2014年6月19日星期四

The hidden beauty of airport runways, and how to decipher them

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/19/travel/the-hidden-beauty-of/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

The hidden beauty of airport runways, and how to decipher them

By Joseph Flaherty, WIRED

June 19, 2014 -- Updated 1136 GMT (1936 HKT)

Almost all airport designs are governed by regulations established by the International Civil Aviation Organization to ensure pilots circling Toledo or Timbuktu remain properly oriented and deliver their passengers safely—Wellington International Airport

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Bird's eye secrets

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Brooklyn-based designer Lauren O'Neil turns airport runways into art
O'Neil used Tumblr to document her work
Her images reveal the common traits among airports

(Wired) -- Airports are known for rules and regulations, a reputation that applies to the runways as well. Almost all airport designs are governed by regulations established by the International Civil Aviation Organization to ensure pilots circling Toledo or Timbuktu remain properly oriented and deliver passengers and cargo safely.

Lauren O'Neil turns those strictures into art, with the help of Google Earth. The Brooklyn-based designer has made a meticulous study of airport runways and logged the results on a Tumblr called Holding Pattern. These views reveal beautiful compositions at airports that are nothing special at ground level.

"I've found even the most humdrum cities or outdated terminals can have beautiful compositions from bird's-eye," O'Neil says. "Even Cleveland rocks!"

Dozens of carefully cropped images reveal common traits among airports, and the logic and order embodied by seemingly random lines becomes clear. Here are some tips to help make sense of the mishmash of lines and symbols you might see from seat 17F.

Runway Math

Airport runways aren't numbered based on priority, but compass bearings. A runway that is 194° away from magnetic north would be simplified to 190° to prevent rounding errors, and the last digit is dropped, leaving it at 19. Fun fact: Most runways are able to be used in both directions, and when approached from the opposite side the runway's number is achieved by subtracting 18 or 180°.

Flying Fonts

Airports use a specialized font to number their runways. It's highly geometric, which eliminates confusing curves and can be reduced to simple schematics, making it easy for groundskeepers lacking typographic training to recreate. The font apparently has no name, but the numbers are called "runway designators" in pilot parlance.

These geometric numbers are used on runways due to their unmistakable shapes and their ability to be easily drawn.

COURTESY TRANSPORT CANADA

Look Out!

Lines radiating like spokes around unpaved patches are common in many of O'Neil's images and act as warnings to pilots to stay off the airport's lawn. Many airports are built on soft soils, so a fully-loaded Airbus A380, weighing 230 metric tons at takeoff, will sink into a patch of sod quickly, requiring hours of recovery, repair, and rerouting.

USA! USA!

Not only does the United States refuse to get on board with the metric system and day/month notation, but we can't even agree with anyone aside from the Philippines on what to call the area of pavement where passengers get on and off the planes. From Cootamundra Airport in Australia to the Bloodvein River Airport in central Canada, this area is called an apron. Here in the states, we call it a ramp. Whatever you do, don't call it a tarmac unless it's actually got a tar surface.

Flyer's Ed

A runway, like most roads, has a center line. But there are plenty of markings unfamiliar to drivers. Eight white bars that resemble piano keys mark the threshold and give pilots an indication of where it would be safe to touch down. Two large white rectangles are the aiming points—the areas pilots should, well, aim for, followed by touchdown markers represented by four white bars. Chevrons at the end of the runway mark the direction of a given strip, but if your plane hits one during takeoff or landing know that a disaster was narrowly averted.

Lines of White? Ready for Flight! Lines of Yellow? Prepare to Mellow.

No pilots actually say this, but it's good to know that if you see white lines and markings it means you're en route to take off. If you see yellow lines and markings, you're stuck on the taxiway.

Color, and the giant yellow "TAXI," that mark the difference between runways and taxiways are to see clear in this image of Boston's Logan International Airport.

COURTESY LAUREN O'NEIL

About the Artist

O'Neil always has lived under the flight paths of airports--a tiny municipal airstrip in her hometown and JFK in New York City--and grew fascinated by the cadence of departures and the changing flight paths over the course of the day. During a moment of wanderlust she opened Google Earth and started contemplating runway layouts from a birds-eye perspective.

O'Neil traveled the globe, virtually, to create beautiful images based on bureaucratic design guidelines. With her art direction, Denver's broad expanses of dull grey concrete tiles became dynamic. Her crop of a runway in Wellington, New Zealand, laced with bright yellow lines became a work worthy of Joan Miró. And hidden treasures, like an inscription in honor of Amelia Earhart, was uncovered in the aesthetic wasteland that is Newark's Liberty International airport.

Each image starts with a clear itinerary, but O'Neil is open to diversions.

"I'm really drawn to the patterns, line work, and typography on the tarmac—especially as it contrasts with the geography," she says. "I was really inspired by the Madrid-Barajas airport after mapping it for Holding Pattern. Everything seemed so considered and straightforward, which lent itself to stronger compositions," she says.

Turns out, MAD is considered a textbook example of good runway design, known for maximizing the flow of air traffic in a compressed amount of space.

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Amazon Fire Phone is a shopping mall

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/19/opinion/saffo-amazon-phone/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

Amazon Fire Phone is a shopping mall

By Paul Saffo

June 19, 2014 -- Updated 1232 GMT (2032 HKT)

Actor Keefe Brasselle and his wife, Norma, wear 3-D glasses at the 1952 premiere of "Bwana Devil" in Hollywood, California. Discomfort associated with the glasses has been a problem throughout the history of 3-D entertainment, but the technology is finally going glasses-free.

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The many ups and downs of 3-D

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Paul Saffo: Amazon isn't playing catch-up, it's changing the game in mobile space
Saffo: Fire Phone shifts focus of mobile devices to satisfying our shopping urges
He says features of Fire Phone will turn stores into de facto showrooms for Amazon
Saffo: Get ready, the next phase will be "augmented reality" shopping

Editor's note: Paul Saffo is a technology forecaster based in Silicon Valley. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- Amazon's new Fire Phone isn't a phone. It's a shopping mall. Not that boring shopping mall slowly dying on the edges of suburban America, but a gorgeous mall with infinite selection and endless opportunities for entertainment, from books to movies and everything in between.

The price starts at $199 with a two-year contract, or $649 without a contract. The Fire Phone may well give its competitors a run for the money.

Malls are social spaces, and so is Fire Phone. Its five cameras and assorted sensors are exactly what is needed to create immersive interactive experience. And what better thing to socialize around than using it to identify new products, deals and scoops? The only piece missing from Amazon's new mall is food, but you can be sure that soon, there will be an Amazon Fresh truck waiting around the corner or an Amazon aerial drone hovering just over the horizon ready to deliver your order.

Paul Saffo

Amazon is pretty late to the mobile space, and if Fire Phone was just another well-designed mobile device, it wouldn't have a prayer of catching up to Apple or Google. But Amazon isn't playing catch-up, it's changing the game by shifting the focus of mobile devices to what it does best: Satisfying our seemingly endless desire to buy stuff.

Google is still struggling with creating a shopping strategy for physical products, and Apple is little more than an elegant specialty store in cyberspace. In contrast, Amazon pioneered online shopping and has reinvented the shopping experience time and again. Fire Phone is just the latest chapter in that long history.

A crucial feature in the Fire Phone is Amazon's Firefly technology, which turns the phone into a one-touch information source for anything that can be viewed with the phone's many cameras. You see a cool jacket on an actor in a movie -- capture the image and Amazon will find it for sale. If you hear a song you like, grab a sample and Amazon will tell you the artist and offer to sell you a copy.

Amazon CEO debuts the 'Fire' smartphone

Or, next time you are at your favorite suburban mall, snap a picture of a product in a physical store and Amazon will offer it to you for less. This may be the most diabolically disruptive aspect of the Fire Phone.

While Apple and other companies are building out physical stores at great cost as part of their shopping strategy, Firefly allows Amazon to invade every store in every mall on the planet and turn it into a de facto showroom for Amazon.

This will drive retailers crazy. Expect to hear much about how Fire Phone is going to kill physical shopping in the days to come. I wouldn't be surprised if some stores attempt to ban Fire Phone entirely.

Once upon a time shopping was mainly "bricks-and-mortar:" an exclusively physical retail experience. After Amazon appeared on the Web, shopping evolved to "bricks-and-clicks:" an expanded shopping reality that provided shoppers the option of visiting either a physical space or a virtual space. Doomsayers proclaimed the end of physical stores, but while online shopping has been profoundly disruptive, the physical shopping experience evolved to coexist with shopping in cyberspace.

We are now moving from "bricks-and-clicks" to "bricks-in-clicks:" a world where the line between physical and virtual not only blurs, but becomes a two-way conversation.

Getting competitive pricing with your phone camera is just the start. The next phase will be "augmented reality" shopping. Want to see if that elegant lounge chair really fits in your living room? Select your chair, hit a button and it appears on your screen as if it were actually in your room. You can even walk around the chair, viewing it from multiple perspectives. Sounds futuristic, but iPhone and Android users can experience this today with apps like Sayduck. With five cameras and multiple sensors, Fire Phone will be able to do this with even greater fidelity.

Amazon's Fire Phone is being released at a moment when we are seeing the rapid growth of the so-called "Internet of Things," where billions of physical objects from toothbrushes to satellite sensors are being connected to the Internet.

Before long, shoppers wandering into a physical store won't use their phones to merely take a picture of an object; they will have a phone-mediated conversation with that object. And when that happens, Jeff Bezos will probably reinvent things again.

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NEW HOME by Tracy Huang

Eurozone recovery not strong enough, says IMF

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27931445

Eurozone recovery not strong enough, says IMF

By Andrew WalkerBBC World Service Economics correspondent

The IMF, headed by Christine Lagarde, says foundations for a recovery have been laid but more must to done

The recovery in the eurozone is not strong enough, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

That's the assessment IMF head Christine Lagarde is delivering to eurozone finance ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg.

The IMF also says the European Central Bank (ECB) should consider buying financial assets with newly created money, if inflation remains low.

But the IMF's regular eurozone health check sees some signs of progress.

"Strong policy actions have laid the foundations for economic recovery," it says.

'Worrying'

However, it also says that the recovery is not robust, and that economic activity is still below pre-crisis levels. Some countries, including Germany and France, have got back to those levels, though the eurozone as a whole has not.

The IMF says much higher growth is needed to bring down unemployment and debt.

“Start Quote

Concerted policy efforts are needed to strengthen the recovery”

IMF

It describes inflation as "worryingly low, including in the core countries". The most recent figure, for May, is 0.5% for the eurozone, with Germany (0.6%) and France (0.8%) not much higher.

There has been mounting concern that the eurozone might face deflation or falling prices, which can do serious economic damage.

There is a welcome for the recent actions taken by the ECB. But the IMF says it should be prepared to do more if inflation stays very low. In particular, it should consider a large-scale asset purchase programme. That means quantitative easing (QE), the policy already used in an attempt to stimulate stronger growth by central banks in Britain, Japan and the United States.

The IMF says that if the ECB does introduce QE, the assets purchased should be mainly government debt or bonds from across the eurozone, using a formula that would mean buying more German debt than any other country's.

Such a programme, the IMF says, "holds the potential to have a significant impact on demand and inflation".

'Concerted effort'

The ECB has at an earlier stage in the crisis bought government bonds, but its purchases were targeted at countries where interest rates for firms and households remained higher than the Bank wanted - such as Greece and Spain.

It also took other steps that at least made its actions look less like QE - it basically "sterilised" the purchases by getting banks to deposit money at the ECB.

Eurozone governments need to press ahead with reforms to improve the labour market and to enhance competition in goods and services markets, the IMF says. They also need to make progress with banking union.

The IMF's general conclusion is that: "Concerted policy efforts are needed to strengthen the recovery".

Perhaps the trouble with that is that eurozone governments have tended to take concerted action when they seem to face imminent disaster. The weak recovery underway means that is not currently the case.

NEW HOME by Tracy Huang

The Swiss train tourists don’t take

http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20140612-the-swiss-train-tourists-dont-take/1

The Swiss train tourists don’t take

By Adam H Graham

Ride the Rhaetian Railway

(Harold Cunningham/Getty)

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Ride the Rhaetian Railway

(Harold Cunningham/Getty)

I floated in a steamy, 38C rooftop pool, watching glints of the sinking copper sun reflect off the Rhäetian Alps. Located in the Canton Graubünden’s town of Samedan, the public, alfresco bath at Mineralbad & Spa is nestled under the 400-year old Reformed Church clock tower, so close that the glockenspiel bells cause ripples in the water.

Related article: 'There is a dark side to this bucolic Swiss bliss'

Mineralbad & Spa is just one of the many alpine wonders found along theRhäetian Railway, a scenic 240km passenger train route that runs from Thusis, Switzerland to Tirano, Italy – passing overlooked alpine villages, archaeological excavations and majestic mountain-perched castles along the way. Celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, the Rhäetian is, amazingly, not a tourist train. But it is one of only three inscribed on Unesco’s World Heritage List, featuring 84 tunnels as well as 383 spectacular bridges and stone viaducts that cross the landscape’s lacework of glittering rivers and glaciers.

: Like a chess piece: the 11th-century Tarasp Castle overlooks Switzerland's Lower Engadin Valley. (Tim Graham/Getty)

The first segment of the train line, a scenic two-hour, 60km stretch from Thusis to the town of Silvaplana, is short but spectacular. The track’s turns and twists provide multiple opportunities to witness the Upper Engadin’s surreal landscape, marked by cerulean waterfalls and lonely, weather-battered castles. From my seat, I counted at least five medieval castles perched high atop mountains like long-forgotten chess rooks.

After the train passes the town of Tiefencastel, it leaps onto the Hope Diamond of rail design: the dramatic six-arch Landwasser Viaduct, which was built entirely of local limestone in 1901. The 65m drop to the aquamarine Landwasser River below is both terrifying and beautiful. More scarily still, the train then plunges from the viaduct into the cliff face, following a svelte black tunnel through the mountains. The whole experience lasts 45 seconds – but it’s as thrilling as any rollercoaster and could induce vertigo in the most blasé of aerialists.

: Over the Landwasser Viaduct. (Michaa Ludwiczak/Getty)

Exploring the Upper and Lower Engadin
For those wanting to take an overnight stop, the Upper Engadin region has hotels to suit every taste and budget. I bunked down in Silvaplana, just 5km west of St Moritz, where the Nira Alpina has direct gondola access to the 3,303m-high Corvatsh Mountain and 70 spacious rooms with balcony views of turquoise Lake Silvaplana. Its handsome head chef Marek Wildenhain even works the breakfast shift, churning out the canton’s best gipfeli (croissants), zopf (challah) and a tasty assortment of Swiss cheeses, meats, nut-spreads and homemade preserves.

Take the Rhäetian’s Engadin Line to the rugged and low-key Lower Engadin, a world apart from its flashy sibling. About 46km northeast of Silvaplana, the Swiss National Park celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2014 – making it the oldest national park in the Alps. The 17,000-hectare park is remote and undeveloped, a rarity in compact and highly developed Switzerland. Its minimally groomed hiking trails remain great spots to witness alpine animals such as ibexes, chamois, marmots, northern hares and even lizards, not to mention innumerable birds and wildflowers, many of which are endangered and on IUCN’s Red List.

: Lake Spol sits in the lush Swiss National Park. (Martin Moos/Getty)

Another endangered aspect of Graubünden is its language. The canton is the only part of Switzerland that speaks Swiss German, Italian and Romansch, a language close to Latin that originated in ancient Rome. Over the last 50 years, Romansch has diminished as the valleys here have become less agricultural and more economically – and linguistically – connected to surrounding areas. But the language, which sounds like Italian spoken through a mouthful of peanut butter, is beginning to rebound. Inside the Swiss National Park, the Hotel Parc Naziunal Il Fuornis one place to hear the language in action. The hotel’s estate dates to 1490, but it likely served as a traveller’s hospice on the ancient Ofenpass for thousands of years before that. Looking at the wild Alps from the hotel, I couldn’t help but wonder if the view had changed much since Julius Caesar crossed the neighbouring Great St Bernard Pass in 57BC.

By Adam H Graham

After sitting on a train for so many hours, you might want to get a closer look at the landscape on a hike. From Il Fuorn, a five-hour, 25km hike up the Ofenpass takes you to the Müstair Valley; better yet, take the 40-minute bus ride up and walk down. The Senda Val Müstair trail runs past churches and homes painted with pastel murals as well as the ruins of Iron Age ovens, from which Ofenpass (“Oven Pass”) gets its name. With minimal noise pollution on the empty trails, it is even easier to hear the birdcalls and smell the fragrant, colourful wildflowers. This region sprawls above the treeline, where uninterrupted sky illuminates the green, rock-strewn landscape with views to Italy and Austria. In the late afternoon the pinkish, alabaster light is so fragile it feels as if it could shatter. The Unesco-inscribed Benedictine Convent of St John in the village of Müstair dates back to the 8th-century Carolingian era. To witness its vaulted roof and Romanesque frescoed apses glow in such brilliance is like entering heaven itself.

Back on the rails
Back at St Moritz, the most awe-inspiring segment of the Rhäetian Railway begins. The 60km, 2.5-hour Bernina line features a series of switchbacks that cuts to Tirano over Switzerland’s glacier-chocked Bernina Pass and icy Lago Bianco before descending into the sun-kissedVal Poschiavo valley, where you can sample Switzerland’s regionalpizzoccheri (buckwheat pasta) and anise-flavoured rye bread. On this line, the train’s altitude reaches 2,250m – making it Europe’s highest train crossing – with inclines up to 7%, the world’s steepest. Highlights include the picturesque medieval village of Poschiavo, which has unique Swiss-Italian cuisine and generously-spirited locals and Brusio’s nine-arched spiral viaduct, which forces the train to coil like a wurstschnecke (spiral-shaped sausage).

: The train's Bernina line passes Switzerland's Lago Bianco. (Melinda Moore/Getty)

Crossing the border into Italy, the train leaves Switzerland’s dark green valleys, snow-capped Alps, peaceful, orderly churches and clock-watching train conductors behind. Descending the mountains with little warning, it suddenly emerges into a landscape of palm trees, crumbling ruins, gelato shops – and passengers gesturing to sash-wearing polizia(police), commenting on the train delays. They’re two contrasting neighbours, brought together by one of the best trains in the world.

Practicalities
Although scenic trains – such as the touristy Glacier Express, where passengers are stuffed with veal and wine while whizzing through the Alps – run along the same tracks as the Rhäetian, they are triple the cost. Instead, buy a Swiss Pass, which includes admission to 470 Swiss museums as well as unlimited rail access for four to 22 days, or purchase regular tickets through SBB or at any station kiosk in Switzerland. Once aboard, travellers can upgrade to a panoramic car for only five Swiss francs.

A SBB bus service from Tirano to Müstair will launch in July, making all aspects of the region much easier to access.

NEW HOME by Tracy Huang

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2014年6月19日 星期四