The Weirdest Story You Will Read Today
March 30th, 2007Travolta. Scientology. Global Warming. Other planets. Dome cities.
Via: This Is London:
His serious aviation habit means he is hardly the best person to lecture others on the environment. But John Travolta went ahead and did it anyway.
The 53-year-old actor, a passionate pilot, encouraged his fans to “do their bit” to tackle global warming.
Travolta, a Scientologist, claimed the solution to global warming could be found in outer space and blamed his hefty flying mileage on the nature of the movie business.
But his appointment as a “serving ambassador” for the Australian airline Qantas doesn’t seem to have much to do with the movies. Nor does a recent, two-month round-the-world flying trip.
“It [global warming] is a very valid issue,” Travolta declared. “I’m wondering if we need to think about other planets and dome cities.
“Everyone can do their bit. But I don’t know if it’s not too late already. We have to think about alternative methods of fuel.
“I’m probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.
“I use them as a business tool though, as others do. I think it’s part of this industry – otherwise I couldn’t be here doing this and I wouldn’t be here now.”
Travolta’s five private planes – a customised £2million Boeing 707, three Gulfstream jets and a Lear jet – are kept at the bottom of his garden in the US next to a private runway.
We need fewer wacko actors like Travola, and more Cryptogoners like Kevin.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/start.html
Albert Einstein, as every kid knows, was a smart guy. But as we discover when we get older, smart gets you only so far. It’s worth remembering, especially now, that what made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma.
At a time when the US, worried about competition from China, is again emphasizing math and science education, Einstein’s genius reminds us that a society’s competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geeks change the world. And, as recent research into Einstein’s personal papers shows, there’s no better glimpse into his offbeat creativity than the way he puzzled out the special theory of relativity.
As a child, Einstein was slow to speak. This, combined with his cheeky defiance of authority and his distaste for rote learning, led one school master to send him packing and another to dismiss him as a lazy dog.
“When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory,” Einstein once said, “it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up.”
Einstein alienated so many professors that he was unable to earn a doctorate, much less land an academic job. At the age of 26, he was working as a third-class examiner at the Swiss patent office in Bern. As it happens, the patent office provided a better launchpad than any university. On his way to work, Einstein would see trains rolling past the city’s 12th-century clock tower, which by then had been synchronized with clocks in the nearby train station, and many of the patent applications he was reviewing proposed using signals traveling at the speed of light to sync up even more distant clocks.
Here’s another Travola moment. Earthrace seeks to travel around the world on biodiesel for a ‘better planet’. Ends up killing fisherman in their way. Sorry 3rd world, gotta go!
http://www.earthrace.net/index.php?section=1
“Earthrace captain Pete Bethune and his crew were allowed to leave Guatemala in late March after a fatal collision involving their biodiesel-powered vessel and a fishing boat Mar. 18. Earthrace is a wave-piercing boat in a bid to break the world record for circumnavigating the globe. After a year-long promotional tour with the boat, the crew started the record attempt Mar. 10.”