Organ Registry?

There’s no such thing as an international organ donation registry? How do the laws work, say if you die in another country, for example? I can’t register in Australia because I don’t live there, and probably it wouldn’t matter? Say I’d be elsewhere in the world, would the hospital be able to take tissues or organs?

King Fahd Int’l

The world’s largest airport, by area, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Screenshots from Google Sightseeing.

Tunnel to a Dream

Satellite image of The Bering Strait, with Siberia on the left, Alaska to the right, and the Diomede Islands situated a beautiful dead-centre.

There’s a competition underway to design a bridge linking an 85km gap between the United States and the former USSR. This is around twice the length of the Channel that links Britain and France. The reality is that it’s highly improbable that any physical structure would ever actually come of this… But that doesn’t stop one being totally oh-so hooked on the idea. A distance of a measly 85km (give or take a few clicks) seems downright goofy in its shortness?

This project is a dream project attempting to connect two continents. In a wide sense, it includes building a tunnel or a bridge at both ends of the strait, extending an existing railways of the United States and Russia, and laying a world highway around the coasts of the world, which require a massive amount of construction.

Once the connection is made, the railway will go through both Uelen of Russia and Cape Prince of Wales of the United States linking the North American Rail System. A new highway will link the existing coastal highway of Uelen – Dezhnev – Tunytlino at Russia and Wales – Tin City – York at the United States.

There has been scientific stirrings that perhaps, in the past, lower water levels would have exposed a ridge allowing our ancestors to stroll between what is now Siberia and Alaska. This would also have been how the North and South American continents were originally populated.

It just seems particularly interesting to imagine a connection of the world’s extremities. Not counting the fact that these aforementioned extremities are but an illusion stemmed from the reproduction of a ubiquitous world map projections. Rarely would you stumble on a 2D global image in where Australia, for example, is ‘centered’ on the sheet. Rather Australia, more often that not, maintains a rather forlorn far-right posting. And why is this, anyway?

Further reading on the Bering Strait here at BLDG BLOG, and the Discovery Channel website.