The Australian government has some scary advice for Aussies traveling to Canada, including:
Alberta and British Columbia are also subject to avalanches.
I guess that’s why Vancouver and Edmonton are such ghost towns.
Bush and forest fires can occur any time in Canada.
Why yes, Toronto was, like, totally leveled by the last one.
My favorite piece of advice is:
Australians are advised to maintain a safe and legal distance when observing wildlife, including marine animals and birds. You should only use reputable and professional guides or tour operators and closely follow park regulations and wardens’ advice.
So if you see a red-red-red robin come bob-bob-bobbin’ along in a Windsor park, you better duck into a shelter until a warden tells you it is safe.
I have been across the border countless times and I had no idea I was in such danger!
according to the New York Times, whose article on the 53 Places to Go in 2008 lists Detroit at number 40, right between San Francisco and Itacaré, Brazil.
So I installed Google Earth today, and am now addicted. Google Earth is a program you install on your Mac or PC which connects to vast databases of maps, satellite imagery, documents, and photos of damn near every place on Earth. It is much richer, a lot more detailed, and has far more capabilities than Google Maps.
The screen capture above of Central Park in New York City does not do justice to what you can do with Google Earth. You can zoom in and get almost frightening detail at street level, zoom out to see the entire globe, pan every which way, look at photos people have taken and uploaded, read Wikipedia articles about places on the map, etc. You can also upload your own photos of places you have been and post them to Google Earth.
The blue dots on the map are the locations where people took pictures. When you click on the dot you can see the picture and read and add comments about it. The orange dots are links to posts on the Google Earth Community about those locations, which you can click on and read. The purple dots are links to Wikipedia pages about those locations.
The only criticism I have is that to post pictures to Google Earth, you have to join a photo sharing site called Panoramio, which is a separate site from Picasa, Google’s in-house photo sharing site, and requires a separate login from the rest of Google’s services. Panoramio, the brainchild of a couple of guys from Spain, was acquired by Google in July, 2007, so maybe Google will eventually merge Panoramio with Picasa.
… The question at hand was how to find good restaurants, and his answer was to take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you’re after. Then got to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic post talking about how you just had the best whatever you’re looking for at one of these restaurants.
At that point, what drivingblind likes to call the nerdfury will begin. Posters will show up from nowhere to shower you with disdain, tell you how that place used to be good but has now totally sold out and - most important to your quest - will tell you where you would have gone if you were not some sort of mouth breathing water buffalo.
Anyone who flies out of Detroit regularly has at least one Northwest Airlines story to tell. This one is pretty frightening:
Northwest Flight 1652, scheduled to depart Washington National for Minneapolis at 6:36 AM this morning, left the gate on-time. But just as it turned toward the runway, a loud, hacking sound – kind of like a handsaw cutting through sheet metal - began vibrating through the cabin. From my seat – 14D -it felt like it was emanating from the right wing, and it continued for a solid five minutes before the captain announced that we would be returning to the gate so that a maintenance crew could cool off an overheating hydraulic pump.
…
This map, from the aptly-named Strange Maps site, shows American states renamed to countries with equivalent Gross Domestic Products. Michigan’s GDP is around the same as Argentina’s, while Utah’s is the equivalent of Uzbekistan (lucky them!).
The site has a number of interesting maps, including a terrific map of Middle Earth, and a map of 19-century Hannover, Germany, tattooed on a woman’s back.
