First off – we are fine. We are in the North of India, far away from the disaster zone. Thanks to all those who inquired about our well being, but there is no need to worry about us. Sorry, I should have said something in my Ahmedabad post, which I wrote the day after the [...]
Nobody uses street names in Ahmedabad. I’ve not seen street addresses of any kind. Directions are always in relation to nearby landmarks: Across from the Law Garden. Next to Veejay’s Restaurant, Across from Sidi Saiyad Mosque, etc. People seem unsure of the name of many streets, and buildings lack street names. But after a few [...]
On the plane to India I read a NYRB article on the history of trade (in goods and ideas) between India and China by Amartya Sen. In a footnote he answered a question which I’d long wondered about but never bothered to investigate: What is the origin of the term “Mandarin”? The term “Mandarin,” from [...]
Done!!! Handed the monster in today. Micro$oft Word failed me at the very end – keeping me up till 4am dealing with crazy formatting issues. I wish I had stayed with Mellel. We are off to India for a month. I’ll try to blog the trip, but no promises. I need some time away from [...]
Right now I’m double checking all the Chinese text in my dissertation, so I was happy to see this post in Languagelog: Hanzi Smatter is a blog “[d]edicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture”. A lot of the site is devoted to tattoos. For example, an entry from December [...]
In previous posts on stress I talked about how, while limited stress can be a good thing, the body’s natural responses to stress are not well adapted for long-term anxieties and pressures common to modern life. Long term stress can slow healing and create other health problems, such as reducing our ability to process fatty [...]
Yesterday, Terry Gross interviewed filmmakers Calvin Skaggs and David Van Taylor who made With God on Our Side: George W. Bush and the Rise of the Religious Right, premiering on Sundance this month. It is a followup to their PBS series from the 1996. What grabbed my attention was their response to Gross’ question about [...]
Who is Bernard Kerik? After reading the answer you just might wish Tom Ridge hadn’t stepped down …