A collection of items as seen on many fine websites this week:
A couple of months ago, there were murmurs that the cheapskate airline Ryanair thought they might be able to get away with removing the seats from airplanes altogether and making passengers stand up like they do on buses and subway cars. That hasn’t happened…yet…but today’s Daily Mail features a mock-up of a design for an aircraft with little jumpseats all crammed together that could very well find its way into service for short-hop flights. As the article points out, the military already uses similar seating to maximize passenger space in troop planes, so it’s not as outrageous as it sounds. Even the designers admit, though, that such seating wouldn’t be comfortable for more than an hour or two. I have to say that I myself would be okay with this for such quickie flights as the Boston-New York shuttles, as long as there was a related price decrease to go along with the inconvenience, but I can also imagine some of the more marginal American airline companies trying to get away with this for longer flights, too.
This story got posted to MetaFilter yesterday and now it’s all over the place: The BBC Magazine features this story of the only woman to ever serve in the French Foreign Legion. Susan Travers was a typical British socialite who wanted to “do her bit” when the Second World War began and became an ambulance driver for French troops fighting against the Russians in Finland. From there, she wound up in North Africa, and when the regular French Army wouldn’t have her, she talked her way into being a driver for the French Foreign Legion. Read the article for the rest of the amazing, romantic, and true story. Or, better yet, read the book. Personally, I can’t wait to see this turned into a movie.
The insanely small sculptures of artist Willard Wigan are not unfamiliar to people who spend any amount of time on the web, but I was very impressed with this tiny replica of Michelangelo’s “David” shown here on the head of a pin with a housefly for size comparison. This post at Laughing Squid also links to a presentation by Wigan at the TED conference, and tells us that Wigan’s art is presently being shown at the Nicole Gallery in Chicago.
This infographic shows a map of the United States represented by the proximity of McDonald’s restaurants. It’s a bit more impressive in its full size, which you can see at its original posting location here. Most Americans live no more than 2 miles from a McDonald’s, it turns out, except whomever it is that might live in this remote corner of South Dakota, which is 145 miles by road to the nearest MickeyD’s. (I suspect that, in fact, nobody lives in that spot, it’s just the one farthest to any McD’s in the U.S.)
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
