Rapid Travel Chai

We have a Supreme Court justice who sounds like C. Montgomery Burns and a heat wave killing people fearful of religion and law from taking a drink of water. I have been collecting links while behind China’s ‘Great Firewall’ and while hosting nieces in NY. This is a catch-up edition of the news of the world and travel that caught my eye in June.

Travel:

• Saudis Turn Birthplace of Wahhabism Ideology Into Tourist Spot (NYT). My visit here.
• Is it time to rethink our ideas about preserving world heritage? (FT). Monuments, humans, and ISIS.
• How The HondaJet Took Flight: An Engineer’s 29-Year Obsession (Forbes). Persistence and flight.
• Super duper full-featured paper map (Flowing Data). Dry.
• France’s Automatic Radar Detectors Raise Millions in Speeding Tickets (Businessweek). ‘The Christmas Wreath’ crossing from Switzerland.
• Can Lufthansa Break the GDS Model?? (Wandering Aramean). Control and cash.
• How To Reapply [Or Apply] For A Second US Passport (Running with Miles). Haven’t decided about re-upping mine. The 2-year validity is a major pain.
• Rome Airport cutting capacity by 40% (Tagging Miles). Rome burning.
• Terrified of traveling with the boss? Don’t be, it’s for your career (Road Warrior Voices). Things like getting your boss out of a middle seat are good. When they great you as “Mr. Krasowski” and take no notice of your boss, bad.
• Tunisia attack: Foreign Office says 15 Britons killed and death toll may rise (The Guardian). One of my favorite countries in the crosshairs of savages.
• Caribbean Islands Face Terrible Drought This Summer (Skift). May is my favorite month to visit the Caribbean, cheap airfares, receding cruise ships, and heat not at max.
• Uruguay to Launch Awkwardly Named Airline (Frugal Travel Guy). Alas there is to be a Pluna replacement.
• How to Rent a Scooter Abroad (Travel Codex). I have often been tempted. Did not know about the small fuel capacity.
• Disney Is Reportedly Set to Ban Dangerous Selfie Sticks from the Parks (Miles to Memories). The tide is turning, I am seeing fewer in NY this month.
• Is Iran The Most Important Travel Destination in Our Lifetime? (Yomadic). I agree and visited during Arab Spring protests in 2011.

News:

• Wesley Clark, Penny-Stock General (Bloomberg Business). What people will do for a paycheck.
• Why Elizabeth Warren Makes Wall Street Tremble (Bloomberg Business). Deeper than the usual caricature.
• Can Racism Be Stopped in the Third Grade? (New York). Fascinating experiment and controversy.
• You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love a Kosher Prison Meal (NYT). Prisoners and flyers in the same culinary boat.
• Sexism no barrier for Japanese exile building India subways (The Japan Times). Succeeds when her homeland closed doors.
• Grim History Traced in Sunken Slave Ship Found Off South Africa (NYT). Stark reminder of a great shame of human history.
• Rolling the dice on Vladivostok (MarketWatch). Russian gets more wacky as you go east, and this is the end of the line.
• Self-exiled former Georgia president Mikheil Saakashvili returns as governor of key region in Ukraine (The Washington Post). A stick in the eye to Putin.
• 700-kg kite in Shiga slams into crowd, injuring four (The Japan Times). A 700-kg kite?
• Why I read aloud with my teens (The Washington Post). The ancients did well with oral traditions and resulting cognitive benefits that we have lost.
• Advice to young scientists: Don’t worry about adviser peering down your shirt (The Washington Post). Spirited debate.
• What Silicon Valley Can Learn From Seoul (NYT). The US has slow internet and single-function apps, Korea has the vibrant opposite.
• Rand Paul Got One (Huge) Thing Right (Truthdig). Speaking up against the worst excesses of the Patriot Act.
• Transnistria shapes up as next Ukraine-Russia flashpoint (FT). Putin nurses these failed buffer states as a Russian line of defense.
• Why do I keep seeing journalists take notes on paper? (Rob Pegoraro). I hate when talking and people are click-clacking on keyboards, though am ok with electronic pens on screens.
• Man With Rare Health Issue Climaxed 100+ Times a Day For 20 Years (chinaSMACK).
• Can you answer this year’s tricky gaokao essay questions? (Shanghaiist). I was in China earlier this month during the college entrance exams. Here’s a taste.
• The Desolation of Merv (The Diplomat). Visited in 2009, in July. Don’t visit in summer.
• The Battle over Indonesia’s first Female Sultan (Foreign Affairs). Conxplex battle of tradition and power.
• Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans (NYT). A challenge to a system that cripples many in debt.
• Lobster fishing practices underscore US-Canada island boundary dispute (Durham University). I did not know we have a disputed border.
• The East India Company: The original corporate raiders (The Guardian). More William Dalrymple.
• Holy Ignorance by Garry Wills (The New York Review of Books). Understanding religion and science.
• Global LGBT community still gripped by homophobic state-sponsored violence (The Guardian). At a day of celebration of tolerance in the US, a reminder of the dangers at home and abroad.
• Lunch with the FT: Takashi Murakami (FT). Wacky conversation with expert correspondent David Pilling.