Travel

I saw two articles this morning which I think invite comparison. First, Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP Corporation, says people visiting China should take laptops with no data, or encrypt what data they have: Travelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive personal or business information to officials who monitor state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger said. He said that without data encryption, executives could have business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists’ lists of contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk. ...

We’re back from a week of vacation in Seattle–this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights–the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies–a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology “free stress test” center, and building housing the Discovery Institute. And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven’t seen in a while (or hadn’t met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food. We didn’t get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those. Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I’m sure we’ll return. ...

Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackelton’s Antarctic campsite cabins at Cape Evans on Ross Island have been sitting there since 1913 and 1908, respectively, and are still intact and remarkably well preserved. The Fogonazos blog has the photos. (Via The Agitator.)

Kat and I returned yesterday from a week-long trip to our nation’s capitol to visit friends, family, restaurants, and museums. We apparently just missed the worst of the summer’s heat wave and had mostly excellent weather. One of my must-see places for this trip was the Steven Udvar-Hazy Center, an extension of the National Air and Space Museum located near Dulles Airport. The second picture above was taken there, and shows one small piece of one wing of the Center, with an Air France Concorde in the center and a Lear Jet 23 above it. The Center also has an SR-71 Blackbird, the Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and a huge variety of military and commercial aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft. Two of Paul MacCready’s planes are at the Center–the high-altitude solar-powered Pathfinder and the English Channel-crossing human-powered aircraft, the Gossamer Condor. MacCready’s Gossamer Albatross, the first human-powered aircraft capable of sustained flight, is down at the Mall in the main National Air and Space Museum, which we also visited on this trip. We spent much of our last day in D.C. at Arlington Cemetery–the first picture above shows Pierre L’Enfant’s grave, overlooking a great view of the city he designed. We visited the usual sites such as JFK’s grave, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and the Custis Lee Mansion. I also tracked down the gravesite of John Wesley Powell (first or possibly second man to travel the length of the Colorado River by boat and second director of the U.S. Geological Survey) and a number of other lesser-visited gravesites (e.g., a number of Supreme Court justices buried near JFK, the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie memorial, and President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft’s grave, which although well-marked did not seem to be well-visited). We also visited the Freer and Sackler Galleries’ exhibition on “Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” saw what was open at the Hirshhorn during some maintenance, made a quick pass through the mammal exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, saw some part of the collection at the National Gallery of Art’s West Building, visited the Washington National Cathedral, and spent a day at Mount Vernon.

I spent most of the last nine days in the Grand Canyon, rafting down the Colorado River on the National Center for Science Education’s 2007 trip. I met interesting people and made new friends, ate great food, and saw amazing sights. This was my third trip down the Canyon, but my first in the last two decades (my previous two were in August 1976 and June 1985). This trip included the presentation of both creationist flood geology and real geology, but there was no contest–when you have hundreds of feet of successive ocean floor beds full of fossils of marine life that has lived and died, and a large variety of completely different kinds of formations that have clearly been deposited in different kinds of events, it’s transparently nonsense to claim that it was all laid down in a single year-long flood. Top photo: Grand Canyon about 25 miles downstream from Lee’s Ferry (mile 0); bottom photo: downstream view of river from Nankoweap Canyon (mile 53). UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Here’s a blog post about our trip by a member of the crew.

David at Blue Mass Group offers comment on the Boston Globe’s story which reveals that Mitt Romney used to strap his dog’s carrier to the roof of the car and put the dog in it for 12-hour trips from Boston to Ontario (the specific story takes place in the mid-1980s). In the story, the children are disgusted because the dog, Seamus, has emptied his bowels in his crate, and the animal waste is dripping off the back of the car: As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ‘‘Dad!’’ he yelled. ‘‘Gross!’’ A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours. As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.David at Blue Mass Group, quoting Ana Marie Cox: Massachusetts’s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal “in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.” An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying “it’s definitely something I’d want to check out.” The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it’s against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and “if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal.” And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said “even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we’d hope that people would use common sense…Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we’d think is inappropriate…I can’t speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation."In the comments, several people correctly observe that a crate-trained dog won’t relieve itself in its own crate unless it absolutely has to or is under extreme stress. Not surprising from a man who wants to double the size of Guantanamo.

We are back from a trip to London (with side trips to Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, and a couple days in Cambridge). Although we didn’t plan it, we happened to see a number of interesting things on St. George’s Day–the immediate aftermath of the attempted suicide jumper rescue at Millennium Bridge (my own photos are much less interesting than the Daily Mail’s) and the Guinness Record attempt (successful, I believe) for largest coconut orchestra at Trafalgar Square (with Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and the cast of Spamalot in attendance, singing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”). We got to see both Oxford and Cambridge’s respective Bridges of Sighs (Cambridge says theirs is better because it’s over water; Oxford’s is really named Hertford Bridge), had lunches at the Eagle Pub and at The Orchard. The photo is me in a doorway at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. Unfortunately, we did not make it to Logic Lane. ...

Barbara Peterson took a job as a TSA screener and has written an interesting description of her experience for Conde Nast Traveler. She blames TSA’s incompetence not on the individual screeners (who are generally doing as well as they could be hoped to under the demands of the job) but on Congress.

Anson Kennedy got this wonderful set of directions on how to get to a location in New Jersey: Stan Schwartz also received some creative directions:

I got back this morning from a few days in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a business trip. It was a beautiful country, with great summer weather. The people were very friendly (and patient with my attempts to use a few Spanish words and phrases, as I’m just a beginner at the language), and the food was excellent. I hope to return for a longer time in the future, and hopefully to get some Spanish tutoring while I’m there. Buenos Aires is a huge modern city (population around 15 million) undergoing a lot of construction, especially in the Puerto Madero neighborhood, where this picture was taken. This was an old port that ceased being used in the 1960s, but is now the location of many restaurants, hotels, and businesses. Although a website about Argentina business warned me that subjects not to discuss were the Perons and the Falkland Islands, both subjects were brought up by Argentinians I conversed with, and it wasn’t a problem. This was one of those rare trips where I returned home to Phoenix to find the weather much colder and wetter than it had been in the place I was visiting. UPDATE (January 26, 2007): CNN Money recommends travel to Buenos Aires, and specifically offers this dining suggestion: Tip: Cabana las Lilas in the Puerto Madero section of Buenos Aires is often cited as the best spot for grilled beef. But Robin Goldstein, a writer for Fodor’s travel guides, says you’ll find a more authentic dining experience at half the cost just next door at La Caballeriza (address: Alicia Moreau de Justo 580).I didn’t visit Cabana las Lilas, but did eat at La Caballeriza with a large group of locals, and it was excellent (even the blood sausage wasn’t bad).