Next year, New Englanders will be thrilled, or terrified, by an ultra-steep new roller coaster opening at New Hampshire’s Canobie Lake Park. In 2011, the historic park will be home to a modern thrill machine in Untamed. Untamed was designed by German roller coaster designers Gerstlauer. It will be one of the designer’s Euro-Fighter 320+ models that have currently only been built in Europe. For more information, you can view diagrams of the ride’s complete layout and also visit Gerstlauer’s website.
At only 1,184 feet long, Untamed will be a compact coaster, but guests will be treated to an onslaught of thrills. The ride will begin with a rare vertical lift to 72 feet. Then, the small 8-person cars will roll over the crest and plunge riders into a beyond vertical 97-degree drop. It will be one of the steepest roller coasters in the United States. After the drop, the cars will navigate three loops including a vertical loop, an immelmann, and a zero-g roll. While brief, Untamed will be quite an action-packed little coaster.
Here’s a POV video of Rage at Adventure Island. Like Untamed, Rage is a Euro-Fighter 320+. So, they should have identical layouts. This video was filmed with permission from the park.
I imagine that Untamed will be great for Canobie Lake Park and the region in terms of tourism. Modern thrill rides, even roller coasters this small, can provide a substantial amount of media attention for amusement parks. Canobie Lake is now officially on my radar as I’ve never ridden a Gerstlauer Eurofighter or really any roller coaster this steep.
Ah, the Bluetooth headset – the kind of gadget you either love or hate. If you love them, you’ll probably have one stuck to your head 24/7. The Jawbone series of headsets from Aliph have long been considered the best of the best in Bluetooth – and rightfully so. Even in its first version back in 2006, Jawbone headsets used technology not found on any other headset.
Since then, Jawbone headsets have come a long way – and the newest generation not only improves on the sound quality, but also reduces the size of the headset. In this review, we’ll take a look at the new Jawbone ICON Suede.
Right away, the ICON headset grabs your attention – it is small, and the outer silver plastic shell is wavy. On the back of the headset is the signature bone conducting sensor, earpiece and a physical on/off switch. On the top are several microphones, and a multi-function button is on top, just above a MicroUSB charge/connection port.
Comfort is high on my list of expectations from any Bluetooth headset, and the ICON really does deliver. Inside its box is a variety of earpieces and an earloop. With these, you can fit the headset using a silicone earbud or an earbud with hook. The earbuds all come in several sizes.
Charging the headset is simple – an AC charger is included, along with a neat rigid/flexible MicroUSB cable. This allows you to charge the ICON using wall power, or your computer.
The USB cable also lets you connect the headset to your PC to use with the MyTALK suite of applications. More on that in a moment.
Sound quality is obviously just as important as comfort – and once again, the Jawbone Icon does not disappoint. Even in the nosiest environment, callers on the other end of the line commented how clear I sounded. At one point I was driving with my car window open, and the wind barely made an impact on the call quality. Of course, the more unwanted noise the headset has to cancel, the more muffled the call may become – but it beats the alternative.
The Jawbone MyTALK feature is quite brilliant. This web based application suite lets you configure settings on your headset, load new text to speech voices, and even load new Dial Apps. These apps provide instant access to frequently dialed numbers, voice dialing, 411 services and even online notation services. Blackberry users can add a battery meter. Take things even further by adding instant access to music stations like AOL Radio and you’ll extend your headset way beyond what most other brands offer.
Other features inside the headset include support for A2DP streaming music and spoken instructions – yes – the headset will read caller ID and its battery level to you. Of course, it also supports multi-point connections, allowing you to connect to more than one device at the same time.
If new features are released, the MyTALK site can even take care of firmware updates for your headset, making it futureproof.
Of course, all these neat features come at a price – the Jawbone ICON retails for $99. However, with excellent sound quality, good looks and a variety of apps and other updateable features, this may very well be the last headset you ever need.
The new Jawbone ICON Earwear collection is available in four styles. To learn more about the Jawbone headsets, to compare models, or to place an order, head on over to Jawbone.com.
Most Daily Pampering is luxury in the form of money, but today’s Daily Pampering is luxury in the form of gluttony. The lesson here: You don’t need to spend a lot to pamper yourself. With Thanksgiving only a day away, we thought today’s pampering should be all about the food.
Welcome to Brennan’s Restaurant, one of New Orleans’ oldest restaurant and the creator of the famous flaming dessert, Bananas Foster. We stopped by Brennan’s for brunch during a recent trip to New Orleans and indulged in the creole and Cajun creations of the kitchen, but it was the Bananas Foster that put us over the edge. For less than you’d spend on a couple Pimm’s Cups at the bar down the street, you can treat yourself to this ultimate luxury dessert.
In 1951, Brennan’s Chef Paul created Bananas Foster. The scrumptious dessert was named for Richard Foster, who served with founder Owen Brennan on the New Orleans Crime Commission. Richard Foster was a frequent customer of Brennan’s and thus, Bananas Foster was born.
Need a little pampering around your dinner table this Thanksgiving? Here is the actual Bananas Foster recipe from the original source and creator of this dessert: Brennan’s Restaurant.
¼ cup (½ stick) butter
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup banana liqueur
4 bananas, cut in half
lengthwise, then halved
¼ cup dark rum
4 scoops vanilla ice cream
Combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambé pan or skillet. Place the pan over low heat either on an alcohol burner or on top of the stove, and cook, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the banana liqueur, then place the bananas in the pan. When the banana sections soften and begin to brown, carefully add the rum. Continue to cook the sauce until the rum is hot, then tip the pan slightly to ignite the rum. When the flames subside, lift the bananas out of the pan and place four pieces over each portion of ice cream. Generously spoon warm sauce over the top of the ice cream and serve immediately.
We know that today and tomorrow, traffic is going to be brutal. With 42 million people traveling for the holiday – and 94 percent of them going by car – it’s inevitable that someone’s going to wind up frustrated. Throw in some nasty weather and highway construction, not to mention a handful of screaming kids, and you have a formula for misery.
Can it get any worse? The Weather Channel thinks so. Not every holiday driving experience is equally miserable: in fact, there are 10 spots where you’re extra likely to lose your mind. So, let’s take a peek at the 10 most congested roads in the country, according to The Weather Channel:
1. New York City to Washington, DC: I-95
This is going to suck. You have a lot of people in New York City and a lot in Washington, DC. There are also a lot in between … and so many of them will be getting behind the wheel. To make matters worse, The Weather Channel notes, “Bad weather is not uncommon along this corridor during Thanksgiving week.” Not enough abuse for you? The company adds, “Some experts estimate that this 225-mile trek is the slowest stretch of highway nationwide during the holiday season.”
2. Boston: Westbound Massachusetts Turnpike from Downtown Boston to I-84
At first glance, I wondered why the New York-to-DC stretch didn’t include Boston. I grew up there and spent many a Thanksgiving Eve sitting in the back seat not moving on the Mass Pike en route to I-84. It’s awful, and The Weather Channel’s comment, “it has been known to come to a virtual standstill,” is not an exaggeration.
3. Chicago: Borman Expressway I-80/I-94, the Tri-State Tollway
The Weather Channel calls this “the trifecta of traffic tie-ups,” because three roads with heavy traffic intersect. The big rigs that use these highways make it even worse. Good luck if this is your route for Thanksgiving.
4. New York City: Throgs Neck Bridge, Whitestone Bridge
Yeah, the Big Apple makes a second appearance on this list. There’s a reason why I’m staying put on the Upper West Side this year. If you’re looking to get from the city out to Long Island or up to Connecticut, don’t be fooled by this “key choke point,” as The Weather Channel describes it: built to “help relieve traffic on the adjacent Whitestone Bridge,” the Throgs Neck has now become a nightmare in its own right.
5. San Francisco: Eastbound I-80 to Sacramento and Tahoe
Are you among the masses dashing out of San Fancisco for Thanksgiving? If you’re looking to get an early feel for winter … well, you’ll quickly realize you weren’t the only person with this idea.
6. Atlanta: I-285 between I-75 and I-85 … in Both Directions
Six major interstates cut through Atlanta, and I-285 is the busiest of them, thanks to two million daily drivers. Throw in the extra traffic for the holidays, and you can expect to see this southern city from under an overpass or across the median. Build a few extra playlists if you’re driving this stretch of road.
7. Washington, DC: I-495 from Merrifield, VA to Landover, MD
Like New York, DC makes The Weather Channel’s list of congested roads twice. The Beltway, which is only 30 miles long, can take two hours on a normal day. Now, add angry, confused or simply stupid holiday travelers … and wait for hilarity to ensue.
8. Dallas: I-35
Are you among the 3.5 million people who will make I-35 a pain this holiday season? Drive with the windows down, maybe you’ll get the chance to make a new friend while you wait … and wait … and wait.
9. Detroit: Northbound Where US-23 and I-75 Merge
Near Flint, you’ll find plenty of people at this spot who are looking to go north for the winter. Blame the “cabin owners, resort seekers and deer hunters.”
10. Miami: The Palmetto Expressway (Near Miami Airport) The Weather Channel calls this “one of the most heavily traveled roads in the Miami area,” and you can expect it to get backed up from Okeechobee Road to south of the Dolphin Expressway. If you’re either flying in or picking up someone who is, leave a bottle of Advil on the dashboard: you’ll need it.
The uproar over TSA body scanners and pat-downs has hit every corner of the aviation world, from passengers to pilots. The vocal consensus, at least, is that nobody likes them, even though 64 percent of Americans support the practice and 70 percent don’t expect it to impact their travel. A friend of mine, flying today, tweeted that he made it through security at New York’s JFK airport in a mere nine minutes.
Nonetheless, flight crews have voiced vehement opposition to the scans, with one pilot becoming an overnight celebrity by refusing to submit himself to that or a pat-down. We all have to do it, though, so this has left me to ponder … what’s the big deal?
I’ve been particularly intrigued by the attitude of pilots toward body scanners. At first blush, it struck me as a privileged perspective: the top dogs on the plane felt as though they shouldn’t have to be subjected to the same scrutiny as the rest of us. Patrick Smith, resident pilot at Salon.com, wrote of the recent TSA change over crew scrutiny, in which “airline pilots will no longer be subject to the backscatter body scanners and invasive pat-downs at TSA airport checkpoints”:
For pilots like myself this is good news, though at least for the time being we remain subject to the rest of the checkpoint inspection, including the X-raying of luggage and the metal detector walk-through. Eventually, we are told, the implementation of so-called CrewPASS will allow us to skirt the checkpoint more or less entirely.
He continues:
Not everybody agrees that air crews deserve this special treatment. That’s not an unreasonable point of view, and I don’t disagree with it, necessarily. As security experts like Bruce Schneier point out, if you are going to screen at all, it is important to screen everybody, lest the system become overly complicated and prone to exploitable loopholes.
This made me wonder, what is the risk associated with not screening pilots as intensively? The only scenario that came to mind involved a terrorist incident. As I let my mind race, I constructed a hypothetical situation in which terrorists got on board a plane, took control and asked for demands of some sort – i.e., they wanted more than to cause death and destruction. In this situation, I suspected, counter-terrorist teams, such as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D, also known as “Delta Force”), would be called into play.
My thinking continued: if a pilot hadn’t been scanned, he could have brought a weapon … which could have been taken from him by terrorists. Would the special forces teams want to know if a pilot had been scanned?
As I continued through my hypothetical exercise, I could hear my platoon sergeant’s voice from close to 15 years ago, drilling me from across time: “Actions on the objective,” he used to say, “always spend most of your time rehearsing actions on the objective.”
You have to admit this about military training, it really sticks with you!
So, my first thought was whether, while rehearsing actions on the objective, the special forces teams would want to know every last detail of what was on the plane. My training falls far, far short of that, and my efforts to reach someone from 1st SFOD-D didn’t pan out (unsurprisingly).
I laid out my hypothetical for Shipley: during mission planning, would the operators want to know if the pilots had been scanned, at least to have a better sense of whether they’d carried any weapons on the plane?
The answer, quite simply, is that it wouldn’t be an immediate concern. I spoke with Shipley by phone today, and he said that whether the pilots had been scanned “would be a very distant ‘what if’.” He explained of the special forces teams, “They’d want to know who they [i.e., the crew] are,” as well as background on how long they’d been flying and any other information related to the incident. Also, Shipley said the teams would want to know if there was an air marshal on the flight. The role of body scans, however, would not be a major factor in planning or rehearsing an operation.
“There are some pretty good people in charge of those planes,” Shipley noted, “good bunch of guys and gals.”
Does it suck that someone else gets to go through security faster and more easily than you do? Yeah, it feels like an injustice. But, let’s be realistic: there really isn’t much at stake here aside from a sense of fairness. Let’s e smart about this, though. The airline industry – and the air travel experience – is fraught with inefficiency. If we can make the operation a little smoother by giving the crew an easier time of getting to work, let’s just bite the bullet on this issue.