Amsterdam is clearly one of the great cities of the world, and Holland one of the most successful countries. With only 16 million people, two-thirds of the country would be underwater were it not for the system of dams and pumping stations. The Dutch obviously have to cooperate with each other to survive. Reflecting that […]…
Category: travel-notes
Paris, September 2011
It’s interesting to take the TGV south from Amsterdam. You’re aware that you’re in Holland as you pass through Rotterdam, but the next step is Antwerp, which is in Belgium. There are no signs saying “Welcome to Belgium,” not even when the train passes through Brussels. There is no need to check passports or change […]…
Man Bites Dog: What the Europeans Can Teach Us
It’s pretty darn near universal Conventional Wisdom in the United States that the Europeans are finished in many ways: they don’t have fast economic growth, they have overly intrusive governments and they’re stuck in the past. Some of that may be true, and I’ve certainly been arguing for years that Japan and China are more […]…
Taiwan’s Challenges, as It Engages With China
In this my final posting from my Asian journey, I am left with big questions about Taiwan’s future. How can it maintain its political independence as it engages so completely with the mainland in economic terms? And how can it ever sort out very difficult problems between its government and that of the mainland? As […]…
South Korea – In The Eye of the Storm
DEC. 3 Rita and I have been in Seoul since the weekend while newspaper headlines proclaim the imminent onset of full hostilities between the Americans and South Koreans on one hand against the North Koreans on the other. Many friends continue to ask, “Are you safe?” What the outside world does not understand are the […]…
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