During my Morgantown days, my favorite mode of transportation was the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) - an 8-seater, electric-motor driven, automatic transportation system that connects 5 different points on the West Virginia University campus.
In spite of being built in the mid-1970's, the PRT still feels like it belongs to the future. A safe, convenient way to move from one end of campus to the other, I am surprised more cities, especially smaller ones who cannot afford (or need) a full-fledged subway or train system, haven't looked at it as a viable people-mover option.
If you are ever in Morgantown, take a ride on this marvel. It will be worth your time, I promise.
(If you want to see a 1977 video about the PRT, click here).
1) If I had an iPhone, I'd definitely get this app. Especially since I am traveling to a predominantly Spanish-speaking country in the very, very near future.
2) Check out this slideshow (be sure to click through the 13 slides). Snowflakes as you have never seen them before. No wonder the saying that no two snowflakes are identical is probably true. Also, these are some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. No wonder when I grow old, I shall retire to a pace surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
Here's a sample of one of the photos...
These snowflake photos were taken by Kenneth Libbrecht of CalTech, using a specially-designed snowflake photomicroscope. They show real snow crystals that fell to earth in northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.
(http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16170-snowflakes/10)
d) I know, I know. I am putting something sports-related but it is very interesting in its own way. Here's the background. Earlier this year LeBron James announced that he was going to leave Cleveland and play for the Miami Heat during a live televised event that was even called The Decision by ESPN.
"...I am taking my talents to South Beach..", he said without a trace of bashfulness. He was widely criticized for it. Where he goes to play is entirely his business and what we think of it should not be talked about, but doing it in such a crass way is what I had an issue with.
Anyway, Nike tried to rehabilitate his image with this ad:
Numerous responses were offered to that ad, but the one that takes the cake is this one:
Finally, to put an end to this business comes an ad purportedly offering Michael Jordan's point of view of the whole issue. End of discussion.
Since the Google search engine and email systems (Gmail) were far superior to the ones that were available at the time they were released, I am guessing this will be good, too. I have downloaded Chrome and have been using it since then. I am still feeling my way around the browser. I have not found a way to sort bookmarks (which I was able to easily import into Chrome from Internet Explorer). When it imported the bookmarks it did so in an alphabetical manner and I had to re-sort the links in the order I wanted them, which took some time.
So far, it seems to be doing all the things a typical browser does. But it is so spanking new, there are many websites that have not designed add-ins and software specific for Chrome. If this browser catches on, as I think it will on PC's, I don't think that will be the case much longer.
If you want to know more about Google Chrome and did not where to look, click here. The site gives you various tips on how you can use Google Chrome and what are some of the pitfalls of the program.
