Since my dear friend, Cindylu, just published a post titled “On Beauty”, I figure I might as well dig through my unpublished drafts and publish one with nearly the same title. I wrote this about a year and a half ago over a steaming glass of chai in Delhi, India. I’m looking forward to reading [...]

Never one to let a good meme die.
Myke asks
1. Estimate the total number of books you’ve owned in your life.
This is gonna have to be one hell of a rough guess. Probably at least half the books I’ve read have been traded with other travelers while on the road. Or with friends and family while [...]

I just now finished Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins and it is - there is no doubt - my favorite book of the year so far.
There is a genre of literature that some over-caffeinated professor decided to one day call post-modern. Despite my general aversion to both hyphens and professors, it’s a [...]

If the bank statement has become the collective raison d’etre of Western civilization, the same could be said of officer rank in 1970’s China (when the story takes place). It just goes to show that there is something strongly human about wanting to create and improve status, whether that status be judged by money, rank, college degree(s), or even blog ranking. Wealth is the usual favorite determinant of status, but if you take class away, status will manifest itself in some other - and equally detrimental - form.

First things first. This has nothing to do with the rest of the post - or maybe it does - but I hope this is a public and official enough place for me to declare that if I am unconsciouss for more than 6 months, somebody pull the damn plug. That’s no comment on the [...]

Bubu’s DNA
When the northern part of the land of Canaan was conquered by the Assyrians in 721 B.C., the people of the ten tribes of Israel were either eliminated, assimilated, or exiled. Many modern-day groups, including the Mormons of the United States and the Falasha of Ethiopia, claim to be descendants of these “ten lost [...]

I found this one year old article in NY Times “Premium Content Archives” - a ridiculous name and a ridiculous concept. And so I happily break copyright law and reprint it here:

Note: This is the third and last in a series … sorta. Here’s the first and second.
It’s only about a thirty minute drive from the entrance of Los Coyotes Indian Reservation to Julian and the best apple pie you or your momma has ever had. Which is exactly what we did - straight to [...]

So I just got done reading two very interesting and differing books about international current events. First was Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s my Country which predictably enough was among other things, a stinging critique of Bush’s foreign and domestic policy. (The other is Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations which I will be reviewing soon) [...]

My updated Reality Fuel list:

Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards
The Zapatista Reader edited by Tom Hayden
Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor
The History of the United States of America by Philip Jenkins
The Sound and the Fury by Robert Faulkner
Spanglish: the making of a new american language by Ilan Stavans
A Mind So Rare: The Evolution [...]