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Airbus has filed a patent for a new plane that looks decidedly more Star Trek Enterprise than airplane.

The Financial Times dubbed it a "flying doughnuts."

According to the patent application, the craft would address a long-standing problem for plane designers — pressurized cabins, which stress planes on the front and back ends and require heavy, reinforced frames.

The patent says the new design would distribute that pressure in a way that would be more "economic and efficient."

Airbus says the design also has an additional benefit: Seating passengers in a circle, doughnut-style, allows for more flyers than the old fashioned paper-towel-holder-with-two-wings.

"An approximately cylindrical geometry limits possibilities for increasing the passenger carrying capacity of the aircraft," the patent says.

Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon, though, told NPR that the design is not currently in production — and may never be. Dubon says the company files more than 600 patents every year.

"Some of these become the seed for other ideas with practical use," he says.

Still, Dubon says, "There are some very clever people here that have fantastic ideas. And who knows? Maybe one day they will come light."

In the meantime, Airbus may want to start redesigning the drink carts to handle curves.

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This may be the first time in a long while that Bill Cosby can't control the public conversation about Bill Cosby.

Read the recent biography Cosby: His Life and Times, and you see a portrait of talented performer who took control of his business and career interests early on, forever suspicious of journalists and industry executives who might try to interfere.

But in the recent explosion of attention to allegations that the comedy superstar drugged and sexually assaulted several women years ago, in incidents reaching back to the late 1960s, Cosby has remained uncharacteristically silent — epitomized by his interview with NPR's Scott Simon who found the comic would only shake his head and utter no sound when asked about the allegations.

(His attorney did provide a statement posted on Cosby's website which said, in part, "decade-old, discredited allegations against Mr. Cosby have resurfaced. The fact that they are being repeated does not make them true. Mr. Cosby doesn't not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment.")

STORIFY: Scott Simon Answers Questions About Cosby Interview

Code Switch

Examining Bill Cosby's Legacy As 'The Cosby Show' Turns 30

'Here & Now': Bill Cosby's Legacy After Rape Allegations Nov. 17, 2014

Bill Cosby Remains Silent On Sexual Assault Allegations

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News of Cosby's silence rocketed across media; the moment was covered everywhere from NBC's Today show to CNN, USA Today and The Washington Post, which called it "perhaps the most significant dead air in the history of National Public Radio."

When NPR most recently spoke to Cosby, four women had come forward publicly with rape allegations: Andrea Constand, Beth Ferrier, Tamara Green and Barbara Bowman. (See this story for a more detailed account of their allegations) Over the weekend, another woman, 66-year-old publicist Joan Tarshis, also told media outlets she was drugged and raped by Cosby when she was 19 years old. Constand filed a lawsuit in 2005 that included 13 women willing to tell similar stories, Greene and Bowman among them; the suit was settled, no terms were disclosed and Cosby was never charged with a crime.

But several recent events, including the 30th anniversary of The Cosby Show and the publication of the biography, have pushed media to reconsider Cosby's legacy.

At heart of this controversy, a generational divide looms. It may have been articulated best by comic Hannibal Buress, who lashed out at Cosby's moralizing about the failures of poor black people and the cursing of standup comics onstage by pronouncing the man once known as America's dad a rapist.

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Bill Cosby, center, with the cast of his hit sitcom The Cosby Show; clockwise from top left, Tempestt Bledsoe, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Lisa Bonet, Phylicia Rashad and Keshia Knight Pulliam. Frank Carroll/Associated Press hide caption

itoggle caption Frank Carroll/Associated Press

Bill Cosby, center, with the cast of his hit sitcom The Cosby Show; clockwise from top left, Tempestt Bledsoe, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Lisa Bonet, Phylicia Rashad and Keshia Knight Pulliam.

Frank Carroll/Associated Press

"He gets on TV, [says] 'Pull your pants up black people. I was on TV in the '80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom,' " Buress said during the routine, captured on a cellphone and posted online to become a massive viral hit. "Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches... 'I don't curse on stage.' Yeah, well, you're a rapist, so..."

Buress' routine and the reaction to it online was a jarring reminder of the new media reality. The 31-year-old comic was just a year old when Cosby's biggest TV hit, The Cosby Show, debuted. He was only 9 years old when it left the air and his words seemed to articulate the skepticism of a generation that may see Cosby more as a moral scold than a showbiz titan.

It's also the voice of a generation active on social media, focused on ensuring sexual abuse allegations are fully examined and that potential victims are fully heard. When Cosby's Twitter account posted a message asking fans to use pictures and create memes centered on the comic, the flood of material that focused on the assault allegations showed how many users felt the issue remained unresolved.

With messages traded on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere, these voices can gain a visibility that was previously unheard of, especially 10 years ago, when Constand alleges her assault took place.

Mark Whitaker, author of Cosby: His Life and Times, told NPR in September that he examined the public records and wasn't comfortable printing allegations he couldn't confirm.

"Either I was going to have to report everything that was on the record, which would have taken a lot of time in the book ... or I wasn't going to go down that road, and I made the choice to not go down that road," said Whitaker, who admitted he didn't talk to the women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault or the comic himself about the allegations. "These stories did not meet my standard for what I could responsibly report."

It's also possible that Cosby, who gave his tacit approval to the biography and eventually spoke to Whitaker for it, might have reacted differently if he knew the book was delving deeply into the allegations. But there is also a sense of opportunity missed here for Cosby; a chance to lay out his explanation in a forum where that was ample space for his account to a journalist who was knowledgeable about his life history.

Two of Cosby's accusers, Bowman and Tarshis, have noted that NBC is developing a new show starring the comic, intended as a family-oriented comedy, suggesting it shouldn't move forward. Quickly as media attention can move on these days, there is still a sense that Cosby will have trouble appearing on a major media outlet until he comments further; already, there have been planned interviews canceled on the Queen Latifah Show, Late Show with David Letterman and with The Associated Press.

Selling the public on a new TV show or movie requires lots of public appearances and conversations with media figures and journalists. Can Cosby run that gauntlet without saying more than he already has? And will TV viewers feel strange watching Cosby play a grandfatherly figure with such ugly allegations still in the public sphere?

These are questions which ultimately could determine how we view the legacy of one of the most successful comedians in show business history.

In other words: At a time when so much of the public conversation is controlled by the public, can Cosby more forward without breaking his silence?

On China's cyberwarfare capabilities

The thing that China has going for it that we do not have is people. The number of people within the People's Liberation Army, within the sort of intelligence apparatus of China, which is a very opaque system in its own right, is believed to be thousands of people, who are basically hired hackers who spend much of their day aggressively trying to penetrate the computer networks of U.S. corporations especially. China is sort of gathering information that they can then pass on to Chinese businesses and corporations that give them a leg up in negotiations and in the global marketplace. They're trying to advance their economy very quickly and stealing information to do it.

Less clear is how sophisticated their sort of military offensive apparatus is compared to ours. For instance, if China ever went to war with us in the South China Sea, let's say, how sophisticated and how good would their hackers be trying to break into our naval systems and confuse our ships? We know less about that but I think the conclusion we have to reach is that because they're having so many more people doing this than we do — I mean, we have a few thousand — that China is a really formidable force. And that makes a lot of sense that they would put so many resources in this. China will never be able to, at least in the near future, challenge us in a conventional military way. They can't go head-to-head with us on land or on the sea. Cyber is a place where they can gain an extraordinary advantage and do a lot of damage.

On the U.S. government positioning itself as a victim

The United States government loves to come out and talk about how relentlessly we're being hacked and how our intellectual property is being stolen from our businesses. And that's true.

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But what that covers up is that we are also one of the most aggressive countries going out there breaking into other countries' systems and spying on them. And we are one of the few countries that we know of that has launched offensive operations in cyberspace. We have used computer viruses to break infrastructure, physical things that are connected to computer networks. Very few countries are known to have done that.

I think one of the reasons why U.S. officials have been keen on showing how we're victimized is because they believe that U.S. businesses have not done enough to secure their own computer networks. From the government's perspective, they can't go in and necessarily force those companies (at least not yet) to improve their defenses, so it's been sort of more of a strategic, rhetorical calculation on the part of the government to come out and say, "We're victimized, it's terrible, lots of information is being stolen, and the only way we can stop this is you corporations have to do better security and work with us and let us help you do that."

So there's a reason why the U.S. has tried to play that victim card so repeatedly: It's because they want to get results from private businesses.

Read an excerpt of @war

The parents of Peter Kassig, the American aid worker who was killed by the Islamic State militant group, said his life was evidence that "one person can make a difference."

In a brief statement Monday, Paula and Ed Kessig remembered their 26-year-old son, who was seized in October 2013, as both a realist and an idealist.

"Our hearts are battered, but they will mend," Paula Kassig said. "The world is broken, but it will be healed in the end."

Ed Kassig added: "Please pray for Abdul-Rahman, or Pete if that's how you know him, at sunset this evening. Pray also for all people in Syria, in Iraq and around the world that are held against their will."

Kassig was a former Army Ranger who had returned to the region as an aid worker. He had converted to Islam while in captivity and had adopted the name Abdul-Rehman.

Ed Kassig asked for privacy so the family can "mourn, cry and, yes, forgive, and begin to heal."

The Kassigs, in a statement released Sunday, said they were "heartbroken" to learn of their son's death, which was announced in a video by the Islamic State.

In his final letter to his parents, Peter Kassig wrote: "If I do die, I figure that at least you and I can seek refuge and comfort in knowing that I went out as a result of trying to alleviate suffering and helping those in need."

Kassig's friends gathered recently in Tripoli, Lebanon, to plead for his release.

"He was full of sympathy for people, and he had some useful skills," Dr. Ahmed Obeid told the Los Angeles Times. "He was very courageous. Maybe that was his undoing in the end."

More on Kassig:

For U.S. Soldier Turned Aid Worker, The Goal Was To Help Syrians

Peter Kassig

Islamic State

ISIS

Syria