Eight things I learned this week, 03

[Part three of a recurring series…part one, part two.]

Starting in June 2009, the US government will require a passport or “similar federally approved document” for entering the US by land. Both US and Canadian citizens living near the borders are unhappy. [Salon]

Fifty percent of the Australia’s houses sit less than 8 miles from a beach. Eighty percent of Australians live within 80 miles of the sea. [Architectural Record]

The capacity of Niagara Falls is controlled artificially; the flow is doubled during normal tourist visiting hours. [Newsweek]

As a reward for returning the Stradivarius left in the backseat of Mohamed Khalil’s taxi, violinist Philippe Quint gave the cabbie a reward of $100, a private 30-minute performance in the taxi waiting area at Newark, and tickets for him and his family to Quint’s next performance at Carnegie Hall. Khalil also received a medal from the city of Newark. The Stradivarius is valued at $4 million. [BBC]

Toilet bowls are cleaner than the average computer keyboard. Studies differ on how much cleaner…1/5? 1/67? 1/400? [Gelf Magazine]

When actively used, women’s ballet shoes can last anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 days. [Arizona Daily Star]

For $6,000, you can buy a Worldchanging Carbon Clean Slate gift for your graduating high schooler, which will offset all the climate emissions that your kid has accumulated from birth. For $25,000, you can offset their entire life. [Worldchanging]

By 2015, Moscow will have the 10 tallest office buildings in Europe. The rent for Moscow office space is currently higher than in midtown Manhattan. [Newsweek]

And finally, a holdover from the last week (which itself was a holdover from the week before). Bob Herbert got his “a third of all American high school students drop out” stat from a report prepared by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center. As I erroneously surmised last week, the ~10% rate from here is not an annual dropout rate. I don’t know how you get from 10% of 16-24 year-olds not having a high school diploma in 2005 to 1/3 of all students dropping out of high school. Final update.

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