This is the worlds shortest escalator located at the Kawasaki More’s department store in Japan.  With a vertical height of just 834mm the escalator was even certified by the Guinness Book of Records in 1989.

What you don’t see in this video is there are another set of stairs just after you get off the escalator.

This is a tale about an encounter I had while on holiday recently. While I was relaxing at a bar, I made the acquaintance of a really cute blonde. We hit it off – when she found out that I was from Manchester, she went crazy. She loved Mancunians. We spent a couple of hours chatting and drinking, and had a really great time. When it was time to leave, I managed to convince her to walk with me – my hotel was pretty close to the bar. Turns out that stoplights are a great place to sneak a few kisses. My blonde cutie agreed.

By the time we got to the hotel, we were on fire from all the passionate kissing. We stumbled towards the elevator. This particular elevator had a clear glass back to it and you could see the entire interior of the hotel through it. The room I was staying in was on the third floor, so I pressed “3.”

When the elevator doors closed, I put my hand behind her neck, tugged at her hair and pulled her as close as possible. We started kissing again, and these kisses put all those previous kisses to shame. All of a sudden, right when it started getting really intense, the elevator pinged. We had reached the third floor, but since we were having such a good time, I hit the elevator button for floor ‘19’ – the highest floor in the hotel.

We lost ourselves in each other as the elevator chugged steadily upwards. Not only did we lose ourselves, but also we lost our ability to notice anything outside of our little kissing circle. Without our noticing, the elevator had gone up all the way to the 19th floor and back down to the lobby.

She put her leg around me and went for my neck. I leaned back to give her better access, opened my eyes a little and looked through the glass wall of the elevator. In front of us there was a security guard and three people staring at us. I started laughing, causing the blonde to cease her assault on my neck and look through the glass wall. She started laughing as well, along with the three people. However, the security guard was annoyed.

I hit the ‘3’ button and the elevator took off with us still laughing. This time, we went straight to the room. What a spectacular and hilarious night!

It is recommended that every person perform 30 minutes of moderately challenging physical activity five times a week, though less than one third of adults in the United Kingdom commit to this lifestyle. This along with poor diet choices has helped over half the adults in the UK become overweight. Out of that number, 23% of women and 22% of men are obese. This has caused rates of type 2 diabetes in adults and children to skyrocket which can dramatically shorten one’s lifespan and cause blindness and circulation issues.

Obesity is spreading alarmingly fast and part of the problem is not just diet, but partially because of the modern sedentary lifestyle. People can get to work using cars and trains, then arrive at their desk thanks to escalators and lifts and really only walk a few steps a days in order to go about their daily lives. Every opportunity to raise the heart rate, burn more calories, and build muscle should be taken to prevent becoming overweight.

Many people overuse the wide availability of lifts today. Ideally, this convenience should be reserved for those who can not or would have a very difficult time traveling up the stairs. Instead, perfectly healthy adults will choose to use the lift when traveling up only a couple levels. Lazy habits such as this, if incorporated in everyday life, will make a person reliant on lifts and other modern conveniences.

As a nation, the United Kingdom is dramatically gaining weight. There is no doubt that using the stairs instead of the lift daily can help improve personal health. While 80% of weight loss is a result of dieting instead of exercise, it is well accepted in the medical community that regular exercise is key in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and living longer.

It is important in combating obesity to find ways to make the most impact with every activity. This will help lung performance as well as help build muscle tissue and start up the metabolism. Muscle tissue helps burn calories throughout the day, so even when sitting at a desk, a person that took the stairs that morning, is still burning calories from that work.

On the long list of common phobias that people fear the most, claustrophobia is in the top five. For many people, even just the thought of being confined in a small space is enough to cause them to break out into a sweat and make their heart race.

This is why the ordeal Nicholas White experienced is all the more horrifying.

White worked in the McGraw Hill Building in downtown Manhattan late Friday night to meet a deadline for the publisher, he decided to step away from his desk and take a smoking break. He went outside and had a few relaxing moments, and felt rejuvenated and energized enough to get back to work. However, on the elevator trip back up to his office at the 43rd level, the elevator stopped inexplicably at the 13th floor.

Frantically, White tried every emergency button and alarm switch, to no avail. His panicked attempts were visible on the security cameras, but for some reason, no one noticed for 41 hours, until White was released Sunday.

Understandably, White was rather traumatized by his ordeal. Confined alone in such a small space, without food or water, completely deprived of any sensory stimulation, is one of the most harrowing experiences a person can experience. White has been unable to work since the event, due to his ruined mindset from the stress of the event. Some doctors believe that White has post traumatic stress disorder from the incident.

Elevators are of course common place; it would be difficult to find an office building without one. Most people do not think twice about walking into an elevator. Yet elevator-related incidents, injuries, and deaths do occur. For instance, Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh entered an elevator in a Houston-area hospital in 2003; as he was walking into the elevator, the doors shut around him, and instead of releasing when they touched his body, the elevator started to raise while Nikaidoh struggled to escape. He was gruesomely killed in the accident, right in front of the other person in the elevator.

In a single year, elevators and escalators kill about 30 people and injure over 17,000. Current mandates do not demand inspections or approvals at the federal level, and instead leave it up to the states’ rulings.

Everyone is reading this long and fascinating story about elevators. I enjoyed the passage on elevator etiquette Instinctively, people know how to conduct themselves when boarding an elevator. A pair of strangers gravitate to the rear corners, another stands by the door, until the fourth arrives. Then these last two cover the front corners, opening the center for the fifth and whoever follows. As more arrive, they all re-position into open space.

The goal is to block potential intimacy and strive for maximum distance. A familiar code of subway riding and urinal sharing. Looking ahead is a must, with a slight vertical motion perhaps. Mirrors amplify the feeling of awkwardness.
Silence is customary, although generic small talk and neighborly greetings are reluctantly allowed.

Reminds me of two things.

1. People facing backward in The Great Candid Camera Stunt (and those not in
the stunt following their cue, like sheep)

2.This marvelous anecdote about Alfred Hitchcock:

Of Hitchcock, my favorite memory is an incident in New York, at the St.Regis Hotel in 1964. With Hitch red-faced and cheerful, and I a bit tipsy after some frozen daiquiris, we boarded the elevator on the 25th floor, riding in silence until the 19th, whereupon three evening-attired folks entered. Suddenly, he faces me and says, “Well, it was quite shocking, I must say there was blood everywhere!” Confused, I thought because of the many daiquiris that something was amiss, but he continued his tale: “There was a stream of blood coming from his ear and another from his mouth.” Certainly, all had recognized him but nobody would look. Two more arrived as he went on: “Of course, there was a huge pool of blood on the floor and his clothes were splattered with it. Oh! It was a horrible mess. Well, you can imagine…”It was apparent that everyone had stopped breathing, including myself. Now he glanced at me, I made a silly nod, and he again continued: “Blood all around! Well, I looked at the poor fellow and I said, Good God, man, what’s happened to you?” Just then, as the elevator doors opened to the lobby, Hitchcock said “And do you know what he told me?” and paused. Reluctantly, the amazed passengers departed the elevator, anxiously staring at the director while passing in silence. After foggy moments passed, I asked, “So what did he say?” Hitch put on a beatific smile and said,  “Oh nothing–that’s just my elevator story.”

The trouble may begin when the lift doors first separate to open. There is a tightness that wells up in the chest. Fear and anxiety flood in, and the heart beats at an accelerated pace the closer one walks to the elevator. Excessive sweating commences and irrational fears may set in long before the lift doors snap closed. The idea of being trapped inside the walls of the lift becomes very real. For a person suffering the debilitating effects of elevator phobia, this scenario is a common reaction felt keenly each time a lift is within sight.

For those who suffer with the fear of lifts, life can become very difficult. Especially for those who live in a larger city, elevator phobia may become an almost daily companion. The panic attack symptoms lay just below the surface, ready to come forward in the most ordinary circumstances of life. A trip to the doctor’s surgery or any other office building may quickly become a fight for sanity and composure. Avoiding lifts altogether may work for a while, but can make it very difficult to function normally. Running into an elevator is a very common part of normal adult life. A profound elevator phobia creates difficult social and work situations, often compounding the sufferer’s anxiety all the more.

Fortunately, there are several therapies that have proven effective in the treatment of elevator phobia. Elevator phobia is very often a conditioned fear, and learning to overcome the anxious response is quite possible.

Desensitization techniques work very well as well, but take a great deal of time to prove effective. Hypnotic therapy can provide relief for sufferers. Hypnotherapy quickly removes the automatic, unpleasant response surrounding experience with lifts and replaces it with a more pleasant reaction. Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP, works very well in combination with hypnosis. Seeking treatment for elevator phobia is the first step to living a life free of this paralyzing fear.

Skiing is always a thrilling adventure, but skiers may be a bit more nervous the next time they get into a chair lift. A new film explores what happens when an innocent ski trip goes very, very wrong. Some ski enthusiasts may be interested in taking a look at the film, despite the rather macabre take on their favorite hobby.

In the upcoming thriller Frozen, three young American skiers named Dan, Lynch, and Parker, portrayed by Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore, and Emma Bell, find that their holiday has turned deadly serious when they are left stranded on a chairlift after the resort closes, not to be reopened until the following weekend. Trapped and isolated, dangling at a dizzying height, and with no chance of rescue, the three friends must decide how far they are willing to go to survive. They soon discover that they have more to fear than just the rapidly dropping temperature.

The film is directed and written by Adam Green, who previously directed the 2007 horror film Hatchet and the 2000 comedy Coffee and Donuts. Anchor Bay Entertainment is the distributor. Shooting took place in February 2009 at Snowbasin, one of the oldest ski resorts in the United States, located in Ogden in the state of Utah. This is not the first time Snowbasin has received attention: it was previously seen hosting several events during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The film has received mostly positive early reviews, according to movie review site www.rottentomatoes.com, though it seems more likely to appeal to fans of horror movies than general audiences. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and was given limited release shortly thereafter. It is scheduled for a wider release on Friday, February 5, 2010 in the United States; no international release dates are available at this time. The film’s official website, where interested viewers may watch the official trailer and find out more information about the cast and crew, is located at http://www.frozen-film.com/. It also has an official Facebook page.

It’s the ultimate fantasy. You’ve been working after hours in the offices of your company’s downtown high-rise. Finally you glance at the clock: how did it get to be so late at night? You make your way down the foyer, press the button for the lift… and, much to your surprise, it’s not empty. The other passenger is a woman with blonde hair, veiled eyes, kissable lips, a neckline that shows just enough. (Or possibly the other passenger is a tall dark handsome stranger in an Armani suit. Sexual fantasies are not solely the prerequisite of the male gender.)

She doesn’t say a word. You glance at the control panel – the lobby button is lit. Yet somehow you know it’s going to take you more than the usual fifteen seconds to get there.

Your eyes lock. She doesn’t say a word as she hits the button marked “Stop,” and reaches for your tie to pull you closer with one hand while her other hand slowly begins to unbutton her blouse…

You know the rest of that story.

Or you should. Shagging in a lift is one of the most persistent erotic fantasies, and it doesn’t always involve an anonymous encounter. For that matter, it doesn’t always involve the “Stop” button.

Maybe it’s the allure of risky behavior. You’re in a public place that because of its closed doors and the necessity of standing very close to other people is simultaneously a private space. Yet the rules of personal space don’t apply. So what rules do?

Or maybe it’s the erotic posture. Sex standing up – because in most elevators except freight elevators there really is no room to lie down, and nobody fantasizes about sex in a freight elevator (unless you’re hot for the UPS driver.)

Or maybe it’s the physical sensation of the g-force, the actualization of Newton’s Second Law: as you accelerate upwards in a lift you feel heavier; lighter as you descend. Maybe what you’re really seeking is the weightlessness of freefall but gravity dictates you must settle for love – or sex in a lift.

Something tells me the people who set up the celebrations for this event were not thinking to clearly when they decided to mix fireworks and ticker tape.

Corinthians had just clinched the Brazilian championship and were celebrating the win in front of their fans when the fire starts. Not only are these nearly burnt but they also 15ft up in a scissor lift. They decided to hire the scissor lift to make the occasion memorable and they certainly achieved that.

Take a look at the video.

Here is the hamster elevator designed to get to places no hamster has gone before.  This hamster is particularly daring as he attempts to grab the hanging food despite the fact there is food already around the cage.   

The device is triggers when the hamster enters the platform and is whisked up to the level of the food hanging on some string.   You know it’s only a matter of time before hamsters actually have one of these in there cage.