Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Newer Entries »

Ski season starts early with heavy snow

October 31, 2010

After the UK and Sweden experienced early, heavy snow in October, heavy snows in the Alps is providing a boon for ski resorts.

Fast Track Ski reports:

A number of big ski resorts will open for the winter 2010-11 this weekend, many of them weeks and even months earlier than planned.

Heavy snow in the Alps has led to Schladming in Austria being the first non-glacier ski centre to open, it’s due to be followed by Kitzbuhel, tomorrow.
Snow reporting agency skiinfo.co.uk reports that up to a metre of snow has fallen in the past week bringing great conditions to the 20 glacier ski areas that are already open in the Alps. The Tux glacier next to Mayrhofen and close to Innsbruck is already offering more than 40km (20 miles) of piste to enjoy with a 600m lift served vertical. The Kitzsteinhorm glacier above Kaprun has more than three feet of new snow on its slopes.
In Switzerland the resort of Laax, which will stage the Brits festival next Spring, has decided to open early too because of all the snow. It joins Gstaad’s Glacier 300 which is opening tomorrow too. Engelberg, Zermatt and Saas Fee are also open, the latter with World Cup Snowboarding this weekend.
In Italy Cervinia opens this weekend, joining Passo Tonale and two other glacier centres which are already open. Les 2 Alpes and Tignes are both open in France this weekend too. While up in Scandinavia Ruka in Finland is already open and will be joined by Geilo and Hemsedal in Norway next weekend.
Resorts have also begun opening in North America. Loveland and Arapahoe Basin have opened in Colorado and Sunday River in Maine. Keystone and Copper Mountain are due to open on Bonfire Day next week, however Canada’s first opening for 2010-11m Mount Norquay by Banff, is due to happen tomorrow, October 30th, conditions permitting.

The Telegraph reports today that  Heavy snowfall has arrived in ski resorts in the Alps and North America, with some areas reporting 72cm of snowfall this week.

 

Tignes slopes October 2010 : Images The Telegraph

 


Tags:, ,
Posted in Travel, Weather | Comments Off on Ski season starts early with heavy snow

Airbus engineering to grow in India

October 3, 2010
Airbus A320 (9M-AFA) der Air Asia

Airbus A 320: Wikipedia

The Telegraph:

Airbus expects India to need around 1,000 new planes over the next 20 years, compared with 3,000 in China. Air traffic has expanded by 16pc in India this year.

Airbus, which has 68 per cent Indian market share, as measured by orders, believes it can build on its current success by selling more aircraft. The European plane maker is also building relationships on the ground. It has 25 partners in India, eight of them top-tier suppliers. Airbus is also leaning more and more on Indian engineers.

The company will decide this week whether to go ahead with its next development programme, a new engine for the single-aisle A320 plane that generates much of Airbus’s profit. “Airbus has never made a secret that our engineering resources are stretched thin,” Mr Enders said during a two-day visit to Airbus’s Indian operations in Bangalore last week. “We’re taking this decision very seriously because we cannot afford that other programmes, especially the 350, should suffer.”

At its base in Bangalore, Airbus has 160 engineers working on the A350 and A380 programmes in conjunction with staff in France, Germany and Britain. The company plans to have 200 staff at the engineering centre by the end of the year and 400 by 2013. India produces around 350,000 engineering graduates a year, about 25pc of which Airbus describes as “employable”. “I don’t think 400 is going to be the final number, there is a huge pool of talent we can tap into,” said Mr Enders. “In terms of the work we sub-contract, there’s a lot more to come.”

In the past, most of the work done for Airbus by external suppliers has been making parts of the airframe, and while some manufacturing work is now being done in India, it is the engineering and technology base that is more attractive, Mr Enders said. “IT, simulations, technical publication – all these are things which India is particularly good at,” he said.

It makes sense and is inevitable that more will shift to India and China – where the market is.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Engineering, India, Technology, Travel | Comments Off on Airbus engineering to grow in India

UN appoints an “Alien Ambassador” – Alien travel to earth suspended.

September 27, 2010
Logo of UN Office for Outer Space Affairs

UNOOSA

This is probably the kiss of death for any prospective alien visits to earth.

An Alien Ambassador is to be appointed by the United Nations to act as the first point of contact for aliens trying to communicate with Earth.

In the midst of a global financial meltdown and a painful recovery the UN is displaying a remarkably insensitive – but not unsurprising – sense of priorities.

But the required quota of Malaysian UN appointees has probably been filled.

Take me to your leader

But good luck anyway to Mrs Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, who is going to co-ordinate humanity’s response if and when extraterrestrials make contact. This sounds like a well-paid and tenured appointment which should last at least for life. Mrs Othman is currently head of the UN’s little known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa).

She is quoted to have said:

“The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day human kind will received signals from extraterrestrials. When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which Unoosa oversees, UN members agreed to protect Earth against contamination by alien species by “sterilising” them.

Alien travel agents must now be striking Earth off their tours.

Oh Dear !

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Space, Travel, Trivia | Comments Off on UN appoints an “Alien Ambassador” – Alien travel to earth suspended.

Stuttgart’s white elephant

September 23, 2010

Hamada Marine "Bridge to Nowhere"

Japan is famous for its bridges to nowhere and highways without traffic but Germany is not immune from this extravagant form of supporting the construction industry and their powerful lobbies.

Der Spiegel runs a scathing attack on the white elephant that is “Stuttgart 21” and Deutsche Bahn‘s CEO Rüdiger Grube:

A multibillion railway development project is going ahead in Stuttgart, despite the fact that it offers hardly any benefits for the rail network and the money would be better spent elsewhere. Experts have been warning against the plans for years, but they were ignored.

Current estimates put the costs of building the subterranean railway station in Stuttgart, the capital of the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, at €4.1 billion ($5.38 billion). An associated high-speed rail line to Ulm, a city lying about 90 kilometers (56 miles) southeast of Stuttgart, is slated to cost another €3 billion.

But what, you might ask, is the payoff for Deutsche Bahn, the federal government or the EU of implementing Stuttgart 21 and building the new line to Ulm? Deutsche Bahn CEO Rüdiger Grube offers one answer: The building project, he explains, will “eliminate the biggest bottleneck on the high-speed route from Paris to Bratislava.”

It would seem that Grube still doesn’t have his facts straight. It might help if he actually took the train from Paris to Bratislava. The roughly 13-hour trip would probably be enough to convince him that this so-called express corridor actually isn’t so express and that boring tunnels through the karst formations of the Swabian Alps mountain range for the Stuttgart-Ulm line is not about to make the connection significantly more attractive.

See map Paris to Bratislava

As Düsseldorf-based engineer Sven Andersen puts it, “Stuttgart 21 does nothing for long-distance travel.” Unlike Grube, Andersen has spent his entire career working in the railway industry, most recently as an expert on operational issues, and is considered one of the top experts on Germany’s railway system.

New Stuttgart station

As Andersen sees it, Stuttgart 21 and the related plan to built the Stuttgart-Ulm high-speed railway line are “a transportation-policy disaster.” Likewise, he adds, the project seems to be based on a complete misunderstanding of Stuttgart’s role in the German and European railway network. “Stuttgart is a destination,” he says. “It’s not a place people travel through to get someplace else. Converting the station into a through station won’t be an improvement on any significant route.” Indeed, all you have to do is look at a map to realize that Stuttgart is not a central location. All fast connections between key economic zones pass through other cities. For example, the Frankfurt-Zurich route runs far west of Stuttgart through Karlsruhe and Basel, while the Frankfurt-Munich route makes a wide arch through Würzburg and Nuremberg, far north and east of Stuttgart.

Full article:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,717575,00.html

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Business, Economy, Engineering, Technology, Travel | Comments Off on Stuttgart’s white elephant

Oh my ! Canada Goose will need a visa for Europe

September 17, 2010
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)

Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)

Biodiversity be hanged ! Alien wildlife must be banned from Europe.

Urgent call on EU to stop billion-euro ‘alien invasion’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11286432

The Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) was the worst culprit, having the biggest impact on both the environment and economy.

Leading experts on invasive species are demanding Europe-wide legislation be put in place by next year to tackle the threat to native wildlife. The researchers want urgent action from the EU to protect Europe’s indigenous species from these “alien invaders”. The scientists are meeting at the Neobiota conference in Copenhagen. They are demanding Europe-wide legislation to be in place by next year to ensure the threat doesn’t worsen. Invasive species are defined as those that are introduced accidentally or deliberately into a place where they are not normally found.

Piero Genovesi is chair of the Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), a global network of experts on invasive species. He told BBC News that the figure of 12 billion Euros represents a significant underestimate of the impact of alien species. “We’re asking the EU to rapidly develop and approve a policy on invasive species, fulfilling the formal commitment agreed by the council of European ministers in June 2009,” Mr Genovesi told BBC News. “This is urgent, we would like this to be in place by next year.”

A Ruddy Duck drake

The Ruddy Duck is just one of more than 1,300 alien species living in Europe which threaten biodiversity.

Scientists gathered at the conference are calling for urgent action by the European Union to implement laws similar to those that already exist in countries like New Zealand and Australia.

Wolfgang Nentwig, from the Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Switzerland has just published one of the first detailed studies of the impact of alien birds in Europe. The Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) was the worst culprit, having the biggest impact on both the environment and economy.

There is something somewhat paradoxical in banning the adventurous and entrepreneurial wild life to protect the diversity of those that are failing !

Update!!

Dr Guy Consolmango, curator of the Pope's meteorite collection

Dr Guy Consolmango

The Catholic church is more open minded than EU scientists. Pope Benedict XVI’s astronomer has said that the Catholic Church welcomes aliens. Highly evolved extra terrestrial lifeforms may be living in space and would be welcomed into the church – “no matter how many tentacles”, the Pope’s astronomer has said.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Science, Travel | Comments Off on Oh my ! Canada Goose will need a visa for Europe

Managing without flights

May 1, 2010

I had to travel to Germany from Sweden during the time when air-space was closed due to the irrational alarm surrounding the volcano eruption in Iceland.

A 1500 km journey – each way – by car over a day-and-a-half was remarkably efficient, relaxed and much less stressful than hanging around at airports. A relaxed night in Bremen on the way to Essen and in Odense on the way back. Half the journey was through Denmark and Sweden with maximum motorway speeds of between 110 and 130 km / h and giving an average speed of 105 km /h. The other half on the German autobahns, where the maximum speed in some sections was unlimited also gave an average speed just over 100km /h.

Beautiful spring weather all the way and back and the average level of courtesy of drivers on the road is remarkably high.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Travel | Comments Off on Managing without flights

Newer Entries »