After an 18+ hour flight from LAX, I am now in Malaysia, with high speed Internet from my hotel room.
This week I discuss updates to my show notes page, and the social impacts of tourism and travel on destinations, including both from tourists and from the tourism industry. (Total Length: 29 min, 55 sec)
This week's podcast covers Geographic Literacy, The Great Escape/Scavenger Hunt, Space Tourism, and the Geography of Brazil. Quite a mashing of topics! and I am not sure if I pull them all together as well as I had hoped.* BBC: The Space Race: Space Tourism (audio)http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1744_spacerace/page4.shtml
* BBC: Space tourist returns to Earth
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4329328.stm
* BBC: Firm offers $100m orbit of moon
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4139188.stm
* Virgin Galactic - space flight reservations website (f0r 2008)
http://www.virgingalactic.com/en/when.asp
* New Voyager News - source for space tourism news
http://www.newvoyagenews.com/news/
This week's podcast is focused exclusively on China, including all of the news items, and a discussion of the history of the Great Wall of China. [Click on the title above to download the podcast mp3 file.]
Tourists Love the Sun/Beach/Coast/Ocean
-- Click on the title above to listen to this podcast --
Prohibited items consfiscated at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport since June 1, 2005
This was my first interview podcast! I recorded it using Gizmo Project -- which is like Skype, but includes a built-in record function. I also interviewed my sister, who has a vacation rental in Cozumel, Mexico, and was there when hurricane Wilma made landfall over Cozumel and Cancun on October 21, 2005. Hurricane Wilma was the strongest low pressure air system (lowest atmospheric pressure) ever recorded in the Caribbean, though it had weakened some by the time it reached Cozumel. (Note that stronger low pressure systems exist in the form of Tornados, but their air pressure has never been measured because they tend to tear the instruments apart.)
The link above is to the following article in the International Herald Tribune about French resistance to international trade liberalization efforts because they threaten its highly subsidized
NEW - Click the Title Link for This Entry to Listen to This Week's Podcast - NEW
This week's podcast discusses several news items and then focuses on the geography of sub-Saharan Africa. I have switched from trying to get my podcast up by Sunday night to doing it on Monday morning. The last two weeks I was up until 2:30 in the morning (which really was Monday morning!) getting the podcast in order. This time, I got the material together on Sunday and then did the podcast on Monday.
In Singapore (where I have twice lived for a period of time) the Fall through mid-Winter season is when all the great festival events take place. These include the Hindu Festival of Lights (Deepavali in the Tamil language, also known as the Hindu New Year), the Christian Christmas (which was the most commercial and least ethnic/religious of them all, in my opinion), and Chinese New Year. Starting off this festival season was Ramadan, which was originally a Muslim month of fasting and tithing, but also included delicious feasting, and now much more ... see the link below ...
There was a story this morning on NPR's morning edition that struck me as the essence of a Geographic Sense of Place story. If you go to NPR's Morning Edition website, the story is listed with this description:Farm Subsidies Debated in Global Trade Talks - by Kathleen Schalch - Morning Edition, October 11, 2005 · U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman is in Switzerland Tuesday to revive stalled global trade talks deadlocked over demands that wealthy countries limit protections for their own farmers. The Bush administration says it is ready to slash U.S. farm subsidies if others do the same, but many countries are reluctant.
The URL is: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4953604 -- Note that if you cannot open the Listen link, you need to go to help to change your default audio player for NPR program
However, this is really a story about the cultural landscape of Switzerland and how it is heavily subsidized by the Swiss government (covering up to 90% of the annual incomes of some farmers) for the purposes of tourism and museumization. Museumization is a term coined by geographer Ed Relph in his 1976 book, Place and Placelessness. It refers to efforts to keep some landscapes from naturally changing and evolving over time -- that is, to freeze them, as if they were in a museum. Relph argues that museumization is an example of inauthenticity and placelessness.
Now I have been to Switzerland and I found the rural landscape, with its high mountain farms, both fascinating and beautiful. However, is it real? If the government needs to use tax dollars to provide 60% to 90% of the income to those who are living that rural lifestyle, then I personally think it is more of a museum than a living landscape. And the Swiss tax payers, andlong with tourists, are paying for the museum to stay open, which may not be a bad thing at all. But at least now you know.
In the context of the NPR description, above, perhaps if Switzerland were to argue that this is not an agricultural subsidy, but a salary for workers in a "living museum," then perhaps it would shift a good part of the global trade discussions. -- Probably not, but a thought.
What do you think? Listen to the story above, and post your comments to this blog, or direclty to me at travelgeographer@msn.com
Happy Trails
This week's podcast looks at a recent report from the Economist on tourism and terrorism in Bali. I then discuss a few other travel and tourism news items and transition into a discussion of the Middle East, which I extend to include the geographic regions of North Africa, Southwest Asia, and even Central Asia. Note that the inclusion of Central Asia as part of the broader Middle East is not widely accepted -- yet. But there are some good reasons, which I outline in the pocast.BBC
Dubai - The Palm Islands
Wiki Travel
(click on the title above to download the .mp3 file)