This New Zealand Herald story asserts that, when it comes to arts and culture, Paris has become “second string” to Berlin, New York and London. Catherine Field writes, “[T]he worshippers these days are consumers, not creators. They are mainly foreign tourists who come to see the eternal Mona Lisa, post-modern American artists, the French Impressionists and Moliere. The city chemistry that produced rawness, dynamism, change and challenge seems absent.” This comes on the heels of Donald Morrison’s Time magazine piece, The Death of French Culture.

Related on World Hum:

* David Sedaris on Flea Markets and Foods Courts in Paris

Photo by izarbeltza via Flickr, (Creative Commons)

I just visited the Pensacola area, a sun-bathed, nature-lover’s paradise that features white sand beaches where you can indulge in almost any water related activity. There is so much to do in the area that listing all of the possibilities is out of the question, but I’ll list some of my favorites. . …

If you are one of the zillions of people who have been breathlessly reading my blog you will know that my friend Bobby Bailey designed a glider to fly in the Red Bull Flugtag held last weekend in Tampa. I had to post about it one more time because his glider won!
The team he designed it for, the Tampa Baywatch, took home top honors with a final distance of 109 feet. It would have flown further if Bobby was piloting it but it still trounced the others –the second place winner only snagged 32 feet. …

Cruises, by their inclusive nature, are lauded as dollar-stretching vacations. But along with fuel surcharges, which continue to soar, cruise passengers could soon be hit with a host of other charges as municipalities increasingly slap new fees on cruise passengers and cruise lines.

The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a public meeting to discuss the probable cause of the May 2007 grounding of the Empress of the North in Alaska, more than a year after the incident occurred.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning funnyman has apparently figured out where it is, because he’s been blogging from Costa Rica about his travels. He’s seen lots of monkeys, and he went zip-lining, “which is a sport where the object is to look like the world’s biggest dork,” he writes. “I was very good at it.” Judge for yourself.

Related on World Hum:

* Onion Video: Andorra is ‘Not in Africa’

The pyramid-shaped, 105-story Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, has been languishing—unfinished—for 16 years. But now Egyptian developers have begun refurbishing what was once dubbed “the worst building in the history of mankind,” Reuters reports. It’s estimated to cost $2 billion—about 10 percent of North Korea’s annual economic output—to finish the skyline-dominating eyesore.

Related on World Hum:

* The Ryugyong Hotel: ‘The Worst Building in the History of Mankind’?

Photo via Wikipedia Commons.

Check out the aluminum skeleton in the picture! My friend Bobby made this thing. It’s going to be sporting wings and flying high –or maybe flying low, or maybe just plummeting into the ocean – in less than a week. Not only that, it will have changed into some exotic creature like a seal or a reindeer or maybe even a giant Oompa Loompa. …

Take a guide, take an ice axe and take the exhilarating challenge of skiing the legendary Haute Route.