We exited the arrivals hall of Dubai International Airport at about 10:30 tonight. Ah, the UAE in late July! t was still 108 degrees Fahrenheit, and humid, and walking into the night was like sliding into a warm bathtub — right up to the sensation that brought to mind trying to breath warm water. But […]

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A significant percentage of the movies I have watched in the past two months has been while flying. In part, it’s because so few films I am interested in seeing have come out during that time. But a big part of it is the array of movies-on-demand available for viewing on the big and modern […]

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Dubai seems to be the dateline for many of the planet’s extremes. Biggest, tallest, longest, widest. Including, it would seem, some of the most egregious examples of food wastage.

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Traveling from the UAE to California is not a journey to be entered into lightly. One is divided from the other by 11 time zones. (Twelve time zones in the winter, when California goes off daylight savings time.) Only one nonstop exists from the UAE to California. (Emirates, from Dubai to Los Angeles, for 16 […]

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Like Dubai, Abu Dhabi has an airport where most people alight only to catch another plane. The UAE is at a sort of crossroads of the Old World. If you want to go from Moscow south to South Africa, you may well change planes in the UAE. Going from Europe to the east of Asia? […]

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In a previous lifetime, an exchange student taken into our household gave me a gift. It was a garish necktie, quite long, with diagonal stripes of red, white and, I think, green. Maybe blue, too. Pretty sure I never wore it; it was that startling. I remember it being encased in a plastic sleeve and […]

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I love this concept. Love it. Even if it’s sponsored by a company that makes caffeine-laced sugary drinks that can’t be good for you … It’s just a very clever idea. The Red Bull King of the Rock. Start with a global 1-on-1 basketball tournament. Five-minute games, tournaments set in 25 countries to winnow the […]

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They play baseball here. Well, not here here, “here” being Abu Dhabi. To my knowledge, Abu Dhabi has one softball field … zero baseball fields. “Fields” of any sort are at a premium here in the desert, and heavily in demand by soccer players. So we have no ball fields here; none dedicated to baseball, […]

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This is a match made in Emirati heaven. Tearing around the French countryside in high-end sports cars for hours and hours. Till you literally can’t stand driving 175 mph anymore. Le Mans, how had you never met the UAE?

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Explaining the process of how mammals reproduce is a fairly recent concept, in human history. Back when 90 percent of all living people were farmers or herders, kids figured it from what went on around the barn. Urbanization led to what came to be called, in the U.S., anyway, as “the birds and the bees” […]

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