New tech-dimensions to travel

"Will you get that thing out of your ear?"

I'm sitting in a cafe in Lisbon, listening to my iPod, and my husband is not pleased. I'm on my honeymoon, after all, and it's a little early in the game for me to ignore him. But I have good reason to keep that thing stuck in my ear: It's instructing me how to ask for a bottle of red wine in Portuguese.

Welcome to the world of tech-enhanced travel. Thanks to a growing array of products for mobile devices like iPods, PDAs and cell phones, it's possible to defy the laws of physics and fit an entire city in your pocket. Whether you're traveling for work or play, mobile gadgets can help you speak better (if you're in a foreign country), eat better (by picking stellar restaurants in unfamiliar cities) and tour better (without being tethered to a guide or tour group)."

Yes, the days of just going off to Europe armed with the book 'Europe on $X a Day" are well and truly of a bygone era. The advent of technology has changed things - ipods, internet cafes, etc. etc. Read this interesting article from the Travel section of the LA Times here.

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Intelligence agencies just can't help themselves

It is insidious and becoming increasingly widespread. Intelligence agencies in countries around the world, in effect, snooping on private exchanges between people not accussed of anything - other than simply using the internet or their mobile phone. The Age newspaper, in Australia, reports on how that country's intelligence operatives now want to widen their powers. It's all a slippery and dangerous slope! The telephone and internet data of every Australian would be retained for up to two years and intelligence agencies would be given increased access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter under new proposals from Australia's intelligence community. Revealed in a discussion paper released by the Attorney-General's Department, the more than 40 proposals form a massive ambit claim from the intelligence agencies. If passed, they would be the most significant expansion of the Australian intelligence community's powers since the Howard-era reform...

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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