Another time-lapse sequence, this time of the US National Science Foundation's icebreaker the Nathaniel B. Palmer, traveling through the Ross Sea in Antarctica. Pink ice. Blue ice. Penguins. What more could you ask for?
[Via MetaFilter]
Things I learned online today:
[Shipwreck mortality study via The Morning News, news of Jonathan Hardy's death via MetaFilter]
Adam Curtis recounts the story of how the cruise ship industry adapted to the era of mass leisure travel:
On many ships thousands of workers below deck work often 7 days a week, sometimes for fourteen hours a day. They are paid two to three dollars a day – depending entirely on tips to earn a living wage. The work most of them are asked to do on their shifts is impossible for one person to complete, so they in turn have to pay others to help them.
And a weird underground economy often results.
In his history of the industry, Kristoffer Garin has described how many of the workers also have to pay bribes to others elsewhere in the complex hierarchy of the ship – waiters have to bribe the cooks to make sure the food is hot, the cabin cleaners have to bribe the laundry chief to get clean sheets on time.
This CCTV footage from the interior of a cruise ship in heavy seas is astonishing.
I think much of the impact is because the CCTV camera offers a fixed view of the action. When you see this sort of thing simulated in a film or TV drama the camera's field of vision tends to move around, be it to enhance the sense of turmoil or to direct the viewer's attention to what a character is doing. Here the camera is just calmly looking on as people and things slide on by … and back again … and then by again. It's simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.
[Via GromBlog]
This hydrofoil, custom-built for a Siberian governor, looks like something out of a Gerry & Sylvia Anderson production.1