Travel Blog: News and Briefs
What We Loved This Week: ‘Up in the Air,’ Mariachi and ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’
by World Hum | 11.06.09 | 5:20 PM ET
Eva Holland
I loved buying my first car. I’ve been plotting a trans-Canada road trip/relocation, from Ontario up to the Yukon, and now—with my tentative start date just 10 days away—I’ve got the wheels to make it happen.
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Yahoo! Buzz‘Ivory Coast = France = Japan’
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.09 | 10:02 AM ET
That equation comes from a James Fallows post in the Atlantic, and he’s talking about language habits.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can’t really learn it, and that one’s attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. “Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!”
Travel Movie Watch: ‘Risk’
by Eva Holland | 11.05.09 | 11:13 AM ET
News broke yesterday that a movie version of the classic board game is in the works, with Will Smith as a producer and possible star. Blogger Colin Boyd is excited about the project, but I’m not so sure.
My favorite thing about the game was always the board itself—if you haven’t guessed that I’m a map geek by now, you haven’t been paying attention—but I can’t imagine how a movie would capture that global sweep, the bird’s-eye view of people moving across the continents. I can only hope the producers care enough about that element of the game to try.
The Best Movies of All Time, Mapped
by Eva Holland | 11.03.09 | 4:08 PM ET
Speaking of London Underground-style maps, here’s another good one: Hollywood classics, organized by genre along colored subway lines. Genius.
Shackleton’s Scotch: Coming to an Auction House Near You?
by Eva Holland | 11.03.09 | 2:43 PM ET
Two cases of the explorer’s drink of choice have been discovered under a hut at Cape Royds, apparently left behind after a failed 1909 polar expedition. The question now, of course: What will happen to the excavated bottles? If they do go to auction, maybe the lucky buyer will want to BYOB on Shackleton’s ship-turned-restaurant.
R.I.P. Claude Levi-Strauss
by Eva Holland | 11.03.09 | 1:11 PM ET
The famed structural anthropologist has died at 100. We blogged about his 100th birthday—and some of his travel-related accomplishments—just under a year ago:
Travel lit readers know him in part from his 1955 travel memoir of sorts, Tristes Tropiques, which begins with the memorable line, “I hate travelling and explorers.” More importantly, as NPR points out, Levi-Strauss “changed the world’s perception of so-called ‘primitive’ tribes in Asia, Africa and America.”
Mapped: The U.S. Interstates, in the Style of the London Underground Map
by Michael Yessis | 11.03.09 | 10:21 AM ET
See it in Senex Prime’s Flickr stream. (Via Coudal)
‘United Breaks Guitars’—And Loses Baggage
by Eva Holland | 11.02.09 | 4:03 PM ET
Dave Carroll, the musician behind the “United Breaks Guitars” protest songs, has been burned by United again. He wound up flying with the carrier from Regina to Denver last week—and, sure enough, he landed in Colorado without his bags. Fool me once ... (Via This Just In)
World Hum Goes to the Travel Blog Exchange ‘10
by Michael Yessis | 11.02.09 | 12:12 PM ET
We’ll be communing with our fellow travel writers and bloggers in New York City June 26-27, 2010, at the second annual Travel Blog Exchange. Founder Kim Mance and her crew launched TBEX last July in Chicago with a memorable day of travel talk.
Next year, the event spans two days and World Hum, one of the event’s media partners, is on the organizing committee. We’re working with Kim and several others in the travel blog universe to help develop the event, and we’ll also be preaching the Travel Writing in the Digital Age gospel with a small taste of our new workshops. If you’ve got any thoughts, suggestions, etc. about what you’d like to see covered, please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
What We Loved This Week: Calexico, Toronto FC in Coach and more
by World Hum | 10.30.09 | 5:25 PM ET
Eva Holland
After years of listening to other people’s celebrity-on-a-plane stories, I finally had my own in-flight star-spotting: I shared my flight home from New York City last weekend with the coaches and players from Toronto FC. Who knew pro athletes sometimes fly coach with the masses?
Follow World Hum’s Contributors on Twitter
by Eva Holland | 10.30.09 | 3:21 PM ET
If you “tweet” (yeah, yeah, I know) then you’ve probably heard about Twitter’s new lists function—it allows users to organize their favorite tweeters into themed feeds, which other users can then choose to follow. We’ve created a list of World Hum contributors; feel free to follow along, and let us know if we missed anyone.
Get Your Sordid Kerouac Estate Details Here
by Eva Holland | 10.30.09 | 12:44 PM ET
The Telegraph delves into the ongoing nasty legal battle over the Jack Kerouac estate. It’s not pretty, though it is dramatic—a disowned daughter, a forged will and a couple of deaths by liver failure are all in the mix. The story also notes that Kerouac’s unpublished first novel, which we blogged about earlier this year, will be out in 2010.
‘Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug’
by Michael Yessis | 10.30.09 | 11:57 AM ET
Funny story, says Gizmodo. They’ve mapped it out.
V.S. Naipaul Mistakenly ‘Killed Off’ in FBI Footnote
by Eva Holland | 10.29.09 | 4:10 PM ET
The travel writer and novelist was mentioned in passing in an FBI court filing as “the late Lord V.S. Naipaul.” This is one detail that I’m glad to hear the Feds got wrong. (Via The Book Bench)
Is a ‘Gerontocracy’ to Blame for the Cuba Travel Ban?
by Eva Holland | 10.29.09 | 3:06 PM ET
Double X writer Kerry Howley, while calling for an end to the ban, highlights some stats about the age of those who still support it. “The future belongs to the would-be tourist,” she writes. “[W]hen you exclude the 65-and-over set, the percentage of people who support a change of policy shoots up to 62.”
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