Xar World

The Danish restaurant has done it again! Having triumphed in the World’s Best Restaurants Awards 2011, head chef Rene Redzepi returned to London and claimed victory again. ‘Coming first changes your life,’ said El Bulli’s Ferran Adria ahead of the announcement - he should know, he’s previously won several times. Speaking shortly before the award, Redzepi said ‘when I first started, I had just 14 bookings on a Saturday. Last Saturday I had a waiting list of over 1,000 - it’s down to the 50 Best award.’

 

For a depressed economy, exports function as a magic elixir. Demand—and with it jobs—appears from outside, generating new income that cycles through the economy, This is why President Obama, as part of his recovery strategy, has set a goal of doubling exports over five years.

Talk of exports normally conjures up images of factories and container ships, but many of America’s exports are services. The nation’s biggest service export is in some sense not an export at all—it’s travel and tourism, an industry begging for respect on National Travel and Tourism Week. I’m pleased to report that America’s international travel export sector is healthy, with nominal revenues reaching an all-time peak last year of $153 billion—about 1 percent of GDP. Still, despite recent successes, it’s not clear that American tourism has ever really recovered from the tough blow it took after 9/11, suggesting there’s plenty we could do to further boost the industry.

As far as the national balance sheet goes, tourism functions exactly like an export. Foreigners come here and spend money, leaving extra funds in American hands, with which we can purchase oil and Chinese toys. It’s an export realm in which the United States has very strong fundamentals.

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For starters, our country is large and diverse. We’ve got beaches, we’ve got snowcapped mountains, we’ve got deserts, and we’ve got cities. We’ve got great art museums and we’ve got the Grand Canyon. Wide open spaces and Manhattan. In other words, there are American destinations to suit any taste. The diversity of the country and open-mindedness of the national palate mean a major American city is one of the best places to sample a wide array of global food. A Chinese visitor to Chicago will find neither the world’s best tacos nor its best pasta, but a dramatically better mix of the two than you’d find in Mexico or Italy. A trip from Rio de Janeiro to New York or Los Angeles will grant you a wider variety of Asian cuisines than just about any Asian city.

Tourism also benefits directly from the structure of the American economy. Whether you like the European welfare state model or hate it, there’s no doubt that it has a powerful impact on relative prices. By using tax dollars to finance social services, Finns obtain cheaper health care and education while paying much more for almost everything else. But nobody deliberately goes to the doctor on vacation, and visitors to Helsinki don’t benefit from the first-rate public schools. The United States, with its low taxes and plentiful land, is one of the cheapest of the rich countries to visit.

Tourism ought to be one of the main ways in which the United States benefits from global growth. With per capita GDP surging in China and generally on the up in India and Latin America, more people than ever can afford to travel. But American public policies are not helping foreign visitors as they could. Everyone knows American transportation infrastructure is in many respects subpar, but few acknowledge the direct link this has to a key element of our international trade. Upgrading our airports, air traffic control, and rail and highway links would make it easier for visitors to come and spend. National parks and public lands, also facing major budget pressure, are critical elements in maintaining America’s appeal as a destination.

And we ought to reassess some of the security measures implemented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Workaday U.S. airport security is an enormous pain for everyone, and its national security value is dubious. The increased scrutiny given to people seeking tourist visas is hidden from most Americans but very annoying for potential tourists. The 36 countries that participate in the Visa Waiver Program that lets people make short-term visits without applying for special permission account for 65 percent of visits to the United States. But major Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, aren’t on the list. Even where it’s not viable to expand the Waiver Program, we should try to make the process more convenient. A January Obama administration executive order has succeeded in drastically reducing wait times from Brazil and China. But there are logistical issues beyond wait time. China, a nation of 1.2 billion people, has  just five locations where visas can be obtained. Harbin, a metro area about the size of Philadelphia’s, is an almost eight-hour drive from the nearest spot where you can interview.

America is a great place to visit, and rapid growth in historically poor countries means more people than ever can come to see it. We need to do what we can to roll out the welcome mat.

 

Matthew Yglesias is Slate’s business and economics correspondent. Before joining the magazine he worked for ThinkProgress, the Atlantic, TPM Media, and the American Prospect. His first book, Heads in the Sand, was published in 2008. His second, The Rent Is Too Damn High, was published in March.

Even those of us that love our jobs can have days where office life just seems like a terrible punishment from the beyond. If your job is crushing your soul piece by piece, here are some ways you can deal with the pain and suffering of office life.

10. The Mild Annoyance of Eating at Work

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The need to eat at the office doesn’t really feel like hell—at least not the eternal-pain-and-agony kind. It’s more like the constant splinter in your skin that just keeps annoying you all day. You have to deal with the always-unappealing brown bag lunch, eat at your desk, and deal with nasty coworkers stealing your food. Of course, there are ways to deal with this problem—specifically, make your brown bag lunch more appealing, make it something that’s keyboard friendly, and if you really can’t deal with the office thieves…just stick some laxatives in the food and call it a day. Photo by Kevin Marsh.

9. The Challenge of Staying Awake

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The next level of hell, slightly more annoying than food, is the sheer boredom of your job. Between meetings, mundane tasks, and listening to your coworker’s all-to-detailed story about her cat Mittens, it’s like your job is trying to put you to sleep. There are a few things you can do to help keep yourself awake, both at your desk and during excruciatingly boring meetings, but you can also give into the temptation and sneak yourself a nap at work. Power naps are the best way to go, and with a few strategies, you should be able to get through a quick nap without anyone the wiser. Photo by Sarah G.

8. The Constant Paranoia of Being Monitored

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Whether your office has a simple web filter on your computer or they’re monitoring your every move, it can make life very difficult. Here’s how to tell if you’re being monitored at work, and what to do about it if you are. And if its web filters that are the problem, you can always bypass them with your own proxy server, or by grabbing some portable apps and turning a thumb drive into a tiny privacy toolkit to browse without a trace. Photo by Diego Cervo (Shutterstock).

7. The Temptation of Constant Distractions

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There’s always something nagging at you to ignore your work and do something to take your mind off the slave driving, whether it be browsing the web, talking with a coworker, or push notifications from all directions. If you really want to focus while you work, we’ve got some tips to help you out. If you can’t figure out exactly what’s distracting you all day, I really recommend using a time tracking program like RescueTime to find out—it’ll make it a lot easier to crush those distractions once and for all. Photo by imageegami (Shutterstock).

6. The Exhaustion of Long Hours

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If you haven’t actually counted how many hours you work in a week, it’s time to start—and if that number’s over 40, you may have a problem. Not only is it exhausting, but it can even lead to health problems like depression, so you need to take charge. At the end of the day, go the f**k home. If you need more motivation than that, there are a few things you can do to make leaving your work behind easier, too. Photo by Wes Peck.

5. The Sacrifice of a Not Getting Paid

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You’d think a hellacious office job would at least pay well, but sadly, that’s just not the case. If you’re unhappy with the money you’re making—and remember, the new salary happiness tipping point is about $50,000—it’s time to see if you can get a raise. Don’t be tough, be honest, and do your homework beforehand. You’re a lot more likely to get paid what you’re worth with a well thought out negotiation than going in angry. Photo by Helder Almeida (Shutterstock).

4. The Nagging Pain of RSI

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You sit at a desk all day, and not only is it making you fat, but it’s destroying your eyes, wrists, back, and the rest of your body, slowly and meticulously. The best thing you can do? Take some time to ergonomically optimize your workspace and change your habits for pain-free office work. And if you’re having a problem with eye strain, there are a few things you can do in that area too—including trying out these Lifehacker-tested computer glasses. Photo by Jhayne.

3. The Stress of Problematic Coworkers

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Distracting coworkers is a mild annoyance, but the truly difficult people are a whole new level of hell. You can’t change other people, so the best thing you can do is focus on your own triggers to deal with difficult people. And, if things get really out of hand, you can complain about them to management without getting them in trouble. Of course, you could always just tell them you don’t like them, too (without being an asshole). Photo by CREATISTA (Shutterstock).

2. The Agony of a Horrible Boss

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If your office is hell, your boss is the devil, slowly driving you into madness faster than everything else. Maybe he steals your ideas, or maybe you just dream about killing them because they’re so bad at managing. We’ve talked a lot about how to deal with every kind of crazy boss, and how to effectively complain about them on the off chance you can actually get them to change. Photo by CREATISTA (Shutterstock).

1. The Frustration of Quitting with Your Sanity Intact

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Deep in the bowels of office hell, the thing that nags you the most as you endure hours and hours of torture, is whether your job is actually so bad that you should quit. After all, jobs aren’t growing on trees these days. If you’ve gotten so miserable that you just can’t survive your job anymore, it may be time to quit. Take some time to prepare yourself for the jump, and make sure you do it with all your contacts and class intact—you may hate everyone at your current office, but they can still be helpful to you in the future (and they’re a lot less horrible when you aren’t with them all day long). Lastly, if you’re looking to get out of the office gig entirely and start freelancing, you may want to wait a bit—you can start freelancing without quitting to see if it’s really right for you—because sometimes, it’s really, really not, and being jobless is an entirely new type of hell. Photo by Stephen Day.

If you have any of your own tips for dealing with a hellacious job, be sure to share them with us in the comments below. And for those of you that love your job…why don’t you just go sit in the corner quietly, alright?

One of the biggest mental tricks that credit cards (and debit cards, for that matter) plays on our minds is that they make the use of money very abstract. It is incredibly easy to forget that the plastic you’re using when making a purchase actually represents money that you’ve had to work very hard to earn.

Even if you manage to get past the disconnect between plastic and money, credit cards still offer a crutch that enables you to spend more than you have on hand.

The end result of both? Debt.

Credit cards often result in patterns of buying that aren’t sustainable over a long period. The easiest way to break that pattern? Ditch the credit cards for a while.

One common technique for doing just that is to freeze your credit cards in a block of ice. That way, it’s pretty inconvenient to get at those cards, but they are still accessible if such a situation demands it.

All you have to do is find a container a bit bigger than your cards, fill it about halfway with water, then freeze it. Pull out the container when there’s a big chunk of ice on the bottom, lay your cards on top, then fill the container with water. Return it to the freezer. After a while, you’ll have a giant ice cube with your credit cards in the middle.

When I was in financial trouble, I took all of our credit cards and put them in a locked box in our closet, buried underneath several items. I knew where they were, of course, but they were difficult to get to in any situation where I might actually want them to buy something I didn’t really need.

If you find yourself sneaking into your hiding place or breaking open that big ice cube to get at your plastic, more drastic measures are needed. Cut them up. You can always order replacement cards if needed.

Also, delete your credit card numbers from online stores. Many websites make it very easy to order new items if your credit card number is stored there. Just remove them and eliminate that option.

Why do this? The reason is simple. Going without credit cards forces you to reset your buying patterns. If you don’t have access to your credit cards, you simply have to live within your means.

Don’t get me wrong, I think credit cards are certainly useful and do serve a purpose for people who have healthy shopping patterns. However, if you’re consistently racking up credit card debt, you’re engaged in an unhealthy shopping pattern and a break can do you a lot of good.

This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. Images courtesy of Brittany Lynne Photography, the proprietor of which is my “photography intern” for this project.

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Welcome to The Simple Dollar! If this is your first time visiting the site, read my story and my key simple ideas for improving your finances and your life. Also, don’t miss 100 great tips for spending less money.

For a lot of people, debt is a cycle.

They’ll spend themselves to the breaking point, watching their credit card balances surge. Then, once they reach a point where they are having difficulty paying their bills, they cut back and start living frugally for a while until the credit cards are under control. After that, they splurge, and the cycle continues.

I’ve witnessed this with friends and family. I’ve read stories like this from lots of readers.

The cycle of debt can be a long and painful one. It keeps you in financial shackles for your whole life, because you’re never quite free of those debt payments.

It’s time to break free.

The best way to do this is to not necessarily focus on minimizing your debt to the absolute smallest dollar as fast as you can. That’s right, don’t do that.

Instead, focus on spending routines and habits that you can sustain over a long period. Focus on cutting out spending that you don’t find personally important, but make sure that it won’t return to your life by finding new life patterns to replace it.

Cutting back on spending can be a lot like binge dieting. You cut back incredibly hard for a few months and see some great results, but the “honeymoon” phase of it wears off and it becomes harder to stick with the changes.

You rebound. You splurge on something. It’s just once, but now you’ve given yourself permission to do it again, and all of the old routines come back.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to cut all enjoyable spending out of your life. If you go rapidly from spending lots of money frivolously to spending almost none, you’ll go through a honeymoon period of enjoying the debt reduction, but soon the honeymoon will end.

If you haven’t replaced your spending habits with new routines, the old habits will return. We are creatures of habit, after all, and if we haven’t beaten down a new trail, eventually we will return to the well-worn path of the old one.

For example, if you have a routine of eating out every night and you decide to completely stop it, focus not on the money you’re saving, but instead focus on learning how to cook well. Focus on establishing the new routine as strongly as you can and the savings will happen automatically.

So, instead of trying to squeeze out every dime, focus instead on finding new routines and making them work so well that you forget about your old ones. Don’t be a debt binger.

It often seems like everything you do, touch, or eat can make you smarter or dumber. But that’s not quite the case.

There are, of course, plenty of ways to tweak your life in order to gain yourself a little cognitive advantage over the competition. The problem is that some have very little real effect. Others are more trouble than they’re worth. Here’s a guide to some of the most effective ways to boost your brain power.

Change your workouts

There’s a rapidly accumulating body of knowledge that suggests that physical exercise not only keeps your mind clear, but boosts intelligence, too. A study from the University of South Carolina, for instance, demonstrated that mitochondria—the tiny structures in cells that provide the body with energy—are created not just in muscles when you work out, but in your brain, too. The effect is that your brain is able work faster and more efficiently after exercise. And for any doubters who might suggest that such a phenomenon is placebo—research has recently proven that exercise’s effects on intelligence are in fact biologically causal.

While you’re considering getting your fitness levels up, you may also want to rethink how you fuel your body. Stuffing your face with junk might stave off hunger pangs, but it sure ain’t keeping you alert. It turns out that that fish, berries and antioxidants delay cognitive decline, omega-3 oils can help regenerate brain cells and even just keeping your blood glucose levels even throughout the day—by snacking on nuts and the like—will keep your brain performing better. And if you’re really desperate, ingesting some of the bacteria found in dirt can speed up your hippocampus.

Tweak your lifestyle

It’s not just what you do to your body that improves the brain, though—your lifestyle choices can have a huge impact, too. While it might sounds ridiculous, what you wear can affect your brain’s power to pay attention and perform tasks accurately. One recent study, for instance, had scientists perform Stroop tests—a simple psychological test which measures mental vitality—when wearing white coats, and when dressed normally. Turns out they did twice as well at the test when wearing the white coat. Interestingly, the team found that the effect didn’t remain when the participants were told they were wearing an artist’s coat—which suggests that any item of clothing that you perceive as being worn by intelligent, successful people will have an effect on your cognitive powers.

Getting a good night’s sleep is another essential behavior that can maximize brain power. To get control of your sleep cycles, approach the process in stages. First tackle short-term behaviors, like limiting alcohol, avoiding caffeine in the evenings, and reconfiguring the bedroom furniture. Then, chart a path to long-term changes like anticipating sleep deprivation and sticking to a scheduled daily routine.

While you’re altering your behaviors, you might also want to bulk-out your record collection. There have been plenty of studies researching the Mozart effect—which suggests that listening to classical music boosts brain power—with mixed results. But the general consensus seems to be that any music that you like listening to can contribute to a boost in dopamine levels in the brain, which is generally thought to improve cognition.

Act intelligent

There is, of course, a reason why most intelligent people seem a bit… odd. It’s because the two go together hand-in-hand. Fortunately, a couple of the tics commonly exhibited by brainiacs can actually help you out if you just copy them. First, you simply must start talking to yourself. A recent study demonstrated that repeating words helps the mind concentrate on what you’re repeating—in fact, it can even help you find things. In tests, the researchers showed that people can find objects—like a tin on a superstore shelf—much faster if they just repeat the name of the product they’re looking for.

If that sounds like child’s play, then why not embrace your inner kid and set aside some work time to daydream? Work right out of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science confirms that working memory capacity—the kind you use for temporary storage of information during longer tasks—is much higher in people who daydream. The best part? Working memory is directly correlated with IQ—people who daydream are in fact smarter.

Take drastic measures

If all this fails, of course, then it’s time to get radical. First off, how about a little DIY transcranial direct current stimulation? Through military testing, DARPA has shown that TDCS can make you better at computer games and the US Air Force has also shown that it can cut pilot training duration in half. In the past, we’ve explained that it should—in theory—be possible to use a 9V battery to achieve similar results in the comfort of your own home. You’re on your own here, though—in practice it’s a dumb idea, and we take no responsibility for the results.

Which leaves the worst case solution: real, hard work. You see, as you age, the part of your intelligence that really struggles to continue working as efficiently is known as fluid intelligence—it’s the ability to think abstractly, reason, and solve problems. And that stuff is important. But psychologists at the University of Michigan have shown that performing N-back exercises—which require you to remember how far back you saw a symbol or heard a noise in a series—for twenty days can boost your fluid memory for a whole three months. Whether you actually train yourself to be smarter than you ever were using the N-back test is still up for debate—but in the meantime, it can’t hurt.

Image by Lasse Kristensen/Shutterstock