Sunday, December 28, 2008
Man Playground
This month's Wired has a brief piece I did on a curious theme park near Kassel, in central Germany. It's called the "Maennerspielplatz," or "Man Playground," and is designed to fulfill a certain set of masculine fantasies -- the ones that involve mud and heavy machinery, mostly. For a few hundred euro, you can spend a day riding quad bikes, driving bulldozers, operating front-end loaders and bombing through the forest in SUVs.
Could this work in the U.S.? I'd point to insurance issues as a major reason why not. The park's founder also noted that driving SUVs offroad isn't a big deal in America, where there's plenty of open space and federal land available for people to trash. Germany's environmental laws make that sort of thing a lot harder.
Finally, as the folks posting in the "comments" section online point out, there's a large segment of the male population that probably wouldn't be all that interested -- namely the guys who do this kind of thing for a living already. Just goes to show one man's work is another man's play, I guess.
Could this work in the U.S.? I'd point to insurance issues as a major reason why not. The park's founder also noted that driving SUVs offroad isn't a big deal in America, where there's plenty of open space and federal land available for people to trash. Germany's environmental laws make that sort of thing a lot harder.
Finally, as the folks posting in the "comments" section online point out, there's a large segment of the male population that probably wouldn't be all that interested -- namely the guys who do this kind of thing for a living already. Just goes to show one man's work is another man's play, I guess.
Labels: germany, maennerspielplatz, wired
Friday, December 26, 2008
Roman Battlefield Discovered
A few weeks back (how time flies around the holidays, huh?) I took a day trip to a forest outside of Hanover to check out a really cool find: a Roman battlefield in the middle of Germany dating to about 200 AD. This is odd, because most people thought the Romans left Germany pretty much alone after AD 9, when they got their clock cleaned by some sneaky barbarians in the Teutoburg Forest.
But apparently not. The archaeologists found almost 600 artifacts, from Roman sandal nails to spear and arrowheads, buried just underground, and hope to find lots more when they go back this spring. I wrote about the initial find for Spiegel and Science.
But apparently not. The archaeologists found almost 600 artifacts, from Roman sandal nails to spear and arrowheads, buried just underground, and hope to find lots more when they go back this spring. I wrote about the initial find for Spiegel and Science.
Labels: Archaeology, artifacts, battlefield, Roman, science, spiegel
