Mexico City and the Oh-So-Predictable Travel Journalist’s Perspective

I’ve read a lot of travel articles on Mexico City, and I’ve had enough. Travel journalists, please, I dare you: Write an article about this city without using the words smog or crime. I somehow manage to survive here without noticing either (most days.) Tourists will notice the crime/smog even less, especially if they don’t have a window seat on the plane, and avoid going to Tepito, the thieves’ market.

Here we go, with the hive mind of the travel journalist:

• “It may be smog-choked, even crime-ridden in parts, but the lure of Mexico City is irresistible.”
• “Mexico City… has a reputation as a peculiarly modern type of hell, sweaty with smog and slums, but is equally shaped by its Aztec heritage and some of the most extensive colonial architecture in the northern hemisphere.”
• “Many first-time visitors arriving at Mexico City airport experience an urge to jump straight back on to the plane. The combination of urban sprawl, brown, soupy pollution and a tangle of motorways is indeed off-putting.”
• “Once known more for its crime, smog, and daunting size, Mexico’s capital is in the middle of a cultural revolution fueled by a rising economy.”
• “Mexico City, with a population of more than 20 million, is slowly overcoming its reputation as an urban nightmare of poverty, crime and smog.”
• “Mexico City has smog and crime – but also great food, music and art.”

Movie — Who Killed The Electric Car? — Everyone, I Guess

Last night we finally watched the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

It’s always a bit disheartening to learn that, because of the “big guys” (the rich white old men of the government, the oil companies and the automakers), the American consumer was never really given the chance to own the true electric car, which uses no gasoline.

About a decade ago, GM released the “EV1” model, an electric car that was the first step in the right direction (that is, a vehicle that didn’t run on smog-spewing foreign oil). They let a few thousand people lease the EV1 models in California and Arizona. When demand started to build, but other factors caused GM to stop production, GM took all their EV1 cars back, with force. They literally smashed the poor, innocent cars to bits and pieces, promising to “recycle” the parts. This didn’t go down without a fight, as fervent EV1 drivers staged a round-the-clock vigil to keep the few cars from the junkyard. GM won.

As highlighted in this 2006 article by Bloomberg News, the death of the electric car was caused by a sort of perfect storm of factors (mostly rich guys noticing how consumers drooled over the shiny gigantic-ness of SUVs – the anti-Christ to electric cars.)

As a result, while gas prices continue to escalate, and global warming is irrefutable, current efforts to improve the first versions of the electric car are amazingly sparse. Right now, the push to create “plug-in” cars seems the most hopeful innovation on the horizon – unlike electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and hybrid vehicles (which still have a pretty crappy MPG ratio), “plug-ins” allow drivers to go long distances without needing to recharge, one of the biggest drawbacks to older electric models.

However, again, it seems like production efforts of the “plug-ins” are moving at the pace of a demented turtle — have you seen any of these cars on the street?

Neither have I.

(Update: The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that “GM Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said yesterday that the company hopes to launch a family of electric vehicles that would share many parts with GM’s mainstream models. GM still needs suppliers to develop the batteries required for electric vehicles, and it isn’t yet certain the suppliers will come through. GM already is mapping out plans to produce a wide range of electric models beyond the Chevrolet Volt, which it has vowed to launch in three years or so.”)

God Bless Working at Home

Dear Lady Luck –

Thank you so much for letting me work for a company that allows me to work at home. And, going farther back in our relationship, thank you for letting me enter a field of work that requires only an internet connection to be productive and, thusly, a wage earner.

As you know, today every single subway line was affected by flooding, stranding many people in the 102-degree heat index weather.

But not me. Or Brendan!

Again, thank you. I’d write more, but I’m working, from my air-conditioned apartment. I’m sure looking forward to that “commute” home. Wink-wink!

– Joy

Virginia Tech: The Victims, from the NYT

As a cynical journalist, it’s hard to get me upset about most news events. On Sept. 11,  I worked until the wee hours of the night, laying out newspaper pages and editing news stories. And then I worked for many days straight,  having very little time to sit back and reflect on what happened.

And don’t even ask me about my days at ABC News. No matter what the news story was, my bosses made a joke about it. I nearly walked out many times.

So, now that I have a job that’s less about the news, and more about general information, I feel a bit more like a regular person — reacting to the news, rather than providing it. This is the first big news  event (I feel) that’s happened since I stopped being a reporter, and I find myself absorbing the information on a more emotional level. Namely, this: The Victims.

Today in Space News: Crazy Lady Astronauts, and Space Junk

I love following news about space. And today’s a real doozy.

First, we’ve got the crazy astronaut story. Wearing diapers, a trench coat and a wig, NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak raced to Orlando in her car to confront a woman that Nowak believed was sleeping with fellow astronaut William Oefelein. She wore the diapers so she wouldn’t have to get out and pee. When she finally found the woman, she sprayed her with a mace-like substance. Here is a nice photo of her, and her mug shot. I love her perfect astronaut hair, an orbital brown bouffant with 80s-style bangs. While this is definitely a sad story, when you’re in a fiction writing class, like me, you can’t help but  think  the truth always trumps fiction. And as a health editor, you can’t help but think borderline personality, anyone?

The second, and far more important chunk of space info, is the news that China blew up a big orbiting satellite, creating an even thicker later of space junk around the planet (and indicating China’s ability to blow up missile-detecting satellites). Humans are such litterbugs, even our orbital space is littered with crap. Already some fancy, expensive sattelites have become damaged, and this has numerous consequences. The poor Hubble telescope has been slammed by debris 725,000 times. Satellites provide lots of important things, from weather patterns, stragetic military information (missiles), communication (cell phones) and endless science data.

Tons of space junk also means that spaceships trying to leave Earth would be forced to navigate the equivalent of an asteroid belt as they leave orbit. With any luck, we’ll be stuck on a hot, melting planet with no satellite communication services. Fun!

Twenty People with Artificial Voice Boxes, Talking All at Once

I’ve had a few bizarre moments in my years as a newspaper reporter, but nothing competes with the time I interviewed the Second Voice Club. All of the members had survived laryngeal and throat cancer, both almost always brought on by smoking. One of the first treatments is to remove the voice box, known as the larynx.

Recommended Reading: “Slow is Beautiful”

From the New York Times comes an excellent article on the fascinating turtle, which has the capacity to live for hundreds of years — if humans don’t drive it into extinction first.

I’ve had the amazing opportunity to volunteer with the Animal Rehabiliation Keep in Port Aransas, TX, where I got to see tiny baby Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles (the single cutest creature on the planet) grow into massive animals and be released back to the sea. But I also saw too many injured sea turtles who had been hit by boats, caught in fishing line or sickened by pollution. One permanent resident, Barnacle Bill, had only two flippers left, so he crawled along the bottom of his tank, wearing a path in the concrete floor. The water level had to be kept low so he wouldn’t have to exert himself to breathe.

Anyway, an excerpt from the article:

People may despise cats or fear dogs, but practically everybody has a soft spot for turtles. “Turtles are by far the most popular reptile,” said Peter C. H. Pritchard, director of the Chelonian Research Institute in Oviedo, Fla. “Unlike snakes, which may threaten you and which move like a flash, turtles are benign and slow, and you can’t dislike or distrust the clumsy.”

(Yet) turtle habitats are fast disappearing, or are being fragmented and transected by roads on which millions of turtles are crushed each year.

You can’t make this up

It took me a long while to figure out that they didn’t actually mean beating. I was sure I was onto another headline error.

Youth Gets Sentenced to Prison in Autistic Player’s Beaning 

‘At first, Sally wanted only spaghetti.’

Animal lovers (like me) also love animal stories, especially those that reveal clever animal idiosyncrasies. Thanks, Brendan, for passing it along. Who knew turtles had such human-like food preferences?

Sally the Turtle: Missing

A woman holds out hope she’ll find her beloved turtle, Sally, missing for months.

Oh really?

Just a minor headline error I spotted on Google News this morning….