Marginal Revolution

Mr Fantastic

From the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong.  Dr. Strange is in the extension.

Seth Roberts writes to me

That's a good way to put it: quality of walking opportunities.  Reduced or enhanced because I don't read the language?  I'm not sure.

I say enhanced.  More generally, I see Paris and Buenos Aires as the two cities with the highest quality of walking opportunities.  Not many cities in Asia do well on this score, mostly because of congestion and pollution.  Los Angeles is an underrated walking city and Sao Paulo used to be; maybe it is too dangerous now.

Which books to take to Africa?

Niall writes me:

I have an optimization problem that I thought you and other loyal MR
readers, like myself, could help me with.

The Question: How should I go about selecting books to bring with me for
a year of field research in rural Africa?

Conditions:
1. I have a limited amount of weight I can carry on the flight
2. There is little or no access to additional books where I will be
3. I only expect to return to the US once during that year

Thanks for continuing the to make MR the most educational blog on the web.

Sadly I do not know this fine gentleman.  But I'll suggest the following five books: Moby Dick, The Bible (but it must be a serious translation), Plato's Dialogues, Homer's Odyssey, and a long, fun book of science fiction or fantasy that you haven't already read.  LOTR would be a fine first choice if it fits that bill, otherwise ask around.  The basic principles are that the works should be long, deep, divisible into smaller parts, capable of sustaining rereadings, culturally central in some way, and last of all you need one piece of pure fun.  Readers, can you improve upon these tips?

I'll add that if you read some language other than English, and thus read more slowly in that language, pick a book or two there as well.

Where abroad do the most American citizens get arrested?

Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, London, Toronto, Mexico, etc.  Nassau, Bahamas is the surprise and more Americans get arrested in Guadalajara than Mexico City.  Here is the list of cities and the story.  Beijing is not on the list so Alex can relax though Hong Kong cracks the top ten.

China's Silver Lining

An hour and a half out of central Beijing, traveling through orchards of apples and pears and still the smog blankets the fields obscuring the view.  Pollution like this I have never seen.

And yet the intensity of the pollution makes me optimistic.  Pollution in China isn't like the demise of the snail darter or some wispy thing that might take a few weeks off your life if you live long enough.  Pollution here irritates, it chokes and it kills young and old.  Pollution like this people are willing to pay to avoid and as the economy grows the Chinese are willing to pay more and more.  James Fallows, who is living in Beijing, suggests that pollution could be China's Silver Lining, and ours.  I read the piece before arriving but after being here a while it rings true.

At the Beijing Airport

At the Beijing airport as the customs official questions you, you get to rate them - there is an electronic box, hidden from their view, that asks for your rating of service.  Damn, this is better than democracy!  I was "extremely satisfied."

On the other hand, MarginalRevolution is blocked but I can still access Typepad.

What to read on a 28-hour plane trip

Chris Blattman gives his tips.  Most of all, read this blog post, which will tell you not to take a 28-hour plane trip.  If you must go, and can't break it up by feasting on chili crab in Singapore, rethink at least one aspect of your life.  But if you are stuck the preferred advice is to start with a bunch of fun books you can finish quickly, move to a longer, more serious work than will command your full attention for quite a while and you won't want to end, and then have some fun stuff left over for the end.  I wonder how general this is as an optimal pattern of intertemporal consumption.

Your Favorite Things China?

I'm off to China next week.  A few days in Beijing, then Kunming in the South then Hong Kong - two weeks in all.  Recommendations, reviews, ideas are all welcome.

The Citadel, or development through tourism

I have long wanted to go there (a sign that it isn't actually a good standard tourist site) and now I read it is the focal point of the new promotion of tourism in Haiti:

The Western Hemisphere's largest fortress, it was built atop a 3,000-foot mountain in the tumultuous years after Haiti broke from France in an 1804 slave revolt and became a symbol of triumph over bondage for descendants of African slaves everywhere.

The trip there is a two-hour crawl over unpaved roads and through garbage-strewn, traffic-clogged streets of Cap-Haitien. The final ascent, a steep cobblestone path, is traversed on foot or on undersized horses beaten with sticks by local guides.

Here is a painting of The Citadel.

Japanese gadget of the day

No, it's not the glasses-cleaning machine or for that matter the Tenga.  Rather, if it is raining, and you enter one of the fancier department stores, they put out a machine which allows you to very rapidly shrink wrap your umbrella.  You just plunge your umbrella in and it takes about two seconds.  The point is that you don't drip water from your umbrella across the whole department store.  Simple, no?

And if that doesn't convince you to visit Japan, maybe Human Tetris will.

Markets in everything, Japanese edition

The Otaku are at it again:

So the niches are always getting narrower. Maid cafes have been the rage for about four years now, and a true otaku would never be satisfied to go to any old one. There must be a fetish about the experience. Perhaps you'd like to put your head on the maid's lap and let her groom your ears. "Let me show you an extra-special level of nuttiness," Lewis says. He leads me to a shop called Candy Fruit, where a maid cafe once stood. It's now a shop selling glasses to two specific breeds of client: women who want glasses to wear with their maid uniforms. And men who want to buy their glasses from a woman in a maid's costume wearing glasses.

The entire article is interesting.

Advice for visiting a developing country

William, a loyal MR reader, asks:

What advice do you have for an aspiring development economist visiting a developing country for the first time?

He is a rising sophomore from a very good university and has strong interests in economics.  The locale is Cape Town, although the question is about general advice.  My tips are the following:

1. Learn as quickly as you can what is safe and what is not.  In Brazil taxicabs are pretty safe, in Mexico City they are not.  This will take some doing and in the meantime be very careful.  Have a prearranged safety net if you lose everything to a thief.

2. Do not get drunk take drugs or patronize prostitutes.  Really,  It is a path to trouble and if you want to do it save it for a more familiar environment.

3. Try out the various transportation networks in the region, the more inconvenient the better.

4. Attend a religious ceremony or fiesta or both.

5. Make sure you visit some small farms.

6. Immerse yourself in the music of the place -- I don't mean the most commercial musics -- before you go and then of course after you arrive.  This is more valuable and more "real" than reading the literature, which is often intended for outsiders.  Of course read some non-fiction on the place as well.

7. See if you can teach or attend a class in a local school.

8.  Eat the street food.

9. Do not rule out the idea of romance, keeping #2 in mind and noting that cross-cultural romantic signals are often misunderstood.  This is a tricky one but it is the #1 teacher if it works out not to mention the romantic benefits.

10. Count the number of Indians and Chinese and Lebanese (and sometimes Koreans) around and draw inferences from that data.

11. If you can, arrive with a well-defined hypothesis in mind.   But don't think you can collect all the data on one trip, you probably can't.

12. Realize that you probably won't understand all the times that people are telling you "no."

Learning the language goes without saying.  I suspect Chris Blattman can add to this list, can you?

Addendum: Here are Chris's tips.

Japanese cooperation

The cliche is that the Japanese are more cooperative than Westerners but I don't quite believe that as stated.  For instance early twentieth century Japanese labor history is rife with conflict and the Japanese Communist Party considered starting trouble as late as the 1960s.  Today in new or surprising situations many Japanese will simply giggle or get nervous or do nothing rather than helping to solve the problem.  When cooperation breaks down it seems to break down altogether.

In my alternative mental model the Japanese have specialized in the use of explicit focal points.  They reaffirm these focal points repeatedly, to an extreme, by the use of rituals, particular forms of relational address, and almost absurd degrees of politeness and apology.  When the focal point is explicit the cooperation works very very well.

But precisely because the Japanese are so good at using explicit focal points, the culture seems ill-suited to improvising or dealing with implicit or shifting or ambiguous focal points.  When the focal point becomes unclear or is placed in danger, they are not very good at finding a new one on the spot.  That is why the Japanese are either extremely ordered and cooperative in their behavior or extremely ineffective and chaotic.  Of course since a new or unexpected situation creates a dilemma, there are social pressures to avoid such states of affairs.  That dynamic strengthens the explicit focal points further, but makes it even harder to change focal points in the longer run. 

The idea of a society investing in a particular "technique of cooperation" I find to be a powerful one.

Addendum: This hypothesis may also help explain why the Japanese travel abroad so often in groups.  It's not just a lack of language skills but the group leader also supplies codes of conduct for unfamiliar situations.

Franco Purini on Tokyo

The minute and the colossal follow one another and clash in a powerful energetic flow that knows no rest, while tangled strips of infrastructure wind between buildings in spectacular spatial combinations.  All is bathed in a hazy, dim light, which rarely brightens, and permeates every interstice of the city, from window to window, sign to sign and corner to corner.  At night, artificial lighting transforms Tokyo into a fantastical apparition of artificial mountain ranges that glow like braziers.  The visual trauma is due to Tokyo giving no sense of any recognizable structure.  Compare with Europe, or the West in general, where cities still have a perceptive -- albeit residual and fragmentary -- urban form which is always based on a more or less rational order, in Tokyo you find a randomness in which every urban rule is overturned or negated.  Or at least so it seems.  As a matter of face, once initial impressions have been overcome, you begin to notice the presence of recurring threads in the urban fabric, first on a subliminal level, than more consciously; a fabric made of multiple, fractal agglomerates of settlements.  These agglomerates are groups in self-similar masses, suggesting urban spaces which are not defined by clearly scaled hierarchies or distinct morphological types.  Here, urban spatiality seems to feature the unplanned coexistence of architectural units and the incidental contiguity or what is small and large, simple immaterial -- rhythm beats over everything, constituting an amazing unifying element in its almost hypnotic repetition of the same model.  In this sense you discover that in the end Tokyo is a simple city that is different from European and American cities only because urban planning is practically absent.  If the former are cities of space, governed by the laws of perspective, then Tokyo is a city of situations...in Asia's greatest city you are completely disoriented from the start. 

That is in a good book called Tokyo: City and Architecture.  I am struck by how much the Tokyo Metro and underground corridors are in fact the defining parts of the city and the most memorable destinations.

The glasses-cleaning machine

The problem with cleaning your glasses is that the drying action can create new smudge.  So the Japanese have invented a machine to address this problem.  The contraption has two pools of whirring water, at different temperatures.  First you dip your glasses into the vibrating pool of warmer water, where some kind of steam action takes place as well.  Afterwards you dip your glasses into the cooler pool of water, which finishes the action and removes the effect of the steam.

I've never ever had my glasses so clean before.  I found the glasses-cleaning machine, not surprisingly, in one of the underground passageways near Shinjuku.

Suzuki House

Tokyo impressions

There are more small things to notice here than anywhere else.  People elevate their cameras on long fishing poles to get better shots in a crowd.  The water container has a separate compartment so that, when you pour, the ice cubes do not spill into your drink.  Or you may wonder: why did I have to order my food by paying into a vending machine?  None of the faucets works in an intuitive manner for me.

I hadn't been to Tokyo since 1992.  What was once futuristic has now become retro and it has made the city more charming and ultimately more convincing. 

Even with the weak dollar it isn't that expensive here.  Hotels are cheaper than in NYC -- not to mention Europe -- and you can eat a great meal for $10 or less if you frequent neighborhood restaurants.  At the fish market world class sushi costs about as much as mediocre sushi in the American suburbs.  I have also ventured into the horrors of real Japanese food, including The Creamy Sauce and Worcestershire sauce.  It's not all hamachi and gyoza, believe me.

Japan bleg

Come mid-May, Yana, Natasha and I have time to do three things in Japan.  Tokyo and Kyoto are on the agenda for sure.  What should the third visit be?  Preferably it should not be too far from the rest.  Afterwards, I am going to Nagasaki for sure, so no need to recommend that.

On the way to the airport

Here are my tips for how to survive a trip to or from NYC's LaGuardia airport, always a daunting experience.  You will notice the piece is on Mark Bittman's new New York Times food blog, which you should be reading anyway.  Don't forget these words of mine:

Just think how much you are saving: what’s really scarce in life is your time and the mere willingness to get up and go. Just do it.

Elsewhere in the world of food blogging, there is a new blog on the economics of food and wine.

Forget your cares and dream about Alesund

That's in Norway and if you live there you don't even have to worry about oil prices going up; fortunately I've been paying off the mortgage rather than buying new stocks (though JPMorgan is up), so maybe I can visit.  Here are other memorable photos, albeit not of Alesund.

The Holiday-Year Challenge

Suppose you want every day to be a holiday.  To fulfill your dream you can travel around the world.  You can take up to a 3-day holiday, like Japan's 3-day New Year, but not the 12 days of Christmas.  You can also count Sunday or equivalent day of rest as a holiday.  Can it be done?  What is the longest holiday stretch possible? 

Cuban jokes

One Cuban young woman complains to another. "He lied to me! He told me that he was a luggage handler! It turns out, he's nothing but a neurosurgeon!"

Explanation here.

Naughty tourism

I could use a more explicit three-letter word in the post title but I fear the software censors employed by our federal government will again block this web site from its bureaucratic readers.  On this topic, I was quite taken by this passage:

"Ingrid," I commented, "If you really think she [the Haitian woman who was propositioned for money] needs a choice then I suggest you give her one.  Why don't you offer to pay her thirty dollars not to come to my hotel room, but to go back to her son and cigarette stand?"

That is from Naked in Haiti: A...Morality Tale About Tourists, Prostitutes and Politicians, by Dan King.  This book has received very little notice but it's a more interesting look at human commodification than anything you'll find coming out of Harvard or Princeton.  I can only say that the author really seems to know what he is talking about, if you get my drift.  This work would not have been approved at university institutional review boards.  It's also one of the best books on "life on the ground" in Haiti, at least provided you can tolerate the author's numerous salacious yet nonetheless totally anti-erotic descriptions of his activities.

The author goes to Haiti, of course, not for the art, but because he wants to buy from women who are not (otherwise) "selling."  Of course that means that the level of poverty is quite desperate, as in Cuba, where the same phenomenon is common.  And often the women sell to benefit their children or parents, not themselves; surely some percentage of them are disgusted by what they end up doing.

If you're wondering about my point of view on the whole question, I am sufficiently Paretian that I don't find the exchange aspect of the relationship, or the passing of money, objectionable per se.  (Assuming, of course, that neither age nor coercion is a concern, and often both are.)  But it is still better, on the buying side, not to do it.  Once you are aware of the kind of human stories behind the other side of the market, I would think it is hard to maintain an unflagging interest in the proceedings at hand.  Nor do I think it would improve what happens in your life next.  Yes the transaction does benefit the seller in many cases, but apply the Modigliani-Miller theorem and rebundle your action into a different blend of charity and erotic self-satisfaction, all toward The Greater Good.

Or so I think.  If you offer your thoughts, please be polite in your rhetoric.

I thank an anonymous MR reader for the pointer to the book.

Markets in everything, German style

Nude flights, there is more information here.  It's from Erfurt to the Baltic and it costs about $800.  The plane seats 55 people.  You can book here.

Thanks to Robert Anderson for the pointer.

The Dialectic at Work?

Justin Yifu Lin, apparently soon to be named the World Bank's chief economist, has one of the strangest CVs you could imagine.  Lin was born in Taiwan but in 1979 while serving in the Taiwanese army he defected to China by swimming from the island of Kinmen in Taiwan to Xiamen in China.  Embarrassed by the defection of a rising star, the Taiwanese army listed him as missing.  Lin left behind a wife and children who (it seems) didn't know what had happened to him.

Lin rose quickly in China receiving a Master's degree in Marxist political economy from Peking University in 1982 and in 1986 a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago (!).  According to the Taipei Times, Lin's wife learned that Lin was alive while he was in the United States and they were reunited in the U.S. where she also earned a graduate degree before both returned to China.  Lin has since become a well-published economist.

I see movie.

Addendum: Tyler also covers this further below.

18 stunning bridges

This is enough to get a boy really excited.  My favorites are Millau, Rotterdam, and Oresund.

San Agustin Oapan, update

I've been in San Agustin Oapan, so I haven't been able to answer emails or read your blog or for that matter read MR.  In the two years since my last visit, I noticed or heard of the following changes:

1. There are now ten Mormons in town, whereas previously there had been two.

2. Immediately upon arrival, I saw two Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on doors.

3. About half the teenage girls wear jeans rather than traditional dress; two years ago the percentage of girls with jeans was zero.

4. There was no rain this summer and hardly any corn was harvested.  Forty years ago this would have meant starvation but now it is a mere fluctuation in real incomes.  People buy more food from stores, albeit at higher expense.  By the way, this is one reason why the Oapan corn farmers do not seem worried about the importation of U.S. corn under NAFTA.

5. There is a construction boom and arguably a housing bubble, financed by what can only be called subprime loans.

6. The municipal building has a new foundation made out of cement; previously the foundation of the municipal building was an old Aztec pyramid.  There is no remaining sign of the pyramid.

7. The town was celebrating the change in the "fiscál," an office very roughly analogous to our secretary of the treasury.  The celebration consists of a procession of fifty old women and a few old men carrying around a large plastic statue of a saint on their shoulders, singing traditional songs and carrying candles, with various peso bills stapled to the saint.

8. Thirty-five years ago the trip down to the main road involved an arduous climb and then descent, usually with burro, lasting six to eight hours.  Ten years ago the trip down to the main road involved a slow four hour drive (but only 25 km) on a dirt road.  Come February, when the paving of the road is finished, it will be a 70-minute drive to the nearest Wal-Mart.

The good news is...

In 2005, the two state airlines – Mexicana and Aeroméxico – were hived off for privatisation and permits were granted for five new low-cost carriers. The following year, the number of air passengers grew by almost 12 per cent, more than in all the previous five years combined.  Flights from Mexico City to Cancún now can be had for less than $100. Previously it had been cheaper to fly to Cancún from New York.

The bad news is...

...huge swathes of the economy – beer, oil, soft drinks, cement, television, electricity and telephony to name a few – are still dominated by one or at most two big companies.

Legally protected companies for the most part, I might add.  If you are listing the major problems of Mexico, we have:

1. Drug trade and corruption and crime, all rolled into one big package.

2. Bad educational system for most of the country, and bad cultural norms for education.  Most people are literate but you don't see many people reading.

3. State-sponsored monopolies.

Going back to the bright side, the numbers of the Mexican middle class continue to grow, grow, and grow.  The shopping malls in Puebla and Veracruz are excellent, and they are not just for a fair-skinned minority elite.  They are packed with middle class people, shopping, and turning Mexico into a middle class country.  It really is happening, and I see it more and more each time I visit.

Five books from Germany

Jeff, a Facebook friend, wrote on my Wall:

Which five German books should I read, before I return to Amerika [my translation]?

He seems to read German.  I will recommend: Goethe's Faust, Rilke's Duino Elegies or Sonnets to Orpheus, Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, Franz Kafka short stories (don't forget "Ein Landarzt,"), and Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game.  Non-fiction does seem to count for the query, although it would not crack my list of top five.  Schopenhauer tempts as well.  Do you have better ideas for him?

Blogging Death in LA

The LATimes has a blog, The Homicide Report, that covers murders in LA.  Here is one entry:

Timothy Johnson, 37, a black man, was shot multiple times at 939 E. 92nd Street in Watts at about 3:23 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 25, and died at the scene. Police officers had received a "shots fired" call and found him. He had been visiting friends in the area.

He had gone to a party that night, then had stopped on his way home to socialize with friends outside. His shooters came by walking or driving. He was hit multiple times. When officers arrived, he was alone, dead on the ground, and the people who had been outside with him had disappeared. A pit-bull puppy chained in the yard was curled on his body.

The comments begin as you might expect from families and friends.

... The life of an African American Man in LA has proven to be a fight till the death. I am struggling now as I sit here looking at your picture. All the years we spent growing up together, supporting each other and just loving one another. I Love you!! You were my cousin by birth but my brother at heart.

Love Kim

Posted by: Khaleelah Muhammad | November 28, 2007 at 04:50 PM

but then a darker story is revealed:

To all the people speaking glowing words about this man ... im sure some of you know and for those that dont, this man was a killer and it was known by LAPD that he has blood on his hands. Trust me he got what he deserved and what i prayed for. He now has to meet GOD face to face and face the people that HE has killed

Posted by: Satisfyied Person | November 29, 2007 at 11:03 AM

Many entries excerpted in the LATimes can be found here, all of the comments (start at the bottom and work up) are here.

Puebla

Most of all this is a town of baked sweets, they use sugar and milk as well as in Calcutta.  Sweet milky creme thingies with walnuts, camotes, amaranth with honey, flan, fried coconut cookies, fresh potato chips with tamarind and chili and many other delights.  There is a whole book Dulceria in Puebla, they weren't kidding.  Mole poblano almost seems like an afterthought.  The produce is also superb; I never had tasted real cucumber before today.  The city is much more beautiful than I had expected and Arabic influences are seen all over, there is even Jerusalem Tortilleria and Beyrut Tacos to add to your dining delights, not to mention the Arabic influence on the baking and of course the architecture.  I used to tell people I don't like sweet things, but due to globalization that fiction is becoming increasing difficult to maintain.

Veracruz bleg

The second part of our Mexico trip will be to Veracruz.  Again your suggestions are most welcome...

Markets in everything

Yes, everything, drive your friend (or enemy) crazy with obscure postcards:

You are bidding on a rare chance to traumatize a treasured friend or relative with baffling, mind-numbing, mystery correspondence from abroad.

Here is the arrangement:

I will be spending the Christmas holiday in Poland in a tiny village that has one church with no bell because angry Germans stole it. Aside from vodka, there is not a lot for me to do.

During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing.

These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.

The postcards will not be coherently signed, leaving your mark confused, guessing wildly, crying out in anguish.

"How do I know this person? And how does he know I had a ferret named Goliath?"

Your beloved friend or relative will try in vain to figure out who it is. Best of all, it can't possibly be you because you'll have the perfect alibi: you're not in Poland. You're home, wherever that is, doing whatever it is you do when not driving your friends loopy with international prankery.

Your target will rack their brains in the shower. At dinner. During long drives. At work. On the golf course.

"Who did I tell about the time I got fired by a note on my chair?" they'll ponder,  "And where the hell is Szczeczinek?"

But wait, there's more.

To add to the sheer confusion and genuine discomfort, one missive will be on an original promotional postcard announcing the 1995 television premiere of Central Park West on CBS.

Another will be a postcard celebrating Atlanta's disastrous hosting of the 1996 summer Olympic games.

Your mark will be at a complete loss, desperate for answers, debating contacting people he or she hasn't talked to in years.

"I know this will sound weird," they'll say, "but by any chance were you in Eastern Europe ranting about cantaloupe... twelve years ago... right before some show with Mariel Hemingway debuted?"

When you decide to end the torment is completely up to you. If you can, I recommend owning up on 1 April 2008 - giving you nearly half a year of joy and a George Clooney-esque level of prankage. If you can't hold it in that long, I totally understand.

Here is the ebay link, so far there are 35 bids, and thanks to George Whitfield for the pointer.

Puebla bleg

I'll be there for Christmas, with Yana and Natasha, please help me improve the quality of our experience.  You all know how fond I am of Mexico, and you can leave your suggestions in the comments...

Honduran thoughts

The best food is cooked in people's homes, sold on the highways, or on the beach.  I recommend grilled corn on the cob with chile and lime, baleadas, which are fresh corn tortillas stuffed with beans and sometimes cheese or avocado or pork, any tamales, and of course seafood, most of all the conch ceviche (I did dare to eat it, in a small village), and the Garifuna seafood dishes and soups cooked in coconut milk.  Honduras is not known as a food country but that is because North American visitors take their meals in restaurants.

It is said that Honduras is too poor to afford its own oligarchy, and the infrastructure here is poor, even by Central American standards.  The rate of AIDS is supposed to be very high.

Natasha and I debated whether the upscale shopping mall in San Pedro Sula -- CityMall -- seemed so U.S.-American because a) Honduras is becoming so Americanized, or b) American shopping malls now attract so many Latinos; that discussion is ongoing.  We also seem to export gang criminality to Honduras, which is no longer a fully safe country.  Overall Honduras gets high marks on friendliness (especially if you aren't mugged; we weren't), and on capturing the old feel of Central America and the Caribbean, but there are few sights of the traditional kind.  The country is recommended for the experienced traveler looking for a change of pace, and luxury living at bargain prices, but most people should try Costa Rica or Panama first.

Tela was a lovely beach community, if you are on the north Honduran coast visit a Garifuna village and make sure you eat a home-cooked meal under the palm leaves.  Every journey has an emotional and narrative center at its core and that was it for us.  The way the kids play almost naked in the dirt you can see why the rate of dengue fever is so high.

Skipping through the blogosphere (when I could connect) I saw horrified reactions to my anthropological suggestion, especially from Felix Salmon and Kevin Drum plus many MR commentators.  Apparently I hit a nerve.  Contrary to their summaries, I am not saying that anthropology is required for good commentary, rather than commentary should disclose how much anthropology went into it.  Can that be so wrong?

And here's Michael Blowhard on Kindle.  Craig Newmark linked to this good post on the economics of the writer's strike, see also here.  Who knows what else I missed?

Japan bleg

How expensive is it to visit Tokyo these days?  I understand PPP indices and know all the tales of $200 melons and beef protectionism.  But how much does the place actually cost?  When I visited in 1992 I stayed in a small but comfortable business hotel, traveled by public transportation, ate sushi, and had a relatively cheap trip.  Is that old mental picture of mine now a delusion?  Should I instead focus my travel attention on the worst currency manipulators?

Why stupid questions are important

"What's the main thing one learns visiting Asia?"  That's the first question that comes to my mind when reading Megan McArdle's travel thoughts from Vietnam (one example here, note it is my stupid question, not hers, another more humorous example here).  Almost every word in the question is stupid -- "main"?, "thing"? -- or it is easy to point out that Asia is a huge, diverse and many-splendored place.

We nonetheless do most of our thinking in terms of stupid questions, whether we like it or not.  It is important to turn stupid questions to our advantage, because in fact that is the main thing we've got.  While visiting Asia I have learned:

1. Population density really can simply crush the environment, and such density is a more common state of mankind than even a New Jersey boy might imagine,

2. Asians are in general far, far friendlier in their home environs, which is perhaps a question of emotional security,

3. It is possible to have billions of people, and massive stretches of land, both urban and rural, with virtually no major problems of street crime (what is in fact the most dangerous Asian country to wander around in?), and

4. A mere collective act of will could make the food better in many, many (non-Asian) countries.

I might have read these points in books, but I would not have learned them had I not been to Asia and asked myself some stupid questions.  Most of all I'm impressed by just how much population density matters.

Shopping hour restrictions

In Zurich almost everything is closed on Sundays, even my hotel restaurant.  There is one massive underground shopping mall clustered at the railway station, where for obvious reasons ("travelers") there is a Sunday shopping exemption.  I believe this is by far the largest mall in Zurich and of course it was open.  The ugliness of the mall, and the inconvenience of the low ceilings, illustrates just how much Sunday shopping is worth.  (That is why one of the world's wealthiest cities, and a pretty one at that, has such a monstrosity for shopping.)  Small entrepreneurs cannot compete with this (chain-laden) mall on Sundays, so I wonder if the hours restriction even favors small business on net.  The legal restrictions on outworking the competition also help explain why immigrants to Switzerland don't move up the economic ladder as well as many American immigrants do.

Free Swiss shopping, free it now.

Small World

The Nepali Times in Kathmandu recommends Marginal Revolution.

I am so jealous

Markets in everything: a bus trip from London to Sydney.  That's 12 weeks, in case you are wondering.

Thanks to Jose for the pointer.

My Favorite Things Vermont

1. Calypso song about a Vermont native: "Guests of Rudy Vallee", and of course Vallee was a central figure behind the popularization of calypso in the United States.

2. Philosopher: John Dewey.  I can't actually stand to read him, but if you recast everything he said, you can come up with some profound positions.

3. Undeserving Nobel Laureate: Pearl Buck.

4. Man with an iron rail through his brain: Phineas Gage.

5. Composer: Carl Ruggles - his 16-minute Sun Treader is one of the most underappreciated pieces of great American music.

That's all I can think of right now.  I'm headed up to Middlebury for a day and a bit, as guest of David Colander.

Best Sentence on Labor Day

On a popular wristwatch a painted image of Mao Zedong waved his hand jerkily with every second.  'He is not greeting you,' the vendor grinned.  'He is saying goodbye.'

From Colin Thubron's excellent Shadow of the Silk Road.

Cappadocia

Cappadocia in central Turkey is highly recommended.  Imagine the Moab if it had been inhabited for 4000 years by a succession of Hittites, Christians fleeing Romans and Persians, Greeks and Turks and you have some idea.

These faerie chimneys exist in the thousands and some are still inhabited.  One fellow showed me around his chimney house.  More in the extension.

Can a mosque be sexy? Yes.

The Sultanahmet Camii or "Blue Mosque" in Istanbul.

On Galata Bridge

On the famous Galata bridge fisherman cast from the top level while outdoor restaurants line the walkway below.  The fishermen's lines are hard to see so dining at dusk you are surprised when silvery fish, glittering in the last light of the sun ascend to the sky as if swimming to the heavens.

On being lost

I am in Turkey this week.  (Where else can you go where the secularists are protesting in the streets!  Awesome.)  Aside from seeing things, I like to travel for the challenge.

Getting to that interesting restaurant reviewed in the New York Times you have to find the ferry station, purchase the right ticket, get off at the right stop, find the restaurant on the streets with no names (ah there's the bull statue! must be somewhere to the east!) and overall get lost many times.  It's a bit like running a marathon but the honeyed pumpkin at the finish line tastes sweeter for all the running.

I don't like being lost, but I like having been lost.

Markets in Everything: Replacement Drivers

The NYTimes reports on Korean replacement drivers - they drive drunks home in the drunk's own car.   

Their work has become such an essential part of life in Seoul and other major cities of South Korea that the national statistical office last year began monitoring the price of replacement driver services as an element in calculating the benchmark consumer price index. An estimated 100,000 replacement drivers handle 700,000 customers a day across the country, the number increasing by 30 percent on Fridays, according to the Korea Service Driver Society, a lobby for replacement drivers.

This seems like a great idea and it's obviously a huge success in Korea. Why not in the United States?

Denver bleg

In July I will have one day in Denver, what should I do?  Mentions of superb spicy food are not to be ruled out.

China journal entry of the day

There is no sun in Chengdu.  Or in Ningbo, where I am tonight.  The humidity and the coal-burning power plants blot out the sun.  There is light, but it is never sunny.  It is my understanding that I shall not see the sun except when we are in an airplane.

Here is more, from a loyal MR reader.

Hell Money

I've always liked this joke.

Paddy O'Brien died and as is the Irish custom the mourners were throwing money into his coffin.  The town miser, whom everyone despised, cried out "I loved Paddy O'Brien.  Whatever anyone else puts into the coffin, I will double!"  Thinking the miser a little bit drunk the townspeople took this as an opportunity to teach him a lesson.  Gathering all their money they showered the coffin with $3012 in bills and coins, more than had ever before been given at a funeral.  The miser then gathered the money, wrote a cheque for $6024 and threw that in.

The Chinese have a similar custom of burying the dead with money but like the miser they understand monetary economics (if not perhaps signalling theory).  Big white guy explains in his interesting post on Chinese hell money.

Hat tip to Marcus at the Mises Economics Blog.

Norway thoughts

I'm back home but I still haven't made sense of the place, not even on a superficial level...

Oslo first struck me as more like Scotland than Sweden, most of all the craggy, weather-beaten faces and the wandering derelicts.  I mean Inverness and Aberdeen, not Edinburgh.  How could such a wealthy and well-organized country have such an ugly capital city?  Only the surrounding waters and greenery were pretty.  And why were so many people so poorly dressed?  Then we went to Bergen -- a "Hansa-Stadt" -- which felt like familiar emotional territory.  People were stylish and the faces were happier and everything seemed more intellectual.  The visual synthesis of land, water, industry, and homes was first-rate, and yes sardine factories in the right setting are stunning.  Usually I end up liking the uglier city more.  Which city is the real Norway, or must I now see Trondheim?  How can this country be the best place in the world to hear jazz?  It is the young who listen, not the old; the players are sincere and convincing, imagine a blond guy named Thor Gustavsen riffing around a flattened third.  We went almost every night, taking one break to hear Varese's Ameriques, by the Oslo Symphony Orchestra.  Yana loved it.  The fjords bored me.  They are as good as scenery comes, but they felt like a repetition of southern Chile and New Zealand.  I admired the homes which had outlets only to the water.  I wished I had brought an iPod full of heavy metal for that boat trip.

I asked for Voss water on several occasions, but no one had it.  Not even in the train station in Voss.  Some Norwegian servers had never heard of it.

I kept on toying with the theory that the country moved quickly from folk paganism to postwar secularism, with only a short Christian interlude in between.

We were never willing to spend on splendid food and the less than splendid food never came cheap.  In Bergen I had one of the best fish and chips servings of my life, I told the happy cook he was a genius, equaled only by the fish and chips geniuses of New Zealand.  I like to eat fish and chips at least once in every country I visit.  Somehow that was my favorite moment of my travels.  He gave us a free piece of fish and chips.

Does it make sense to wonder in which countries people are "the most normal" or "the least normal"?  I'm fine with the exercise being about the wonderer, not the subjects.  On the Continent the French seem the most normal to me.  In the North the Swedes seem the most normal.

The joke ends with the exchange: "A: Does it always rain here in Bergen?  B: I don't know, I'm only fourteen years old."

Near Death Experiences and State-Space Consistency

Tyler (and Ryan) ask, Should near death experiences change your life?  The answer is no.  The reason, however, may surprise you.  It's not because NDEs are unimportant it's because they are very important.

Recall that a rational choice-plan is time-consistent, you should not plan today to make choices for tomorrow when you know today that you will renege upon those choices tomorrow.  Eating cake today because you will diet tomorrow is not a rational choice if you will not in fact diet tomorrow.  Time-consistency does not require that you always follow through on today's plans - new information arrives which may cause you to rationally change your plans - but it does require that you expect to follow through on today's plans which means that if no new information arrives then you should follow through.

The same idea explains why if you are rational you should not change your life if you experience an NDE.  NDEs are not new information.  You know that you are mortal, right?  You know that you could die today.  You know that experiences like Ryan's are not uncommon.  Thus, if you are rational you should not change your life if you experience an NDE.

Do I advise, therefore, that Ryan get on with his life as before?  No, not at all.  My advice is not for Ryan, it's for everyone else; Choosing rationally requires that you choose today so that if you have an NDE you will not change your life. 

The fact that many people who have an NDE do change their lives is evidence that most people do not choose rationally.  Thus the ways in which people who have had NDEs change their lives is important information for the rest of us who want to choose rationally.

Do you recall the secret to happiness offered by Gilbert, the one you almost certainly will not accept?  It is to accept that your own anticipations of what you will do and feel if certain things occur is not as good a guide to what you will actually do and feel as are the actions and feelings of other people who actually have experienced those events.  Thus, if near death experiences tend to make people more giving, caring and less fearful of change then this is how you should act today.

Long-time readers will know that I take the idea of reflective equilibrium quite seriously.

Random impressions

Yes, I would buy Tanzania Fund. 

The calm and reserved Dar Es Salaam is remarkably safe; I haven't once felt threatened or even "watched."  It is the women who stare, not the men, as is common in Islamic countries.  Throughout East Africa the country has a reputation for politeness and courtesy. 

If a 45-year-old Muslim woman tells you she took out a micro-credit loan to open a "saloon," she usually means a "salon."  In the interviews the Tanzanians are eager to be helpful, but they do not take over the conversation, as might happen in West Africa.

Although there are no tourist sites of note, the city is a pleasant green and backs into the water.  You might see an Indian Dhow pulling into the harbor.  Every now and then you see an impressive Masai walking down the street.

Food prices are falling and the economy is booming.  Per capita gdp in Tanzania is about $700 but the city is prosperous.  Squalor can be found,  but only with effort.  There are plenty of new buildings, a few real bookshops, and a bunch of OK shopping malls.  Spiderman 3 is already in the theatres.  Given that migration is possible, and the city is not crushingly overcrowded, how bad can the countryside be?  (Don't answer that one.)

They carry eggs on the bicycles and everything else on the top of womens' heads.  SUVs are common.  Crafts are not impressive.  Tanzania, though large and populous, is far from an African cultural leader.

The Indian and Chinese restaurants are spicy and genuine.  The crab and the vegetables are superb.  Ugali is the native dish; you get some ground cornmeal, roll it in a ball with your fingers, and then dip it into a coconut sauce with vegetables.  They cook "pullau" rice with cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, and coriander.  Goat biryani is also common; it bears only a passing resemblance to the Indian concept of the same name.

Zanzibar, a two hour ferry ride away, has splendid old Arabic and Indian doors and many Arabic-style buildings.  Children play in the narrow streets.  Most of the women wear headscarves and a few wear the full veil.  The beaches appear perfect though I did not have time to swim.  For nightly street food there is spicy lobster, grilled fish, large fresh prawns, and french fries.

My guide in Zanzibar explained:

I decide to sell to muzungu [in Swahili this means "white person," plus some local nuances of expression] for my living.  The Tanzanian custom is go to witch doctors.  The muzungu custom is go to travels.

How to prepare for your trips, culturally

In the last week or so three loyal MR readers have asked how I prepare for trips, in terms of background reading and the like...

At this point in life the answer is usually that I do nothing other than call up memories of previous cultural consumption.  If you are not at that point, Wikipedia is an excellent source for fiction and movies from a country.  When it comes to music, consult the various Rough Guides to music; I mean the books, not the mediocre CD collections or the so-so travel guides.  Also try the AllMusic guide, either paper or on-line; when it comes to music neither Amazon nor Wikipedia is to be trusted ("why not?" is an interesting question, is it because too many people feel entitled to have an opinion about music?).  Bring music on cassette, CD, or iPod, as soundtrack for your trip, and ask your driver to put on Radio East Africa.  Finding the best non-fiction books is the hardest category to master.  I still prefer shelf browsing at libraries and book superstores. 

An MR request is another option.  Matt Dreyer asks what I recommend for a trip to Greece and Turkey.  Offhand I'll say Herodotus, the usual Greek classics, Pamuk's Snow and Istanbul books, Sarkan (a Turkish singer), Sufi music, Greek traditional music from 1930-1950 (there are some wonderful collections, look for the word rembetika), a study of Turkish and also Greek textiles, a picture book on Cycladic art, a book on Greek sculpture at the National Museum in Athens, Norwich on the Byzantine empire, Michael Grant on the ancient world, Lord Kinross on the Ottoman centuries, a biography of Ataturk and there are a few good recent books which survey contemporary Turkey.

Your tips, either general or specific, are of course welcome.

Memo to self

Visit London every year.  Bar Shu, 28 Frith St., near Leicester Square, is the best Sichuan food I have had.  The "Exploded Pork Kidneys" are especially fine, as are the green beans.  Also noteworthy is Hot Stuff, 19 Wilcox Rd., a small Pakistani takeaways place which is rapidly gaining global fame.

For the first time in my life, I no longer feel I live in or near the center of the world.

Odd signs in taxicabs

Red light indicates Your voice may be Heard by the Driver.

If they are going to have little flashing red lights (it was off on today's trip from the Tate to Harrod's), that is not one of the five verifiable contingencies I am most curious about.  It's not even my greatest curiosity about the driver.

Travel book panic

As the weeks before a trip approach, I assemble piles of books on the dining room table.  Each pile is constructed with care.  There is a travel guide pile, a fiction pile, a "needed for work" pile, and a "maybe I won't take this one at all" pile.  The most important is the "I'll probably read this one before the trip comes along" pile.

The books take on a life of their own.  At times I lose track of the planned trip and I think of it as little more than a chance to read, free of the usual interruptions.

The excitement mounts.  I frequently visit the piles and think about how it will be to experience those books.

But the day or two before the trip, panic sets in.  The piles seem totally inadequate.  Totally inadequate for my reading.  Totally inadequate for my development as a human being.  Most of all, totally inadequate for the trip.

I rush to Borders and buy a whole new set of books.

Hrak!

Be afraid, be very afraid

On his travels to almost 100 countries, Barry Goldsmith, a creator of tours for General Tours, says he has worried about risks like terrorism, crime and infectious disease. But one trumps all the others.

“It’s traffic accidents,” Mr. Goldsmith said.

Road accidents are “the largest cause of nonnatural death among U.S. citizens overseas,” said Betsy L. Anderson, a senior consular official at the State Department.

Here is the full story.  Some of the lessons are simple: insist on a vehicle with seat belts, sit in the back whenever possible, try to avoid driving or being driven at night, and don't take too many car trips.  Avoid the "Andean bus plunge."

Thomas Kaminski has another good observation

I also wonder how anyone in Italy makes a buck.  Rome is filled with small shops that apparently provide one small good or service—in my neighborhood alone, there are at least 3 competing herbalists (besides 3 or 4 farmacie), 2 guys who sell stuff for remodeling your bathroom, 4 tire stores or auto repair shops (each in a space no bigger than my living room at home), at least 4 small dry cleaners, 3 barbers, 3 hair dressers for women, a furniture restorer, a guy who sells wood and tile for floors, a different guy who sells only paint, a guy who does hand-painting on china (at least I think that’s what he does), and a dozen other small businesses.  In fact, from my limited experience here, Rome seems to have far more small shopkeepers (i.e., small entrepreneurs) than Chicago.  And I don’t see how any of the proprietors can make enough to keep his doors open.

And I wonder how so many used book stores survive in the expensive districts of central Paris.  I also wonder why Italy has so many stores for fancy underwear, and why so many Italians conduct their arguments out in the street.

100 Greatest Trips

That's the title of a fun, new book.  Here is my personal selection of 10, in no particular order, and not counting the U.S.:

1. Glottertal to St. Maergen, through the Black Forest.  Maybe only two hours by car, but sheer magic.

2. The East Coast of Taiwan, Suao down to Hualien and then into Taroko, the marble gorge.  The best coastal route I know.

3. Mostar and Sarajevo, to remind us of the thinness of civilization.  They're also beautiful cities with great food and moving graveyards.

4. Susten Pass, in Switzerland, the best route through the Alps.

5. The bus from Punta Arenas to Torres del Paine, Patagonia, Chile.  You see flamingos, rheas, and end up in a stunning national park.

6. The Panama Canal -- perhaps the most underrated sight; you feel like you are in the jungle, you are in a jungle, then a large steamer comes by.  The tour of Rotterdam Harbor is a close runner-up.

7. To and through the Tiong Bahru food stalls in Singapore.

8. Thingvellir, Iceland, home of the first Icelandic Parliament.  Such a long trip to see just four homes.

9. A walk through Ginza District in Tokyo, or perhaps Shinjuku subway station, with its dozens of maze-like paths to varioius streets.  Don't even try the map, just be happy with wherever you end up.

10. Walking Paris end to end, pick just about any route.

I've never been to East Africa, and I'm not counting the Iron Market in Port-Au-Prince.

Home

I arrived three hours early and went through six different and thorough searches at the airport; I do look like a drug dealer.  By my fourth day it had become clear how many wealthy Colombianas have had plastic sugery, of the disproportionate kind if you get my drift.  Colombia now has more people than Spain.  The American government freezes the funds of the families of Americans who have been kidnapped.  I found Bogotá safer than Madrid.

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair just listed Bogotá as one of the six up-and-coming tourist hotspots; Sibiu, Romania and the Kurile Islands (Russia) also made the list, enjoy.

Bogota thoughts

If you are nostalgic for Tower Records, there are a few branches left in Bogota...

Unlike Mexico City and Rio, most of the shops don't have private security guards or much in the way of security systems.  Bars on home windows are unusual.  I haven't heard many sirens.  Solo women walk around many parts of town.  Fear of civil war, kidnapping, and paramilitary guerrillas is no reason to postpone a trip.  From a tourist's point of view, Bogota is more secure than most other Latin American cities.

There is less glamour here than I expected, and most of the city is solidly working class, lower middle class.  People are well dressed but in a relatively formal way; there is little sartorial individuality or flair.  Dark clothes, especially black, are the default style, but not in a Will Wilkinson cool hipster sort of way.  Rather the message is "it rains here a lot and it is cool and foggy and we have endured centuries of violence, so why wear floral pink?"  The bowler hat, however, is now passe. 

Bookstores and libraries are everywhere, and it is common to see people reading or carrying books.  The shops display their serious books, not the junk.  The museums are the best in South America, for both content and presentation.

Bicycling is a big deal, and the bus system is well-developed to an extreme.  The water is potable.  The green hills around the city are attractive, the colonial part of town has wonderful colors and houses, and the modern architecture is getting better.

Colombianos are remarkably gracious and friendly.  There is nothing like isolation to make people love foreigners.  Does having a bad international reputation make people nicer to compensate?

You have to utter "good day" to the guard each time you enter a new room in a museum.  People open doors for each other.  No one is loud.  It all feels vaguely right-wing.

The local soup mixes shredded chicken, avocado, potato, corn, capers, cream, and herbs for a tasty blend.  So far the food doesn't thrill me; too many restaurants remain in the meat and potatoes stage; being in the Andes has never been good for any cuisine, except of course for their hearty soups.

The people look surprisingly homogeneous; I expected more Caribbean types and indigenous.  That said, the Turks run the textile trade and there are plenty of Chinese (so-called) restaurants.  Indian features are common, but blended into a broadly Spanish mix.  No one is very tall.

How can such a nice place be in the midst of a civil war and guerrilla uprising?  Why do leaders in the highest reaches of government secretly work with the paramilitaries?  Does every radio station in the country play Juanes, and how long will their Tower branches last?

Here is a good reading list on politics and institutions, but do any of these pieces explain what I am seeing?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

A love affair between a Colombian and a Russian friend of my wife, long ago.  The Iron Curtain intervenes.  A name.  An old address.  A non-working phone number.  Can I find him?

Visited countries

Since I enjoy revisiting familiar places, it is not often I get to new countries, but if all goes well I will tomorrow...

Here is how to make your own map, including for the USA.  The insane are welcome to register their "counties visited."

Ordem e Progresso, part II

Property rights are evolving, and rapidly:

Vigilante militias are alleged to have taken over Rio de Janeiro slums, ruling as feudal lords and imposing taxes, as a result of the collapse of legal policing in these areas.

The vigilante militias are made up of off-duty police officers and former police officers.  They work to expel drug traffickers and other criminals from favelas, known as Brazil's poorest and roughest neighborhoods, to set up protection rackets themselves.

According to Rio De Janeiro's public security department, 92 favelas are now controlled by militias, up from 42 in April 2005.  They take over a new neighborhood at an average of 12 days.

Sociologist Ignacio Cano, who works for the Rio de Janeiro State University, said that the root of the phenomenon is a quest by corrupt police officers for more money, against the backdrop of falling drug profits and a drop in bribery.

These officers have decided to take direct control of the areas and seek other ways to extract cash from Rio's poorest, he said.

Militias then demand protection money from the neighborhood they have captured: taxing residents five to seven U.S. dollars per head for living in the area; demanding two dollars for each tank of natural gas, the most common source of heat for cooking; and charging local taxis for entering the area.

I read many articles on this topic but the most insightful is this Chinese source, consistent with what I heard from Brazilian friends. 

Two questions: first, which groups are the most efficient "bandit-controllers" of the favelas?  Should it be someone who will continue to live there, or someone who owns land there (informally perhaps), or someone altogether different?

Second, would drug legalization do much to limit crime in this setting?  If a group can create a territorial monopoly on selling drugs, and drugs cease to be very profitable, cannot that same territorial monopoly be transferred to other goods and services, as we seem to be observing?  In Rhode Island the vending machine business was long corrupt.  It may be claimed that the illegality of drugs makes them a special target, but keep in mind the laws are not and cannot be enforced inside the favelas.  It is the favela boss who issues the relevant dictates.

As for Rio, here is what went on earlier this week.  I am happy to report that all three of us are back home safe and sound.

Ordem e Progresso

This is my third trip to Brazil...

One data point aside, the most obvious difference in Rio, from ten years ago, is how much safer it seems.  Many parts of town that were previously filled with stalkers and snatchers and kiddie gangs are now quite walkable and indeed pleasant.  Small crimes have gone down in frequency, but crime occurs on a larger scale.  The city has been parceled out, and if the police control a part of town they are able to keep snatchings and the like to a minimum, unlike ten years ago.  That said, the clashes at the fringes, between the police and the favela kings, are, according to my Brazilian friends, more frequent and more violent.  There is greater cartelization of territory, with tighter control within each market, but more at stake on the borders.

As Americans (and Russians) we are not used to visiting large, insular countries like our own, but Brazil is just that.  The diversity is remarkable, for one example Sao Paulo has about three million ethnic Japanese.  But as in the United States, much of the diversity is an illusion.  You can be from anywhere, and do anything you want, but somehow you still only have the option of being Brazilian.  Hardly anyone here speaks English, or indeed anything other than Portuguese.  Many people claim to speak Spanish; that only means if you speak to them in Spanish they are willing to answer you back in Portuguese, with one or two Spanish words thrown in.  There are few concessions to tourists, and even the most famous sites are visited mainly by Brazilians, not foreigners.  It is one of the best experiences of intense cultural immersion you can get.

Yes there are string bikinis but they are overrepresented on postcards.  The ocean walk in Rio is full of people who should not be wearing bikinis.  Brazilian women are among the world's most beautiful but in part because they do not insist of being superthin.  They will overwhelm you with their sensual earthiness, and their true appeal doesn't rest much on their looks one way or the other.

I had to wait four hours for a connecting flight from Sao Paulo to Rio.  I saw hundreds of Brazilians waiting for different flights (have I mentioned that infrastructure is terrible?), but not once did I see anyone reading a book.

The food is better than I remember it, top sirloin being the best cut at a churrascaria.  The cheeses, while not complex, are superb.  The cold antipasti are often the best part of the meal.  Only Italy has better pasta, and even that is debatable.

I find it hard to finish Our Mutual Friend, perhaps because the plot still doesn't make sense to me, not even on second reading.  Still, I hold an obvious fascination with serial stories which pretend to be about one thing and are in fact deeply about something quite different; those who read MR most closely already know this, even if they can't always figure out the plot.

Merry Christmas

My long plane flight to come

What does the peer pressure say?  Will it be a re-read of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (the key to deciphering Lost, I might add...