Destination: United States
Interview With TSA Chief Kip Hawley
by Michael Yessis | 08.03.07 | 12:08 PM ET
Today security expert Bruce Schneier posts the last piece of a five-part interview with Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for the Transportation Security Administration Kip Hawley. The TSA chief has taken some public flogging during his tenure, and perhaps in an effort to rehabilitate the TSA’s poor image among travelers, he traded e-mails with Schneier. For his part, Schneier asked some tough questions. His first includes this: “Can you please convince me there’s not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers?” Let us know if you think Hawley’s answers should cause us to drop or raise the World Hum Travel-Terror Fatigue Level.
Related on World Hum:
* Man Detained by TSA for Writing ‘Kip Hawley is an Idiot’ on His Clear Plastic Carry-On Bag
* Security Expert: New Passports Vulnerable to Cloning, Sabotage
* Passports and Privacy: Here Come the RFID Chips
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Yahoo! BuzzJames Teitelbaum: Escape to the Isle of Tiki
by Jim Benning | 08.03.07 | 10:35 AM ET
"Tiki Road Trip" offers a guide to North America's greatest tiki sights. Jim Benning asks its author about the enduring allure of mai tais, beachcomber flotsam and all things "Polynesian pop."
U.S. State Department’s New Cultural Ambassadors: Ozomatli
by Jim Benning | 08.02.07 | 2:05 PM ET
Heading…
Russia to Plant Flag on North Pole Sea Bed
by Michael Yessis | 08.02.07 | 11:40 AM ET
It’s provocative actions like this that we had in mind when we selected the Northwest Passage as one of our Seven Wonders of the Shrinking Planet. According to the AP and other media reports, Russia’s Rossiya icebreaker has reached the North Pole, clearing way for scientists “to dive in two mini-submarines beneath the pole to a depth of more than 13,200 feet, and drop a metal capsule containing the Russian flag on the sea bed.” The goal of the expedition: to solidify a claim to the enormous oil and gas reserves that are believed to be stored beneath the floor of the Arctic Sea. Russia, however, isn’t the only country with interest in controlling the area.
New Travel Book: ‘The Year of the Goat’
by Michael Yessis | 08.02.07 | 10:41 AM ET
Full title: “The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese”
Authors: Margaret Hathaway, with photographs by Karl Schatz. Hathaway, according to the book’s Web site, “loves any combination of the following: reading, writing, cooking, napping, animal watching, traveling, making puppets, and being outdoors.” She also managed New York’s famed Magnolia Bakery. Schatz is “a photographer, picture editor, web designer, and journalist,” and the former online picture editor for Time Magazine.
Released: August 1, 2007
Travel genre: Food narrative, cheese-and goat-based
Security Expert: New Passports Vulnerable to Cloning, Sabotage
by Michael Yessis | 08.01.07 | 11:17 AM ET
Lukas Grunwald, “an e-passport consultant to the German parliament” according to a story in Wired, says the new U.S. passports have security flaws that could “allow someone to seize and clone the fingerprint image stored on the biometric e-passport, and to create a specially coded chip that attacks e-passport readers that attempt to scan it.” Grunwald is scheduled to elaborate on his findings at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas later this week. He’s one of many who have sounded alarms about the RFID chips in the new passports.
In Los Angeles, Among the Stars
by Jim Benning | 07.31.07 | 2:22 PM ET
After reading that actress Drew Barrymore wanted to become a travel writer, South Florida Sun-Sentinel travel editor Thomas Swick wrote a column suggesting he become her mentor. In fact, he thought he’d offer to do just that during a recent visit to Los Angeles. “But soon after that column appeared, I started to have second thoughts,” he confessed Sunday. “Now that I was in L.A. I wanted to find her and tell her to forget travel writing (no future) and ask if she’d give me acting lessons.”
Chicago’s ‘Ghetto Bus Tour’: Listening to the ‘Voices of the Voiceless’
by Michael Yessis | 07.31.07 | 8:47 AM ET
Rio. Lagos. Mumbai. Chicago? Indeed, “poverty tourism” has reached the shores of Lake Michigan. For $20, travelers can hop on a yellow school bus with Beauty Turner, a “magnetic 50-year-old with a preacher’s gift for turning a phrase,” according to a story in the Chicago Sun Times about her “Ghetto Bus Tour.” The AP, which also ran a piece on Turner and her tour, reports that it’s her “last gasp in her crusade to tell a different story about Chicago’s notorious housing projects, something other than well-known tales about gang violence so fierce that residents slept in their bathtubs to avoid bullets.”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: From the Fringe of Edinburgh
by Michael Yessis | 07.27.07 | 2:58 PM ET
The Scottish capital made a move toward the top of travelers’ minds this week—the famed Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival begin soon—along with China, the Sierra Nevada and some purveyors of hotel porn. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Edinburgh Travel Guide
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Not the Hamptons. Yet.
* 36 Hours in Edinburgh also makes the most e-mailed list, currently at No. 3.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Got a Free Weekend? Escape to the Sierra Nevada
Most Read Feature
World Hum (posted this week)
Ask Rolf: I’m in my Mid-40s. Am I Too Old to Stay in Hostels?
* It’s all about spirit, says Rolf.
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Marriott Blasted for Hotel Porn
* Morality in Media is making a stir, and Kitty Bean Yancey’s Hotel Hotsheet blog has a raucous discussion going on.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (posted this week)
‘Into the Wild’: Sean Penn Adapts Jon Krakauer’s Book for the Big Screen
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (this week)
Beautiful Chinese Travel and Vacation
High-Tech Taxis: New Yorkers, Drivers Brace for Showdown Over New Systems
by Ben Keene | 07.27.07 | 10:44 AM ET
When they went green, nobody complained. But the announcement that New York City’s taxis are going high-tech hasn’t been met with quite the same enthusiasm. Especially among cabbies. In particular, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents several thousand drivers, objects to new rules mandating pricey equipment in each of the 13,000 vehicles in the city’s fleet. Passed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) following several public hearings this spring, the regulations require medallion taxicabs to install an entertainment-cum-global positioning system before January 2008.
New Travel Book: ‘Led Zeppelin Crashed Here’
by Jim Benning | 07.25.07 | 2:47 PM ET
Full title: “Led Zeppelin Crashed Here: The Rock and Roll Landmarks of North America”
Author: Chris Epting, author of numerous pop-culture guidebooks, including Elvis Presley Passed Here: Even More Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks
Released: May 1, 2007
Travel genre: Quirky guidebook
Territory covered: North America, including the New York City buildings featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti.”
Promo copy: “Pop culture historian Chris Epting takes you on a journey across North America to the exact locations where rock and roll history was made. Epting has compiled nearly 600 rock and roll landmarks, combining historical information with trivia, photos, and backstage lore, all with the enthusiasm of a true rock and roll devotee. No other book delivers such an extensive list of rock and roll landmarks—from beginnings (the site where Elvis got his first guitar), to endings (the hotel where Janis Joplin died), and everything in between.”
Most Endangered Historic Places in the U.S. Named
by Ben Keene | 07.25.07 | 2:24 PM ET
The Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group the National Trust for Historic Preservation recently released its 20th annual list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in the U.S. They are:
The U.S. Taxicab Capital is…Bethel, Alaska?
by Michael Yessis | 07.24.07 | 10:23 AM ET
Likely so. Bethel, a city of 5,900 located about 400 miles west of Anchorage, has one cab for every 84 people, according to the AP. New York City has one cab for every 149 people. Bethel owes its cab-happy status to its geography: It’s ringed by thousands of ponds and you can’t drive in or out of town.
China’s Air Pollution Goes Global
by Jim Benning | 07.23.07 | 2:50 PM ET
Talk about a shrinking planet. “On some days,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “almost a third of the air over Los Angeles and San Francisco can be traced directly to Asia.”
‘Into the Wild’: Sean Penn Adapts Jon Krakauer’s Book for the Big Screen
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.07 | 10:26 AM ET
Sean Penn lined up some impressive talent for his adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s beloved book Into the Wild, the story of twentysomething Christopher McCandless’s self-imposed exile from mainstream society and tragic journey into the Alaskan wilds. Penn wrote and directed the film, which stars Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Zach Galifianakis, William Hurt and others. Eddie Vedder and Gustavo Santaolalla contribute to the soundtrack. The movie opens Sept. 21, and already I’m getting that dueling “I can’t wait to see it/I can’t believe what an awful idea this is” feeling of seeing a favorite book get turned into a movie.