Gadling

Remember the coffee revolution of the Nineties, when what used to cost 25 cents at some crappy diner suddenly cost $3 at a snooty cafe? Well, at least instead of drinking what looked and tasted like dishwater you now got something that tasted like actual coffee. Ah yes, I was in graduate school then and the coffee revolution came along just at the right time! But coffee has been around a lot longer than that, as a new/old coffeehouse at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia shows.

Americans have been drinking coffee since before they've been called Americans. A local wigmaker and caffeine junkie named Richard Charlton opened a coffeehouse at Williamsburg more than 240 years ago, when Virginia was still a colony. Today Colonial Williamsburg, an interesting and authentic recreation of a Colonial town, has reopened this coffeeshop on the same site. You can sit in 18th century style while sipping a coffee, chocolate, or tea. You're not allowed to dump the tea into the sea, that was in Boston, but Charlton's coffeeshop was the scene of angry colonists confronting the British-appointed governor of Virginia colony to protest the Stamp Act in 1765.

This wasn't surprising. Coffeeshops were places to meet and discuss politics. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson drank coffee at Charlton's shop. There's no record of what they talked about over a good cup of Joe, but we can imagine. Did hepped-up caffeine addicts create the superpower we know today? Stranger things have happened. . .

EasyJet has apologized to everyone who will listen over a fashion shoot that appeared in its inflight magazine.

Did the models wear too little? Did they look like fourteen year-old cokeheads? No, none of the usual stuff; they happened to be posing at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Yes, some fashion photographer decided the concrete blocks known as the "Field of Stelae", properly called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, would be a cool place for slinky women to show off designer duds. The editor of the magazine at INK Publishing thought it was a pretty neat idea too, and easyJet didn't notice until too late.

Now they've yanked the issue from all their planes and are "reviewing their relationship" with the publisher.

This was probably an honest oversight by easyJet, who acted quickly and appropriately when the issue came to their notice, but what about the magazine's editors? Or the photographer? Or the models? Didn't anyone stop and say , "Hey, millions of Jews died in the concentration camps. Perhaps we should take these photos somewhere else?"

Nope, apparently not.

It's World Heritage Week from November 19-25 and countries around the globe are celebrating the priceless treasures that UNESCO, which runs the list, is helping to preserve.

But one country, India, is wondering why two of its most famous places aren't on the list. India has no shortage of World Heritage Sites, like the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, but the 3500 year-old holy city of Varanasi (Benares) isn't on the list and the Buddhist shrines at Sarnath are only on the tentative list.

This seems like an odd oversight. Varanasi is a beautiful, chaotic, ancient city on the banks of the Ganges. Nobody knows just how many temples there are here, from massive golden structures with elegant statues to little flagstones carved with a lotus flower and daubed with a bit of paint or an offering of a flower. It seems that when you are close to the river you cannot look anywhere without seeing a temple or shrine. In fact, it's hard not to see several of them! The riverbank is famous for its burning ghats, platforms where Hindus are cremated before their remains are tossed into the holy Ganges River. But like in Hinduism itself, death and life are two parts of the same process. While people are mourning along one section of the riverside, not far off the dhobis are washing clothes, spreading out colorful saris like terrestrial rainbows, while old men play chess and kids frolic in the water. The ghats are strange mixture of morbid reminders of mortality and the throbbing life that makes India so exciting.

Nearby Sarnath is where Buddha is said to have preached his first sermon, and there are numerous temples in the representing all the Buddhist countries in the world. It's interesting to see Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and other temples all together, attended by monks of all different nationalities.The peaceful, semi-rural surroundings make a stark contrast to noisy Varanasi.

So why aren't these two places, so popular with visitors and so important to world heritage, not on the list? Nobody seems to have a good answer, but the Indian press does have some complaints about how they are treated, not by UNESCO, but by the Indians themselves. An article in the Times of India complains that the temples of Varanasi aren't properly preserved. The stone temple of Kashi Vishwanath, shown here and built in 1777, was recently painted using enamel paint, which can seriously damage the stone. Now curators are facing a hefty preservation bill if they want to save one of the most important temples to Shiva. A recent study found about 2,000 temples in Varanasi that need help, but nobody is sure of the true extent of the problem.

Sarnath was submitted for consideration in 1998. Now it appears poised to get on the list. While the older temples and monuments have crumbled with time, the newer temples are in good condition and give the visitor or pilgrim a world tour of Buddhist practice. Here's hoping Sarnath makes it onto the list soon, and that India will increase its efforts to preserve Varanasi and get it on the World Heritage List too.

Gallery: Varanasi and Sarnath

Civil War battlefields are some of the most popular tourist destinations in the U.S. The most famous battlefields, such as Gettysburg and Shiloh, attract hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. But there are many other battlefields that are just as interesting but little-known outside their local area. Here are four that any history buff will enjoy. You'll notice all of them are west of the Mississippi River. After the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg fell on July 4, 1863, the Union gained control of the Mississippi, cutting the Confederacy in half. From then on the fight in the West was practically a separate war. It gets little press in comparison to the war in the East, but it's just as interesting.

Lexington (September 13-20, 1861): September 1861 was a hopeful time for the Confederacy. General Sterling Price had defeated a large Union force at Wilson's Creek in southwest Missouri and now marched through central Missouri gathering recruits. At the river town of Lexington he found a Union force under Col. James Mulligan defending the stone building of the Masonic College on a hill overlooking town. Mulligan had built earthworks all around the hill. Price's inexperienced troops had trouble taking this tough position until they hit on the idea of lining up bales of hemp, the local cash crop, and rolling them uphill as a mobile wall. Bales of weed are apparently bulletproof and as the fort became hemmed in Mulligan had no choice but to surrender. This early rebel victory proved short lived, and soon Price had to retreat to Arkansas in the face of superior forces.

The Battle of Lexington State Historic Site has a good museum and remnants of the original earthworks. The town has many interesting old buildings. The courthouse has a cannonball lodged in one of its pillars!

Fort Davidson (September 27, 1864): By the autumn of 1864 the war was going badly for the Confederacy, especially in the West. Other than some raids and constant guerrilla activity, the rebels had been pushed out of Missouri and northern Arkansas. General Sterling Price hit upon a bold plan to march north out of Arkansas and take St. Louis just before the presidential election. This, he hoped, would make Lincoln lose, or at least take pressure off the beleaguered Confederates east of the Mississippi.

His first stop was Fort Davidson in the Arcadia Valley in southern Missouri. While some of his officers recommended bypassing the fort, Price wanted to give his troops an early boost in morale and capture supplies. The rebels charged across an open plain into withering musket fire and blasts of grapeshot. By the end of the day almost a thousand men lay dead around the fort, and the Union troops still held their ground. That night the defenders snuck out under cover of darkness, blew up the fort's magazine, and slipped away into the night. This disastrous defeat so weakened and delayed Price's army that he gave up trying to take St. Louis. His invasion became just another raid as he made a long loop through the state, ending in defeat at the Battle of Westport near Kansas City. Price's invasion was the last major Confederate campaign west of the Mississippi.

Fort Davidson State Historic Site preserves the fort's earthen ramparts and has an excellent museum about Price's Raid.

Gallery: Four Forgotten Civil War Battlefields

The Old West was a place where there were gunfights on every street, the bank got robbed every day, and every saloon was filled with girls dancing the can-can.

Well, actually it wasn't, but that's the way it seems from the movies, and a lot of those movies were filmed at Old Tucson Studios.

Located a short drive west of Tucson, Old Tucson Studios is the perfect place to film a Western. There's an entire recreated Western town there surrounded by Arizona desert, with the Tucson and Catalina Mountains providing a scenic backdrop. Oh, and the sunsets are more beautiful than anything you'll ever see on the screen.

The main attraction at the studios is the town itself, which has provided a backdrop for seventy years of films. Movie buffs will be in a constant state of deja-vu. Wasn't that saloon in The Outlaw Josie Wales? Isn't that the ranch from Bonanza? In case you're having trouble playing Spot-The-Set, there's a seventieth anniversary exhibit on right now showing never-before-seen production stills from some of the many films that used Old Tucson Studios. A preview video can be seen here. Some of the employees are really knowledgeable, so you might want to go on one of the historical tours.

There's plenty going on too. Costumed performers rob the bank, there are gunfights full of stunts, and even magic shows and train rides. It's all a bit hokey, but that's part of the fun. Kids love it.

Unfortunately there was a bad fire in 1995 that destroyed many of the buildings and irreplaceable movie history, but there's still plenty left to give you a good dose of movie nostalgia. So saddle up and ride down to Tucson, and while you're there you might want to see some more of the Old West attractions southern Arizona has to offer, such as the ghost towns, the Saguaro National Monument, and the Old Spanish Trail. Tune in next time when I'll be talking about Tombstone, a real Wild West town.
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Dear Leader,

I've heard that's how you like to be addressed by the people of North Korea, but since this is the beginning of a letter I guess I should say Dear Dear Leader.

My editor sent me this article claiming that while your people are starving you own six luxurious trains fitted with high-tech communications facilities, conference rooms, and even ballrooms. Since you're reportedly afraid of flying, I can understand you needing a train with all the communication equipment you'd find in, say, Air Force One, but do you really need the ballrooms? Do you like to invite your nuclear scientists to an evening of waltzing?

Perhaps this story isn't true. Not all stories about dictators are, after all. The rumor that Hitler only had one ball is highly debatable, for example, and while you did kidnap a South Korean director to start your own movie industry, that doesn't mean that you have 19 train stations around the country for your exclusive use. This report was in a South Korean newspaper and cited U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies. Not the most sympathetic observers, to be sure.

I'd like to get to the bottom of this, so here's a modest proposal. How about you set up a railway tour of North Korea? If you don't have any luxury trains, you can market it as "Adventure Travel" and bring in rugged backpackers accustomed to hard journeys on third-class trains. If you really do have some luxury trains, perhaps you could spare one of your six, ballroom included, and market it as "Luxury Travel". You'll attract a richer clientele and prove your generosity by opening up one of your moving ballrooms for public use.

Instead of paying money, the visitors could pay with food. The food could be pulled along in boxcars behind the ballroom and distributed to your needy people along the way. This would be a great propaganda coup. Your media could broadcast how the Dear Leader is giving up one of his trains to feed his people. Getting your people to actually believe your media is your problem.

I would, of course, be invited along to cover the event. I've always been curious about your country and this would be a good way to see it. I'd even bring along some food to give to hungry North Koreans, whom I would insist on interviewing privately and anonymously about life under your rule.

I know you're going to see this, because even a relatively unknown writer like me Googles himself on a regular basis, and I'm sure you have a whole team of secret police Googling you. So what do you think? Shall we prove those South Koreans wrong and make North Korea the newest destination for backpackers? Or perhaps prove them right and make North Korea the new Monaco? I promise that if you let me leave the country alive I'll publish a series of features right here on Gadling, and give you an idea of what your people say about you behind your back.

sincerely,

Sean McLachlan

PS: Don't kidnap me. I have no experience making nuclear weapons or movies.

UNESCO has just made the latest addition to its World Heritage List--Suleiman Mountain in the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

This is Kyrgyzstan's first World Heritage Site. The mountain has been a holy spot for thousands of years. Prehistoric rock art shows it was sacred long before Islam came to the region. When the new faith took over it became a focus for Muslim pilgrims. Sick people sit in the caves on the mountainside hoping to be cured, and there's a natural rock slide that women use to promote fertility. Kids slide down it too, supposedly to make them grow up healthy, but judging from this video it looks like they're having too much fun to think about that. There's an interesting slide show of the mountain here.

There are seventeen places of worship on the mountain, including a reconstruction of a medieval mosque. The original was destroyed by the Soviets in an effort to stamp out religion in the region. Judging from the thousands of pilgrims who go to Suleiman Mountain every year, they didn't achieve much.

The mountain is right next to the 3,000 year-old city of Osh, a stop on the old Silk Road, so adventure travelers following this increasingly popular route will want to stop off and see this.

Visitors to many Italian churches will see a new addition next to the door--automatic holy water dispensers.

Priests have been noticing that worshipers are reluctant to put their hands in the font containing holy water for fear of catching swine flu. About thirty people have died in Italy from the disease and people are a bit jittery about sharing the same water as hundreds of strangers, however holy it might be.

Some churches have even closed their communal fonts, like Milan's cathedral, pictured here.

When inventor Luciano Marabese saw what was happening, he got to work. He invented an automatic dispenser that works along the same lines as a soap dispenser in a public bathroom, but has the look of a traditional font. The faithful put their hands under the dispenser where an infrared detector senses them and squirts out some holy water. There's a video of the dispenser in action here.

Now if we can only get people to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. . .

November seems to be the month for celebrities embarrassing themselves at airports. First Britney Spears passes through airport security carrying a Big Gulp, and now Mike Tyson is arrested for a fight at LAX.

Details are sketchy at the moment but police arrested the former heavyweight champion and photographer Tony Echevarria after an incident at the Los Angeles airport yesterday. The photographer claims Tyson decked him. He was brought to a hospital and treated for a cut to his forehead. Tyson's attorney claims Echevarria was overly aggressive and Tyson feared for the safety of his wife and infant child. Both say they want to press misdemeanor battery charges.

Police booked both men and released them on suspicion of battery.

Presumably a security camera caught this incident on film, so expect to see some video of this pretty soon.

While it's always tempting to take pictures of celebrities at airports, it's best not to act like the paparazzi while doing it. Tony Echevarria got off easy. He may have gotten a cut to the forehead, but at least he didn't get his ear bitten off.

It was built to keep out foreign invaders, but apparently the Great Wall of China can't protect itself from the greed of Chinese corporations.

The Hohhot Kekao Mining Co. is accused of destroying 330 ft (100 m) of China's most famous structure while prospecting for gold. The damage occurred in Inner Mongolia, where the company is prospecting. This stretch of the wall is one of the oldest, dating to the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.).

This isn't the first time the Wall has been damaged. Local farmers often steal stones for building materials, much like what happened to parts of Hadrian's Wall in England, and last year five miners were sentenced to up to three years in jail for damaging the Wall while operating heavy machinery nearby. Officials said those responsible for the new damage could face up to ten years because of the greater amount of destruction.

As China goes through its Industrial Revolution, its cultural heritage faces greater threats. The Industrial Revolution in England destroyed many of that country's ancient buildings and stone circles, and the expansion of St. Louis, Missouri, in the nineteenth century destroyed virtually all trace of a prehistoric Native American town. St. Louis used to be called "Mound City" because of the numerous prehistoric earthen mounds there, but now only one survives. it would be nice if China could learn from other countries' mistakes.