For most people in New York, the Long Island Railroad is either the bane of their commuter existence or the one thing standing between Manhattan and partying on the beach. But writer Emily Meg Weinstein decided she'd ride the train just for the hell of it--and think about her upbringing in the suburbia it serves.
Her essay today in The Morning News gives a blow-by-blow account of a ride from Port Washington into Manhattan, as seen from her seat on the 11:11. Not far into her trip:
There is a bay--the bay across which Jay Gatsby gazed longingly at Daisy Buchanan, I'm always quick to point out.
Later Weinstein passes through Great Neck:
The kind of town where an enormous banner proclaiming "BOTOX IS HERE" is not considered to be in poor taste.
After the jump, we've Google Mapped all of her stops, and linked to Jaunted contributor Ben Hancock's guide to surviving the suburbs for you LIRR warriors.
A court may have declared Steve Fossett legally dead back in February, but a group of backcountry experts and wilderness athletes is setting out to search for any sign of the super-adventurer. The 10-person squad has set up a base camp between the Bodie Hills and the Sweetwater Mountains, about a 110-mile drive south of Reno, Nevada.
Geologist and "adventure racer" Simon Donato is leading the ground search team, and his group will cover 15 to 20 miles of territory a day, focusing on wooded areas that could obscure aerial views of the wreckage of Fossett's plane.
Another similar but separate team will try its luck with an independent ground search later this year. Fossett's widow, Peggy, isn't involved with either effort.
Nah, not really. The scientists at the massive European physics lab CERN say when they switch on the Large Hadron Collider this August nothing more than groundbreaking research will result.
But some of the nerds at Wikipedia say the LHC could create "micro black holes, strangelets, vacuum bubbles and magnetic monopoles," none of which we understand--but all of which sound terrifying!
If you don't fear science and like wearing hardhats on tours, you can actually go visit CERN. Make reservations at least three months ahead of time by filing out this form.
Florida's governor announced today that his state would buy out US Sugar, the country's largest sugar processor, for $1.7 billion. The deal, once finalized, will have the firm shut down in six years and turn over 187,000 acres of land to the state, restoring natural water flow back to Lake Okeechobee.
Governor Charlie Crist says the deal is:
As monumental as the creation of our nation's first national park, Yellowstone.
We wouldn't go that far, but it is quite a move. But will the cool place names in South Florida disappear like the 1,700 jobs at US Sugar? We're not ready to say goodbye to Sugarland Park, Sugarton and Sugar Junction!
Jessica Bruinsma got lost in the Bavarian Alps a few days ago and then fell 16 feet onto a rocky overhang. Rescue workers scouring the mountains near Berchtesgaden, Germany couldn't find her and were likely losing hope. But Bruinsma had the brains to attach her bra to a supply line she'd stumbled upon--and notify some lumberjacks that she was nearby.
Only hours after Bruinsma sent the slinky signal, rescuers helicoptered in to pick her up. She's headed back to her hometown of Colorado Springs in a few weeks--where her family promises to throw her a bra-laden welcome home party.
The US Open just wrapped up at Torrey Pines outside San Diego; Tiger Woods won. The schmancy course has been hyping the golf tourney for more than a year, and they put on quite the contest.
Tiger Woods of course played well, but Rocco Mediate wasn't content to let him simply walk off with a win. After an entire 18-hole playoff, the two were still tied. On the first hole of a three-hole sudden death round, Tiger took the win.
A gigantic greenhouse complex is being built in Thanet, England. The development covers 565 square miles and will boost the UK's vegetable crop by 15 percent.
The complex, known as "Thanet Earth," will grow 1.3 million tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers year-round in seven separate greenhouses. The $157 million project is the brainchild of a British produce supplier and three Dutch farming companies. We can't help but wonder if more of these mega-greenhouses might be the answer to the whole "global food shortage" thing.
Maybe Bono can get some other eccentric rich people to buy one? Or maybe the Netherlands will build the next mega-greenhouse: This one is all hydroponic.
For some reason, Gadling thinks an awesome alternative to high-priced road trips this summer is to tool around via Google Street View. We'd never trade in our rental car keys for a laptop, but it's true you can see a lot of the country thanks to the search giant. Except for one little neighborhood, that is.
North Oaks, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, asked Google earlier this year to remove Street View images of the nabe from its servers. After discovering that private residents own the roads in the 4,500-person community, Google had no choice but to comply.
This doesn't mean you have to drive to North Oaks to check it out, though. Google still has awesome satellite coverage of the area. And perhaps even topping that is mapping on Microsoft's Live.com: You can make out a barbecue grill on this deck.
