Author: Mollie Barnes

Travel agents pull a Star Wars

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

If you’re a nerd like me, you remember those times in Star Wars where a crew is receiving a message via a hologram, right? Luke Skywalker will be needing some handy advice and Yoda will appear in a hologram giving him some “advice good for Luke”, yes? Sorry about my lame attempt at Yoda lingo.

So imagine this: you just ended a wonderful stay in Germany, and you’re trying to smuggle some Deutsch chocolate and sausages into the US of A, but you get stopped. Somehow the TSA has discovered your lie. You have smuggled these delicious goodies into America every year on your annual trip to Germany, but now, they somehow have figured out your lie! How you ask? HOLOGRAPHIC PEOPLE. That’s right. Some airports around the world now have holographic travel agents to help assist you, or in your case, catch you red-handed.

Holographic Boarding Agent

These crazy things can actually DETECT WHEN  YOU’RE LYING at customs. Creepy and crazy if you ask me. The hologram uses infrared sensors and other crazy technology to detect changes in pupil dilation and subtle changes in tone to know when you’re lying to customs about bringing in that illegal chocolate and sausages.

The article from BBC I read about the topic mentions that families are very interested in the new travel agents and that people are very satisified with their experiences using them. It also says that the holograms use “soothing” voices to calm down distressed travelers. I don’t know about anyone else, but I know personally if I’m in distress when I’m traveling, a computer is going to do everything BUT calm me down. After the novelty wears off of feeling like Luke Skywalker, I’m going to get real angry at these things. I’m pretty sure when my baggage is lost, and a computer keeps telling me to calm down, I would probably just end up attacking it with my trusty traveling neck pillow. Then I will proceed to look for a REAL person to calm me down and get me my missing luggage so I can finally brush my teeth after hours of traveling.

Dark tourism: a necessary evil?

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

So seeing as I have a lot of work that I SHOULD be doing, obviously what I’m doing is planning a trip. I’ve been wanting to go back to New York for awhile and visit my family. With the recent anniversary of 9/11 it got me thinking about visiting ground zero and why people do it. I remember when I was at ground zero in 2007 and I didn’t even have any capability of wrapping my head around the fact that just six years before people had probably died and had their whole lives changed as they stood in the same spots that I stood in. The same places where at the time I was there stood food stands, street vendors, people drinking coffee and going about their normal business at one time had people in utmost despair and confusion.

Even when I went to the London Tower, we went in the torture chamber and still it was hard to imagine the thoughts and emotions that were going on in the peoples’ heads who were going through these atrocities in these same places where I stood.

At the Tower of London

There is a whole label dedicated to this type of vacationing called Dark Tourism. In travel article the author thinks that it is a necessary evil to help tourists better understand the destination wholly.

What are your thoughts, are vacations purely for enjoyment and shall we say, fun in the sun? Or should they be times to explore and understand a place and a culture different from their own? Or should we have separate vacations for these two purposes?

Forget Atlantis, here’s a real lost city

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

Everyone loves a good legendary lost city. Oodles of movies, stories, attractions and even hotels are named after the famed lost city of Atlantis. I have a personal bond with the Disney movie dedicated to Atlantis and this weird Mole character. Since my name is Mollie some people shorten it to Mol, which is correctly pronounced like mall but of course all my really nice friends pronounce it as MOLE. Real attractive, no? No.

Mole from Disney’s Atlantis in all his shining glory. Looks just like me, right?

That short personal connection aside.. imagine my excitement when I first heard about a REAL lost city that was found using remote sensing and space imaging. The city of Ubar is believed to be located deep under the sands of the Sahara desert. I first heard about it at a lecture by my astronomy professor and former astronaut, Linda Godwin, last spring. I was intrigued and awestruck. They found this city using images taken from space and “thermatic mappers” which gather information in different light spectrums, thus providing us with imaging and views that we could not normally see with our own limited eyesight.

PBS has this great interactive site with a pictures, articles and interviews explaining the whole process for people to easier understand.

These archaeologists are out there doing works of fiction. They are doing what all these fables and movies said they would. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that none of the archaeologists and scientists working on the Ubar site actually look or act like like Mole from the movie, much to my disappointment.

When asked what their favorite Disney movie is most girls might respond with a tale of love and royalty such as Cinderella or Tangled, but my favorite was always Atlantis. And now it’s as if Atlantis is REAL. I love it when things that sound like myths actually turn out to be plausible and all of this is happening because of what science has to offer. All it takes is a little curiosity and the right tools (brought to you courtesy of NASA).

Atlantis isn’t the only Disney movie to become a reality either, a group of scientists also made a house fly, just like in the movie UP.

The scientific world sure is a wonder. What movie do you want to see be made into a reality next?

I wonder if my room is a black hole

Posted on by Mollie Barnes

“I CAN’T FIND ANYTHING IN MY ROOM! IT’S A BLACK HOLE!”

With all the new technology out there now, nothing is simple. Most cameras don’t use AA batteries anymore. Some of them have these fabulous rechargeable batteries that save you money! Sounds awesome right? Not in my opinion. If you’re anything like me, you lose everything, and so having to keep track of this one charger is impossible. Last night I was scouring my room for my charger and I found myself thinking, “I literally cannot find anything in this black hole.”

Matter rotating around a black hole

A lot of us say things like that without really knowing what they mean. Recently I read an article in Astronomy magazine, “Hungriest black holes thwart star growth”. Black holes have always fascinated me (as I’m sure many others) because we can’t know much about them because of their properties. All we know is that they are super massive, thousands of times more massive than regular stars (which are already incomprehensibly massive compared even to the fattest of elephants).

These black holes suck in so much material which stunts star growth. They have very strong gravitational pulls which means these holes absorb all matter within their grasp. Once matter has “entered” the black hole so to speak, it cannot escape. Not even light is fast enough to escape, which is really just the gloomiest thing…not just metaphorically but physically, too. Since there’s no material left surrounding the black hole, there is nothing to gather together to create a star, to create life, to create light, TO CREATE HAPPINESS. Well, you get my point. If this was the only definition, my room would most certainly be a black hole because it definitely sucks in everything that I need and prevents me from growing as a student by distracting me from my studies (and at it’s current state of messiness I’m sure light can’t even escape, either).

Many people are turning against funding for NASA because they think that it is too much of a money-suck. Some also think the Mars rover is a waste of time and resources. To that all I have to say is: if they cancel funding for NASA how will I procrastinate doing my homework by uploading pictures from the weekend if I can’t understand the logic behind cleaning my room so it doesn’t turn into a black hole and stunt my growth as a student and it keeps all the light and therefore happiness out?

So to take the shortest path possible…funding for NASA = LIGHT & HAPPINESS.

I’m pretty sure if you asked anyone if they considered landing on the moon to be one of the most significant accomplishments of the past century they would say yes. And who made that happen? NASA.

So honestly, unless you’re a happiness hater, why wouldn’t you support NASA?