Monday, November 28, 2011

Edinburgh - Top 10 Attractions

!±8± Edinburgh - Top 10 Attractions

The first and most obvious attraction is Edinburgh Castle - you could easily spend half a day here. As well as the castle itself there's the Scottish Crown Jewels (along with the Stone of Destiny), Mons Meg (a huge bombard cannon), the Prisons of War Exhibition, the Scottish National War Memorial, the National War Museum of Scotland, the Royal Scots Regimental Museum and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Regimental Museum.

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, founded in 1670, is the 2nd oldest botanic garden in the UK. It's both a scientific institution and a tourist attraction.

Though originally located within Edinburgh, the gardens were moved out of the city in Leith to be away from the pollution. The Temperate Palm House, built in 1858, found here is the tallest such building in the UK. Nearly 34,000 plants are grown at the Botanics in Edinburgh or its three smaller offshoots located in other parts of Scotland.

The Saint Giles' Cathedral, though technically it's not a cathedral as it doesn't have a Bishop, is a major landmark in the city of Edinburgh. Easily found between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, this church is the largest Church of Presbyterianism and contains the Chapel of the Order of the Thistle. Its crown tower is quite distinctive and the cathedral is easily spotted from other vantage points in the city.

The Scotch Whisky Heritage Centre - remember Scotch Whisky is spelled without an 'e'! This is an excellent place to visit for all fans of this distinctive whisky.

A trip to the centre can lead to a tour where you'll learn all about the making of whisky, the difference between the various types such as single malt, etc, the people who made whisky the worldwide success it is today. And there's also a free drink included in the entrance price.

Edinburgh Zoo is located on Corstorphine Hill and offers nice views over the city, but that isn't why you would visit here. This is Edinburgh's 2nd most popular attraction after Edinburgh Castle. The animals you can expect to find here include rhinos, jaguars, koalas, lions, tigers, a polar bear, and many more. In addition there's much scientific work done including research on behaviour, conservation and captive breeding programmes.

The Museum of Childhood was opened in 1955 by town councillor Patrick Murray and is thought to be the first of its kind in the world. In addition to learning about how children were raised, dressed and educated in the first half of the last century, there's also a huge collection of toys, including dolls, teddy bears, train sets and tricycles from all over the world.

The National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library for Scotland and is home to about 7 million books, 13 million printed items and over 1.6 million maps! These are housed in a number of buildings in the city centre. The most significant items of this vast collection include the original manuscript of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the Gutenberg Bible, the First Folio of Shakespeare and a few significant others.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse (aka Holyrood Palace) was originally founded as a monastery by David I of Scotland in the 12th century. The Abbey still exists as a ruin to this day.

Since the 15th century, there has been a palace on the site, used as an official residence of the Kings and Queens of Scotland. Today it is used by Queen Elizabeth II as a summer residence. While there you can check out the Royal Apartments and see the various styles of decoration as it has changed over time; and you can visit the Queens Gallery, which displays choice works of art from the royal collection.

Arthur's Seat is located just outside the city of Edinburgh. This is the tallest peak in a range of hills found within Holyrood Park. Due to its name there are many who believe the hill has some connection with King Arthur but there is no evidence of this.

The hill is an easy ramble so if you'd like a quick walk in the Scottish countryside you won't get better than this. When you're visiting the hill be sure to check out the Salisbury Crags, these cliffs are 46 metres tall and are popular with Rock Climbers.

Edinburgh Festivals are also kind of like a tourist attraction and draw huge crowds. Festivals include Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Edinburgh Hogmanay, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the Edinburgh Mela, the Edinburgh International Science Festival and the Imaginate Festival.


Edinburgh - Top 10 Attractions

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Dine on Gourmet Light Fare and Great Atmosphere at Walt Disney World

!±8± Dine on Gourmet Light Fare and Great Atmosphere at Walt Disney World

During a jam-packed Walt Disney World vacation you'll sometimes just want to grab a light, but delicious dinner at one of Disney's lounges. Below are a few great choices for appetizers, small plates, and fine wine:

Narcoossee's (Disney's Grand Floridian Resort)

At a small bar within the restaurant you can order from the extensive wine list along with appetizers like crab cakes, Prince Edward Island mussels, and artisan cheese. Finish with the restaurant's signature key lime creme brulee. Time your meal around the Magic Kingdom fireworks show easily seen from the resort's marina or the restaurant's wrap-around veranda.

Mizner's (Disney's Grand Floridian Resort)

Just upstairs from the Grand Floridian's marvelous lobby, this classy bar offers fine wines, single malt scotch, and appetizers from Citrico's, one of the resort's signature restaurants. Feast on warm onion tart, artisan cheese, and sautéed shrimp with lemon, white wine, tomatoes, and feta with the additional bonus of live big-band music.

Territory Lounge (Disney's Wilderness Lodge)

A rustic bar offering Pacific Northwest wines, cocktails, and tasty Applewood smoked bacon and tomato or pulled pork and coleslaw flatbread.

California Grill Lounge (Disney's Contemporary Resort)

Disney's best lounge high atop the Contemporary Resort with great Magic Kingdom fireworks views. You'll have to check in at the second-floor podium to be allowed up the elevator and waits are often very long, but you'll be rewarded with pristine sushi and sashimi, amazing flatbreads, inventive appetizers, and over one hundred wines available by the glass.

Il Mulino Bar (Walt Disney World Swan)

One of Disney's coolest bars where platters of Italian antipasto, wood-fired pizza, oysters on the half shell, and more are accompanied by Italian wines and classic cocktails. Finish with homemade gelato or, my favorite dessert, tartufo, Italian gelato encased in chocolate and served with whipped cream and zabaglione. There's even an outside terrace, perfect for balmy evenings.

Todd English's Bluezoo Z Bar (Walt Disney World Dolphin)

An amazing lounge where you'll find an ultra-hip atmosphere, delicious flatbreads, super fresh raw bar, crab nachos, tuna tartare, and lobster broccoli stuffed cheddar potatoes along with desserts the likes of warm molten chocolate cake and caramelized apple lasagna, all accompanied by fine wines, champagne, and extraordinary martinis.

Kimono's (Walt Disney World Swan)

Great sushi, Oriental hot appetizers (gyoza, Kobe beef skewers, duck satay, and tempura), and a full wine and bar menu along with super-fun karaoke.

Shula's Lounge (Walt Disney World Dolphin)

Shula's restaurant's full menu is available at this adjoining sports-type bar with great appetizer choices like Oyster's Rockefeller, chilled Maine or flash fried lobster, steak tartare, and beefsteak tomato and gorgonzola salad. Top if off with the signature chocolate soufflé for dessert.

Rix Lounge (Disney's Coronado Springs)

A fun lounge offering DJ driven music or a live percussion band as well as margaritas, mojitos, and champagne. Food choices include chorizo flatbread, sashimi tuna, smoked salmon tartare, and citrus chicken skewers.

Tambu Lounge (Disney's Polynesian Resort)

Overlooking the lush grounds and lobby of the Polynesian Resort is this small lounge just outside Ohana's restaurant serving duck pot stickers, honey-ginger chicken wings, and crab cakes as well as tropical drinks.

Stone Crab Lounge (Downtown Disney)

If you love whopping platters of fresh seafood then head to this bar at Downtown Disney's Fulton's Crab House. Feast on cold seafood platters of lobster, crab, and shrimp, or steaming bowls of clams and mussels either inside at the lively bar or outside at a waterfront table overlooking sparkling Lake Buena Vista Lagoon.

Wolfgang Puck Grand Café's Sushi Bar (Downtown Disney)

If you are spending an evening at Downtown Disney find a seat at the this very popular part of the Café, then order up a glass of sake accompanied by marvelous sushi and sashimi. Or choose something from the full Café menu with appetizers and small plates the likes of butternut squash soup, vegetable spring rolls, Wolfgang's famous wood-fired pizzas, truffle Maytag blue kettle chips, or cobb salad.


Dine on Gourmet Light Fare and Great Atmosphere at Walt Disney World

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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Waterford Lismore Roly Poly Old Fashioned Glasses, Set of 4

!±8± Waterford Lismore Roly Poly Old Fashioned Glasses, Set of 4

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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Predicting the Future

!±8± Predicting the Future

We all predict the future. When we read a story, educators tell us that we are unconsciously trying to guess what comes next in the story. It's part of the fun of reading. Sometimes the author will give us hints about what is coming next such as using the writing technique of foreshadowing.

Here is an example of how the average person might make a prediction. Someone buys an old, used car. A friend says, "You just wasted your money. It'll break down within the year (prediction). You would have done better buying a new one." We are not only good at making a lot of predictions we are also good at covering our tracks when the prediction doesn't pan out. If the car is purring along after a year, the friend might say, "Of course, it lasted longer than a year. You took better care of it than most people." After two years, the friend might be saying, "Well, I guess you just got lucky and got a better-than-average care." Very few people would say, "I was flat wrong about my prediction because your car is still running."

Of course, we mortals act like this. That's because we are not professional prognosticators. We all know that the pros do a much better job at making predictions. That is why they are interviewed for the knowledge they have to share.

Oops, maybe they aren't all that good. Several years ago, a psychologist decided to check out how well professional forecasters actually do. Philip Tetlock is a professor at the Haas School of Business in Berkeley. He decided to find out if experts who actually made their living in the field of politics and economics could predict events accurately in their field of study. He found people who regularly offered advice and made public comments on a variety of trends in their specific fields of expertise. He chose 284 experts to study. Over the course of the study, the experts had made an amazing total of 82,361 forecasts.

Let's see how these experts did. Would you pass the envelope, please. Okay, let's look at the results of these super mortals. Oh - something must be wrong here. The results are unimpressive. Did they do only slightly better than you or I would have done? No. Did they do the same as Jane and John Doe might have done. Nope. Omagosh. They actually did worse than the average person would have done by just guessing.

The study also found that the more the experts knew the less reliable they were at guessing what would happen to the world in the future. Dr. Tetlock explained this by saying that experts very quickly reach a point where their expertise does not give them any futher advantage over non-experts. He does not believe specialists in any field can outperform nonspecialists who are intelligent and can stay abreast of events and ideas. His study also showed that forecasters who were well known experts would tend to exaggerat the confidence they had in their forecasts. He concluded that "Experts in demand were more overconfident than their colleagues who eked out existences far from the limelight."

This is terrible. Why do our experts do so poorly? The best guess is based on human nature. People love to be right but hate being wrong. So, when we make a guess (forecast) we "fall in love" with our choice. No matter how it turns out we stick with the choice, justifying it right to the bitter end. This seems to be exactly what plagued the experts.

You would think that really smart people would learn from their mistakes. Even though experts are smarter than most of us, they are also human and subject to the thinking errors that affect all humans. One (of the many) thinking errors that might explain why smart people don't learn from their failed predictions is called confirmation bias. This error describes how most people tend to dismiss new information that doesn't fit with what they already believe. So if experts really believe their predictions actually come true most of the time, then they will automatically refuse to accept the failures.

Other psychologists think that maybe too much information may also be a handicap for accurate predictions. By having more information than the rest of us, an expert can marshal more facts to support her predictions. Although these predictions may be more appealing to the average person, they are still subject to the same failure rate.

Even when a prediction does come true, an expert will believe they had made the prediction with a great amount of certainty. Dr. Tetlock found out this did not match the data they had collected. In other words the experts were actually more tentative prior to the prediction than what they thought after the predicted event.

This also happens to people who believe they have special powers to see into the future, like psychics. Years ago, a young woman contacted me to tell me that she had precognitive dreams. For example, she would dream about a terrible tragedy like an airplane crash prior to it actually happening. After she gave me some very impressive examples, I suggested she write down the details of her next tragedy dream immediately upon waking in the morning. After writing down the details, she was to seal the paper in an envelope and mail it to me immediately. She called me a few weeks later and excitedly told me about a dream she had about an accident that had killed many people. When she read about it a few days later all the details in her dream matched the newspaper account. I had her come to my office and we opened her letter together. She was surprised, shocked and disappointed with what she had written. The information was not even close to the event in the newspaper. Her mind had tricked her with something called retrograde memory. As she read about the accident in the newspaper the information went into that part of her brain that held long-term memory. As she tried to recall what she had dreamed, the dream details were replaced with the actually details.

How about those of us who buy into the predictions made by other people? Why would we be so gullible? There are many factors that make it more likely we will do this. One reason is that people tend to be more willing to believe information that has a lot of detail. One study asked people which of two health policies they might choose. The first policy covered their hospital expenses for any reason. The second policy also covered their hospitalization expenses for all diseases and accidents. Even though the coverage on these policies were identical, most people said they would be willing to pay a higher insurance premium for the second policy. More detail. This might mean we are more likely to accept a prediction if it has a lot of details instead of one that is less descriptive.

All of this is to say that people should be cautious about making decisions. A few years a really smart person made the mistake of making his prediction public. William Dembski is a Ph.D. mathematician who did not understand the pitfalls of predictions. Oddly enough, even though he teaches in an academic setting, he is a vocal critic of Darwin and evolution. He believes that evolution will never be able to answer how life evolved on our planet and is a strong supporter of something called Intelligent Design. He was so confident in his beliefs that he wagered a bottle of single-malt scotch about the truth of his beliefs. He publicly said that if the issue of teaching evolution or Intelligent Design in schools should ever go to trial, Intelligent Design would win hands down. Then the Dover trial took place. Intelligent Design was thoroughly dismissed (by a conservative judge) as an acceptable subject for school biology classes. Like many prognosticators, Dr. Dembski will not admit defeat. Evidently he has never given away that bottle of single-malt scotch.

Another smart person is more humble. Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics and a professor at Princeton University, says that "making predictions is hard ... especially about the future, and sometimes about the recent past." Even that great philosopher about life, Yogi Berra, agreed with Dr. Krugman when he said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

If you are interested in the book from which much of this material was taken, it is called "Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? How Can we Know?" (2005), Princeton University Press.


Predicting the Future

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