapid determination of distances, elevations, and bearings.

Ok, so there is a difference between tachometer and tachymeter. Good to know. You see, we assumed that what was advertised as a feature on this wrist-instrument was a tachometer, which measures rotations per minute. And if that were the case, I would be baffled because ITS A WATCH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, I WOULD HOPE THE ROTATION PER MINUTE IS 1, 1/60, or 1/720!!!

But no, it is a tachymeter. The dictionary still doesn't explain how the hell this watch can survey distances, elevations and bearings, or why the average corporate schmuck who buys it would ever need to do any of those things (especially an airplane pilot, since I would assume the cockpit has about 800 instruments with a little more precision than a simple 'wrist-instrument'). But at least they didn't put a tachometer. That, to quote my nemisis Bill O'Reilly, would be ridiculous.

After all this banter, I must point out that Patek Phillippe offers a rather elegant looking chronograph (WATCH!!! just call it a WATCH you stupid ad execs!!) with a feature to automatically adjust for timezone changes. Patek Phillippe, "you merely look after it for the next generation." Oh barf.