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Side Trips
Briefs: Stockyard landmark
By JANET K. KEELER
Published July 17, 2005
The Union Stockyard Gate on Chicago's South Side has been proclaimed a literary landmark in honor of a novel that exposed the bloody, unsanitary work once done in its shadow.
The proclamation was made in June to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Upton Sinclair's muck-raking novel The Jungle, a book credited with spurring a successful movement to clean up the meatpacking industry.
The gate is located at Exchange Avenue and Peoria Street.
FLOOD OF BUSINESS
Holiday Inn Express seems to be going into the bathroom-accessories business. It has been selling hundreds of Kohler StaySmart showerheads each week at $75 apiece. The devices, designed to deliver consistent pressure, are part of a $20-million, systemwide bathroom upgrade. Other changes: thick towels and waffle-weave shower curtains hung on curved rods that give bathers 25 percent more room in the shower. Go to www.hiexpress.com and click on Company Store.
WORTH DRIVING
The world's best drives according to Men's Journal magazine:
- Pacific Coast Highway, Calif.
- A2 Autobahn, Germany
- Rubicon Trail, Calif.
- (Old) Route 66, United States
- Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah
- Needles Highway/Iron Mountain Road, S.D.
- Alaska Highway, Canada/United States
- Uspallata Pass, Argentina and Chile
- Amalfi Coast, Italy
- Blue Ridge Parkway, Va. and N.C.
LAST-MINUTE TRAVEL
Some Web sites to help you plan a vacation at a moment's notice:
- www.lastminutetravel.com Hundreds of deals on flights, hotels, cruises, cars and packages as well as vacations with Funjet Vacation charters. Top 20 Deals is also a feature of the site.
- www.11thhour.com Weekly specials, many for travel a month to six weeks out. Search for vacations and cruises from a revolving inventory of more than 15-million deals. The site's 24-hour hold on bookings gives buyers a chance to change their minds, but once booked, the deal is done.
- www.site59.com You can book three ways: flight and hotel with optional car; flight and car; or hotel and car. Packages to destinations in North and South America and Europe can be purchased 14 days to three hours before departure.
- www.expedia.com/lastminute Ever-changing inventory of flights, hotels, rental cars, cruises and packages. When you enter the name of the city from which you're traveling, a selection of deals will appear.
Compiled by JANET K. KEELER from staff reports and the Associated Press, Knight Ridder Newspapers and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. You can reach Keeler at 727 893-8586 or krieta@sptimes.com
GEOQUIZ
The world's appetite for energy is becoming ever more voracious. The United States consumes 25 percent of the world's energy. But on a per-capita basis, Americans are only the second-largest energy consumers among the G8 countries.
Which one of these G8 countries ranks first in energy consumption per person?
A. Japan
B. Italy
C. Russia
D. Canada
The answer is Canada. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Canada, with a population of almost 30-million, consumed 23 percent more energy per person than the United States in 2002.
There are a number of reasons why Canadians use so much energy. Among them are the country's cold winters, vast distances and the very energy-intensive process of extracting crude oil from Alberta's abundant tar sands.
Japan has the second-largest economy in the world, but its per capita energy consumption was only about half that of the United States (as of 2002). On average, each Japanese used about 172-million British Thermal Units, a common energy measure. Each American used 339-million BTUs.
Italians consumed 133-million BTUs of energy per person as of 2002, almost 25 percent less than the Japanese. Italy uses less energy on a per capita basis than any other G8 nation.
As a legacy from Soviet times, Russia's economy is not very energy-efficient. Still, Russians rank only as the third-heaviest energy users among the G8 countries, with a per-capita energy consumption of 191-million BTUs.
Each Russian used more than twice as much energy as the average Pole, almost six times as much as the average Chinese and 14 times more than the average Indian.
- www.theglobalist.com
[Last modified July 15, 2005, 09:28:03]
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