WOW Air is really their name, they’re a low cost carrier with initial promo fares for US service that are advertised from Washington DC (but really departing BWI) and Baltimore to London, Copenhagen, and Reykjavik as low as $99-$125 one-way. Return flights are slightly higher, but total trip costs under $300 to Europe are pretty […]
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There's no airline in the world as innovative when it comes to their safety video as Air New Zealand. They're engaging, innovative, and fresh. And I actually think they're brilliant.
I know some people argue that safety videos shouldn't be made entertaining, but I disagree. I think the more that airlines engage people with safety videos, the better -- and that's a good thing for safety.
Anyway, Air New Zealand has just unveiled their latest safety video, entitled The Most Epic Safety Video Ever. Here's how they describe it:
The post Air New Zealand’s Latest Hobbit Themed Safety Video appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
The Work Projects Administration (WPA) was the source of countless classic works of American art, but their largest painted commission, the series of murals at what is now Rincon Center, was almost instantly reviled for its realist, some say communist, portrayal of California's past.
The murals were the work of Russian-born artist Anton Refregier who won a competition to paint the works in the newly built Rincon Annex Post Office. From a period between 1941-1948, interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, Refregier created 27 murals on the walls of the post office's main hall. He worked in a "social realist" style that endeavored to paint the lives of the working class as they were with little aggrandizement. Unfortunately almost from the outset, his works came under attack. Even as the artist worked on the pieces, the criticisms started rolling in ranging from a church group complaining that a friar was too fat in comparison to the Indians he was aiding to depictions of union victories and the triumphs of Chinese labor in America being shouted down. Each time, the artist dutifully made adjustments, erasing controversial symbols and changing the race of any offending figures. Even as he actively worked to appease his critics, the vitriol towards his works intensified to the point that near the finish, Refregier refused to work on the murals past sunset due to groups of rabble-rousers that would show up on site to make trouble.
Once the the murals were finished, criticisms of the populist works intensified further as Red Scare alarmists started seeing Communist overtones all of the red-colored items among the murals. A motion to destroy the works even made it to court in 1953, with the backing of the California State Senate. Luckily the furor over the works died down and the murals were given a stay of execution.
The post office gave up ownership of the space in the 1980s and it was developed into a commercial and residential space. The murals were restored as a part of this development. However as the space expanded, the murals were once again put on the chopping block, only to be saved by the lobbying of art preservationists.
If giants had sandboxes, what would they be like? Many children spend hours pondering this question, but you might be surprised to find that the answer lies just north of the tiny Yukon town of Carcross in the form of the world's smallest desert.
North of the 60th parallel, the Carcross Desert is not the northernmost desert in the world, but it is the most remarkably contained, and once held the Guinness World Record as the Smallest Desert in the World ( an honor that now belongs to the Atacama Desert in Chile). At just one square mile in area, it seems more like humans attempted to deposit a few thousand tons of sand along nearby Lake Bennett and missed their target by a few miles. In sharp contrast to China's afforestation efforts on the frontier of the Gobi desert, nature has succeeded in sustaining this ecological gem for thousands of years.
The Carcross Desert was formerly the bed of a Pleistocene glacial lake, and remains arid due to the rain shadow effects of the mountains in Yukon's southern lakes region. Although the winds are harsh and inhibitory to most plant life, the dunes are home to a few unusual flora, even sporting the exceptionally rare Baikal Sedge (which is normally found only off the coast of Lake Baikal in Siberia).
It also offers unusual recreational opportunities for outdoorsy Yukoners. Many in Whitehorse travel south during the summer months to go sandboarding on the dunes.
