Posts under ‘Brazil’

Below are seven quirky facts about countries in Central and South America. (Two of the entries were suggested by a Latin America Fanatico via Twitter). Venezuela adopted its own time zone in 2007. The time the country adheres to is 4.5 hours behind GMT. Before the change in 2007, Venezuela was 4 hours behind GMT. [...]

One summer when I was in law school I helped defend someone who was on the wrong end of one of the biggest drug busts in the history of Baltimore. If you’d read about “Doug” in the newspaper, he’d probably seem like a scary guy. He had a long arrest record, a serious drug abuse [...]

The anti-corruption group Transparency International annually publishes a “corruption perceptions index,” which measures the level of government corruption in each country. In the latest index, which was released in November, the majority of the 180 countries analyzed scored below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have [...]

What line you say? The arbitrary one established by CONAR—Brazil’s nongovernmental agency in charge of regulating advertisements. (Hat tip to the Wallet Pop blog for this post). Brazil showed its prudish side earlier this year when it considered legislation to ban violent video games. That issue seems pretty straightforward compared with the logic behind CONAR’s [...]

When I think of Brazil, the phrase “blame it on Rio,” comes to mind. I picture rowdy crowds partying during carnival or the beaches populated by people with tiny bathing suits and a care-free attitude. Or–on a darker note–the country’s lawless favelas. But the country appears to be a bit more straight laced when it [...]

Bloggers are intimately familiar with the negative and positive aspects of giving their work away for free. Most follow a business model in which they receive little or no compensation until they lure enough readers to attract sponsors and/or sell their work as a book or e-book. With tens of millions of blogs out there, [...]

By Jennifer Lubrani I am not superstitious. I especially don’t follow all those silly New Year’s rituals that so many perform year after year. That is until one member from the Colombian side of my family turned me into a New Year’s superstition believer. You see, in Colombia, there’s a tradition that when the clock [...]

There’s no question that Roosh Vorek, the author of South American travelogue A Dead Bat in Paraguay, is a “player” when it comes to the ladies. Before self publishing a memoir about his travels in Brazil and other countries, Vorek wrote Bang—“a collection of simple but powerful techniques, moves, and lines that make it easier [...]

As Rio prepares to host the 2012 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, much of the world is watching the picturesque city continue to struggle with gang and drug violence.  A police helicopter was shot down with a high caliber weapon this weekend, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Much of the violence emanates from [...]

In his new book Bicycle Diaries, former Talking Head’s front man David Byrne writes about his perceptions of cities throughout the world as viewed from his bicycle. One of the cities he rides through and writes about is Buenos Aires. Although I haven’t read it yet, the book is on my radar screen because one [...]