I love the simple, Zen nature of this photograph by OurManWhere. At first I thought he might have just tilted the camera, but if you look closely at the trunk of the tree, it comes out of the earth at one angle, and then slowly compensates for its unexpected location on the side of a hill somewhere in England’s Lake District. Isn’t nature just grand?
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Here at gadling, we are quick to bash the megalomanic American exports ranging from Starbucks and hamburgers to bad movies. It is not that we don’t want American companies to succeed abroad. You just don’t want to see home-grown fast-food chains when traveling to Southeast Asia.
I can’t help but cringe when I analyze some of the crap America exports. Even worse, that others think America IS that crap.
Take Playboy, for example. Their new store–largest in the world–just opened right in the heart of London, on Oxford Street. If you are like me and have no idea that there is such a thing as a Playboy store, you must wonder: do they sell those heavily airbrushed, half-plastic, no-way-they-could-survive-in-the-age-of-HDTV women? They don’t. It is worse than that.
They sell what they call luxury goods: clothes (apparently competing with Diesel), cosmetics and branded knick-knacks to anyone who thinks buying a hat with the bunny head logo on it is living dangerously. The Playboy store doesn’t even display the magazine or any sex toys. What? We complain about Starbucks taking over the world one caffeinated step at a time but at least they actually sell coffee, not pictures of coffee.
Sightings of the famous Scottish monster are down lately — only two sightings this year so far and three in 2006. Ten years ago sightings were in the double digits and residents fear that fewer Nessie sightings could mean fewer tourist dollars. Nessie has been a key tourism draw, bringing an estimated 6 million pounds a year into the Scottish Highlands.
The Loch Ness Monster Fan Club runs four web cams on the North Shore of Loch Ness, hoping to record a glimpse Nessie. There have been more than 4,000 purported sightings, and lots of speculation as to what the creature might be. Some believe Nessie is an unknown species while others speculate that it could be a sturgeon, or even a last surviving dinosaur.
Cold War relics are simply a joy to explore. For me, it’s their proximity to recent history that makes them so fascinating; it wasn’t so long ago that they were very active and very serious in their role to protect our fair lands from the communist menace. Today, they are almost comical in the fear and paranoia so deeply imbued throughout.
Bunkers are some of my favorite Cold War relics. Not only are the located underground, but they represent the ultimate Cold War fear: nuclear annihilation.
With the Cold War over, governments around the globe have begun decommissioning a number of such bunkers. Some have simply “disappeared” while others have been purchased by civilians.
Recently, Sophie Campbell of The Telegraph, burrowed into Kelvedon Hatch–a three-story government bunker in Essex, England which was purchased in 1994 by a local farmer and has since been turned into a rather cool museum.The farmer purchased it nearly empty but has managed to find enough period gear to restock parts of the bunker to make it look like it did while in operation. He has also staffed the station with a number of mannequins manning radio receivers, hospital units, and even a Prime Minister’s quarters.
The whole bunker is set up to appear as though a nuclear bomb had just been dropped and museum visitors (paying £6.50 each) are the lucky few to have gained access to the government facility. The visitors are treated to fake news reports detailing the damage above ground and the impending doom in store for those left outside of the bunker’s ten-foot thick walls and 1½ ton blast doors.
It sounds pretty cool to me, but wouldn’t it be a whole lot more realistic if they hired a bunch of nuclear mutated ghouls to attack visitors in the bunker and eat their flesh? I certainly think so.
I’m afraid whisky is something I’ll never truly understand.
It’s legions of fans, however, wax eloquently about 100 year old bottles and various malts as though this amber liquid was the nectar of the gods. To me, it will always be a drink that wrenches my face into painful contortions any time I try to swallow it.
For those with more sophisticated palates that appreciate the finer attributes of whisky, there is no more holy ground than Scotland, the birthplace of whisky. Travel & Leisure contributing editor Alexandra Marshall recently traveled to the southwestern Scottish town of Bladnoch to visit the famous Bladnoch Distillery and partake in the local $1,000 per person Whisky School.
While there, Marshall learned about all the intricacies of distilling and can now speak knowledgably about such things as mash. She was also pulled over by the local police for erratic driving on the way home one day despite having not consumed any whisky that afternoon; the fumes from within the distillery were enough to do her in.
Even though I’m not a fan of whisky, the trip and school still sounds pretty cool–although when it comes time for sampling, I’d be down the street at the local pub ordering up a beer instead.
(Oh, and before you complain that I’ve left the “e” off of “whisky,” please realize that this is the Scottish spelling.)