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Postcards from:
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Greetings again from Las Vegas, Since returning home three months ago in March after the Tunisia adventure I've been busy, busy. While the visit to the north African nation provided an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity about ancient Carthage and Hannibal's march with elephants to Rome, my time in the region passed peacefully despite all the warnings about terrorist activity in the country. However, two weeks after I left the country all hell broke loose. On 18 March ISIS terrorists killed many foreign tourists in an attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis City.
The minute I got back home I immediately began tackling
the many problems with my enormous travel website.
Changes made by the web host to deal with system
security vulnerabilities disrupted the navigation
features of my site and hundreds of broken links needed
attention. Then, many formatting inconsistencies which
have accumulated over the years needed attention. Time
flies, especially when overwhelmed by so many technical
challenges. Now, most of the broken hyperlinks have been
fixed and the navigation for my next planned expedition
is available in draft form for those who confess to
looking ahead at preliminary drafts.
You may recall I had planned to visit North Korea during the last trip and that the DPRK government closed the country to foreign tourists during my time in Hanoi just weeks before I'd hoped to make the excursion. Now, those plans can be reactivated. I'll restudy the situation from the comfortable vantage point of Bangkok and head north once I formulate workable plans with the Koryo Travel Agency in Beijing. In anticipation of a successful forbidden adventure I have been watching YouTube videos shared by other recent travelers who have successfully made the trip:(see A B C D). The US State Department is vigorously discouraging Americans from venturing into the rogue state, but as many as a thousand of us have been curious enough to ignore the advice in recent years... I will be careful.
Entera, one of my most relevant and prolific information
gate keepers found this interesting, but obscure
historical document: "Why
Socialism?:Albert
Einstein." Written in 1949 at the very height of the
anti-communist scare, it shows another profound side of
the great man and provides much vittles for cogitating.
The YouTube video presentation, The Story Of Earth And Life does a fantastic job of presenting the essence of the academic views offered in the Great Courses: Big History and Origins of Life, which I just finished studying. As I move from one study subject to another with the Great Courses I always examine the collateral possibilities at YouTube. There is at least one directory of documentary length YouTube presentations. As soon as you find one there will be many more listed down the right hand column of the page. I have to believe these new technological marvels are going to have profound influences on the way we engage young students in education in the not too distant future. Now it is back to preparing for my Tuesday, 23 June departure for Bangkok where I'll start the process of concocting a next great adventure including the DPRK.
Peace, Fred L Bellomy
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