Posts Tagged ‘science’

This fortnight in Online Insights, we hear about a stoush between an airline and a big man from Hollywood, access some of the world’s greatest minds as well as the world’s worst clients, and learn about whose house to burgle NOW. As always, remember to email me with website suggestions – sd@stevedavis.com.au.

A tale of two plane seats

Kevin's photo sent to Twitter

Movie director, Kevin Smith, is at the centre of a little online storm he created after being ejected off a plane because he was too fat to squeeze into one seat safely. The airline in question is Southwest Airlines in the USA and the story goes that Kevin had bought two tickets for his flight (as he usually does and as the airline policy requires for passenger safety and comfort) but decided to transfer to an earlier flight. Unfortunately, there was only one seat left on the flight and because he could not squeeze into his seat safely, he was asked to leave. So far, one has to say that when they learned there was only one seat available, the airline should have declined to allow him to board, and he should have known that unless he had taken a miracle wonder diet between booking his two seats and electing to try for an earlier flight, he should have stuck with his original flight. However, he decided to try his luck.

Now, I must say, it must be embarrassing to be asked to leave a flight because of your size, and might even trigger some anger as self esteem issues surface and along with feelings of being dealt a bad hand in life. But adding further fuel to this fire, Kevin is one of those minor celebrities from Hollywood who mostly makes the kind of films that are to the world of movies what whoopee cushions are to the world of toys – simply, base, novel, and quickly grown out of. But be that as it may, this thing called Minor Celebrity Syndrome is at play in this story, I believe. MCS works like this. Major celebrities generally have an air of entitlement about them and most people they interact with recognise them and happily kowtow to their needs because they relish sharing stories of having been in so-and-so’s company. They can get stroppy from time to time but it is temporary because the world generally loves them. Minor celebrities, on the other hand, are hardly recognised by anyone at all and so their air of entitlement is often dashed, making them nasty, spiteful and arrogant. Kevin is one of these minor celebs Read the rest of this entry »

Captain Skellett’s Science Blog

Science Week ends today, so I thought I had better mark the occasion by sharing some science sites.

The first is by a young, Adelaide-based, science communicator, Captain Skellet, who I met at a Twitter forum I was presenting last week. Her blog is like New Scientist meets Sex And The City meets Pirates of the Caribbean because amid the intriguing science articles, there are diary entries from the goings on in Captain Skellett’s life, and little pirate-like quips! Read the rest of this entry »

Beer Wars Movie

I talk a lot about wine so I thought I would balance the books here by mentioning this novel event that took place in America last week. A documentary about the US beer market and the battle between small breweries and the big breweries was released and screened in cinemas for one night only.

They actually beamed it in to 440 cinemas live and then held a live panel discussion with the movie maker, Anat Baron, and representatives from the different sides.

According to the publicity, ” n America, size matters. The bigger you are, the more power you Read the rest of this entry »

Flickr Vision

Regular listeners will know I am a fan of Flickr – the online photo sharing site. Well now I have found a new way to enjoy it. It is called Flickr Vision and it is such a simple but mesmerising concept.

When you visit the site, your screen is filled by a map of the world and right before your eyes, every few seconds, a photo pops up over a country, as a Flickr member uploads another new photo. You basically get to watch photos being loaded to Flickr from a geographical perspective.

It is simply fascinating. Not much else to say, other than, enjoy.

However, if you are more voyeuristic, you can switch Read the rest of this entry »

Australian Nudist Federation website
Australian nudists have finally entered the 21^st century with an official website coinciding with the release of new guidelines for naturists. Unfortunately, the site is one of the clunkiest I have seen for a while with bandwidth-heavy technology. This site certainly won’t be the model for modern websites. Not only is the design dated, the technical aspects suggest it has either been created by a “friend of a friend of a friend” or by a web designer who has not kept up to date with the importance of fast-loading sites and eradication of annoying, animated gifs bouncing around on the page like a parent trying to be cool at a teenager’s birthday party.

Be that as it may, if you are happy to wait for the Read the rest of this entry »