A map, any map, is a picture of the world in miniature. They can be frighteningly complex, choc full of annotation and information, but they can and should be easy to understand. A map may have a hundred or more words on it but it’s easy to tell what those words mean. When the name [...]
People in Hollywood are seen more often than people from any other place in the world. The verb can only be “seen,” because movies were seen long before they were heard. The place and its primary industry still obsess over the way people and things look. Hollywood may not be the movie and television capital [...]
You are bound to hear a great deal about the Mayans this year. It’s been said that the Mayans predicted the world would end in 2012. That is not true. The world may or may not end in 2012, but the Mayans never predicted it. For a traveler, a student of history, or just a [...]
A good family movie gets laughs from kids and adults. The movie shouldn’t soar over the heads of young, or bore the… less young. Easier said than done. Jokes that adults find tiresome, might be a kids favorite part of the movie, content adults enjoy could be inappropriate for young eyes, or incomprehensible to young [...]
Non-stop charter flights can now travel between O’Hare and Jose Martí airport in Havana, Cuba. The first of these flights took off November 25th of this year. The charter airline that flew this first trip, C & T Charters, say they plan to continue these flights on a weekly basis. Previously, government regulations would have [...]
Do your homework! I was once a sixth grade math teacher, so I am used to telling people to do things that aren’t fun. I tried to do as little of that as possible when I was a teacher and I try to do the same as the columnist for Vámanos but I want to [...]
The holidays happen at the wrong time of the year. From Thanksgiving, the busiest travel holiday in the U.S, to New Year’s week, there is an excess of travelers. We all try to make it through the airports in a lump, like a big mouse in a small snake, and the airports have trouble digesting [...]
I remember feeling trapped at grandma’s house, 13-year-old Casey, trying to figure out how to play Uno by myself. Columbus Nebraska has never been a playground for the rich and famous, but when I was 6 it was great fun. I remember my pre-puberty self digging through dusty crates of old toys, finding my fathers [...]
Experience cuts both ways. People often say they travel to “try something new” or “break out of a routine.” Novel and different things excite us. Dr. David Eagleman said in an article in Current Opinion in NeuroBiology “perceived durations can be distorted by… an oddball in a sequence,” put simply, doing something different can change [...]
Steven Levitt, coauthor of “Freakonomics” has a theory on how to be happy. He suggests a person should try to do things other people don’t want to do. He asserts that success is harder to attain in a crowded field than in an open one. You might not get a chance to be the best [...]
