On June 26, 1997, the Spice Girls were dominating the radio airwaves, Evander Holyfield still had both ears intact, and I was 21 years old sitting in a bar at JFK airport drinking a Bud. I was about to enter my senior year of college, and was afforded an opportunity of a lifetime – I was selected to serve as a volunteer for a children’s summer scheme in Dungannon, Nothern Ireland. Back then, I had no idea how much that trip was going to affect me. 14 years later, and I still think about it, and am reminded of it, on an almost daily basis. For three weeks, I would be staying at a Youth Center in Dungannon and would have the time of my life. Evander Holyfield, however, wasn’t going to be doing so well – but I will get to that in a bit.    [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
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Recently you may have seen reports in the news about a Borat-style incident featuring a Brazil-based Al Jazeera employee named Gabriel Elizondo who was recently denied permission to film a high school football game in Booker, Texas.  Apparently Mr. Elizondo has been traveling around the states trying to gauge the American mood on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, etc.  No sooner had he shown his Al Jazeera business card than the high school superintendent, a Mr. Michael Lee,  told him to leave the school premises, denying Mr. Elizondo permission to film or conduct interviews. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Ah, the unpredictable world of the dictator. One minute you’re a living god with a gold toilet, multiple palaces and a personal bodyguard of nubile female ninjas, and then the next it’s all over, as if all that splendor was nothing more than a very long – and mostly quite pleasant – dream.

Such is the reality Muammar Gaddafi finds himself inhabiting right now. Until recently he was not only the planet’s most famous colonel (after the guy who makes fried chicken, of course) but also Africa’s longest reigning head of state. Less than nine months ago he was still being feted by world leaders and fawned over by a prestigious English university hungry for oil money. His children enjoyed expensive educations at European and American institutions. And what about those tender, personal moments spent leafing through his album of Condoleezza Rice portraits? [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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10. You’ve lost so much blood from mosquito bites, they’ve stopped biting you

9. That ‘travel agent’ you went to drunk turned out to be an Army recruiter

8. You go in for a spray tan and come out looking like John Boehner – which makes you cry like John Boehner

7. Your summer highlight: watching reruns of “iCarly”

6. Your eyebrows haven’t grown back since the Fourth of July

5. First name “Rod.” Last name “Blagojevich.”

4. Your vacation package is for seven days and two nights

3. Your sunburn is so bad, drivers stop at you and wait for you to change

2. Due to hard-of-hearing travel agent, instead of Cancun you wind up in Camden

1. The B&B you’re staying at evidently stands for ‘bed’ and ‘bugs’
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, travel & foreign lands by Bob Sullivan
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Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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I think it might be this one, from The Daily Beast, a website run by a formerly successful magazine editor of some renown:

Obama Trumps Libya Critics

A bit early for drawing that conclusion, wouldn’t you say? Apparently not.  After a few paragraphs of preamble, reminding us of the criticisms of the president (such as his failure to seek approval for this war from Congress, well who cares about that?) we arrive at this stunning piece of analysis:

Now that Libya seems to have turned out all right, with the rebels controlling most of Tripoli and Gaddafi barely clinging to power, the critics look overly cautious, if not plain wrong. But none of them are saying that they are sorry. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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The Jersey Shore, contrary to popular belief, is not crawling with spray tanned, STD-ridden, greasy haired, foul mouthed, borderline date rapists. My family owns a home in Margate, New Jersey, so you can rest assured there are at least six people along the Jersey coastline who possess reddish hair, pinkish skin and are of a strong moral fabric. I was lucky enough to spend the past week down in Margate my own little family, my sisters and my niece, and my parents. It was a fun filled, great time – despite the weather for the week that made it seem like we were in rainy and foggy ol’ LondonTown (sans the riots, of course). Ironically, it was the closest vacation I have had since visiting London back in 2006.   [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
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I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we haven’t had any global health scares like Swine Flu, Avian Flu or SARS recently. Why? Well, with all the economic misery in the United States and Europe, revolutionary unrest in the Middle East, rioting mobs in the UK plus the usual war and famine elsewhere, things are so awful right now that apparently we do not need hallucinatory fears to stimulate the collective nervous system. We have enough actual worries of our own. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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What was the central lesson that the Great Powers learned from the carnage of World War II? I firmly believe it was “never again”- that is, “never again will we fight a country that has even remotely comparable military strength to our own.” Even so, beating the crap out of weak nations is not always as straightforward as one would imagine.

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Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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Diversity pops up where you least expect it. For instance, Doha, Qatar and Toronto, Canada, two places I visited recently and which at first glance are complete opposites, then upon closer examination shockingly similar, before upon still further review become utterly dissimilar again. (I stopped comparing at this point – you’re welcome to dig deeper on your own time.) I had always pictured Qatar possessing an almost entirely Arab population and Toronto being filled with white folk in Maple Leafs gear. Both communities have more than their fair share of these demographics, but it’s only a small slice of the social fabric. Indeed, Qatar may be the most diverse place I’ve visited outside of Epcot Center, as I encountered Europeans, Asians, Africans, etc. There is a reason for this: Qatar has massive oil and gas reserves and as a result – follow me here – lots of money. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands by Sean Cunningham
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NOTE: I’ve never been been one for blogging while on family vacations, not wishing to publicize how far I was from home, and how empty said-home was. So my ‘cruise posts’ over the week ahead – mockumenting the adventures of a West Texas desert-dweller in the middle of the biggest dang lake he ever saw – will be appearing one week after-the-fact.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 12 –The port of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is slowly slipping from view, and we are now getting a chance to explore what will be our home over the week ahead. Plenty of topics for discussion among our new-found friends and acquaintances aboard the good ship Carnival-Freedom … “Where you from?” … “Is this your first cruise?” … “Do you get seasick?” … and, “Who’s going to win the NBA title?” Carnival Cruise Lines offered what I though was a splendid way to show our support, and I was sure to show my support for the Dallas Mavericks, early and often. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, travel & foreign lands by Jeff McDonald
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Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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I recently returned from a four-day road-trip (with my nephew Noah and his parents, traveling separately) to some of the Civil War battlefields. It’s a pilgrimage I’ve made more than once over the years, a way of embracing both nature and history. (Those blood-drenched meadows look terrific in the spring.) Done right, it can almost feel like time-travel.

Confederate cemetery at Appomattox

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Tags: education, ends & odd, race & culture, terror & war, travel & foreign lands by Jeff Scheuer
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Tags: politics & government, travel & foreign lands by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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10. A gift certificate to Scepters R Us

9. The latest CD from Prince

8. Gold bricks

7. An English-American dictionary

6. An athletic cup to protect the crown jewels

5. The illusion that their family still has some power

4. A nightie from Queen Victoria’s Secret

3. A sobriety test for the future Princess Kate’s personal driver

2. Something to read on the throne

1. Nothing (what could you possibly get them that they don’t already have?)
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: advice, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, ends & odd, travel & foreign lands by Bob Sullivan
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Some time ago I got heavily into crime. Not big or interesting crime mind you, like serial murder or death camps, but rather tiny crime, rubbish crime – the kind of thing unusual enough to fill 150 words in a newspaper, and then disappear forever.

My interest in this inglorious subgenre started in Russia, where the mind-bendingly dull Moscow Times would very occasionally publish something readable, strange one- or two-paragraph stories from around Russia, often featuring an element of crime. I vividly recall the tale of some kids who were found playing soccer with a human head near Smolensk. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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People love to knock my home state of New Jersey. I would like to argue that South Jersey and North Jersey are entirely separate entities. North Jersey is home to smog, clog, congestion, and overdevelopment, but in their defense, they are also home to Bruce Springsteen – so they get a lifetime pass for that one. South Jersey is home to a wonderful rural area my friend Burks and I affectionately refer to as “God’s Country”. And I have my dad to thank for introducing me to this once mysterious area. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
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Strange things happen to your mind when it’s transplanted to a foreign culture. Events and ideas that would have once appeared outrageous become very normal, and before long you accept them without batting an eyelid. It takes a serious jolt for you to realize how normal the hitherto abnormal has become.

Recently I had one of those jolts, when I read that the Texas State Legislature was about to pass a law forcing college campuses to permit students to carry concealed weapons on their persons. There is already a law that says Texas colleges can decide for themselves if they want students to wander around with secret firearms. None permit it; that’s why state lawmakers want to force them to grant students their 2nd Amendment rights. [Read more →]

Tags: travel & foreign lands, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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This week, thou shalt not make one Charlie Sheen joke or reference, however his brother Emilio Estevez  is still fair game. But the real issue today is that my commute to work is getting the better of me. According to Google maps, it is 8.3 miles from my doorstep to my workplace of Drexel University. Not bad, right? But the commute takes me anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour each day. My folly is that there is no good way to go. The options I have all gobble up money, time, my safety and my sanity. [Read more →]

Tags: Marty digs, travel & foreign lands by Marty O'Connor
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I’ve always been fascinated by the military. Well, not always. In fact, when I was younger I was bored senseless by it. I couldn’t stand war films, war comics, or anything war related. The only exception was war in space. I loved laser guns and watching aliens die.

And then, at some point, my attitude changed. After all, nobody can deny that war is a phenomenon worth pondering, given that humans like killing each other so much.

Suddenly too I found that I admired military people. I was jealous of their ability to rise early, keep their hair short, and submit to external authority. Bohemianism is overrated: disciplined habits can help a man progress in life. [Read more →]

Tags: terror & war, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
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