Road trips are great. Road trips in foreign countries are an adventure. In this time-lapse video, travelers make the drive from Quito, high in the Ecuadorian mountains, to the coast. It’s amazing to see the climate and topography change as the trip takes them from an elevation 9,350 feet down to sea level. The only things we’re still curious about are the snacks that they packed for the ride!
Watch Las Vegas grow over 40 years
Las Vegas wasn’t always as sprawling as it is today. Modern Las Vegas extends far beyond the Strip. It wasn’t all that long ago, however, that Sin City was just a tiny speck on the map. As more Americans – and international travelers, for that matter – discovered Las Vegas and began turning it into a premiere vacation destination, development projects boomed and investments in this urban oasis exploded. Thanks to this time-lapse of NASA satellite images, we can try to wrap our minds around just how far Las Vegas has come since 1972, and how it has grown exponentially over the decades.
What do the next 40 years have in store for Las Vegas? Hopefully an end to that “Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” slogan.
A cultural tour of Burma through tilt-shift timelapse
For those who’ve wondered what local life is like in Burma (Myanmar), “Bonsai Burma” by Berlin filmmaker Joerg Daiber can enlighten you. Using tilt-shift photography, Daiber takes viewers on a cultural tour of the country showing daily life, women working in the hillsides, children playing, hawkers selling goods at the market, and fisherman working for their catch. Furthermore, viewers will be taken through various cities and shown an array of landscapes – mountains, hillsides, rivers, and cities – giving an all-encompassing tour of the country.
Video: New York City subway tap dancer
If you find yourself on the New York City subway on any given weekend, you may be treated to the dance styling of a young tap dancer trying to support himself through college. Joshua Johnson is a junior at Penn State University and a native New Yorker who travels home twice a month to tap dance on the subway and earn extra cash through donations of subway riders. Joshua primarily taps on the 2, 3 and Q trains and calls his performance “The Tap Express.”
While performing and soliciting donations on the subway is illegal without permission from the MTA, chances are you’ve seen some kind of performer on the train if you’ve ridden enough times. In my 12-plus years in New York, I’ve seen (and even participated in) a few acts including magicians, break dancers, comedians, steel drummers, Doo Wop singers and plenty of just-plain-crazies, often the most entertaining performers of all.
Video produced by the New York Times.
Video of the Day: Earth Hour 2012
The imagery is powerful: people from around the world, holding hands and candles in the dark, while iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Coliseum shut down their lights in recognition of Earth Hour 2012, one of the world’s largest voluntary actions for the environment. The evocative Sigur Rós soundtrack doesn’t hurt either.
Earth Hour calls upon individual citizens to switch off their lights for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Started in 2006 by WWF-Australia, the event quickly became a movement, spreading to hundreds of millions of people across 135 countries in just five years. Through an aggressive social media campaign, Earth Hour continues to send a strong message for environmental awareness, urging people to learn more about the global climate change crisis and take actions “beyond the hour” to lesson their impact.
This year’s Earth Hour is scheduled for Saturday, March 31, at 8:30 p.m. local time. If climate change is important to you, don’t miss the chance to join a movement for change.