Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Spanish-Language TV News Just Might be Good For You
by Jim Benning | 05.22.08 | 4:34 PM ET
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has stressed that Latino immigrants in the U.S. have “got to turn off the Spanish language television” if they want to understand English and local news. Many others agree. But “Schwarzenegger is wrong, and so is this new consensus,” argues former Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mathews in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzThe (Frugal) Grand Tour
by Michael Yessis | 05.22.08 | 2:39 PM ET
Another year, another epic trip for New York Times Frugal Traveler Matt Gross. He just kicked off a modern version of the Grand Tour of Europe—on a budget. He’ll be filing blog posts, videos and stories for the next 12 weeks, more time away from home for the man with an intriguing outlook on home.
Did ‘Easy Rider’ Get the South All Wrong?
by Eva Holland | 05.22.08 | 11:11 AM ET
I finally watched that seminal road movie Easy Rider for the first time. I’m always a sucker for a good road-trip flick, and, as expected, I loved the scenery, the music and the campfire-side musings about freedom. But as the credits rolled, I thought to myself: No wonder people in the South feel so hard done-by.
Foie Gras Returns To Chicago
by Eva Holland | 05.22.08 | 10:23 AM ET
It’s a victory for duck-liver lovers: the Chicago city council has overturned a ban on foie gras that was originally imposed two years ago at the urging of animal rights groups. Said one council member: “This is clearly a matter the council should stay out of and let the educated consumer and chefs make their own menu choices.” The repeal of the ban also means the end of another chapter in Chicago’s historic resistance to food-and-drink laws, as the illegal “duckeasies”—restaurants that had gone on serving foie gras without charging for it—will now return to the straight and narrow.
Related on World Hum:
* Sardines, Sushi and the Healthiest Diets on Earth
Trolling for Travel Stories in the ‘Sports Illustrated Vault’
by Michael Yessis | 05.22.08 | 9:55 AM ET
Sports Illustrated, a bastion of world-class magazine writing for 54 years, recently digitized its older content and opened a free archive called the SI Vault. What to read first? Five minutes of searching turned up some terrific travel-related stories: Wallace Stenger’s 1955 piece We Are Destroying Our National Parks, Tenzing Norgay’s four-part 1955 story Tenzing: Tiger Of Everest (pictured) and the classic I plan to devour first, The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch, George Plimpton’s 1985 April Fool’s hoax about a baseball player who visits Tibet to study to be a monk, wears a hiking boot on his right foot and throws a 150 mph fastball.
American Airlines Announces $15 Fee For Checking First Bag
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 6:33 PM ET
Christopher Elliott suspects other airlines will soon follow American’s lead, and the days of free checked luggage will likely go the way of free in-flight meals and sufficient leg room. Let the bitching begin. It’s justified.
Barbecue Goes Global
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 5:17 PM ET
Memphis in May’s World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, aka the Super Bowl of Swine, took place last weekend with some fresh blood: teams from Belgium, Norway and Estonia. How’d they do? Well, give ‘em a little something for the effort. “[I]t takes sheer guts to fly over from a part of the world where this way of cooking is fledgling at best and to try to speak the complicated language of barbecue with a French, Estonian or Norwegian accent,” writes the Washington Post’s Joe Yonan. “To then try as the Belgians did to win the whole-hog contest using the antithesis of barbecue—and a mere six hours—is like soccer star David Beckham jumping onto the field with the Patriots and the Giants and attempting to head a football pass.”
R.I.P. Diana Barnato Walker
by Eva Holland | 05.21.08 | 3:57 PM ET
Diana Barnato Walker, the first British woman to break the sound barrier, died last week at age 90. Walker got her start as a civilian pilot in Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War, ferrying more than 240 Spitfires around the country. On August 26, 1963, she took her first flight at supersonic speeds, reaching a mind-boggling 2,030 kilometers per hour.
Commercial Air Service Has Disappeared From More Than 30 U.S. Cities
by Michael Yessis | 05.21.08 | 10:47 AM ET
Bad news for travelers looking to fly out of small and midsized cities. More than 400 airports have also seen the number of flights shrink, according to the New York Times. With rising fuel prices, we likely haven’t seen the end of the cuts.
Seasteading: The New Frontier
by Michael Yessis | 05.20.08 | 4:21 PM ET
From Wired: “If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters.”
How Unhappy Are American Travelers With the Airlines?
by Jim Benning | 05.20.08 | 10:44 AM ET
Quite. Customer satisfaction dipped in the University of Michigan’s latest survey to its lowest point since 2001. Southwest Airlines received the highest customer satisfaction score. US Airways received the lowest.
Pico Iyer in Ladakh: ‘The World’s Last Shangri-La’
by Michael Yessis | 05.19.08 | 3:43 PM ET
The New York Times’ T Magazine features Pico Iyer’s latest story, a chronicle of a trip to the northern Indian region of Ladakh. He writes: “[W]ord has got out that here is a remote, unusually undeveloped ‘paradise,’ to which, of course, we bring our own, very different images of paradise.” Sometimes, as we know, paradise even involves shopping centers.
Inside Nicosia, ‘the Last Divided Capital in Europe’
by Michael Yessis | 05.19.08 | 2:03 PM ET
World Hum contributor Joanna Kakissis went to the capital of Cyprus and visited with a few ethnic Greeks and Turks who live in the divided city. One needs “a little magic” to see Nicosia as one city, she writes in a story for the New York Times. “We’re not the Israelis and Palestinians,” one Greek Cypriot tells Kakissis. “We don’t have to love the Turks, and they don’t have to love us. We just have to tolerate each other.”
American Beer: Beyond Bud Light
by Eva Holland | 05.19.08 | 10:45 AM ET
I’m not sure I agree with the Toronto Star’s theory that the rise of quality craft beer in the United States is a new trend. It seems to me that anyone who’s been paying attention has known there’s more to the American brewing scene than the Silver Bullet and the King of Beers for quite some time. Still, I enjoyed Josh Rubin’s take on the state of the beer nation and, among things, its “hop-heads.” Whlle we’re on the subject, if you’re headed to Denver, Portland or San Francisco this summer, Fodor’s suggests beer-related tours, festivals, brewpubs and day trips in those “hoppy cities.”
Related on World Hum:
* Rural Pubs in Ireland Becoming ‘So Yesterday’
Photo by spcummings via Flickr (Creative Commons)
World Hum’s Most Read: May 10-16
by World Hum | 05.16.08 | 6:57 PM ET
Our five most popular features and blog posts this week:
1) In Patagonia, In Patagonia (pictured)
2) Promised Land Closed: Audio Slide Show
3) Should I Quit Law School so I Can Travel the World?
4) On the Occasional Importance of a Ceiling Fan
5) ‘7 Tourist Traps You Love’? Um, Not so Much.
