Text Messaged Acceptance
February 8, 2006 | 1 Comment
Creighton University has started sending early acceptance to students who opted in for SMS notification. In laymans terms, they text message their cell phones.
Since November, 700 students - or 44 percent - of those admitted to Creighton have been notified through a text message. The school added the option on application forms last fall. [...]
Opting for the text message allows students to know the university’s decision up to a week earlier. [...] text messages are sent to students within 24 hours of the admission committee’s decisions, whereas letters can take several days to draft and then arrive in the mail. [...]
Katie Infantine, 17, of San Diego, [...] “Text messaging is really popular with my friends,” Infantine said. “So the fact a college would do that is really cool.”
Some may see this as a gimmick, but I think this is a fantastic way of generating buzz in high schools nationwide in the hallways, in a very personal way. Nothing like speaking to students with technologies they are familiar with.
Tags: acceptance, admission, admissions, creighton, creighton university, education, higher education, san diego, university
World’s Tallest Bridges
August 30, 2005 | 33 Comments
When I had an incoming search for “World’s Tallest Bridge” I was excited at the prospect of doing some research on bridges. For years I have been fascinated with all shapes and sizes of bridge, a definite side effect of living in Pittsburgh, PA. There are enough bridges in that city and county that they have a whole website dedicated to them. According to that website:
Pittsburgh has 30 river bridges with an additional 29 river bridges within Allegheny County for a total of 59. Then you may start to add the many others which cross streams, ravines, roads, railroads, etc. The typically cited a figure of over 2,000 in Allegheny County apparently doesn’t include railroad bridges owned by the railroads, and only includes those over 8 feet in length.
By some counts they have the most bridges in the world, but apparently Paris might have more or less depending on how you cont. While I’m still on that topic, here are my Pittsburgh favorites:
- Fort Duquesne Bridge, nicknamed “The Bridge to Nowhere” because from 1969 to 1986 one end hung in mid-air due to complexities in attaching it to neighboring expressways and bridges.
- Roberto Clemente Memorial Bridge, Seventh Street, and Ninth Street bridges nicknamed the “Three Sisters Bridges” (more pictures)
- Smithfield Bridge
- Homestead High Level Bridge
OK, moving on from PIttsburgh to the main event, the world’s tallest bridges.
The world’s tallest bridge is France’s Millau Viaduct spanning the River Tarn. The bridge stands at an impressive 341m tall and 2,460m long. This is in fact 30m taller than the Eiffel Tower. Construction completed in late 2004. Also, the roadway of the bridge is only at 270m, while the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado has a deck at 321m.
Although, it seems this is in fact only the world’s tallest vehicular bridge, I cannot find any sources naming any other sort of bridge that is in fact taller. If someone knows, I’m dying to find out.
More on the Millau Viaduct:
Official Site
BBC: France shows off tallest bridge
MSNBC: World’s Tallest Bridge
According to Wikipedia, the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge (1,991m) in Japan is the world’s largest suspension bridge and this is also the longest bridge span. It seems the Millau Viaduct is longer, so I’m not sure why they haven’t updated. The Messina bridge in Italy is supposed to be completed in 2011 and will have a span of 3,300m, blowing this record clean out of the water.
But what about longer bridges that aren’t suspension? Well the Second Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana is 38,422m long and crosses Lake Pontchartrain. That’s a lot longer… but doesn’t have much height.
To add one more level of complexity, the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong is the bridge with the largest rail carrying span (1,377m). So this one is really big and can handle lots of weight.
Finally, being from New England I must touch on covered bridges. The longest covered bridge crosses the St. John River in New Brunswick, Canada and is 390m. Plymouth, NH claims to have the world’s strongest bridge, Smith Covered Bridge, but I think they just made the claim and no one has challenged it…
More bridge resources:
The World’s Greatest Bridges
BridgePros
HowStuffWorks.com “How Bridges Work”
A couple other bridges I can’t resist:
- San Diego’s Coronado Bridge - I love it because it is big, high, and has a huge curve in it.
- Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Bridge (Official Site)
- Boston’s Charles River Bridge
- Plymouth, NH’s New Bridge (unnamed to the best of my knowledge) This brige is still under contruction/destruction, but will significantly change the initial view of Plymouth.
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San Diego Zoo
November 16, 2004 | 1 Comment
The San Diego Zoo has definitely earned it’s reputation as one of the best zoos in the entire world. Zach and I spent last Friday wandering around the zoo and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Some of the animals were a little disappointing, like the giant pandas, who receive all kinds of hype, but aren’t really all that interesting to watch. Some of the other animals pleasantly surprised us though. The polar bear exhibit was quite good. The observation room was half under water and half above water. One polar bear in particular was extremely playful. We must have stood and watched that bear play with a large plastic toy (it looked like a 3 foot gray Tylenol pill) for 20 minutes. He swam and dove and tossed that toy all over the place. The entire crowd thought he was great. The tiger was another great exhibit because one of the tigers decided to pace directly in front of the observation window. We watched him for quite a while as well.
The zoo is enormous, and it was quite a challenge to find the best path through the zoo with a minimum of back-tracking. Unlike most zoos, the San Diego zoo is not set up so that you can just walk in a circle around and see everything.
So, if you ever find yourself in the San Diego area, reserve a day to treat yourself to the San Diego Zoo (and if you have time, take another day to check out the park that the zoo is in, Balboa Park - it’s got tons of museums and a botanical garden.) Oh, and don’t forget to check out the pictures from the zoo in our image gallery!
Tags: animals, california, photo, photographs, photos, san diego, zoo