“We need YOU to land this plane!”

by Aaron Hotfelder on

We’ve all seen a variation of the same scene in movies or on television: an airplane is cruising along at 30,000 feet when, suddenly, the pilot is put out of commission- either due to terrorists, a heart attack, or, most often, snakes. Suddenly, a flight attendant or passenger is called upon to land the plane, aided by the patient voice of someone in a control tower. “See that red lever?” they’ll say. “Let it up gently.” Usually, the de facto pilot has nerves of steel and manages to make a safe, albeit bumpy, landing.

Because movies and television are always completely faithful to reality, and they never exaggerate for dramatic effect, it may seem as if this scene could actually happen in real life. Not so, says Patrick Smith in his newest “Ask the Pilot” column. If there’s a certified pilot sitting next to you, telling you just what to do and when, you might have some fighting chance, says Smith. But in any other circumstances, your future is a little more bleak:

“The chance of success: approximately zero percent. I reckon [you] would be highly fortunate just to locate a microphone switch and figure out how to communicate. Keeping the plane upright would in some ways be the easiest part. It’s the small stuff that presents the greatest challenge: working the radios, dialing in changes to the FMS (flight management system) and autoflight panels, changing speeds and altitudes. Dictating such tasks from afar would be difficult enough. For the hapless passenger pressed into duty, getting them right would be even more challenging.”

Take a look at what you’re up against here.

Showering on the Trans-Siberian

by Neil Woodburn on

One of the longest stretches of time I’ve been without a shower was the seven days I spent on the Trans-Siberian traveling from Moscow to Beijing.

Although the train carriages were comfortable enough, each had only a single toilet, a horrible little sink, and absolutely no opportunity to shower–or so I thought.

Like most people on the Trans-Siberian, I slowly ripened over the course of the journey along with the three other passengers who shared my berth. But according to Vanessa Arrington writing for Lonely Planet, this simply wasn’t necessary.

The trick is to bring along a larger water bucket. Passengers can fill this with boiling water from the samovar, mix it with cold water from the bathroom sink and then toss it over their head while locked in the bathroom. The water will disappear through a hole in the floor and onto the tracks below.

While this seems a pretty decent idea, I see two immediate problems. Since there is only one bathroom, there will be some pretty angry people on the other side of the door waiting for shower time to finish. Worse, however, is that the bathrooms are very small and very dirty. I would not want to get naked in one of these things while the train is rocking back and forth. Ugh!

Let’s face it; if you can’t go that long without a shower, get off in Irkutsk or somewhere else along the line and lather up. Just don’t get back on board and turn up your nose at fellow passengers who aren’t going to smell as fresh and rosy as yourself.

Prostitution in Monkeyland?

by Abha Malpani on

If anyone says that they don’t stop in their tracks when they see animals mating (out of sheer curiosity, of course), they are probably lying.

When I was in India on a school trek, I remember seeing a chameleon getting it on with another and it changed colors in the process! It’s not something you see often, and I personally think it’s fascinating.

But, who would have thought that paying for sex extends to the animal kingdom?

According to the Discovery Channel, evidence has been found that male monkeys “pay” for sex by untangling and cleaning dirt and parasites from the fur of the females. The higher the ratio of male to female monkeys, the more grooming the male monkeys need to do to get their sex-life going. This process can last from a few seconds up to half-an-hour and turns the monkeys on. Scientists are guessing that this is how foreplay in humans developed. Also, it seems that materialism is part of primate social life as well: the higher status monkeys don’t have to work as hard as lower status monkeys have to for sex.

The research was conducted in Indonesia from 2003-2005 where the 243 grooming sessions of long-tailed macaques were analyzed.

Although we evolved from these animals, you hardly imagine that the prostitution and materialism of humans also have roots in our animal ancestors.

Absinthe now legal, no longer cool

by Aaron Hotfelder on

The United States recently approved the sale of absinthe, and many people around the country are just now getting their first experiences with the potent, anise-flavored spirit. Absinthe, famous for supposedly inspiring creativity in the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, and Gaugin, has been banned in the United States since the early 1900s, but a version of the drink was approved for sale earlier this year.

Over at Salon, a new article debunks some myths surrounding absinthe, just as the New York Times did almost a year ago.

From my own limited personal experience in Prague, I can attest that the author of the Salon article is being very kind when she says absinthe is an “acquired taste.” I found that even after following the traditional sugar cube/slotted spoon ritual, it felt like downing a glass of very bitter rubbing alcohol. And no, I didn’t see any green fairies.

I didn’t meet anyone in Prague who drank absinthe on a regular basis (though I’m sure some do), and in general, it seems to be consumed for the sake of novelty (as in my case) more than anything else.

For more first-hand reports of experiences with absinthe, go here.

(Kids, take note: Drugs are inferior to hugs, and stay in school.)

Infiltrating North Korea Part 19: A Final Word

by Neil Woodburn on


Infiltrating North Korea is a 19-part series exploring the world’s most reclusive nation and its bizarre, anachronistic way of life. To start reading at the beginning of the series, be sure to click here.

Although it was a short trip of only five days, my time in North Korea proved to be one of the most fascinating journeys I’ve ever taken.

This brief glimpse into the world’s most reclusive nation was a rare opportunity to go back in time and witness what the Soviet Union was like fifty years ago. Everything I’ve ever read about the former USSR was alive and well in the streets of Pyongyang; red banners hanging everywhere, blanket censorship, ubiquitous propaganda, very few automobiles, fantastic and accessible cultural arts, barely any crime, and a tightly controlled populace afraid to even fold a newspaper with an image of Kim Il Sung on the front for fear of doing something sacrilegious to the Great Leader’s image.

The North Koreans, however, have taken this concept of totalitarianism even further than the Soviets ever did. The Korean cult of personality, for example, requires that people not only wear a pin of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il on their lapel every day, but also that they bow to any statue of the leaders they come across–and there are a lot of statues in North Korea. Not even Stalin nor Lenin were worshipped to such a degree.The North Koreans are also more paranoid about tourists than their Soviet predecessors; we weren’t allowed to speak to anyone during our time in North Korea, we were routinely prohibited from taking photographs, and we couldn’t wander about on our own. We saw only what the government wanted us to see and spoke only to those thoroughly vetted and officially approved to deal with tourists.

Knowing that my journey to North Korea was carefully regulated to reveal only the positive sides of this “socialist paradise” was extraordinarily frustrating. History is full of naïve international observers who were similarly distracted by smoke and mirror tactics, and then reported back to the civilized world about the excellent conditions they witnessed at various prisons, camps, and hellholes.


Totalitarian governments are very effective with their Potemkin villages and deceitful webs and I wanted to make sure I did not fall victim as well. I therefore read everything I could get my hands on before visiting the country. If you plan on going yourself, I highly recommend that you do the same, otherwise you will be won over by singing children, clean streets, well dressed citizens, and a fanatical devotion to socialism.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that it’s criminal to visit North Korea without educating yourself first. Mandatory reading starts with The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan–the son of a privileged Pyongyang family who spent ten years of his life, starting at the age of nine, in a North Korean labor camp. Chol-Hwan is coincidently my age and it was therefore particularly poignant knowing that at the same time I was going to high school homecoming dances and football games in the 1980s, Chol-Hwan was being beaten, brainwashed, and forced to cut trees and dig holes in freezing temperatures without adequate clothing. And, he ate rats to survive.

This certainly raises a moral conundrum; should tourists pay exorbitant prices to visit this totalitarian nation knowing that their hard currency helps support the regime?

I scoffed at this originally because my experience in traveling has taught me that human interaction with supposed “enemies” is the very best diplomacy in the world. In addition, bringing an outside perspective to an imprisoned people can also be extraordinarily powerful. The whole reason East Germany was the first communist country to fall was because they had more access to the outside world than any other communist country–they saw what life was like on the other side of the Wall and they rebelled.


The problem with North Korea, however, is that the people remain isolated even in the presence of foreigners. We were never given a chance to speak or interact with a single person. My initial belief that I could make some type of impact, perhaps by simply giving a child a candy bar, turned out to be an absurd impossibility.

And, as a result, my presence did nothing more than slightly boost the government coffers and help Kim Jong Il purchase more of his beloved premium cognac while the rest of the country starves.

And so, I leave it up to you to decide on whether such a trip is appropriate or not (and if you’d like contact information for my travel agent, please email me). Despite my frustrations, however, I feel fortunate that I was able to go and I can only hope that my injection of hard currency into the Kim Jong Il regime has been negated by this fair and balanced account of my time spent in the Hermit Kingdom.

Yesterday: A Tale of Two Cities