Besides the fun, the thrills, and the experience of the new, is there a true high-brow reason to spend an extended time away from the home country? Do you really become intelligent, or more aware, or more well-rounded by traveling the world? As I write this we are a week away from a US presidential …

I just spent five hours on a Saturday finishing up a ghostwriting project, after working a good 50 hours already this week. But I didn’t do this so I could squeak out the car payment on a new BMW or add a home theater to my sprawling McMansion. I did it so I could get …

I just got back from a wild and wooly four days in New Orleans, where the wife and I celebrated our anniversary by going to Jazzfest. Yes, we acknowledged our joining in this “sacred institution” by drinking for days on end, dropping into our spinning bed way too late at night, and gorging ourselves on …

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the lengths some companies are going to with their architects in order to get us “knowledge economy” fat-butts to get some exercise during the day. They’re putting parking lots as far away from the offices as they can, in order to make people walk further. …

OK, so while you buy the “travel when others aren’t” idea in theory, maybe you’re just not willing to step out of our dangerous but familiar coccoon and into an unfamiliar frontier of SARS, terrorism, and flag burning. Well there’s a place for you too, and it’s not so far away. It’s called Latin America …