BEIJING—Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables are shedding rare light on the personalities and opinions of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang—the men tipped as China's next president and premier, respectively—while also revealing a surprising level of openness in their past dealings with the U.S. Embassy.
Today's issue of Creative Loafing has a feature article on the role the High Museum plays in the promotion of contemporary art and artists in Atlanta and the Southeast. Much of High Anxiety focuses on the tone of the Museum during the tenure of current Director Michael Shapiro.
Jabbing at the High seemed to reach a zenith this year with the Allure of the Automobile, a block buster show of classic cars presented within the curatorial context of a museum. The show was a huge success, generating big ticket sales in the midst of the recession's crush on nonprofits.
For me, the notion that the High can be a fulcrum for Atlanta's contemporary art scene is noble, but not an appropriate priority for a general museum. Reading some of the quotes from the article flashed me back to the London art world circa 1992 and the dismay and shock my colleagues and I expressed when one of our instructors had the audacity to bad mouth Damien Hirst. The young and hip will always be drawn to the young and hip.
My advice? Support the arts community and enjoy the energy of new ideas you will see in Atlanta's smaller galleries (and on our bridges and walls). But don't miss either Dali: The Late Work or Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting. If the High is selling out, I'm buying.
Heading into the holiday weekend with a close eye on the events in Korea via The Economist and New York Times. When does China get serious about dealing with North Korea?
I just discovered this great article from Wired on the Georgia Guidestones. This mind blower is about two hours from Atlanta in rural Elberton, GA. Shannon and I made the trip to Elberton about ten years ago and were taken aback by the mystery and enormity of the stones. Check it out!
The articles reinforce the sway China and her cash enjoy around the world, but also highlight the realities of the PRC's state capitalism model and the rubber stamping culture at the executive ranks of many major companies. Just don't accept this as status quo:
Check out the great new series in the New York Times focusing on the Sandwich Generation - the 20 million plus population of Americans simultaneously caring for aging parents and their own children. Ron Lieber, author of the Paper's Your Money column, highlights a variety of fiscal challenges faced by this growing segment:
Aging parents run short on money just at the time that they need specialized care. Adult children fail to launch and move back home with their parents. And people in their 40s, 50s and 60s are stuck in the middle, supporting the older and younger generations amid their own uncertainty about continued employment.
Have you every fantasized about shooting a potato out of a giant air cannon? I know I have! This weekend I punched one off my bucket list, and nailed an old 27 inch TV in the process.
Economic planning is not tantamount to socialism, because economic planning is also practiced in capitalist countries
The market economy is not tantamount to capitalism, because a socialist country can also have a market economy.
Both economic planning and the market economy are economic means.
The essence of socialism is to emancipate and develop the productive forces, destroy exploitation, eliminate polarization, and attain common prosperity in the end.
I have had burgers on my mind since watching Adam envelop some kind of juicy, spice bomb burger at Super Pan this afternoon. A perfect day for the latest installment of The Economist's Big Mac Index.
After the Obama Administration avoided declaring China a "currency manipulator" this spring, the Chinese government let the RMB start appreciating again. This was assumed to be a pre-greased understanding: as long as the Chinese government wasn't forced to "knuckle under" to foreign pressure, it could start moving in the right direction. Then, after a very short time, the appreciation stopped -- this chart shows the movement over the past year:
What we're seeing here: the essentially frozen exchange rate until June of this year, then the brief strengthening of the RMB's value through June and until early July -- and then the reverse trend, through much of the summer, of the RMB weakening again against the dollar. Finally, starting about a month ago, the Chinese government let the RMB's value starting rising once more.
The calculus of China politics being what it is, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo is most likely a set back for reformists within the PRC. Look for lots of spicy reaction from China over the weekend.
China's willingness to allow the RMB to appreciated 2% this year, regardless of U.S. election-year rhetoric to the contrary, is impressive, if not pragmatic. Power in China is political, not macroeconomic. State Capitalism has driven China to explosive growth over the past thirty years, but I am not sure how personal liberty fits into the balance.
During my time in Taiwan, my sweet tooth quickly drew me to Baobing, the Taiwanese take on a snow cone. The versions I enjoyed in the Taipei night market were usually scrapped ice smothered with red beans or fruity syrups.
Sno-Flake, just opened in Inman Park (on Highland Avenue across from the Mead Development), offers a modern take on Taiwanese shaved ice. Check their technique for molding flavors into ice blocks before spinning the blocks on custom built electric scrappers. The results are delicious!
Pay a visit after your next power meal at Sotto Sotto for a healthy alternative to that chocolate soup!
Here is video of the more traditional version from Gem, my favorite all time video blogger.
Congratulations to all the winners in the annual Creative Loafing Best of Atlanta poll. A special shout out to these friends and scenes that made the list:
Head to the 'hood this week to enjoy discounted tasting menus from thirteen of Atlanta's finest restaurants. The event benefits the Atlanta Community Food bank.
The old Blogger site will redirect you to the new URL once the transfer is completed. I will go in next week as the cyber dust settles and address the RSS feed and other connections.
It is a pleasure to share my discoveries, ideas and lunches with you here. Thanks for reading!
Just in case you have ever snickered at the Smart Car zooming past you on the road, check out my buddy Dave Teffeteller walking away from a massive wreck this weekend.
All the best to Dave and his companion and fellow fishing guide Justin Witt. We are happy to have you both back in Georgia in one piece!
As the parent of two kids under five, I almost spit out my coffee when I saw this graph in the Economist last week:
(click to enlarge)
Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board).
Is virtual learning the designed solution to this situation?
Matthews Asia, the San Francisco-based mutual fund company, has long been my favorite resource for on-the-ground insights on Asian economic matters. The Matthews team recently completed a massive overhaul of their website, making their voluminous collection of free market data even more accessible.
Check it out for yourself! Opportunities abound in China, India and Southeast Asia, just know the game you are playing.
Hector Santiago is a TV star and owner of Pura Vida, home of Atlanta's best Tapas experience. More importantly, he is the man who has given us the world's greatest burrito!
Make your way to the parking lot at Highland and Blue Ridge on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon to experience El Burro Pollo. Chicken burrito is the only game this food stall plays - $6 for a regular, $10 for a large.
Am I obsessed? Does the smoky burn of the pickled chilies induce some kind of hallucinatory state? Is this all just an excuse to run down the street for a King of Pops dessert?
There is only one way you will find out! See you in line next weekend.
American kids under 18 send and receive roughly 2,800 texts per month, according to Nielsen, or about 93 per day. Assuming 7 hours of sleep per night, on average, that's about 5.5 per hour spent awake, or one every 10 minutes or so. In the next two age brackets, text-message usage falls by more than half each.
But it's people ages 18-24 who talk the most on their cellphones, according to Nielsen, averaging 981 minutes per month. These are probably the people most likely to not have landline phones, so this also makes sense.
Word from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy is that Georgia is just a few applications away from securing its own AT license plate! Please apply now to get the AT represented on the road.
The iPad's intuitive interface makes it appealing to senior citizens around the world, says Takahiro Miura, a researcher at the University of Tokyo: "The iPad is a good tool for the elderly because it's very forgiving of mistakes." Miura's team uses computers to help train senior citizens to rejoin the workforce. "Unlike the PC, it doesn't require prior knowledge," he says.
As a Generation X music fan, I admit that prior to reading Terry Teachout's Pops, A Life of Louis Armstrong, I fell into the Hello Dolly/Hot Fives and Sevens camp.
I knew Louis Armstrong as a cultural icon of the post WWII generation and, later, got hip to Armstrong the musical revolutionary of the 1920s and 30s. Teachout's story of the journey between these eras is the core of Pops, and it offers fascinating insights into Jazz, Jim Crow and perseverance.
Teachout effortlessly traverses the party vs. musicology chasm that derails many musician biographies. The reader is presented with a grounding in New Orleans Jazz and the genesis of Armstrong's musicianship free of the pedantic tone that sours me on many Jazz books. We get some insights into Armstrong the viper, but stories of road life, broken marriages and the mob never take over the narrative of Armstrong the musician.
Besides his own writings (two books and hundreds of magazine articles), Armstrong recorded thousands of hours of audio tape throughout his life, capturing his stories, remembrances and occasional rants in his own voice. Teachout takes full advantage of these recordings to flesh out the role Armstrong played in the Civil Rights movement, detail the inter workings of the music businesses, and explore the relationships Armstrong maintained with many of the luminary figures of his age.
Pops reinforces Armstrong's place as the King of Jazz, but also reveals a master of stagecraft, a humanitarian and, in his own unique way, a powerful political operative.
This is a great read for the plane and a top-notch primer on hipster vocabulary! Be sure to check out the appendix for Teachout's list of the top 30 Armstrong tracks, all available via Itunes.
Look for the paperback release on October 7, 2010.
This week's Economist has a must read article on the new era of labor in China. While labor in China remains incredibly cheap, only about $0.81 an hour, new standards for workers' compensation and other inputs are raising real factory wage costs in major cities to levels on par with Thailand and the Philippines.
A key takeaway is that the China game is growing up, not going away. The Pearl River Delta may be too rich for more and more manufacturers, but the interior and frontier areas of China, the origins of the huge supply of migrant labor that fuels coastal factories, are open for business.
