planes

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7 Horrifying Aircraft Landings (in which no one died)

Many people board an airplane flight thinking that if anything goes wrong, they will probably die. We board anyway, knowing that the odds of something going wrong are pretty small. In these seven stories, hundreds of passengers thought it was the end for them, but thanks to skilled pilots and crew members (and a fair amount of luck), they all survived to fly again. If they ever wanted to. 1. British Airways Flight 38 Beijing to London 16 crew, 136 passengers January 17,... READ ON

List

Music on Wheels: 7 Bicycle Bands

Few things go together as well as bicycles and music. If you didn't already know that, there are plenty of people who will prove it to you. The... READ ON

Article

Technical Details of the Disney Monorail

Last Sunday, a tragic monorail crash at Walt Disney World (between the Pink and Purple trains) killed the driver of Purple, Austin Wuennenberg. In the aftermath, Disney closed the monorail system for investigation and there has been a surprising amount of web coverage of the incident from monorail experts and drivers. But one forum post caught my attention. Written by a former monorail driver (sorry, "railie"), the post is educated speculation about what might have happened. It's interesting mainly... READ ON

Article

Spira: The Foam Car

The Spira foam car is a the brainchild of Lon Ballard, who began the project by looking for ways to incorporate vehicle safety technology for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcycle riders as well as those inside the vehicle. He decided that foam is a good substitute for airbags. From installing foam here and there in existing vehicles, he eventually created a car with foam all over. In fact, the Spira is 90% foam! * Not to be confused with the Korean Spirra sports car, the Spira is a really small car.... READ ON

Article

Start Your Peapod with an iPod

Peapod Mobility, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chrysler, will roll out the revolutionary Peapod on Earth Day, which is Wednesday. The website is just a tease for the... READ ON

Article

Amish Hackers

Today's surprising article: Kevin Kelly on Amish hackers. In a thoughtful article, Kelly explores Amish culture (from an outsider's perspective, anyway) focusing on their use of technology. Kelly's thesis is that the Amish aren't anti-technology per se -- they're just slower to adopt technology, and have a highly developed sense of which technologies they adopt. In Kelly's visits to Amish territory, he witnessed a people who had carefully selected their technologies, balancing family and community... READ ON

Article

6 Days on a Container Ship

Today's awesomeness: excellent travel writing from Fred Scharmen, a man who spent six days aboard Dettifoss, a container ship. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel on a container ship, a sort of paid stowaway on a long, slow journey? Well, even if you haven't, I personally think about this a lot. Without further ado, here are some choice snippets from this engrossing travelogue: The only break was when Goodman, the Second Officer, invited me to come visit the bridge: "That sign... READ ON

Article

What's in Your Car?

With the holiday driving season upon us, many Americans will be taking to the road for long trips this weekend. I'll be heading up to Seattle (only about a three-hour drive), but I'm already planning everything: I'll be carrying core beverages, backup beverages, a selection of audiobooks, a pile of outdated maps, and of course a trunk full of weird junk that might be used in case of emergency (an unopened AAA "Emergency Kit," a squeegee on a stick, oil, a lot of bungee cables, an expired Washington... READ ON

Article

Designing for Space: NASA's Industrial Designers

Design magazine Core77 sent the intrepid Glen Jackson Taylor inside NASA, to learn how the organization handles industrial design -- the process of designing the usable and beautiful devices. But when Taylor arrived, he found a surprise: "There isn't really a place for industrial designers at NASA," he wrote. "Here the engineers are considered the designers, and the team has only been able to exist under the guise of human factors, a quantifiable soft science that is acknowledged as necessary." So how... READ ON

Article

Documentary: The London Underground Map

In 1931, Harry Beck drew a diagram of the London Underground (aka the Tube), making visual sense of an extremely complex system. Today Beck's map is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, and is considered a classic work of design. Beck's work is the template for modern subway and train maps, and his influence is seen worldwide in the way we conceptualize public transportation. Beck's central breakthrough was making a map that simplified geography to achieve maximum clarity. He reasoned that the... READ ON