The Baltimore-based band Future Islands created a genre of music called post-Wave. This is one band you should pay attention to.BACK IN MOREHEAD CITY, on the North Carolina coast, I knew Future Islands singer Sam Herring as the younger brother of my friend Joel. Keyboardist Gerrit Welmers was the quiet kid who had a crush on my sister.

Man, were they happy to see us.A LOT OF PEOPLE have heard about Pitcairn — very few have actually been there. The island, a craggy black rock in the middle of the South Pacific, is one of the most difficult places to visit on Earth. Halfway between Peru and New Zealand, it’s only accessible by boat. The closest airport is on Mangareva, in the Gambier Islands, 330 miles away.

This might be hard to believe, but we may currently be living in the most peaceful time in human history.THE IMPORTANT QUESTION to ask here, according to Steven Pinker in this article at the Wall Street Journal, is: “How bad was the world in the past?” It certainly feels like a very violent time, most likely due to mass media coverage (i.

Josh Heller’s recount of a few days in London.EVERY TIME I’VE FLOWN INTO Heathrow in the past year, I’ve made sure to keep copies of my itinerary and the hotels I’d be staying at on hand because I’m not keen on repeating my six-hour detainment in 2009.I’d only had the street address and e-mail of the people I was staying with; I didn’t have their phone number.

Keeping photos private online is next to impossible.MOST ONLINE SHARING OPTIONS are either overly complicated or too risky if you care about privacy. It’s easy enough to share on Facebook, but they’re constantly changing their privacy options. Flickr looks nice, but (in my opinion) it’s too much of a hassle if you have a ton of photos.

Sometimes it’s cool to look like a tourist.AS SOON AS my bus pulled into the station in Cusco, I knew I was going to fit right in — with the gringos that is.Known for their huge alpaca industry, Cusco makes it easy to spot a gringo from a mile away, decked out head to toe in recently purchased, brightly colored threads.