Preview Antarctica

Antarctica, a 40-minute feature film on the continent, animals and the scientists who work there, is available on streaming video from Hulu.com.

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Women in Ancient Greece

The Onassis Cultural Foundation in midtown Manhattan has just opened an interesting exhibition on the role of women in ancient Greece, as illuminated in art of the time. The New York Times writes,

The main misconception is the notion that women had a universally mute and passive role in Athenian society. It is true that they lived with restrictions modern Westerners would find intolerable. Technically they were not citizens. In terms of civil rights, their status differed little from that of slaves. Marriages were arranged; girls were expected to have children in their midteens. Yet, the show argues, the assumption that women lived in a state of purdah, completely removed from public life, is contradicted by the depictions of them in art.

Much of that art is religious, which is no surprise considering the commanding female deities in the Greek pantheon. Like most gods in most cultures they are moody, contradictory personalities, above-it-all in knowledge but quick to play personal politics and intervene in human fate. Four of them make in-depth appearances here.

Read more of this excellent review.

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TDI Radio goes live!

We’re still trying to work out how to embed a player inside this here blog, but in the meantime, you can check out the sounds of Travel Dynamics International’s world on Blip.fm! You’ll find ancient Malian songs, traditional sea shanties, Greek folk songs, South African choral works, and a great deal more. It’s the soundtrack to your voyages.

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Things to do in Venice when it’s flooded, #5

Wakeboard. Hang ten, dude! From the marvelous website News:Lite – It Barely Qualifies as News, we receive the heroic story of Duncan Zuur, who has now fulfilled his life’s ambition of wakeboarding across St. Mark’s Square. I’m not sure it’s really worth your while to watch the video; suffice to say that he attaches a motorized winch to one end of the piazza, straps his wakeboard to his feet, and zips along past the arcades of the Doge’s Palace carving s-curves in the floodwaters.

Hey, the authorities are urging tourists to stay away for the moment. This is the best we could do.

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A Better Jet-Lag Pill?

We give people wonderful vacations here at TDI, but let’s face it: a trans-Atlantic flight, a hop on a boat, and touring the very next day? We know it, you know it – that first breakfast is rough when you’re still feeling that soul-delay. (That’s how William Gibson describes jet-lag in his novel Pattern Recognition.)

Well, an experimental drug currently undergoing trials is threatening to neatly reset the body clock, banish jet-lag, and eliminate that excuse, at least, for not traveling with us to the Mediterranean or Africa. Time Magazine reports that:

The drug, tasimelteon, works by mimicking the effects of the naturally occurring hormone melatonin, which has long been identified as the regulator of the body’s sleep and wake patterns. In Phase II and III clinical trials of 450 people who were subjected to simulated jet lag in a sleep laboratory (participants were forced to go to bed at 6 p.m. and wake up at 2 a.m.), a team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found that the new drug restored near normal sleep the first night it was used.

Read the rest here.

(Thanks to MyTravelOptimizer!)

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One reason why we do what we do.

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.
– Ralph Crawshaw

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