From "Is Instagram’s Latest Travel Trend a Disaster Waiting to Happen? Travel accounts that feature risky, cross-continental journeys are proliferating on social media. Security experts have serious concerns" (NYT gift link).
Here's that "one clip"
IN THE COMMENTS: A lot of you want to talk about the "real" Ian Anderson, and I see he's still around. He's 79. Here's the 2022 Jethro Tull album, "The Zealot Gene."
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42 కామెంట్లు:
Expert, texpert…
Aqualung. There, I said it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPErFLWht1U
So, a guy named Ian Andersen is "flouting" the security warnings?
Great article, although wasn't Mr. Anderson staying at hotels and being escorted by an Iranian Guide?
As for the Foremans, I sincerely doubt they were just a British couple out for a ride and ended up serving 10 years in Prison.
I think we're missing quite a bit of the story.
I've noticed this pattern in the anglo-american press whereby every Brit/American arrested for spying in Iran/russia/China/etc. gets the "Well thats crazy, they were just ordinary joes or journalists doing blahdeblah" treatment.
Even though we know Israeli and western intelligence agencies have a zillion spies in every country.
The guy ought to be blaring Jethro Tull.
I'm glad these people all want to record and provide us with a record of their incredible risky adventures. Personally, I have zero desire to risk my life for no reason, but I love reading or watching people who do.
Beaten to it.
I can't remember the details of the story about the idealistic young... couple? I think they were a heterosexual couple, not two young women, who were biking? trekking? through some fundamentalist Muslim country and were brutally murdered. (Sheesh. Why am I even commenting, if I remember this little?!)
(Here's why:) It seems to me that it's definitely a disaster waiting, or sometimes not waiting, to happen. And it seems to me that a good chunk of the blame belongs to media that present as both evil and paranoid everything our government does in a foreign country besides handing out condoms, encouraging indigenous people not to assimilate into the "modern world," and creating makework for the children of local dictators. If idealistic young people actually believed the evidence of their lying eyes early in their travels instead of the tales told by idiots, maybe they wouldn't end up deep inside a country that doesn't want them, advertising their wealth and naivete to local people who might well want some of the wealth and wish that they had the luxury of the naivete.
“ In 2024, she became the first person to complete a new route across Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, totaling some 342 miles.”
How does anyone know this is factual? And why publish a belief as a fact?
He's following in the footsteps of Rick Steves. The traveler is. Not the flautist.
Ian Anderson is the flute player, right? If he isn't it's the other guy who should have become famous.
It’s cheating if you pay someone to protect you.
Have they scheduled the future protest over his upcoming tragic death yet? That traffic in Madison ain't gonna block itself, you know.
A disaster waiting to happen? There have always been intrepid explorers throughout human history. The only difference is that they're now documenting it in a format available to the world, and, maybe, making a buck off it.
Remember Shackleton's ad?
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
Oh, and, I got to meet Ian Anderson of JT backstage about ten years ago. Interesting guy.
"America Fuck Yeah" was intended by the South Park guys to make fun of OTT patriotism. But because their movie made equal fun of OTT leftism, lots of righties (who tend to allow and appreciate good-natured ridicule of our excesses) adopted the song. But at the same time, we see Mr Andersen lip-synching it ironically.
That was a long way of saying AFY could be a song that brings us all together. Everyone sings the words and applies their own interpretation. Hey, the Star-Spangled Banner is much more warmongery. And much more difficult to sing. CC, JSM
"tribute to Ian, mate." - what I say after I get "that look" when I have to double on flute. Followed by: "I told you to let me just play it on clarinet."
Althouse’s point about Ian is that he was not sitting on a park bench eying little girls with bad intent.
The namby pamby Karen's want to crush the human spirit.
**Eastern Approaches (1949) is a memoir of the early career of Fitzroy Maclean. It is divided into three parts: his life as a junior diplomat in Moscow and his travels in the Soviet Union, especially the forbidden zones of Central Asia; his exploits in the British Army and SAS in the North Africa theatre of war; and his time with Josip Broz Tito and the Partisans in Yugoslavia.**
(Maybe) A funny story about the Jethro Tull Anderson: He wanted to be the guitarist for Tull on the level of Clapton but someone told him he just wasn't ever going to make it. So he decided to distinguish himself one another instrument, decided on the flute, and then taught himself how to play it. . . .while performing.
Traveling alone, especially when female, in poor countries is not a good idea. But if you want to engage in that sort of risky behavior well its your life. Just don't demand Uncle Sam come and rescue you.
If I'd president in 1904, there would have been no Perdicaris alive or Razuli dead. It would've been "good luck with that".
Anderson the flautist, IIRC, decided on his own that he would never be a Clapton--at least that's what he has claimed.
YT is chock full of interviews with and about him, of course, and I enjoy the many reaction videos available from younger people who never heard the great late60s/early70s music of Tull and others.
Dude was trying to do an Iranian version of Cycling Thru Japan, which is a great TV show. Unfortunately, Iran at the governmental level is even more paranoid about foreigners than Japan. CC, JSM
Extreme rubbernecking.
Remember Shackleton's ad?
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.”
The greatest ad ever written.
"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it."
I hope that he'll be OK, but traveling to certain places in the world can be very risky. Something like this is all about the risk/reward ratio.
Some of this is a function of youth. i was never lame brained enough to bike through Iran or (WTF squared) Antartica, but I did go to some offbeat places in Spain and Mexico just for the sake of meeting people who weren't tourists. Not all my experiences were exalting and affirmative, but some were. When you;re in your twenties, very few things are more exciting than foreign travel.
“In 2024, she became the first person to complete a new route across Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, totaling some 342 miles.”
It’s true, before her, everyone just completed the old routes.
I went through a period in the 80s and 90s where I was hooked on this type of stranger in a strange land books. Books on Tape used to have a lot of them. I listened to books by Peter Fleming (Ian's interesting older brother) Freya Start and others who traveled solo in the middle east, Asia and other dangerious parts of the world in the 20s and 30s.
George Kennan traveled across Siberia in the 1860s surveying a telegraph line and wrote a book about it.
Lots of good books by African explorers in the 1880s or so. Stanley, Mungo Park and others.
A very interesting genre
John Henry
The Shackleton quote is pretty cool but unfortunately is an urban legend. Claude says it is first found in 1944 in a book by Carl Hopkins Elmore "Quit You Like Men" (1944)
C Northcote Parkinson in either "The Law and the Profits" or "The Law" has a whole chapter on the problems with recruiting ads and suggests that they be written something like this one. I did not remember Shackleton from his books. Claude says there is nothing to show that Parkinson had it in mind.
It is still a great concept.
John Henry
Robert Pelton Young wrote several books on the worlds most dangerous places that I read 20 years ago. He would go to places like Beirut, Liberia, Congo and Chechnya and write about being in a war zone. Very interesting reading.
More current, but less danger oriented is Matt Lakeman's substack. He spends several weeks in offbeat countries like Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Guyana, Tunisia and similar and writes longform articles about them. https://mattlakeman.org/
John Henry
So Many Enemies, So Little Time: An American Woman in all the Wrong Places: another fascinating book by Elinor Burkett. Once you start reading her, you can't stop. She and her husband took precautions: there were places he went to alone. She does not sugarcoat, and she also seeks the positive. More people should know her work. The Chinese habit of spitting on the floor profusely gets a little gross.
It feels like the article and clickbait don’t do Anderson justice. He didn’t ride into Iran during the war. He was riding across Asia, which is generally risky anyway all the time, when the war broke out and he then immediately gtfo and resumed on a route to avoid it. He documents the difficulties he has along the way, including political and diplomatic ones. There’s a motorbiker, a Dutch woman that goes by ItchyBoots, who I’m surprised NYT didn’t mention, but she similarly posts a seemingly honest account of the good and bad of her journeys. Neither of this vloggers seem in over their heads or under any misimpression about the dangers of what they’re doing. And perhaps that’s the risk, that they might inspire armchair pretenders to try something similar and they will find themselves in situations they didn’t realize were possible. But this is a bit like writing an article about Alex Honnold and fretting about the dangers of climbing. Yes, it’s risky, and yes these people might get hurt, but they know what they’re getting themselves into. That they’re worth watching, and perhaps admiring on some level, doesn’t mean they should be emulated but it also doesn’t mean they should be discouraged.
He says in the video that he was required to pay a "guide" and was required to stop at a certain hotel. My impression is that the "guide" is a mandatory government minder. The hotel looks pretty good, though.
Paul Theroux's travel books are very good in the genre of literate westerners travelling on the cheap in sketchy places.
Also Bruce Chatwin.
While on this subject of personal visits to remote areas (peopled or not), one should mention American Colin O’Brady—who skied entirely across Antarctica in the first solo cross-continent jaunt of that kind back in 2018 (54 days, ~932 miles [1,500 km], from Hercules Inlet to the Ross Ice Shelf via the South Pole), writing it up in his book *The Impossible First*.
This last November Colin attempted an even longer traverse of Antarctica, this time along its longest dimension (from ice-shelf to ice-shelf) passing through the South Pole. By February, running out of food, O'Brady was forced to terminate his new expedition, but that still left him with the record for the longest solo time on the continent, as well as the first unassisted (by dogs or kites) human traversal of the Ross Ice Shelf.
One can read about Ross O'Brady's recent expedition here: 1, 2, 3, 4
Fools, Angels, etc..
I saw Jethro Tull back in 2005 when Anderson and Martin Barre were still playing together. They were excellent. Surprisingly young audience. Sadly I think Anderson's voice has since deteriorated, but old rockers don't want to retire.
I saw JT live twice in the early 70s. They were outstanding, and Anderson was a dervish--a first class act all around.
I tell you one thing that really drives me nuts, is people who think that Jethro Tull is just a person in a band.
John Henry,.
You should clarify that this was not George Kennan the diplomat, but rather a cousin of his from 2 generations earlier.
"that Jethro Tull is just a person in a band"
Key and Peele did a variation on the theme with Hootie and the Blowfish.
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