Back in 2001 the US National Transportation Safety Board published a report on the survival rates in air crashes (PDF, 800 KB). They are much better than you might think: Nearly 96 percent of the occupants involved in a Part 121 aviation accident over the past 18 years survived the accident, and in over . . . → Read More: Maximizing the chance of surviving a plane crash
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Using the waze desktop maps There is a new social mobile application on the block – waze.com. You can download the application onto your smartphone (Apple, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian at the moment, Blackberry is coming shortly) and use the free software as an on-board turn-by-turn navigation system. The maps are . . . → Read More: Help fill in the blanks on waze.com If like us, you have the feeling that flying with Ryanair is no longer the bargain it used to be, you could be right. The Sydney Morning Herald has just published a report showing Ryanair’s charges have increased by 700% since 2006. You can avoid part of the increases by using a . . . → Read More: Ryanair’s additional charges up by factor of 7 since 2006 The Boston Globe often has fabulous pictures in its “The Big Picture” section. Their latest series is no exception – just take a look at these! Next time we drive past Maastricht, we are going to take a look at Selexyz Dominicanen. There’s an article in the Guardian architecture section about this book shop in a converted church, and it looks spectacular. The architects were Merkx + Girod, and the photo above is from their . . . → Read More: Selexyz Dominicanen When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to . . . → Read More: 1984 has been delayed, not cancelled Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic all join the Schengen Zone tonight. That is the part of the EU where the member countries trust each other enough to abolish the visa- and border controls (But beware! At airports, the new members won’t benefit from the abolition of . . . → Read More: The fog clears in Europe Picture from Arborsmith Studios website (click picture to visit)Axel Erlandson an American arborsculptor opened an exhibition in 1947 featuring trees which he had shaped by pruning, bending and grafting. The original exhibition, called The Tree Circus had a chequered history, only bringing in a little over $300 in a good year (1955). Eventually 12 . . . → Read More: The tree circus Russia and the USA have the world’s highest populations of prisoners [PDF from the British Government, 116 KB size]. Russia has 685 per 100,000 people of the national population locked away, followed by the USA, which has 645 prisoners per 100,000. Those figures are around 6 times the rates for most countries in Europe, . . . → Read More: USA / Russia – getting indistinguishable? If you have any plans to visit the spectacular Grand Canyon Skywalk, you will probably be interested to read this article first – here’s the salient point: We walked in to get the tickets and met a very long line of people waiting to do the same. After 10 minutes of waiting, a “Question . . . → Read More: The Great Grand Canyon Skywalk Rip-off |
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