Over the last two years, I have traveled to multiple countries with a single beefy USB charger, even though those countries use a variety of electrical plug types.

How? I bought a power cord for each kind of plug:

• USA + Canada: Type A
• France, Portugal, Sweden: Type C (the Euro plug)
• Ireland + United Kingdom: Type G
• New Zealand: Type I

Each of these power cords has the same connector: the figure-8 C7, since that's what the USB charger accepts.

Similarly, I bring clover-leaf C5 power cords with different plugs for PC laptop chargers.

Obviously, I could use travel adapter plugs instead, but I find it convenient to bring the right power cords. And a selection …continue.

This may, perhaps, be old news in bear circles, but I only read it ten days ago on the plane over, in Robert Hughes' quirky Barcelona the Great En­chantress. The founder of Catalunyan/Catalonian/Catalan national in­de­pen­dence a thousand years' ago was the Visigoth known as Wilfred the Hairy. History does not record with any clarity how Guifré el Pilós earned that name.

I haven't visited the Iberian peninsula since the 1970s when the well-founded stereotype was that Spanish men had mustaches. That seems to have gone out of style: almost all men, young or old, were clean­shaven. And after having seen countless women wearing tanktops in the heat, I can say that …continue.

Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades. This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona. Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food. He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino, Catalun­ya's founding as an in­de­pen­dent nation a thousand years ago by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy, up through the Olympics in 1992. This is no com­pre­hen­sive survey: he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol than on the Spanish Civil …continue.