One for the Road: Our Dumb World – Onion’s Atlas

by Kelly Amabile on

I just finished listening to some short clips from the audio book version of the Onion’s new atlas of planet earth, aptly titled Our Dumb World. After a short introduction, it begins: “Here are audio clips from some of the countries that matter – France: One nation above God.” It goes on to share important facts about France that you really ought to know. For example, that the leading cause of death is turtle neck asphyxiation. It doesn’t get any nicer. While rattling off the facts about Bolivia, the narrator stops to blow a line of cocaine.

In true Onion style, the book prides itself on offering up incorrect statistics on all of the Earth’s independent nations. (They’re just not sure how many there are.) And they guarantee that once you finish listening to the audio book or reading the hardcover, you will, of course, be the smartest person in your dorm room, carpool or cell block. This is anything but your average atlas.

Air France strikes. Again.

by Grant Martin on

What the heck is it with the European transportation network? Last weekend when I was in Germany the rail network was on strike, making my 15 minute journey to The Longest Bar in the World three times longer than it needed to be. That’s beer drinking time, people!

Earlier today, Reuters reports that Air France went on strike, disrupting a fair number of medium-haul flights, although at this rate longer haul flights will soon be affected.

Up to sixty percent of employees are participating in the protest of salaries and working conditions that will be renegotiated later this year.

I’m not going to make any crass comments on unions nor the parallels between the transportation market abroad and the domestic automotive industry (let your imagination run wild). But if you’ve got a ticket on an AF flight in the next few days it would be a good idea to call ahead and make sure that your flight is still leaving. There are going to be a lot of unhappy frenchies in the next few days.

Hotel staff trained to deal with naked sleepwalkers

by Catherine Bodry on

Apparently, there’s been a surge in sleepwalking among guests in one of Britain’s largest budget hotel chains. And the sleepwalking itself wouldn’t be a huge problem, except that the majority of these zombie-like guests don’t bother to put any clothes on before they take their nocturnal stroll.

Reuters reports that the budget chain Travelodge has seen a seven-fold rise in sleepwalking in the past year, and that 95 percent of late-night walkers are scantily clad men. As such, the company has begun training staff how to deal with naked wanderers.

The company released a “sleepwalkers guide,” which recommends keeping towels handy at the front desk — “in case a customer’s dignity needs preserving.”

World Hum and where the heck is Justin?

by Jamie Rhein on

When I came across his interview and picture posted yesterday on World Hum, I was so happy to see that Gadling’s lead blogger Justin is keeping warm during his travels in Eastern Europe. He was staying near Prague in the Czech Republic. I knew his girlfriend had caught a cold a while back, and being the fine fellow that he is, he had tracked down medicine to help her feel better. [see post] Now that he’s shown up in this interview I’m feeling even more envious of his trip than I did before–except for one thing.

In his interview I did notice his details of the teenage travelers who were swapping spit (not Justin’s words, but mine) on a good part of a bus trip he took through the Czech Republic countryside. As wonderful as travel is, there are those moments when it is just hard to relax in any kind of Zen-like way. From what he said, the teens were in competition with the scenery for his attention.

At what point does a lovefest, when it’s not our own, become a point of distraction? Once when I was ushering a concert at the New Mexico State Fair for a civic club I belonged to, I had to repeatedly ask a couple to quit necking. Seriously, they were all but laying across their seats. The people around them kept imploring me to do something to get them to stop. From what I recall, they never did stop. The people who paid to see the concert who had the honor of sitting next to these two hickey makers ended up with a show quite different from the one they anticipated when they first settled into their seats for a night out. [Thanks to valerio for the shot on stockxchange]

The end of the world comes to the Vatican

by Catherine Bodry on


Don’t worry; despite what the above photo implies, you won’t need to bring protection from plagues or rains of fire at the Vatican’s “Apocalypse” exhibition. Msnbc is calling the exhibit — a collection of works ranging from the 4th to the 20th centuries — “unusually bright:” “while ‘The Apocalypse’ usually evokes Doomsday visions, remarkably few monsters and sword-bearing angels populate the works on display.” Instead, organizer Alessio Geretti told reporters, the exhibit is reviving a view of The Book of Revelation as “a book of hope.”

Works on display include masterpieces from the Louvre, Capilla Real, National Galleries in Berlin, Budapest and Warsaw, and St. Marc’s Basilica in Venice. Artists include Salvador Dali and El Greco.

The exhibition runs through Dec. 7 and is part of the normal tour of the Vatican Museums.

Thanks to Micah A. Ponce on Flickr for the slightly scary but definitely awesome photo.