Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Stinky Woman Forces Emergency Landing. Headline Writers Rejoice.
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:50 AM ET
American Airlines Flight 1053 made an emergency landing in Nashville earlier this week after a woman struck a match to mask evidence of a troubled digestive system. Translation: She farted and tried to cover it up. It was an embarrassment for the unidentified woman, and an embarrassment of riches for the world’s headline writers. Here’s a sampling of what they came up with to describe the story:
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Hum World Headlines
by Jim Benning | 12.05.06 | 8:30 PM ET
News shorts for curious travelers.
Egypt
Pharaohs’ Tombs Trump Village Homes
Reports the New York Times: “Bulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.” More than 100 houses have been cleared in the last week. Interesting. In Los Angeles, they’d more likely destroy historic tombs to build new houses.
USA
What’s your travel terror score?
Did you know you had one? “Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on [Automated Targeting System’s] analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered,” the Associated Press reports. Creepy.
Spain
Bona tarda or buenas tardes?
The Los Angeles Times explores the pitched battle over languages in Catalonia. “Some ATMs in Spain offer a choice of six languages, four of which are the Spaniards’ own.”
Japan
Ping, Ka-Ching, Ka-Boom!
Money raised from Japan’s pachinko habit just might be supporting North Korea’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The machines rake in more than $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea.” As a result, some players are souring on the game.
USA
Bright lights, big city, mucho vino
Novelist Jay McInerney has a great side gig: traveling the world to write about wine for Home & Garden. Now, a number of those columns have been collected in a new book, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. His interest in wine “started with literature, really—as with so many other things,” he says in San Diego Reader. Among the inspirational books: Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”
Around the World in 20 Geography Questions
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 9:12 AM ET
This might be the slickest, most addictive geography quiz we’ve seen. How many countries can you place on the map in the time allotted?
‘Mapping the Imagination’ with Simon Winchester, Peter Turchi and Madhur Jaffrey
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 8:56 AM ET
Here’s something for anyone who gets a thrill from looking at a map: The public radio show “To the Best of Our Knowledge” devoted an hour this weekend to stories about maps and the imagination. Among the segments: “Maps of the Imagination” author Peter Turchi talks about map-making and writing and Simon Winchester discusses the man behind his book “The Map that Changed the World.”
Why Are Cruisers So Susceptible to Viruses?
by Michael Yessis | 12.05.06 | 8:47 AM ET
Another cruise ship—this time Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas, the world’s largest—recently returned to port with hundreds of passengers reportedly ill from a norovirus. Its the latest ship to succumb to gastrointestinal bug, and yesterday Slate’s Explainer spelled out why these travelers keep on getting sick. The reasons: Close quarters, questionable food and water safety in some ports and the influx of new passengers.
Postcards from ‘The Edge’
by Michael Yessis | 12.04.06 | 8:31 AM ET
Apparently U2’s guitar player The Edge has been sending postcards to his mum since the band started. McSweeney’s recently posted excerpts, including this from 1996: “I am writing you this from Japan. The picture on this postcard is of a monastery. We went there to visit. Bono kept asking what things were called in Japanese. The monk would say a word and Bono would repeat it. Except poorly. And in this annoying reverential whisper. He thinks the monks are so serene, but what Bono doesn’t know is that they are, in fact, killing machines. Any one of them could crumple Bono’s windpipe with a single swift blow to the throat. Bono would stagger around gasping for air before he collapsed in a Zen rock garden, dead. And that would be ironic. Because Bono talks so often about how much he loves to ‘rock.’”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Great Wall, Good Grief!
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.06 | 8:50 AM ET
Is the world falling apart? Travelers this week seem concerned that it is, as crumbling attractions in China, England and Cambodia have grabbed our attention. Don’t worry. A man in India has some duct tape, and if he can fix a plane with it, surely he could be handy with it elsewhere. Here’s your Zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
The Great Wall, Siem Reap, Stonehenge Getting Too Much Love
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Saving the Great Wall From Being Loved to Death
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Ski Europe: The Best of the Alps
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
Paris by Night
* A slow-loading but spectacular panorama of the City of Light.
No. 1 World Music Album
iTunes (current)
Loreena McKennitt’s An Ancient Muse
Most Dugg “Travel” Story
Digg (current)
Why Americans Should Never Be Allowed To Travel
* A collection of ridiculous things travel agents have heard from travelers. How ridiculous? This ridiculous: “I had someone ask for an aisle seats so that his or her hair wouldn’t get messed up by being near the window.”
Most Popular Travel Podcast
PodcastAlley (November)
808Talk: Hawaii’s Premier Podcast
New York Times Selects ‘The Places in Between’ as Top-10 Book of 2006
by Ben Keene | 12.01.06 | 7:34 AM ET
Deeming it suitable company for “the masterpieces of the travel genre,” the New York Times chose Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between as one of its Ten Best Books of 2006 this week. In his review in the Times this summer, World Hum contributor Tom Bissell praised Stewart’s comic timing, sense of character, as well as the effort made to empathize with the men he meets along his trek, and then concludes by extracting a few pieces of valuable advice from the narrative: “If you are forced to lie about being a Muslim, claim you’re from Indonesia, a Muslim nation few non-Indonesian Muslims know much about. Open land undefiled by sheep droppings has most likely been mined. If you’re taking your donkey to high altitudes, slice open its nostrils to allow greater oxygen flow. Don’t carry detailed maps, since they tend to suggest 007 affinities. If, finally, you’re determined to do something as recklessly stupid as walk across a war zone, your surest bet to quash all the inevitable criticism is to write a flat-out masterpiece.” Here’s hoping other end-of-the year lists include a few of the other examples of excellent travel writing published in the last twelve months.
Related on World Hum:
* ‘Naked Tourist,’ ‘The Places in Between’ in the New York Times
* ‘It Would Be a Pity to be Killed, Of Course’
Rachael Ray to Feed Space Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.06 | 7:22 AM ET
Perky, polarizing multimedia mogul, Food Network personality and travel show host Rachael Ray will cook Thai chicken and two other meals for the astronauts on the next voyage of the space shuttle Discovery, which is set to launch Dec. 7. They’re the first meals from a food celebrity to fly on the shuttle, USA Today reports. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station ate Emeril Lagasse’s jambalaya and mashed potatoes with bacon last August.
World Hum’s Most Read: November 2006
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.06 | 7:12 AM ET
Our 10 most popular stories posted last month:
1) USA Today’s Seven New Wonders of the World
2) The Art of the Deal: Peter Wortsman Bargains for Goods in Marrakesh, Morocco
3) ‘This is Lagos’: George Packer in Nigeria’s Megacity
4) “The Odyssey”: The Sir Ian McKellen Audio Version
5) Seven New Wonders of the World Fever: Catch It
6) The Rise of the Procreation Vacation (Complete with Sea Moss!)
7) Mexico 2006: ‘The Year of Traveling Cautiously’
8) Surfing U.S.A.: Australian Duo Getting Stoked in All 50 States
9) A Dreaded Norovirus Strikes Again
10) The Critics: ‘Walt Disney’ by Neil Gabler
Tourism Official Insists ‘It’s Not Whatever Goes’ in Brazil
by Jim Benning | 12.01.06 | 6:43 AM ET
‘Micronations’: Interviews with the Authors
by Michael Yessis | 11.30.06 | 8:23 AM ET
Lonely Planet’s recent book about micronations begs several questions, such as: Are micronations better when they’re founded on comedic or political principles? Also: Is creating your own nation a better alternative to armed revolution? The authors of Micronations answer these and other questions in several interviews they’ve given this month. Co-authors John Ryan, George Dunford and Simon Sellars spoke with Andres Vaccari at Sleepy Brain; Ryan spoke with Alex Chadwick of NPR’s Day to Day and Rolf Potts at Yahoo! Travel; and Sellars talked to Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG.
Related on World Hum:
* Inside the World’s “Micronations”
Plane Magic
by Michael Yessis | 11.30.06 | 7:43 AM ET
The creator of this amazing image of airplanes taking off is apparently still a mystery to awestruck flickr users.
Airlines to Screen “Beat the Drum” in Support of World AIDS Day
by Michael Yessis | 11.30.06 | 7:41 AM ET
American, Delta, United, British Airways and 30 other airlines will set aside their usual in-flight entertainment on more than 40,000 flights Friday to show the movie Beat the Drum. The movie depicts the impact of AIDS on African children, and, according to news reports, the screenings are expected to raise $300,000 for African charities.
Radiation Detected on Two British Airways Planes*
by Jim Benning | 11.29.06 | 2:26 PM ET
Yikes. From the Guardian Unlimited: “British Airways passengers were being sought tonight after traces of radiation were found on two aircraft as part of the investigation into the death of a Russian former spy. The airline said very low levels of radiation were found as part of the investigation into the death last Thursday of Alexander Litvinenko, whose body had traces of polonium 210, a lethal radioactive substance.” British Airways officials believe “the risk to public health is low.”
* Add: AP reports that officials “drew up plans to contact thousands of airplane passengers”; three planes have been grounded.
