By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Part 2 of 4: FINDING A HOME. When we left home we left with the hope that we’d find the city for us. We’d walk the streets and feel comfortable. We’d savor the foods and feel fine if we got fat there. We’d see the homes and picture ourselves there. It would feel like home. After visiting more than 200 cities, where have we decided to settle? Follow us on the second Wednesday of each month to discover what traveling the world taught us about where we want to call home.
Having decided last month that the developed world is where we want to live, which country? Do we want to live surrounded with the history of Europe? Do we want to enjoy the culinary delights of Hong Kong and Singapore? Do we want to live in the Land Down Under?
HE SAID…
I have always seen myself as someone who would live abroad. I’ve dreamt of returning home for my 30th high school reunion to elicit envy for my globetrotting lifestyle. I’d call places like Monaco, Chamonix and Singapore home, maybe all at once. Most of all, I’d be able to say I went somewhere in life, somewhere exotic compared to Middle America.
Beyond the allure of living abroad I see some quantifiable benefits. I’d be freer to start new businesses with national healthcare instead of employer-based care. I’d be more easily able to quickly visit interesting places based in Europe or Asia. I’d be able to take public transportation instead of sitting in traffic. These lifestyle benefits can’t be discounted.
It’s easy to picture myself living in a modern metropolis like Busan.
Read the rest of… Matt & Erica Chua: Living Abroad vs. the USA
Now that supporters of growing industrial hemp have the groundwork laid in Kentucky, a bipartisan group of officials is now turning to Washington to get the go-ahead to grow the crop.
Jonathan Miller, the former state treasurer and a member of the industrial hemp commission, said the request could be made of the Obama Administration before June. Those who will likely play a role include Republican Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth of Louisville.
“In the next few weeks or so, sometime this spring, we’re gonna go up — Commissioner (Comer), a couple of the board members possibly myself. We’re going to gather with our bipartisan delegation,” Miller said. “Sen. Paul and Congressman Yarmuth are playing the point and start meetings with Obama administration officials. The thing with hemp it is an issue that it involves a lot of different agencies. At the center is the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency. They’re the ones who will be making the ultimate decisions.”
But Miller said those are not the only agencies with an interest in industrial hemp. He said the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Energy are all interested in the crop, which could mean more avenues for the group to seek support for a federal waiver.
“Getting (the agencies) together on the same page is going to be our critical element,” Miller said. “It might take some time, but I’m confident from what I’m hearing from my friends in Washington that there is a lot of interest from a lot of important people that want to legalize hemp. Or at least it allow states like Kentucky that have a waiver to be able to do it on their own.”
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And Miller said he supports legalizing marijuana, but that does not mean everyone who supports hemp on the commission also supports marijuana.
“I support legalizing marijuana. I came around after Gatewood Galbraith died, and I dedicated a few months to looking at his critical issue and I realized that he was right, but other hemp supporters like Commissioner Comer aren’t for legalizing marijuana,” Miller said. “Hemp and marijuana are very different.”
The Pew Research Center shows that for the first time a majority of Americans favor legalizing the use of marijuana. And that Miller said is good news for proponents of legalizing industrial hemp.
“The fact that there is a majority of Americans out there supporting legalizing marijuana. There is probably a super super majority of Americans that support legalizing hemp,” Miller said.
And Miller said that super majority could be the political difference for passing the law in the United States.
“President Obama has the opportunity without taking the risk of angering all the people who are opposed to marijuana legalization and appeasing those of us who support both by legalizing hemp or at least allowing states to do a waiver,” he said.
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Apr 8, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
The End Times are all the rage, ignoring the Mayan distraction, it’s still apocalypse now for many fundamentalists. A quick search of google reveals that “end times” has 2.6 billion results, compare this to a paltry 1.4 billion results for “God” himself and it’s clear that it’s a question on many minds. While the end of days can be debated until that very last day, what would it be like to know for certain that you’re living in the Book of Revelation? For Ephesus and Pergamon in Turkey, being part of Revelations isn’t up for debate, they are actually in the Book of Revelation.
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If the end of days is more figurative than literal, merely representing the end of all that we accept as permanent, Ephesus today could be exactly what John the Baptist envisioned for the end of the world. Standing as one of the world’s great cities for 2500 years, today it lies in ruin. The collapse of such a city could have been nothing short of the end of the world for those that see the civilization they live in as timeless.
Read the rest of… Erica & Matt Chua: Witnessing the End of the World
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Apr 5, 2013 at 4:00 PM ET
I’m so pleased to report that legislation honoring Shemp Howard (née Samuel Horwitz), the most overlooked member of the comedy troupe, The Three Stooges, has now officially become a law in the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Shemp has deserved this honor for decades, and I for one am thrilled to death that a proud Jewish exemplar is finally getting the recognition he so truly deserves.
Mazel Tov, Shemp!!!
UPDATE 4:30
So it turns out that the legislation that has officially become law is not “Shemp” legislation, but “hemp” legislation.
(Which is also pretty damn awesome. Read my piece upon the bill’s passage in the General Assembly.)
But my apologies to the Howard family and the entire American Jewish community for my reading mistake.
Here is the update on the hemp legislation from the Courier-Journal:
Gov. Steve Beshear will allow legislation permitting hemp production in Kentucky to become law without his signature, and now supporters of the measure say they plan to turn their attention toward Washington in hopes of knocking down federal barriers to the crop.
The bill will officially become law at the end of the day Saturday but will have no real effect until the federal government takes action to declassify hemp as an illegal drug or to grant Kentucky a waiver that would allow people to start growing the plant, which is native to Kentucky.
“We’re going to be figuring out a strategy about going to Washington and trying to get a waiver or trying to get them to lift the ban,” said state Rep. Paul Hornback, the primary sponsor of the bill.
Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, of Tompkinsville, a key proponent of the legislation, said he plans to talk next week with U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth about how to move forward to obtain federal permission to grow the crop. “I hope farmers can start putting seeds in the ground next spring.”
Hemp fiber, oil and seed have a variety of uses and can be used in products including clothing and fuel. Hornback said the market for hemp products in the United States is more than $400 million annually, which he expects to increase if cultivation resumes in the country.
Hornback and Comer argued that as one of the first states to allow hemp farming, Kentucky could attract processors they speculate could employ hundreds. Opponents have been concerned that legal hemp would complicate efforts to spot illegal marijuana plants. The two are identical in appearance, but hemp has a fraction of marijuana’s intoxicating ingredient THC.
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Apr 1, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Going from the Middle East to Latin America was a breath of fresh air. While the sites and experiences of the UAE, Oman, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Turkey were wonderful, the constraints of daily life wore on us. Here’s what it felt like to escape the Middle East.
HE SAID…
The Middle East is different. While China may be different because of people’s actions, or India different due to hygiene, or Brazil different due to liveliness, it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly is different in the Middle East. It’s not so much an attribute, but a feeling. Being in the Middle East feels different.
No matter where I went I couldn’t get over one thing: half of the population is imprisoned in their clothing. While some places were “more liberal”, almost everywhere we went women had to wear a burqa and head covering. Claim all the “cultural differences”, “religious” and “historical” reasons you want, but to me it is wrong. While the burqa’s fashion disaster itself is reprehensible, what it represents is worse: that women are second-class, they cannot make their own choices. Imprisonment in clothing and culture is the only way I can truly explain it.
Argentina is the polar opposite. Women and men alike are free to choose what to cover and what to leave exposed. Women are allowed to act independently, travel freely, choose their education, and responsible for the consequences of their own actions. While the Middle East is about limits, Latin America is about a life without limits. The attitudes, personalities and styles of Argentina were a much needed break from the Middle East.
All day, everyday, I’d rather be in Latin America, full of it’s infidels and fun than the Middle East.
Read the rest of… Erica & Matt Chua: Escaping the Middle East
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Mar 27, 2013 at 12:30 PM ET
We tend to mythologize the dead; and perhaps that’s fair with politicians who’ve passed, since we use them for rhetorical target practice when they are stumping the earth.
But regardless of the intended spirit, today is a very special day for the memory of my friendly acquaintance and sometimes political rival, Gatewood Galbraith.
On the surface, the two of us could not have looked any more different — my buttoned-down, over-dressed-to-try-to-look-my-age appearance was a stark contrast to his rugged and ragged hippie/cowboy mien. And the communitarian ethos of my attempt at being an auteur, The Compassionate Community, was a diametric challenge to the in-your-face libertarianism of his autobiographical The Last Free Man in America.
But as we campaigned against each other in the 2007 Kentucky gubernatorial primary, Gatewood and I learned we shared a very deep bond: a mutual frustration with politics-as-usual, especially with the hyper-partisan, broken-down political system within which both of us had given much of our lives.
So when he died suddenly last year, I decided to honor his memory by taking another look at his pet cause — the issue that drove him the most passionately — the campaign for which he endured decades of public ridicule — the stance that probably ensured that he would never hold public office: The legalization of marijuana, and of its distant cousin, industrial hemp.
It didn’t take me long to realize that Gatewood was right: Legalizing pot not only made strong economic sense for our poor state, I believed that it was a moral imperative. I shared my views in my hometown paper and The Huffington Post; and upon publication, learned that most of my friends had agreed with Gatewood, and just had been too embarrassed to admit it.
While a few states have marched quickly down the legalization path in recent years, I realize that my conservative old Kentucky home will probably lag the national trend by several years, if not the full twenty as per Mark Twain’s famous description of the Bluegrass State.
But I had hope for hemp. It was a matter of clear and convincing logic that the non-narcotic crop that was grown by Henry Clay — Kentucky’s second most famous 19th Century native — could ultimately boost a farm economy struggling due to the incredibly shrinking global demand for tobacco. So I used my digital platform to advocate for hemp legalization.
I soon learned of a whole new group of unlikely allies. Hemp was not simply the pet cause of many of my tree-hugging, peace-seeking friends on the left, I learned that it was also a special focus of many libertarian, liberty-loving Tea Party activists on the right.
Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner Jamie Comer grabbed hold of this motley coalition, and asked me to join him on his newly-invigorated Industrial Hemp Commission. Together, a group that would likely find strong disagreement on any number of hot-button issues, drafted a bill that would establish an administrative and law enforcement structure for hemp growers should the crop be legalized at the federal level. Critically, it would empower Kentucky to jump to the front of the line and establish itself as the national leader on the crop once expected federal approval was granted.
I have to admit, I didn’t expect Senate Bill 50 to pass early on. Another unlikely coalition, composed of law enforcement officials and members of both the Democratic and Republican establishments, joined their voices in strong opposition. When Comer and I debated law enforcement on statewide television, I knew in my mind that our positions were persuasive, but my heart warned me that the political opposition was too strong to surmount this quickly.
I had recognized that Comer was a comer — and as a conservative Republican bucking law enforcement, I realized that he had the courage and chutzpah that define my personal definition of leadership. But I had underestimated Comer’s political shepherding skills.
Read the rest of… Hemp and the Legacy of The Last Free Man in America
By Ronald J. Granieri, on Wed Mar 27, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
German unification was one of the most dramatic developments in contemporary history, as well as one of the most unexpected. After decades during which the press and public measured political wisdom according to how well leaders managed the apparently permanent realities of German and European division, leaders in 1989 had to improvise responses to the literal collapse of the most concrete of those realities in Berlin. As much as German politicians had claimed for years to be hoping for this day, none had actual plans ready. Into this potentially dangerous vacuum stepped a most unlikely improviser. Helmut Kohl was a reasonably successful party leader of enormous bulk and moderate political gifts, generally underestimated even by his political allies and known neither for creativity nor dynamism. To the surprise of all, he proved remarkably adept at managing the international and domestic complications of 1989. Within thirteen months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he rode successful reunification negotiations to a landslide victory in the first all-German democratic elections since 1932. Even if many of his decisions during those months can be (and have been) questioned, his place in history is assured.
Kohl’s story provides but one of many crucial insights into how the story of German reunification displays both the limits of realism and the unpredictability of history. That unpredictability reminds us of the role that individuals can still play in the modern world, even in the face of enormous complexity. For it was the combined actions of individuals, neither beginning nor ending with Kohl, who changed the world in 1989, and all students of international affairs can profit from reexamining that dramatic story.
To appreciate just how important those individual actions could be, one has to remember the state of the world (and of most thinking about the world) in the 1980s. After decades of Cold War, the US-Soviet rivalry still shaped most global conceptions, on issues ranging from economic development to the world chess championships, not to mention the Olympics. Even as progressives decried the focus on East-West rivalry and advocated more attention to North-South issues of economic development, conventional wisdom dictated that intelligent people assume the existence of Eastern and Western blocs for as far as the eye could see. The sense that this rivalry was permanent, and required careful management rather than bold transformations, was pervasive. Indeed, that attitude was so widespread that when commentators spoke of the End of the Cold War at all, they imagined a world in which the United States and the Soviet Union, with their associated allies, still coexisted, though at a reduced level of tension, allowing the allegedly inevitable process of convergence to make their systems look as much like each other as possible. No one imagined one side would disappear. That would have been dangerously unrealistic.Nowhere were these assumptions more obvious than in Berlin. Although actual defenders of the “anti-Fascist protection barrier” were few outside of the upper leadership of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), the world had come to accept the presence of the Berlin Wall as the price to be paid for stability and security in Central Europe. President Ronald Reagan had declared “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” when he spoke before the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, but his words were greeted at the time as the tired echo of anachronistic sentiments. No one really expected it to happen—perhaps not even Reagan himself, who by that time was committed to negotiating arms control treaties with the Soviets based on his positive assessment of his new partner, Mikhail Gorbachev. If anything, informed observers assumed that Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika would stabilize the Soviet Union, making the situation even more permanent. That was, after all, why Reagan felt he had to ask Gorbachev to tear down the wall; no one else had the power to do it.
Read the rest of… Ronald J. Granieri: The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Power of Individuals & the Unpredictability of History
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Mar 25, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
(What do you do when you have something amazing and you don’t want to share it? You tell people it’s terrible so that you can have it all to yourself. It was along that line of thinking that original settlers of Sirince named it Çirkince, which in Turkish means ugly. The founders discovered their own slice of heaven and didn’t want to share, so they called it ugly and lived happily ever after…until 1926. The small hamlet was renamed Sirince, which means pleasant. Now the perfect side-trip from Ephesus this pleasant little city gets it’s fair share of visitors. Pleasant may still be an understatement, but will hopefully keep the crowds at bay and preserve the beauty of this place for a few more years.
Şirince was settled when the Greek city of Ephesus was abandoned in the 15th century, but the “pleasant” town you see today dates from the 19th century. The old brick and stucco buildings with bright orange terra-cotta roof tiles and deteriorating wood shutters lend a medieval feel to the town. As you wind your way through the cobblestone streets the cafes draw you in and the welcoming owners beckon you to sit down for a hot drink.
Read the rest of… Erica & Matt Chua: The Prettiest Ugly City in the World
