Peter "Just Loves Flying"

Last week I took part in a “teach-in” organized by Michigan State University devoted to the ongoing crisis in Mali. A half-dozen Africanist scholars joined a pair of retired U.S. ambassadors to discuss the origins and consequences of that country’s state collapse, ethnic tensions, the rebel takeover and French military intervention. The audience, mostly MSU students and faculty, included several Malians. One recurring subject was the Tuareg people and their place in the Malian nation. Various non-Malian participants spoke of the need to grant the Tuareg some kind of autonomy, while Malians in the room rejected such an arrangement. At one point a Malian graduate student in attendance stated flatly, “There is no ‘Tuareg problem’ in Mali.”

This remark reminded me that listening to Tuareg and non-Tuareg Malians talk about their intertwined history can be like listening to Israelis and Palestinians talk about theirs: the two groups’ respective visions of…

To start let’s mention 10 benefits traveling does for you:

1. it broadens your horizons
2. experiencing different cultures and realizing the same things can be done in different ways
3. meeting some of the nicest people
4. doing things you don’t normally do
5. eating foods that change your taste buds
6. seeing things you haven’t seen before
7. learning a new language or part of it
8. understanding different cultures
9. sense of adventure
10. develop skills you didn’t know you had

And the list can go on and on……………..wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that more often? Well I guess you can! Become a professional traveller, work on an airplane, work on a cruise ship work on a yacht and the list goes on, but in reality these jobs are not for everybody. Now one of the best things of travel I think is meeting so many different people. What if you could have a…

Originally published in The Bona Venture on December 7, 2012.

It’s been four days, and the royal baby already has five parody Twitter accounts.

In an announcement which took over social media, their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a.k.a. Prince Will and Princess Kate announced Kate’s pregnancy on their official website on Monday.

Granted, this is nothing compared to the overwhelmingly exuberant media coverage of the Royal Engagement and the adorable couple’s wedding in April 2011, but the general public hasn’t even known about the pregnancy for a week and it’s still, unfortunately, taking the world by storm.

You can follow the Royal Baby in what might be the longest-running live tweet in history — nine months of undoubtedly exciting action from Kate’s womb!

The best part is, you have plenty of options. @RoyalFoetus, @Royal_Fetus, @IamRoyalBaby, @UnbornRoyal and@HRHBaby are all Twitter handles probably created by obsessive fans…