landspeednyc

Website aims to educate Americans about Canada

I've seen Canadian Bacon, Kids in the Hall and the South Park Movie, and I've listened to Martha and the Muffins- what else do I need to know about Canada? Well, maybe there's more....

From the Globe and Mail:

Oh sure, you hear about how everyone plays hockey in Canada, gets to the rink by dogsled and then goes home to an igloo.

But many myths about Canadians that circulate in the United States aren't nearly so silly or harmless.

Perceptions that Canada is soft on immigration, routinely harbours terrorists and supplies most of the U.S. with marijuana are potentially a lot more unsettling to cross-border ties.

That's one reason why the Canadian embassy in Washington is assembling an army of ex-pats as it battles the errors spouted by U.S. television pundits and repeated at dinner parties.

Speak It in Chinese, Hear It in English

From Newsweek:

Alex Waibel doesn't understand Chinese, but he can read street signs when in Beijing. A team of engineers led by Waibel at Germany's Karlsruhe University has developed a heldheld device called the Sign Translator. It uses an integrated camera and software that recognizes, and translates into English, about 3,000 Chinese characters.

The Sign Translator is the cutting edge of a raft of breakthrough developments in translation technology coming down the pipeline. Governments in Europe, rather than corporations, are driving much of the innovation—and with good reason. Consider the European Union: in Brussels, the world's largest translation and interpretation operation spends more than $875 million a year ferrying information in and out of the bloc's 21 official languages.

The IHT's Roger Collis asks, "Earning miles: Is it worth it?"

From the IHT, another take on an eternal question:

I was a lone consumer voice in Bangkok last month at the Frequent Flier Conference 2006, a gathering of nearly 200 airline and systems software executives.

 

The first question to the panel was, "What is the role of frequent-flier programs in the overall marketing mix?" To which I found myself replying, "To con travelers into thinking that they'll get a free lunch." The corollary is, "Do you want to pay top dollar for a full- fare ticket and earn miles that you may find hard to redeem, or pass on the miles and buy a discounted business- class ticket for less than half the published price?"

Favela chic escalates- first, music, shanty tours and City of God; now, hotels

From Yahoo news/Reuters ("'Little Slum Inn' offers priceless views"):

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - Breathtaking views high above Rio de Janeiro's beaches and mountains can be yours for just a few dollars a day -- if you skip pricey hotels and sleep in a slum.

Rio's slums, or favelas, are infamous for drug and gang violence. But a new hostel called "The Little Slum Inn" is attracting adventurous tourists, mainly from Germany, France and the United States, who dare to live amid the grit and poverty.

"This place isn't for wimps. If you are uptight, you can go stay at the Copacabana Palace," said co-owner and shantytown dweller Andreia Martins, 31, referring to the luxury beachfront hotel where the Rolling Stones stayed last month when they played a free concert for more than 1 million people.

From the Guardian:

Favela hotels serve up different view of Rio

With her thick-rimmed glasses and sparse, rotting teeth, Alzenira Bento is hardly a typical hotel owner. She has spent her life carting firewood up the mountainsides of Rio de Janeiro and washing the clothes of Copacabana's rich "madames", and now, at 70, lives in a three-storey home at the heart of the Chapeu Mangueira shantytown, which peers over Rio's famous beach.

But as the driving force behind the "Rio Culture" pousada (inn), Mrs Bento is part of a new wave of favela hoteliers offering stays in Rio's redbrick shantytowns at rock-bottom prices.

"Foreigners are tired of seeing that postcard, that washed version of Brazil," said her 40-year-old daughter, Patricia Bento, who also chips in at the family-run guest house. "If you just stay in the [five-star] Sofitel you leave with no notion of the extent of the misery in this country."