Tax On Goulash?

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(From Economist.com)

Book Bits for the Traveler - Rag and Bone

I have harbored and interest, maybe an obsession, with religious relics dating from my days studying art history in college. As an outsider to Roman Catholicism, It was fascinating to discover how much of the cannon of Western art traces to the veneration of the teeth, hair, and bones of the Saints.

A visit to Chartres Cathedral, ostensibly constructed over the course of hundred of years as a center of veneration for the cloak of Saint Mary, wet my appetite for the martyred and led me to explorer scores of churches, reliquaries and other holy holes in the wall all over Europe.

As Peter Manseau’s new book Rag and Bone - A Journey Among The World's Holy Dead reveals, my fascination with the mementos of faith is not that unusual. This highly readable travelogue touches on the meaning of relics as symbols in the world’s religions as a backdrop for the author’s treasure hunt to find a variety of remains and the stories that go with them.

Beyond a generous serving of Western Saints, Manseau delves into the roles of Saints in Orthodox Christianity, explores the conflict over one of Muhammad’s whiskers, and travels California with a van full of Buddhist remains, described as looking “a bit like Pop Rocks, or the occasional malformed mint one finds in a Tic Tac dispenser."

The book is still in hardback, but at 250 pages it is an easy fit for your briefcase. The stand alone chapters make it a perfect travel book. Grab this great read for your next trip for fascinating insights into the world’s religions and a great story to tell about Jesus’ foreskin.

Want more? This past weekend’s New York Times had a review of An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town by David Farley. The reviewer called the book scabrous and adolescent, so it must be good!

Coolest Travel Gadget

Thanks to the Gulliver Blog for introducing the Stash-Card. Pretend you are James Bond (or some more nefarious character) and hide your most precious possessions inside you laptop's card slot. I know Paul Trost has two.

Inside Asia's Asia Play

Checkout the great articles in the new AsiaNow newsletter from Mathews Asia. This issue focuses on the ramifications of the current economic crisis and larger issues of cultural and governmental influences that affect the future of Asian economies.

The biggest lesson of the current crisis for Asian countries is that they can no longer depend on the West as a market for their exports, nor for reliable returns on their investment capital. To address the first issue, Asia has to cultivate its domestic consumer markets to sustain its growth.

PS - Thanks to the ICA Newsletter for recommending this brief video featuring Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley Asia’s chairman, addressing domestic consumption in China.

A Real Green Prodcut

This morning's Economist.com featured a small article about the UK firm 2K Manufacturing's new particle board substituted made from plastic bottles.

The company's process for reclaiming plastics without expensive sorting and cleaning might offer a template for local processing of all plastics. Britain currently recycles only 15% of its plastic waste.

R.I.P. Les Paul

Father of electronic guitar, jazz innovator, weekly club dates in his 90s.
The Man
The Axe

Art Bits - A Moment with Monet

The current Monet exhibit at the High Museum ends on August 23. This show, another example of the High's ability to organize micro events around recognized masterpieces, is not the Musée de l'Orangerie, but should not be missed by Atlantans.

The exhibit centers on the triptych Reflections of Clouds on the Water - Lily Pond from the Museum of Modern Art. Before entering the gallery holding these canvases, visitors receive a good background on Monet's later life and the context of his creation of the Water Lilies series.

My advice for these kinds of shows is always the same - be the first person in or the last person out. If you can find the time to avoid the tour groups and well meaning parents (I am one of these too on Thursday afternoons), you can arrange your own private audience with Monet. If only for a few minutes, make the effort to be alone with a palette of color that draws you the beauty of Giverny and the doors of abstract expressionism.

View of AFAR

This weekend I received a copy of a new hipster travel magazine called AFAR. I believe this is positioned as vehicle for the real travel philosophy - experience culture, serendipity and purpose on a trip rather than bus tours and McDonald's.

I am going to subscribe and encourage you to check them out. The layout is fun, there are all kinds of interesting vignettes and great features about Tokyo's costume-play culture and the secrets of a Paris baker.

Bon voyage!

The First March

Yesterday I made a late evening run to Hartsfield-Jackson to spend a few minutes with a friend passing through town. Walking through the commotion in the atrium I noticed a gaggle of about sixty or seventy young men lounging around, separated from the tourist families and the sleeping layover victims.

It was easy to put together that this was a fresh batch of recruits heading to basic training. Many were sporting recruiting premiums - Go Army shirts, camouflaged backpacks, etc. The crowd was a mix of races, sizes and attitudes, but I don't think any of them were over 21. Dispersed among the recruits were two older characters, I assume recruiters, circling around offering slaps on the back, reviewing paperwork and generally keeping an eye on their flock.

While my friend and I sat in a restaurant the group transformed before our eyes. In a matter of seconds the recruiters popped the hodgepodge into a single file line. The looks on the faces of the young men changed instantly as they assembled into their first formation. The journey ahead was becoming real.

As each of them passed us, clumsily marching out of the terminal to a bus destine for Fort Benning, I was struck by the combination of innocence and purposefulness in their expressions. These were young men, from all walks of American life, heading towards a future leading many of them into hardship and harms way.

I am sure this ritual plays out many times a day in the world's busiest airport. Seek it out the next time you are in ATL. For me, watching this procession was both moving and encouraging. Without question politics, the G.I. Bill, family, and a host of other factors played into the decision each of these young men made in enlisting, but their faces told me that the American ideal closed the deal. That is something we should all respect and celebrate.

Say What?

As a one thumb texter, I got a real kick out of the article in today's Wall Street Journal about the vocabulary of texting (parents take special note). Central to this new language is the lexicon of abbreviations that often leave me scratching my head as the Twitter feed scrolls on my phone.

These include:

• CID . . . . . Consider it done
• FWIW. . . For what it’s worth
• HAND . . . Have a nice day
• IAT . . . . . I am tired
• NRN . . . . No response necessary
• 4COL. . . . For crying out loud

My bookmarks list now includes NetLingo, a texting dictionary, and Dtxrt.com, a Babel Fish-type translator.

KUTGW.

China 2.0

On the happy day my holdings in the Matthews Pacific Tiger Fund finally regained their cost basis, I was further pleased to read comments from The Boston Consulting Group regarding their positive outlook on the future of the Chinese economy.

Check out David Michael's brief but fact filled white paper Lucky 8 . This delves into the well tread view of China's need to shift away from export manufacturing as its key economic driver, but also touches succinctly on other key areas driving China's economic engine. These include:

• Increased consumer spending
• The PRC government's new strategies for managing the economy
• The continued strengthening of domestic China companies
• A new era of stability with Taiwan