Results tagged “Pittsburgh” from Intelligent Travel Blog

The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, like its namesake, has attitude. Its shows often offer sly, wry comments on the links between culture and media. In an exhibit mounted as the G-20 economic summit meets in the city, 20 outspoken cartoonists from the member nations have contributed their takes on global warming, unemployment, Carla Bruni, and the size of President Obama's ears. "Drawn to the Summit" will be on display through October 18. Closed today as G-20 spouses visit, the museum will reopen tomorrow. Click here for a slideshow of images.

--Chris O'Toole

Travel writer Chris O'Toole sends along a dispatch from a quiet corner of Pittsburgh, where the G-20 Summit is being hosted this week.

Before they discuss firing up the world economy, leaders at the G-20 Summit, beginning today in Pittsburgh, get a chance to chill out in one of my favorite places, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Tonight President Obama welcomes the A-list crowd for dinner at this classic Victorian glasshouse with a twenty-first century twist. Tweaks like geothermal heating tubes, passive cooling in its indoor tropical forest and a grass roof atop its subterranean entrance makes it one of the greenest greenhouses in the world.

"Here Is Where," is the latest column on the Intelligent Travel blog. In conjunction with his upcoming book, "Here Is Where: In Search of America's Great Forgotten History" we're going to follow historian and Legacy Project founder Andrew Carroll as he drives, flies, walks, boats, buses, bikes, and hikes to seek out little-known historic sites in all 50 states. Bookmark all of his posts here.

Most accounts of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's three-year trek across the continent have the expedition beginning in Missouri on May 14, 1804. But the first journal entry was in fact written by Lewis on August 31, 1803--from Pennsylvania.

"Left Pittsburgh this day at 11 ock with a party of 11 hands 7 of which are soldiers, a pilot and three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage," Lewis notes in the first line. Two sentences later we learn how close the whole journey came to unraveling from the get-go; while one of his crew mates was holding an "airgun" Lewis had brought, the rifle accidentally discharged and shot a bystander in the head. "[T]he ball passed through the hat of a woman about 40 yards distanc," Lewis writes in his error-ridden prose. "[S]he feel instantly and the blood gusing from her temple... [but] in a minute she revived to our enespressable satisfaction."

They departed soon after.

I thought the site would be a fitting a place to officially start my own coast-to-coast adventure, so I flew into Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C. (my home) the evening of July 5th. David Grinnell, who is the chief archivist at the Senator John Heinz History Center and could not have been more helpful, informed me that the site was near the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge at 11th street (pictured, above).

Greetings, city-lovers! Lindsay Welsh calls Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home, and she's got heaps of advice on what to see and do in the city.

Want to see your city on IT? Copy and paste our list of fill-in-the-blank questions into an e-mail, fill in your answers, and send your responses to IntelligentTravel@ngs.org. And if you're still waiting for us to feature yours, fear not! We're going to keep posting as long as we keep getting them (please include photos and links!).

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is My City

The first place I take a visitor from out of town is The Strip.

When I crave Middle Eastern cuisine I always go to Ali Baba's in Oakland.  This place has been here for years and so has the decor but the food is great and service is quick.  BYOB

To escape the hustle bustle I head for a walk in Frick Park. 

If I want to people watch I go to the Beehive in Southside or Kiva Han in Oakland.

Pittsburgh, aka "Roboburgh," has long been a hub of cutting-edge robotic technology, and Chris O'Toole downloads the details on the newest exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, which opens this weekend.

Robots: so smart, so shiny, so smooth. They're the celebrities of the machine world (next to the iPhone). So it's fitting that the most glamorous and well-known machines have gathered in one place, at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center, so humans can pay tribute.

The Robot Hall of Fame honors movie droids like R2D2 and C-3PO, creepy HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, and a classic 1928 pin-up girl: Maria, the shapely robot of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. But it also credits real-word winners like NASA's Mars Sojourner, the DaVinci surgical robot, and everyone's favorite living room pet, the Roomba.  

The hall of fame is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, which inducts new members each year. It's part of the world's largest permanent museum show on robotic sensing, thinking, and acting. It opens tomorrow, June 13. Roboworld features over 30 exhibits packed with super-smart demonstrations of how robots collect data, process information, roll, fly, and build things. And it has a few lovable greeters, like Andy, a robo-thespian, and Athina, a sassy chat-bot who'll converse on any topic. She even laughs at her own jokes, like this one: how many humans does it take to change a light bulb? Her answer: three. One to weep uncontrollably; one to cut its soft fingers while attempting to change the bulb; and one to program the robot to do it. Hey, at least we're good for something.

Photo: Andy the robo-thespian via The Carnegie Science Center

Sometimes, I think I've become almost too reliant on Google Maps to help me find my way. Last weekend, I was out with a friend trying to get to Mount Vernon to see the holiday decorations at George Washington's home. We plugged the place name into my friend's iPhone and started driving, and it wasn't until we pulled up to the Pirates Cove Waterpark (closed for the season) that we realized we'd been Googleduped (a phrase I'm coining here, for lack of better options).

So I was tickled when I came across the Street with a View project, a collection of folks in Pittsburgh who teamed up with the Google Maps Street Team to present a more interesting glimpse into the lives of some city residents who live, work, and play along one alleyway. Spearheaded by two art school grads of Carnegie Mellon University, Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett, and taking a page from the Improv Everywhere gang, the group staged a marathon, a parade, a mad-scientists laboratory, and a sword fight all along the route. The Google Maps crew captured their antics as they drove down the street, and the results can now be found on the actual Street View of Sampsonia Way.

I think it's brilliant, and a fun way to inject some personality into the Google Maps experience. If there had been an actual pirate waiting for me at Pirates Cove, I would not have been nearly as upset at being Googleduped.

Have you been Googleduped? Tell us about it in the comments below.