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Dallas Smith's Blog

Murano-Burano Photos

March 2022 - World Cruise

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Murano is famous for its unrivaled glass designs. Burano is famous for its historic production of lace as well as its brightly colored buildings. Below are samples of both islands.

A Tourist's View of Israel

February, 2015

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The world is a big place…I was picked up at 3am to travel to the Mumbai airport for a 6:40am Turkish Airlines flight, which flew seven hours from Mumbai to Istanbul. After a couple of hours in the chaotic, crowded, and very international Istanbul airport, I flew two hours to the Ben Gurion airport outside Tel Aviv Israel. Met by Susan, we traveled half an hour by taxi to the town of Rehovot, where Susan’s sister and her husband have lived for many years. . .

Telehealth/Telemedicine: Disrupting Our Healthcare System

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This conference offered insights into what is possible if data is collected on millions of people so that, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can gain insight and information that will lead to more accurate and earlier diagnoses, treatments, and better health outcomes.

Kyoto Shinto Shrines

Visiting Shinto Shrines and Buddhist Temples

10/26/2023By Dallas Smith0: Seven Japanese Cities Visited on the Viking Cruise
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Shinto is Japan's "native" religion, dating back at least two thousand years.  The Shinto temples in Kyoto date from the eighth century, when Kyoto was the most powerful city in Japan.

Celebrating My 50th High School Reunion

August, 2016

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I try not to think too much about the fact that I’ve reached that lofty milestone in age of having attended my fifty-year high school reunion. I graduated from Columbus High School in Columbus, Georgia, in 1966. My graduating class had around four hundred seventy. . .

Turkey: Religion and Politics

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Our Turkish tour guide, Mehmet, has a college degree in English literature.  He spent his military service working as a translator.  Obviously, his English language skills are outstanding.  Having been a tourist guide for twenty years, he has visited these Turkish historical sites hundreds of times.  Thus, he has refined his narratives over the years to be immensely content-rich, historically informative, and culturally aware.  Therefore, besides my own reading and observations, much of the information I will recount in this blog is derived from what I've learned from Mehmet's daily cultural and historical descriptions.

Xue--Vietnam's Historic Capital City

Visiting a Buddhist Pagoda and the Imperial Palace

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The city of Hue is located approximately in the middle of Vietnam and was the seat of royal power from the 19th and into the 20th centuries.  There were thirteen kings who reigned from Hue.  Many of the ancient structures were destroyed during the Vietnam-American War, which have since been restored.  The photos show scenes from the Imperial Palace as well as the three hundred-year-old Buddhist pagoda.