Category Archives: Around the World

It’s almost like being there

MetaFilter: 360-degree panoramic galleries of European cities

“Arounder has an ongoing collection of high-quality full screen Quicktime VR panoramas of European cities, focusing on famous artistic and cultural landmarks (in Rome, Florence, Köln, Barcelona, Cyprus), with interactive maps and travel information. A collaboration with national tourist offices by Swiss company Vrway Communication, which also publishes Vrmag, a bi-monthly review of panorama photography, and the FullscreenQTVR directory in collaboration with the well-known panoramas.dk.”

I’ve been to the Cologne Cathedral many times, but am always amazed again by the sheer grandeur of the building. The virtual tour of the Kölner Dom lets you get a feeling for the place even if you’ve never visited. Bonus: There are nice views of Cologne from the towers of the cathedral.

Thirteen years ago I visited Tuscany on a school trip in my final year. We stayed in Florence (Firenze!) and of course visited the cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, and its tower. Cathedrals in Tuscany usually consist of a main building, il duomo, a baptistry, il battistero, and a tower, il campanile (e.g., the famous leaning tower in Pisa is the campanile of the cathedral at the Piazza dei Miracoli, the Square of wonders). The virtual tour of the Catheral made memories come back… I remember climbing up on top of the dome – there are very narrow funny little flights of stairs between the outer and inner domes, which can be a bit claustrophobic, but you are rewarded with a great view of the city.

In German they’re called Nasenbären, “nose bears”

Daniel spotted a group of Coatis while at Kitt Peak Observatory and managed to take a couple of good photos of them.

André and I saw some while hiking in Chiricahua National Monument during our trip in 2002. We were on a longish hike (very few people on the trail) and suddenly saw what looked like monkeys run off in the distance. Now I know that monkeys do not usually live in Arizona, but I had no idea what else they could be, so we had to ask at the ranger station after we returned from the hike. The ranger told us that we had probably seen some coati mundi (or white-nosed coati, ring-tailed coati), which is rare because they are pretty shy.

The other time I thought I’d seen African animals in the USA during that trip turned out to be neither a mirage nor a species unknown to me: I saw some oryx antelopes, which I had previously encountered on a trip to Kenya. It turned out that someone actually set some oryx antelopes free in the US in order to hunt them. Having no enemies, the population apparently grew quite a bit.

Big Brother in Space

News @ Nature.com: Space cadets taken for a ride.

“Television show hopes to convince participants they are in orbit. […] It is all set to be the thrill of a lifetime. A group of intrepid adventurers, having fought off dozens of other hopefuls, will head into space for a five-day voyage, to be watched and envied by millions. Except they won’t.”

I don’t even want to imagine what happens when the people who are “sent into space” in this show find out they are duped – in front of millions of TV spectators, no less. There’s an article (see quote below) at Spiegel online (German) which reports that there are going to be actors among the candidates whose job it is to dispel doubts any of the real candidates may have. Only four people will “fly into space”, and even one of them is going to be an actor. The fact that there are going to be “moles” among the candidates makes it even worse in my view.

On the other hand I hope that noone is so easily fooled, but maybe the candidates are all people who think that the movie Armageddon was a good film with serious science behind it. I wonder how the film crew explains to them that the sun will shine into the plane from different directions while they are allegedly being flown to Russia (the article says they are going to be flying in circles above the sea and landing in Britain).

Aus dem Artikel bei Spiegel online, Sender gaukelt Kandidaten Flug ins All vor:

“Um auf Nummer sicher zu gehen, hat Endemol zudem Schauspieler in das Freiwilligen-Team eingeschleust, die bei Bedarf aufkommende Zweifel zerstreuen sollen.
Tatsächlich ins All “fliegen” sollen schließlich nur vier Personen, davon ein Schauspieler.”