Archive for August, 2008
Beautiful, desolate Namibia
The southwestern African country of Namibia may not be well-known as a tourist destination, but travelers who have been there often return home raving about the desolate beauty of the place. Elinor Burkett is one of those travelers and she wrote about her Namibian experiences for a recent NY Times story. As the first rays of the sun [...]
Clan-based government in Somalia?
The best designed governments are those that build upon the culture of a country, rather than those that try to impose foreign ideas and systems on a people. So I read with interest this recent story in the International Herald Tribune about a movement to re-design the government of Somalia in a way that would emphasize the traditional [...]
Food from the rest of China
Did you know that 100 million people in China are minorities? There are 55 tribal groups in the country who are not ethnic Chinese. That means there are 100 million in China who probably don’t eat all that much Chinese food. NPR’s Kitchen Window has an interesting feature about these ethnic groups and their foods, based on [...]
Favorite places in the Middle East and Africa
The Chicago Tribune has been asking their foreign correspondents for travel tips and for lists of their favorite destinations. One recent installment focused on places in the Middle East and Africa. An excerpt: Liz Sly on the Middle East: My favorite place: The Old City of Damascus, Syria, a warren of ancient cobbled streets, mosques [...]
Early morning exercise in Beijing
In honor of Beijing playing host to the Olympics for the past two weeks, here is another China-themed post. Many Chinese people make it a habit to get up early every morning in order to perform tai chi exercises, often in a public park. So John Branch went to one of Beijing’s most popular parks one [...]
Coastal Catalonia
If you’re searching for a more authentic and less glitzy destination by the sea, Sarah Wildman recommends Costa Brava – the sparsely populated coastal region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain. She wrote about a recent trip there for the International Herald Tribune. On the small roads between Cantallops and Llançà – two names that were barely dots [...]
Obama veepstakes surprise?
This is a bit longer than my typical post, but if you’re interested at all in U.S. politics there is a lot here that will interest you and hopefully provide some food for thought and debate… Speculation over Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate is reaching a fever pitch this week, with the selection widely expected to [...]
Rooting (maybe) for Chinese Olympic success
The Chinese are proud to be hosting this year’s Summer Olympics in Beijing, and they certainly want the home team to perform well. But perhaps not too well. There was an interesting cultural note in a recent Washington Post article about Chinese rooting interests in these Olympics. It seems that while the Chinese are proud of their [...]
Rich India, poor India
Every country has to deal with contrasts between its rich and poor citizens. But in few countries is this disparity as stark as it is in India. A new film there (“Barah Aana”) looks at the life of migrant workers who are employed as waiters and chauffeurs, and it explores the contrasts between their existence and the lives [...]
Press coverage for “Two Laps Around the World”
I have to take time for a bit of book promotion here, as there was some nice press coverage in today’s Arizona Daily Star newspaper about my travel memoir, Two Laps Around the World. It was the trip of a lifetime. Two trips, actually. In 2002, Bob Riel and Lisa Higgins, wed the year before, embarked [...]
The “little emperors” of China
Want to know the long-term consequences of a society filled with one-child families? Apparently, the situation gets a lot more complicated when combined with an economy that produces too few professional level jobs. Check out the current situation in China, which is described in a fascinating article in Psychology Today. When China began limiting couples to one child [...]
Differences between individualist and group-oriented societies
David Brooks usually focuses on politics from a conservative perspective in his NY Times op-ed column, but every once in a while he has a piece that delves into culture in some form or other. That is what he does in today’s column, which looks at some of the differences between individualist and group-oriented societies. This [...]
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