Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Spirit’s New Carry-On Bag Fee: ‘Outrageous’
by Eva Holland | 04.08.10 | 12:53 PM ET
That’s one word Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood used to describe the new carry-on baggage fees announced this week by Spirit Airlines. LaHood also told Christopher Elliott that his department aims to do something about it:
I think it’s a bit outrageous that an airline is going to charge someone to carry on a bag and put it in the overhead. And I’ve told our people to try and figure out a way to mitigate that. I think it’s ridiculous.
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Yahoo! BuzzSlate: A Surface Journey Around the World
by Eva Holland | 04.08.10 | 12:12 PM ET
Slate’s latest Well-Traveled series is a five-part excerpt from Seth Stevenson’s new travel book, “Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World.” We’ve got an interview with Stevenson about the book, and the power of surface travel, today on World Hum.
What if Martha’s Vineyard Had a Subway System?
by Eva Holland | 04.07.10 | 3:31 PM ET
It might look something like this. (Via Boing Boing)
A Space Travel Playlist
by Eva Holland | 04.07.10 | 10:09 AM ET
Lapham’s Quarterly has a list of the tracks that were launched into space aboard Voyager 1 and 2 back in 1977. Thankfully, none of the top five songs we never want to hear in space made the cut. (Via Kottke)
Will ‘Globish’ be the 21st Century’s Lingua Franca?
by Jim Benning | 04.06.10 | 3:22 PM ET
What’s “Globish”?
It’s a boiled down version of English, Robert McCrum explains, comprising “1500 essential words for international communication, and the idiom-free turns of phrase in which they might be expressed by the world’s two billion non-native English speakers.”
McCrum makes a case for its rise in this intriguing essay, as well as in a book coming out this year, “Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language.”
Among the essay’s intriguing passages:
There’s also a sense in which the narrative of Globish makes some important cross-cultural connections. Here, I pay tribute to Magna Carta and Bob Marley, VS Naipaul, Shakespeare and the Founding Fathers, but also The Simpsons, Coldplay and the author of Dreams from My Father. Globish analyses Twitter, Iran’s green revolution and Slumdog Millionaire, and places them all in a new context: a Globish-speaking society.
(Via ALDaily.com)
Another ‘Slightly Creepy’ North Korean Night Out
by Eva Holland | 04.06.10 | 1:27 PM ET
A couple of weeks back we met the chain restaurant as done by North Koreans. Now, the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos offers a glimpse of a more “upscale” North Korean restaurant experience in Beijing. A sample: “[T]he experience is not, in the traditional sense, relaxing. The food is serviceable, though it always arrives with the slightly creepy sensation that dining out on North Korean fare just might be an act of exceptionally poor taste.”
Holy Week Around the World
by Eva Holland | 04.05.10 | 1:58 PM ET
The Big Picture has another stunning photo essay, this time of Easter celebrations from Afghanistan to Guatemala.
Blog to Watch: This American Infographic
by Eva Holland | 04.05.10 | 12:47 PM ET
The site aims to create “infographical companions” for each new episode. Here’s one for a January installment on vacations. (Via Kottke)
Chart: Global Consumption of Prepackaged Food
by Michael Yessis | 04.05.10 | 11:36 AM ET
The United States, not surprisingly, leads the world in eating food from boxes and bags. The New York Times has the full rundown of what you’ll most likely find the locals eating when you travel around the globe.
What We Loved This Week: New York City, Alaskan Beer and Comparing Notes with Fellow Travelers
by World Hum | 04.02.10 | 4:04 PM ET
Jim Benning
I’ve spent the week hanging out with travelers and travel writers in New York and now St. Louis, and I’ve loved comparing notes on favorite places. I don’t get to do it often enough. It’s good for the traveler’s soul.
New Air Travel Security Protocols on the Way
by Eva Holland | 04.02.10 | 1:05 PM ET
The Department of Homeland Security is set to announce a new intelligence-based threat assessment system to replace the mandatory secondary screenings that were brought in for certain nationalities after the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest flight over Detroit. From the New York Times:
The intelligence-based security system is devised to raise flags about travelers whose names do not appear on no-fly watch lists, but whose travel patterns or personal traits create suspicions. The system is intended to pick up fragments of information—family name, nationality, age or even partial passport number—and match them against intelligence reports to sound alarm bells before a passenger boards a plane.
President Obama signed off on the new protocols yesterday.
World Hum Writers on the Air
by Eva Holland | 04.01.10 | 2:23 PM ET
A few World Hum contributors made radio and podcast appearances this week: Tom Swick and Jeff Greenwald talked travel writing past, present and future on NPR’s KQED Radio, while Doug Mack showed up on CBC Radio’s Q to talk about his Europe on Five Bad Ideas a Day project. Good stuff all around.
Is This the ‘Twilight of the Travel Guidebook’?
by Eva Holland | 03.31.10 | 11:57 AM ET
With his second edition looming, guidebook author David Page ponders the future of the genre:
As a traveler who prefers to ferret things out on his own, to skip the well-paved interpretive loop and instead wander off-trail in search of the overlooked and overgrown, I can’t say I’ll much lament the passing of the genre (assuming, that is, that the rumors of its demise have not been greatly exaggerated). Give me a half-decent map, a good 19th-century explorer’s narrative, a gallon of water and maybe a headlamp for good measure, and I’ll set off across the landscape giddy into the unknown. When I get that hankering for a decent Philly cheese steak or a sixer of empanadas de pino, I’ll risk altercation and embarrassment and ask a local—long before I try to hack my way to something useful through the thickets of TripAdvisor or Yelp.
As the author of an old-fashioned printed-and-bound guidebook, though, I worry. I wonder if it may finally be time to decamp. Or (gulp) to reinvent.
Trash Talking in Airworld
by Michael Yessis | 03.31.10 | 11:03 AM ET
Harriet Baskas tallies which airports and airlines are brawling.
‘Realistic Google Maps Walking Directions When in a Different Country’
by Michael Yessis | 03.31.10 | 10:07 AM ET
Quality travel humor from Zach Jones and McSweeney’s. A taste:
1. Exit train station, make left... 2 m
2. Continue down Major Street, get used to it, because you’re going to wind up on it several more times… 32 m
3. Make right on what seems to be Correct Street... 1 km
4. Correct Street changes into Completely Unheard of Street, continue down for another 2 kilometers… 4 km
