Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Standing room
Today at Spiegel was fun. I wrote a short piece on a German firm that may be bringing a much-needed innovation to airplane cabins everywhere soon: urinals. Anyone who's gingerly stepped into an airline bathroom at the tail end of a flight fro, say, Frankfurt to San Francisco knows that men have terrible aim. Engineers think that by giving guys their own facilities they'll save women the sight of disgusting bathroom floors and save airlines cabin space, which means more money per flight.
In the "things I never thought about before " category: there's a whole company that does nothing but build bathrooms and other facilities for Airbus. You can even buy airplane showers from them. (Presumably only if you're absurdly wealthy.)
Thanks to Jens Romca at www.muellerromca.de for the pretty picture.
Labels: airplane, spiegel, urinals
Friday, May 09, 2008
Bienen halten ja, Mund halten nein!
It's been a while since I checked in here. April was a busy month: I managed to visit five countries in a little more than three weeks, and one of those countries was Japan. More on that trip soon, I hope.
I've been at Spiegel the last week, and today I wrote about an "absolute bee emergency" in Baden-Wuerttemburg. The quote above is from a disgruntled beekeeper I talked to and is, well, just not the same in English. Even after a week of translation work on tight deadline, I am still charmed by the quirks of the German language sometimes.
I've been at Spiegel the last week, and today I wrote about an "absolute bee emergency" in Baden-Wuerttemburg. The quote above is from a disgruntled beekeeper I talked to and is, well, just not the same in English. Even after a week of translation work on tight deadline, I am still charmed by the quirks of the German language sometimes.
Labels: beekeeper, bees, spiegel
