Jack Kerouac’s On the Road | A Penguin Books Amplified Edition for iPad
I don’t have an iPad, but if I did this would probably be the first ebook I’d buy. Not because I’m some Jack Kerouac freak. I like his work well enough and loved On the Road, but I hardly consider him one of America’s great writers. This just seems like everything a book for the iPad should be.
It includes the original book, of course, but also tons of supplementary material including audio clips of the author reading a few chapters, pages from the actual travel journal he kept, “side-by-side comparisons of Kerouac’s famous original scroll draft and the published text,” and “pages from the journals Kerouac kept while on the road.” And much more, too much to mention.
But I will note the “Fully interactive map of the now legendary trips from 1947, 1949, and 1950 taken by Dean and Sal in the book.” Now that’s the kind of thing an ebook of this legendary novel should include.
8 Destinations for the Solo Traveler | AOL Travel
As with everything else, traveling alone has its pros and cons. Pros: No scheduling conflicts, you can choose every meal, not to mention grab all the glory of travel triumphs (and pitfalls) all to yourself. Cons: Safety is paramount, and there is the ever lingering feeling of loneliness that can turn a fabulous, delicious dinner into a slow form of torture.
AOL’s suggestions aren’t all that adventurous. I’m not sure even one would qualify as “exotic,” although you could make an argument for Singapore, I guess.
Still, there are some worthwhile suggestions. I can personally vouch for Norway’s solo travel virtues. When AOL writes, “Scandinavians love Scandinavia — particularly when they’re showing you around and lauding the delicious food and fascinating cultural scene,” they could not be more accurate. Despite stereotypes of stoicism, there is likely no more welcoming bunch than you’ll find in Norway. Conveniently, most of them speak better English than the average American. And while culturally it is notably homogeneous, the country is impossibly beautiful and varied.
Case in point: On a train from Bergen to Oslo years ago, I met a girl on her way from Lapland to Oslo to attend university. She had lived in the far north of the country her whole life and this was her first time away. She was on that train for six hours, she told me, before she encountered her first tree.
Yes, her first tree.
This wasn’t like the first time someone saw snow or the ocean. This was a tree. Trust me, there are a lot of trees in Norway. Timber is one of Norway’s primary natural resources. And yet, because this girl had lived all along in Lapland, essentially in the Arctic Circle, she’d never seen a real living one with her own eyes. Remember, she was on her way to college. She was eighteen.
Photo: Aker Brygge | Oslo, Norway | by The Wandering Chicken
You have been told to follow your dreams. But what if it’s a stupid dream?
7 Frequent-Flyer Tricks Worth Learning | Frommer's
Usually these sorts of articles are useless to all but the least experienced travelers, but this one actually has some worthwhile stuff buried in it. I found the section on finding “secret ways to book award seats on partner airlines” particularly helpful.
Why Hasn’t Commercial Air Travel Gotten Any Faster?
Or, more accurately, why is commercial airline travel still so slow? It’s a question I’ve often wondered about and fortunately Slate’s resident Explainer (in this case, Brian Palmer) has the answer. Or answers. Or at least some plausible explanations.
There are apparently a number of factors. First among them: fuel efficiency.
Commercial airlines have slowed down over the last three or four decades. Today, flying from New York to Denver takes 19 more minutes than in 1983, and a flight from Washington, D.C., to Miami takes 45 more minutes than in 1973. The primary reason for such sluggishness is the cost of fuel. By the laws of physics, the increase in drag equals the square of the increase in speed, so even a slightly faster flight requires a lot more fuel. Hiking a plane’s velocity by 10 percent takes 21 percent more energy. Speeding up by 40 percent approximately doubles fuel consumption.
You would think advances in technology would offset this. We certainly should have more aerodynamic planes now than we did in 1973, right? Well, no. Not really. Fact is most planes in service are really pretty old or at the very least based on some fairly old designs. And unfortunately the Explainer doesn’t see that changing.
Manufacturers are technically capable of producing faster planes, but there isn’t much demand for them outside of the military. In 1961, American manufacturer Convair released a commercial jet that could reach Mach 0.91, meaning 91 percent as fast as sound. That’s significantly faster than current design speeds, which range between Mach 0.78 and Mach 0.82. Even though fuel cost less than 50 cents per gallon back then, few airlines were willing to give up fuel efficiency for the sake of speed.
So it comes back to fuel efficiency, I guess. Wouldn’t you think we’d be able to make a plane that is both faster and more fuel efficient? C’mon, rocket scientists!
But it’s not all fuel efficiency. Apparently air traffic is another reason.
Today, most bigwigs fly jets, and their gain is our loss: Not only are more planes using U.S. runways, but passenger jets must reduce their airspeed when they get caught behind a corporate CEO.
Does this make anyone else feel uneasy about the friendly skies? For some reason I get a Fifth Element image of planes darting this way and that.
Anyway, there’s also this, which is not really about the speed of air travel but our perception of it:
There have also been changes in the way airlines report flight times, which makes them seem longer than they actually are. When airlines started disclosing their percentage of on-time flights in the mid-1980s, they added a few extra minutes to the scheduled times to increase their apparent punctuality, a practice known as block padding.
This mathematically jujitsu has been obvious for some time to anyone that travels frequently. Mr. Palmer’s being generous when he says “a few extra minutes” — it’s more like an additional 20% on top of the actual flight time. Which of course makes on-time statistics generally useless at least as far as gauging on-time departure goes. I find most flights I take don’t get off the ground until well after the scheduled time but still manage to land on time and often early.
Click here to read the whole thing on Slate.
Everything is a Remix: Part 3 | A Film by Kirby Ferguson
The third installment of the the documentary series by Kirby Ferguson has arrived and it moves even further afield from the traditional concept of the “remix” to take on the act of creativity itself.
Click here to watch parts one and two.
What America Looks Like: On the Ohio River, Addicted to Pills | The Atlantic
This is a story about drugs, family and absence along a bend in the river. Travis Simmons is attempting to move past his addiction, and despite prison, parole, parents, and his devotion to his daughters, he cannot stay out of trouble.
The ongoing feature “What America Looks Like” on Conor Friedersdorf’s blog at The Atlantic has been consistently fascinating, and this installment is perhaps the best yet.
Tobolowsky on Groundhog Day
I’m one of those who feel Groundhog Day is a near perfect comedy. I watch the film anytime I come across it and inevitably find something new to enjoy. It quite literally gets better with each subsequent viewing.
Of course, for any fan, it took but one viewing to fall in love with the character Ned Ryerson and the actor who portrayed him, the great Stephen Tobolowsky. He steals every scene he’s in, quite a remarkable feat because he’s opposite Bill Murray in every one of them.
The other day I was listening to a recent Sklar Brothers podcast which included an interview with the actor. He’s every bit as funny and disarming as he is on camera. And while they didn’t discuss Groundhog Day, I was ecstatic to learn that Tobolowsky has his own podcast called The Tobolowsky Files. Needless to say it took me all of two seconds to subscribe.
I went back through the archives immediately to see if there was one concerning the film. Sure Enough, Episode 29 centered on the making of Groundhog Day. If you’re even a passing fan of the film, it’s a must listen. Tobowlosky recounts his experience (which he remembers rather fondly) and gives inside details about how the film came together, a true exercise in “guerilla filmmaking,” he calls it. He weaves story into story, mixing insight, humor and heart, giving the listener an understanding of not just what it was like to be a participant in that particular film but also a collaborator in the filmmaking process in general.
One of the more interesting tales involves the scene in which Bill Murray’s character Phil Connors finally comes to the realization that he is stuck in time. Let’s just say what appears on the screen is far different than what was originally planned (and shot) and that, as Tobolowsky says, the film is far better for it — in fact, might be the movie it is because of it. It’s an incredible look into how “small” changes can radically affect the entire tone and meaning of a film. And Tobolowsky tells the story beautifully.
Listen to The Tobolowsky Files Episode 29: The Classic at Slash Film or download it from iTunes.
Visiting 10 of the Most Interesting Abandoned Places on Earth | AOL Travel
Travelers looking for a getaway from the normal getaway should skip the sandy beaches to walk amid silent relics in Namibia, Chernobyl or an abandoned California gold mining town. These empty places may look like Scooby Doo set pieces, but they hold important clues to bigger mysteries about both the past and the future; the creep of urban decay and the necessity of memorializing tragedy. Sometimes history lives alone.
—Saira Bajwa, AOL Travel
Photo: Kolmanskop, Namibia | by Damien du Toit
