Tourism vs. traveling?

Oh, I'm not a tourist.  Because I'm WAAAAYY cooler than all the other people who are on the plane.  I'm a TRAVELER.  And I write about travelling.  It's part travelogue, part blog.  I call it a "Traveblogue."  Get it?  And MY pictures are better than YOUR pictures, because I have special insight into what is meaningful and important, unlike you.  No, I'm not a tourist.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Why I travel, rather than tour

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2013/0516/Why-I-travel-rather-than-tour

10 Best Countries for Moms- Guess what? USA Doesn't make the list

From Time magazine:

10 Best Countries for Moms

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/10/10-best-countries-for-moms/?xid=newsletter-weekly

 

America's level of development is hampered by several issues, many of which stem from an imballance in the distribution of wealth.  Put succinctly,  we have thousands of incredibly wealthy people, and  millions of pretty poor people.  This fact contributes to lowered life expectency and overall health for many Americaans:

What’s Ailing America? New Report Finds U.S. Falls Behind International Peers in Health and Life Expectancy

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/11/whats-ailing-america-new-report-finds-u-s-falls-behind-international-peers-in-health-and-life-expectancy/#ixzz2TH2l8aSe

On the bright side, as annoying as traffic is, The US does pretty well in terms of automobile traffic, but if you can believe that Chicago doesbn't make the list of top ten worst traffic cities, that tells you how bad it can actually get out there:

Top 10 U.S Cities with the Worst Traffic

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/07/top-10-u-s-cities-with-the-worst-traffic/#ixzz2TH3H4yf6

Tropes! Tropes I tells ya! They're EVERYWHERE!

Tropes are those key symbols and key scenarios that have become the currency of popular culture astorytelling and media.  The ugly duckling who grows into a swan, the underdog who wins the big game, the hooker with the heart of gold, the crabby old man who learns to be happy, the "very special" episode of whatever show where they talk about something heavy and serious- these recurring themes are called TROPES. 

Here's an interesting wiki about them that gives examples and background in exhaustive detail.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

DNA, Populating the Americas, and self-correcting science

Three points of interest here:

1)  the biggest question in American Archaeology is how and wehn the continent was settled by its inhabitants.

2) More than material culture and the fossil record, genetic data provide us with a huge data set that continuously reveals more as our ability to decode it expands,

and

3) Science presents us with a body of knowledge that is only true as far as we are able to discern at the present moment, and that facts change as our ability to understand them change.  Thus, while at one point genetic evidence pointed to a single wave, we now have the ability to refine that and overturn it.  It seems like there were three waves of migration that populated the Americas.  And if the evidence changes, so will our conclusions.

Americas 'settled in three waves'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18770963

Time lapse photos- urbanization, deforestation-global warming from Time magazine

Yahoo news article about the site:
http://news.yahoo.com/stunning-30-year-timelapse-shows-earth-s-changing-surface-161911528.html


Original Time Magazine site:
http://world.time.com/timelapse/

Fair Trade, Clothing, and Market Externalites

Market externalities, or hidden costs that get passed on to the producers (farm and factory workers) so that business owners can enjoy high profits and consumers can have cheap products, are becoming more and more important to consumers.  The Fai Trade movement addresses some of these concerns in terms of food, and now, clothing is becoming scrutinized after the tragic Bangladesh factory collapse that kills 800 workers.

 

 

From the New York Times, 5/8/13:

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/business/global/fair-trade-movement-extends-to-clothing.html?emc=eta1&_r=1&

Some Retailers Say More About Their Clothing’s Origins

Mosquito Coast Lobster fishermen- My own area of interest.

From National Geographic, May 2, 2013:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/02/my-village-my-lobster-film-exposes-extreme-danger-behind-a-favorite-seafood/

My fieldwork was on the Mosquito Coast and I "discovered" the plight of the lobster fishermen there.  Now through the Smithsonian, the world can understand better how local backwater regions get sucked into the global capitalist economic system.

Uncontacted Tribes- Who, Where, and How Many?

From National Geographic- April, 2011:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/01/uncontacted-tribes-the-last-free-people-on-earth/

Uncontacted peoples?  Hard to say how many there are.  The first picture shown in the article above shows peole with a machete and an enamelled metal pot- obviously they've been in SOME kind of contact with SOMEONE.  But folks like this cretainly live outside of the global capitalist system to an astonishing degree, and the question then is what are we to do about it?
 

Ethnicity and Afghanistan

More from NPR today- Afghan ethnicity.  Now THAT is a thorny rose.


http://www.npr.org/2013/05/08/179079930/afghans-confront-senstive-issue-of-ethnicity

By the way- the Dow hit 1500. DO you care? Should you?

"However high you rise is how far you can fall"  - Marc Healy, feeling all "motivational" and stuff.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is a stock market index of 30 stocks that are meant to be representative of the market as a whole.  When people refer to "blue chip" stocks, they are referring to those that are included in the Dow.

These milestones are statistically meaningless, but they have a lot to do with consumer (investor) confidence, just as people are more likely to buy something that is priced at 2.99 than if it is listed at 3.00.  When the Dow hits an increment of thousands, people get exuberant, and it's big news.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181997704/dow-jones-closes-above-15-000-for-first-time?sc=nl&cc=brk-20130507-1620

What is prejudice?

Why are we sexIST and racIST but homoPHOBIC?  What exactly IS chauvanism?  Well, if you ask me, ethnocentrism is the one concept that seems to disentangle these terms most effectively.  Not the ethnocentrism isn't itself a problematic word- it is, for several reasons, but it gets right down to the heart of what most prejudice is about.  That discussion is for another time though.

Here, NPR reports on "The New Face of Prejudice":

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/22/177455764/What-Does-Modern-Prejudice-Look-Like?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20130428


Here's a humorous, but insightful take on early 21st cetury bigotry in the USA:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/the-7-types-of-modern-american-bigots.html