The facts are all there when it comes to global warming. There’s the fast melting Arctic ice and the rising temperatures in Antarctica, to cite two alarming trends. Here’s a most interesting pie chart that buttress this science-is-on-our-side point. And another reason why RailRiders UVA sun-blocking clothing– sorry for the shameless promo — will help you weather the climate-changin’ times.

While Google Maps has shrunken the world down to our desktop, that doesn’t mean we have mastered world geography, or for that matter, even right here in the U.S.  And we’re not just talking state capitals. So to test your knowledge of geography, here’s a simple quiz that recently appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. We have selected 10 questions from its complete list of 50. To find the answers, click on the continued reading link.

1.What major city’s name officially starts with “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de” and ends with “del Rio de Porciuncula”?

2. Which is larger: Great Britain or California?

3. They don’t call it British Honduras anymore. What do they call it?

4. What is the only U.S. state capital that shares a border with a foreign country?

5. Which continent is Greenland considered part of?

6. What’s the only U.S. state named for a Greek island?

7. What is the only state in New England that doesn’t have an Atlantic coast?

8. Which two cities sit 5,772 miles apart, at either end of the Trans-Siberian Railway?

9. What is the only country in which you can see cheetahs and penguins in the wild?

10. Approximately what percentage of the earth’s surface is covered by water? Continue reading →

RailRiders Adventure Clothing has a long-standing interest in Earthbound matters. In fact, this concern goes with the territory for a company born at sea in the early 1990s, and now is known for “making the toughest clothes on the planet.” (For those new to RailRiders, our first product was padded jibe shorts for sailing. Our apparel line now includes many products for hiking, running, traveling. Of course, we haven’t stopped designing apparel for the sea. Our Bone Flats collection has been a success right from the start.) Yes, our planet. Intriguing isn’t it, to see how human time is measured against geological/biological time?

RailRiders Adventure Clothing will be presenting on a monthly basis movie clips from an adventure-oriented film that you might have never seen, or one that deserves watching again. To launch our new adventure-in-cinema series, here’s scenes from the 1972 German classic, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (“Aguirre, Der Zorn Gottes”). Directed by Werner Herzog, who, in recent years has filmed grizzlies and life in Antarctica, “Aguirre” is the bizarre saga of a 16th century conquistador’s search for “El Dorado,” the lost city of gold, in the hidden reaches of the Amazon basin. The late German actor Klaus Kinski played Aguirre, whose tyrannical control over his party of explorers was so complete that they have no recourse but to follow him on his crazed quest, even as they are being killed off by the unseen Indians.

Here’s the contest photo.  Tibetan Buddhist nuns taking a lunch break from repairing a local road in Daofu, China. Contest rules are simple: we are looking for a caption that is humorous, pithy, or both! Submit your entry to info@railriders.com. Contest deadline has been extended to February 1, 2012

Long before the initials TSA stood for anything but for what a child might find in his bowl of alphabet soup, or for those my-bladder-is-about-to-burst delays on the tarmac and the plane’s two disgusting lavatories are under siege by their own occupy movement, flying used to be fun. Feeling nostalgic for those friendlier skies? Here’s a vintage photo from 1967 as passengers relax in the lounge aboard a Braniff International flight.

Here’s an alphabetical-by-state cheat sheet culled from movies. The intro is from Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, then segues into 25th Hour, Forrest Gump, Juno, Simpsons Movie, Arsenic & Old Lace, Pelican Brief, Sling Blade, Pale Rider, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off…and ends with Unforgiven and Roxanne. Complete list of films here.

The much ballyhooed, big-budget Steven Spielberg sci-fi family drama on Fox, “Terra Nova,” begins in the year 2149, a period when all life on planet Earth is choking to death on air pollution and over population. But faster than you can say H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, off-screen scientists have discovered a Stephen Hawkian rift in space-time that allows VIPs and useful handymen and professional sorts to travel 85 million years back in the past and thus offering these pilgrims from the future a second chance to reboot Earth and save humanity from global-warming skeptics and EPA deregulation.

But 85,000,000 years is an awfully long time to screw up things, especially considering that humans only split off from the chimp family tree 5,000,000 years ago. Can you imagine what 80 million years of evolution would do to the human genome? Would we all look like the offspring of Lady Gaga and a bio-engineered cyborg? Also, why go back in time all those years and be vulnerable to life extinction phenomenons such as meteors the size of Manhattan smashing into the planet? Why not set the wayback dial to just before the age of the Industrial Revolution?

At the center of this high-concept series that shamelessly melds Avatar, Lost, and Jurassic Park, is the racially blended Shannon family (father Jim is an ex-cop who was doing hard time, his wife Elisabeth who is some kind of super doctor, and their three children, Josh,  an annoyingly rebellious teen who hates his dad, Maddy who is brainy and insecure, and button-cute, small-fry Zoe.) The Shannons are pretty much like almost all dysfunctional TV families– conflict and tension are present but never insuperable.

Terra Nova was filmed primarily in Queensland, Australia– and the natural setting with its backdrop of mountains and rain forest does look gorgeous — but the series is severely undermined by atrociously lame dialogue and a total absence of awe by the characters plopped into a prehistorical past. What do the Shannons care most about right after quantum-shooting through time? It is who’s sleeping in which Ikea-furnished bedroom. CGI special-effects dinosaurs and an armed renegade group called the Sixers provide most of the initial action.  But there’s an iron-clad cardinal rule attached to any Spielberg show or film: kids will get injured, but never killed. So when a pack of carnivorous reptiles (nicknamed slashers), which are the size of a school bus, attack a group of kids who sneaked outside the compound’s gate, no one is eaten like a tasty hor’doeuvre or sliced in half by their razor-sharp teeth or claws. This is one slasher pic that fails to rise to the squeamish occasion, although one of the adult Sixers does get munched like a shrimp on a barbie.

With its cringe-inducing dialogue, two-dimensional characters, and obvious plot developments, the only way to effectively get through a Terra Nova episode without gagging might be with one of those respirator masks from 2149.