Yes, I know we've had a ton of videos today, but you MUST see this.
Awesome Daniel Maas NASA Mars Pathfinder Animation set to "Sunspots" by Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor) via Fark.
Category Archives: Travel
Dubai: Land of Laughs
I'm not an American, but from time to time I can't help but feel bad for the poor buggers, like when their president tries to sell their ports to people like this. Mind you, I like people like this, but I wouldn't be selling my ports to them; there's the ones you date, and the ones you take home to momma and sell your ports to, and these are not the latter. Wisdom and good times from a Dubai taxi driver, via Gridskipper.
Cabbie: Where are you from?
Us: Washington, D.C. in the United States.
C: You know George Bush?
U: (polite laughter) No, we’ve never met him.
C: You know Osama Bin Laden?
U: (slight discomfort) No…. We’ve never met him either.
C: Do you want to meet him?
U: (wondering where he’s going with this) Um… no. (sincerely hoping that we’re not on our way to see him right now)
C: I want to meet him very much.
U: Uhhh… Really? Why?
C: So that I could turn him in to the United States and gets lots and lots of American dollars. (hysterical guffaws)
U: (relieved smiles) Oh, okay.
C: No, I couldn’t do that. They would kill all my family. (another explosion of hilarity)
U: (polite but uncomfortable laughter)
Operation Pathetic Fansite
In our ongoing quest to find the fansite of the most pathetically non-fansite-deserving thing or entity in the world, we have come across, thanks to BoingBoing, a uniquely strong contender.
The only real quibble is it's not technically a site, but rather a Flickr tag.
Still, a strong showing nonetheless, for something it's almost impossible to imagine someone actually giving a rat's ass about.
Flickr photos of airline spoons.
Streaming Eagle Cam 3.0: Swartz Bay
Well, the original eagle cam is done for the year; no hatching eggs means a lot of disappointed readers (and not a few conspiracy theorists, I might add) so the Hornby Island team has found a new nest, with chicks, near the Swartz Bay ferry terminal on Vancouver Island. FYI This is the ferry that takes people to Vancouver from Victoria…only it's not really very close to Victoria…it's complicated.
Anyway, the link is the same: Streaming Eagle Cam Swartz Bay this time.
And here's a pair of Peregrine Falcons in Harrisburg, with chicks.
And my previous posts on eagles:
Streaming Eagle Cam 2.0 Baby Eagles in Colorado
Eagle Chick on Santa Cruz Island, California
and
My Original article on the Eagle Cam; perhaps these new eagles are the ones Christi and I spotted in the story here.
The T Factor: Brits Abroad
Although, according to research, not quite as broad as Americans. But that's neither here nor there.
The Brits are travel-happy. In fact, one of the biggest issues in the recent election there was "Damn and blast, how is a simple working man supposed to fly the family to Marbella for some sun once a year, Verbier for a little exercise, Paris for some shopping, and Florence for a nice little walking tour every now and again, and still feel that he's doing his part to keep the planet free from excess pollutants???"
Well, quite.
With a culture like that, you'd expect that most Brits would know, oh, I dunno, like the first thing about travelling? I've only ever been to the US and one trip to the tropics, so I cannot lay claim to any great sophistication here, but even I know that there are, ferinstance, fishy-type things in the sea. I mean, in England you can just walk to it; surely there's no excuse for this if you come from Blighty. Hell, if you come from Saskatchewan you still know there are fish in that big outdoor watery thing, whether it's a lake or an ocean.
Anyhoo, without further ado, we present some of the complaints lodged with UK travel companies by greviously aggreived tourists.
A company insider said: 'People are much more aware of their rights nowadays and much more tempted to blame someone if something goes wrong. We have noticed a surge in weird complaints over the last few years.
'Their instinct is to lash out and blame someone, and because it's such a litigious culture, people always think the travel company must be to blame.'
The Association of British Travel Agents said recently that a couple cancelled a two-week break in Majorca and demanded a refund because of the risk of contracting the SARS virus.
It was pointed out to them that Majorca was not affected by SARS, but they insisted on cancelling anyway.
Then they sued to get their cancellation fee back. And here is a small roundup from the article:
No one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled…
My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room and we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the rooms that we booked…
The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers, will we be OK staying here..?
It took us nine hours to fly to Jamaica from England – it only took the Americans three hours…
It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel… I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller…
I was bitten by a mosquito – no one said they could bite…
We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white…
We had to queue outside with no air conditioning…
…And finally, from a holidaymaker in Spain:
There were too many Spanish people. The receptionist spoke Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners.
raincoaster 