Maine Solar System Model

The residents of Aroostook County, Maine constructed a scale model of the solar system which you can see as you drive along Route 1 from Presque Isle to Houlton. The sun, located at Presque Isle, reaches up to the third floor of the Northern Maine Museum of Science. The earth, a mile away at Percy's Auto Sales, is a styrofoam ball 5.5 inches in diameter. Drive another 4.3 miles to see Jupiter. And Pluto, forty miles away at the end, is a one-inch-diameter wooden ball.

Everyone seems to use a different mnemonic to remember the planets in the Solar System. The one I learned is "My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines."

To remember the points of the compass I always have to repeat the phrase "Naughty Elephants Squirt Water".

Posted By: Alex - Thu Dec 11, 2008 - Comments (4)
Category: Travel, Landmarks, Sightseeing, Space Travel

The Overview Effect

According to The Overview Institute, the Overview Effect "refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere. From space, the astronauts tell us, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this 'pale blue dot' becomes both obvious and imperative."

The purpose of the Overview Institute is to "promote and support widespread experience of [the Overview Effect], through direct space travel, and newer, more powerful and more publicly available space art, multi-media and education."

Nice idea, but being the cynic that I am, I'm pretty sure it's going to take more than being blasted into space to cure people of their prejudices and tribal loyalties.

Posted By: Alex - Thu Dec 04, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Travel, Space Travel

Road Maps: real and imaginary

An unusual hobby: Adrian Leskiw designs fictional cities and nations, and then he draws roadmaps of them. In painstaking detail. He describes himself as a "roadgeek". You can browse through his collection of fictional roadmaps at The Map Realm. One use I can think of for these would be to sneak them into rental cars. (Mislabel them, of course.) Tourists would spend hours examining them, trying to figure out where they were.



But wait, there's more. Leskiw also collects covers of real roadmaps. He has an extensive collection of the official Michigan, Ontario and Ohio road maps. In the old days transportation departments apparently hired artists to design these covers. Now they seem to just slap generic photos on them.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Nov 25, 2008 - Comments (4)
Category: Art, Regionalism, Travel

Lost in Translation

I'm posting this from a Starbucks in Bremen, Germany. (I'd prefer to be in a German cafe, but Starbucks turns out to be the easiest place to find an internet connection.)

Most Germans speak very good English. Which means it's not common to find the kind of bizarre translation errors that are a common feature of Japanese or Chinese English. But they do pop up occasionally. I walked past this sign outside my hotel in Bremen at least ten times before I noticed that something was wrong with it.

This German department store would probably have to change its name if it wanted to open a chain in America.

Finally, when I saw these "Berliners" (jelly donuts) on sale, it reminded me of one of the most famous mistranslation urban legends of all time: the claim that when Kennedy proclaimed "Ich bin ein Berliner" to a crowd in Berlin on June 26, 1963, that he was actually proclaiming he was a jelly donut. Yes, a Berliner is a jelly donut, but the word can also mean a citizen of Berlin, and everyone in the crowd would have known what he meant.

Posted By: Alex - Mon Oct 27, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Regionalism, Signage, Travel

Di Filippo & Woodring Book Signing

I'll be away in Seattle from Friday October 10 through Monday October 13, attending the launch party of my new novel, Cosmocopia. But I've stacked up four posts in the queue, all new FOLLIES OF THE MAD MEN. Enjoy!

Posted By: Paul - Thu Oct 09, 2008 - Comments (5)
Category: Literature, Books, Science Fiction, Travel, Weird Universe, Paul

Follies of the Mad Men #21

[From Life for March 10 1952. Two separate scans, top and bottom.]

The weirdest thing about this ad is the notion that an airline would give a customer something for free!

Posted By: Paul - Tue Sep 02, 2008 - Comments (4)
Category: Business, Advertising, Drugs, Smoking and Tobacco, Flight, Travel, 1950s

On the Road

I'm off to visit relatives on the West Coast for a bit more than a week, verifying the existence of The Curly Horse That Looks Like A Stuffed Toy. But thanks to the miracle of semi-not-dumb software, I've stacked up posts in the WU queue, to release one per day.

What are they?

One hundred percent installments of FOLLIES OF THE MAD MEN!

You'll be treated to man-sized tissues and oversized-liquor bottles, salt-shakers full of deadly substances and animalized businessmen, among other goodies. I'm sure you'll enjoy this parade of wacked Madison Avenue brainstorming.

I won't be able to participate in the comments threads till I get back, but rest assured I'll read them then!

Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 26, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Travel, Weird Universe, Paul

Nit Wit Ridge

Continuing the travelogue, on Friday my wife and I drove up north from San Luis Obispo and did the tour of Hearst Castle. It was worth seeing, but for my money it wasn't as interesting as "Nit Wit Ridge" located about fifteen minutes away in nearby Cambria. Nit Wit Ridge is like the anti-Hearst Castle, being a mansion built entirely out of junk. From sierrasol.com:


They're not kidding when they say it's built out of assorted junk. How many toilets can you spot in the picture below? (I see at least four.) Unfortunately Nit Wit Ridge is not open to the public, so I was only able to admire it from the outside.

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 16, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Travel, Landmarks, Alex

Madonna Inn Urinals, etc.

Reporting in from the road: I spent Thursday night at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. It was as over-the-top kitschy as promised. One of the main tourist attractions there is the urinal in the downstairs men's bathroom. People make special trips to see it. The novelty is that it's a waterfall urinal, but unfortunately it was out of order when I was there... so no waterfall. Still there was a steady trickle of tourists wandering into the restroom to see it, including many women with their giggling young daughters following behind. So if you're a guy who actually wants to use the restroom, you're out of luck.

The upstairs men's urinal featured a trough. Interesting, but there were no tourists lining up to see it.

While in San Luis Obispo we also checked out Bubblegum Alley, to whose walls people have been sticking used bubblegum for decades. Opinion about the alley is split between those who think it's really cool, and those who think it's filthy. For instance, while there we overheard a mother ordering her obviously fascinated son, as they walked through it, to keep his hands behind his back and not touch anything. No one seems to know exactly how the tradition of sticking gum to the walls started, but Wikipedia reports a rumor that it may have originated during the 1950s out of a rivalry between the students of San Luis High School and Cal Poly: "As soon as the Poly students suspected that the High School was trying to out-do them on the gum walls, the college students stepped up their game and immediately became more creative, thus launching Bubblegum Alley."

Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 16, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Travel, Landmarks, Alex

Head Out on the Highway

Yesterday we spoke of cursed movies that affected cast and crew alone. Today, we'll look at movies that emit curses--in the form of copycat incidents.

Can it possibly be that the 1993 movie titled THE PROGRAM is still exerting its malign influence, causing dumb-ass teens to lie down on the center stripe of highways, as described in this fifteen-year-old article from The New York Times?

What makes me think so? An identical fresh incident from my own home state, as recounted in this article.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 12, 2008 - Comments (6)
Category: Death, Fads, Hollywood, Movies, Travel, 1990s, Cars