ninme

The Times (£) – From Beijing to London in 48hrs? Now that’s a great rail journey

High-speed technology and investment is about to make railways competitive again. Bargain airlines may have made previously forgotten cities accessible but security and congested skies have added hours to the journey. Trains can offer [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

I think I’d intended this for yesterday, but it’s a good thing I forgot because lord, there is nothing going on. But this was quite hilarious:

If you’ve ever traveled by budget airline, and I’m an American so I never have, you’ll really appreciate it.

Categories: Business & Media

This is very good:

The Times – The British girls disappearing into forced marriages, by Lucy Bannerman

“I was told I was staying here for ever,” she says [Tania (pseudonym), 16]. “For ever” often used to mean until 18 – the minimum age at which a Briton could sponsor a spouse’s entry [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

WSJ – Flight Attendant Pops Emergency Chute, Escapes Plane at JFK

I think we’ve all been on those flights where we wish the flight attendant would just deck the jerk and go out with a flourish. But this flourish is pretty epic.

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph – Wayward Alzheimer’s patients foiled by fake bus stop A German nursing home has come up with a novel idea to stop Alzheimer’s patients from wandering off: a phantom bus stop.

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Looking at the photos accompanying the Times article about the Prime Minister’s trip to Washington. Wouldn’t it be funny (funny ironic? funny haha?) if Dave is to Obama what Bush was to Tone. What is it about the co-politicals rubbing each other the wrong way?

In other news: There isn’t any. It’s 10 pm and I [...]

Categories: Politics

A restaurant review in The Times: Giles Coren reviews Brasserie Joël, London SE1

What preposterous gastronomic oxymoron to serve such stellar names of old rural France in this wizened prepuce of an urban planner’s foetid, guilty nightmare?

I love it.

Categories: Food

Brett McS has been to PEMBERLEY! PEMBERLEY!

*gnashes teeth*

And reports that they were having international horse trials on the grounds!

/embraces chronic alcoholism**

Permberly – er – Chatsworth

Categories: Art and Literature

Telegraph – First flight from Baghdad to London in 20 years ends in farce with plane impounded

The first flight from Baghdad to London in 20 years has ended in farce with the plane impounded at Gatwick airport after Kuwait went to the High Court demanding £780 million for planes stolen by Saddam Hussein.

Ouch.

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

And yet making that one-way to NZ that much less complicated…

TIME – Why More U.S. Expatriates Are Turning In Their Passports. By Helena Bachmann

While a small number of Americans hand in their passports each year for political reasons, the new surge in permanent expatriations is mainly because of taxes. Considering [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Do you all remember a couple years ago when I was home when my grandmother was passing and I got a really awful case of poison ivy? I got some topical cream from the doctor, but by the time I got to see her it had almost finished cycling through the awfulness.

Of course I never [...]

Categories: Wildcard

With the world’s journalists stranded in one place or another, this is what they fill 24 hour news with, a song on how to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull (ay-uh-fyat-luh-yoe-kuutl-ul):

Oh well. It’s quite sweet.

Are there any links between Icelandic and Welsh, I wonder? That thhhl noise at the end sounds familiar…

Categories: Science and Nature

…because the line so amused Half last time…

Our plane left at 8.30 this morning, shaved a half hour off the flight time, and we landed at 11. We were in the rental car by quarter to noon, and at the condo (after stopping at Safeway for coffee/filters/milk/bottle of wine) by 1. Amazing. Some people aren’t [...]

Categories: Wildcard

In a 24 hour period:

In other news: Youtube has redesigned (yaaay) and now doesn’t allow embedding smaller than 560 (booo) so I had to look up in my archives another video to get the dimensions (for crying out louuud).

/sigh

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

Telegraph – Barack Obama ‘too tired’ to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown

Barack Obama’s offhand approach to Gordon Brown’s Washington visit last week came about because the president was facing exhaustion over America’s economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

How does he explain the [...]

Categories: Politics