January 2012
2 posts
“Better than the assent of the crowd: The dissent of one brave man!”
– —Sima Qian (145–90 BC) Records of the Grand Historian
Haiti & History →
Currently reading History, Historians, and Development Policy, and finding a need to refresh my knowledge of colonial/post-colonial isms.
December 2011
8 posts
“This scheme is an outcome of extreme starvation at an age when I knew only to...”
– film-star-turned-Chief-Minister, M.G. Ramachandran, 1982 introducing the guarantee of one meal a day to children in government aided schools.
Schumpeter - Standing for Convictions in a... →
He seems to be involved in everything I’ve been reading lately, and I’m intrigued enough to give it a whirl.
Do They Know it's Christmas?
Two years ago I was soaked to the bone, seated in the back of a church pulsating with West African hymns.
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I spent last year pacing in the Istanbul airport, moving from Rome to Delhi, anticipating a family reunion overdue.
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This year I’m at home, but alone again, with a 23 year old bottle of rum, a stack of ungraded finals, and basketball.
“Those who give food give life to living beings
who cannot live without water....”
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Purananuru, No. 18, lines 18-23
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As part of my winter reading, I came across these lines from a Tamil poet to a Pandya king in the first century CE. A good introduction.
The Shop on Main Street →
thinking about Havel, re-watching this film.
What Work Is, Philip Levine →
On this dim winter morning, over-caffeinated and under-fed, staring at World Bank graphs and labor demand functions, I thought of Levine.
“Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her...”
– Joyce, Ulysses
Songs of Kabir
It amuses me that I’ve found this book now, considering the Gen. unwittingly named me this when we met in August. However I’m amazed at how fresh this work remains after six centuries.
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The mind’s a shortchanging
Huckster with a crafty
Wife and five
Scoundrel children.
It won’t change it’s ways.
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The mind’s a knot, says Kabir,
Not easy to untie.
November 2011
6 posts
“Our democratic forms of government offer a periodical chance at election time to...”
– Robert Jackson, Assistant US Attorney General, 1937
“In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;...”
– Ezra Pound, who I thought of today en route home, realizing that the world still exists.
Feast Day →
In my youth, in the days when We awaited the feast day with impatience, afterwards I would lie awake filled with sorrow, And late at night I’d hear singing on the road, Decaying in the distance, bit by bit, But penetrating my heart just the same.
Fall Music →
In a haze, lying in my sun porch, staring out at the few leaves left on an old chestnut oak.
The Post-MDG World →
I normally am loathe to post news-ie type deals, but he gives a shout out to IR, and I like the way this made me think.
October 2011
3 posts
Plato - The Origins of Democracy →
My new and old worlds collide.
September 2011
3 posts
Stony Places →
“I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves...”
– the late W. Maathai - Nobel Acceptance Speech
Streetwise
Knee-deep in realist, constructivist, and other such -ist theory, I haven’t had much time to reflect on the sea change that has occurred the past month. It’s hard to put thoughts to paper in a coherent way, so for now I’ll leave it to the professionals (i.e. Mohamed Choukri)
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An unpleasant looking man arrived, carrying some papers. He must have been the maths teacher. The...
August 2011
4 posts
Ars Poetica
Discovering the Caedmon Poetry collection CD’s in a closet of mine a few weeks back was like meeting an old friend, and the subsequent nights spent with them have been filled with an internal Rohmer-esque dialogue between myself and the work of Auden, William Carlos Williams, Philip Levine, and a few others. Of course I realize how pedantic this all sounds, but isn’t that what grad...
Buffett on Rose →
For all of you that think Buffett is a demi-god, this will not change your opinion one bit. Incidentally, while I don’t watch tv shows with regularity, I have a Charlie Rose show addiction.
From the Big Rock to East Rock
Day two of the grad school experiment finds me willingly adhering to stereotypes - ate leftover thai food and some sort of terrible non-dairy milk beverage with granola (because it was there, and I had no desire to leave the house), drank copious amounts of coffee, and read until the lines blurred together.
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Regarding the title, I wasn’t aware until today that my interest in place names...
“I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the...”
– from September 1, 1939 - W.H. Auden
July 2011
5 posts
Morocco's Maternal Mortality Miracle →
Thinking back to the few times i rolled into my local sbitar, I’d be interested to know how exactly this data was retrieved, (specifically in the bled), and what the incentives/pressures were to submit good numbers, but this is still a good thing.
Europe on Fifteen Hundred Yuan a Day →
fascinating.
Georgia Peaches, Not So Sweet →
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. - A. Pope
UN Women Justice Report →
Big goings on in the ever busy world of ‘reports’.
Turturro's "Passione" →
I have yet to see a movie in a theater since returning - and listening to a segment on NPR today bemoaning the 28 or so sequels infiltrating major theaters this summer got me thinking of all the good films I’d like to see. This review is especially effusive in it’s praise, and I have to admit that for a second I thought Turturro was the guy that played Egon (Harold Ramis)...
June 2011
5 posts
Food & Speculation
I’ve recently been wading into the ocean of information out there about food prices - specifically how and why some say speculators are to blame for the current crisis and general volatility. It’s been a sisyphean task mostly, even with the advantage I have of concurrently studying macro. In the words of my 7th grade earth-science teacher, it is about clear as mud. Here are some of the...
3rd Goal Moment of the Week
“Consider a small medieval town. Out of the many economic activities that take place, one of the most important is raising sheep…”
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One of the few instances of my economics book making me laugh out loud. Of course not being able to keep this to myself I brought it up with my professor who, much to my horror, felt it was a good “real-world” teaching moment and asked...
Wall Street Shenanigans, Bollywood Style →
“Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud.”
Guardian List: Top Nonfiction →
A lot of obvious choices here, and I generally loathe lists, but some of the books I had not heard of I will gladly investigate for addition to the vault.
Naoroji - Poverty and un-British rule in India →
The e-book world was still in it’s infancy when I left for Morocco. Though by no means my preferred medium of reading anything, it is glorious that this and a few other such books are available at no cost.
- A related note: I’m a little worried about what will happen when my unbridled post-return enthusiasm for mental stimulation meets that cavernous library in New Haven.
May 2011
2 posts
Beach House - Norway →
I’m behind the times, but I like these folks.
Sim Sala Bim →
Fleet Foxes - apparently a big deal these days.
April 2011
1 post
Two Weeks
My service is ending much as it started, in the constant company of others, discussing the future and what it has in store for us. In a funny way the discussion is the same as before; food, friends, work, language. Much like two years ago we think we have a vague idea of what is in store for us across the ocean, and much of this will assuredly be turned on it’s head by the whims of life.
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...
March 2011
2 posts
Dreams of Pakistani Grill and Vada Pao in... →
a lengthy paper on the immigrant discussion of taste
Ethiopian "Church Forests" →
terrible intro, but interesting topic nonetheless
February 2011
3 posts
PepsiCo’s Deal With Mexican Farmers Is Good for... →
Opinions vary.
“Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead”
– A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
January 2011
1 post
A Respite
I have no pictures, no daily writing, and very little in the way of material to share from my month-long sojourn in India. Suffice it to say that my purpose was to absorb the familiar and familial. I would find myself at times sitting on a sofa in my cousin’s house and silent for a half-hour just listening to the din around me, pouring my cha from mug to saucer. I felt my two years of...
November 2010
6 posts
“Underneath his hand her shoulder felt cushioned in a way that his wasn’t. There...”
Book Review - Saul Bellow - Letters - NYTimes.com →
“Bitter melancholy” is “one of my specialties,” he tells Edward Shils in 1962. About “the power to despair,” he writes to a friend in 1961 that “having myself felt it, known it, bathed in it, my native and temperamental impulse is to return to sanity in the form of laughter.”
Recipes for Pies and Tarts - Slide Show -... →
I’ve looked at this slide show far too many times than is healthy.
Mnemosyne
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I have a long distant memory of shaking a mango tree, hoping the monkeys wouldn’t get to them first. Eating my first caperberry, the revelatory sour-salt crunch. A girl, whose name means pomegranate making me fresh lime juice.
I wonder, how long must she have thought about what to prepare for dinner that first night, when these children of a boy she once doted on arrived? From a...