Thirty letters in my name

The male cardinal is bright red and a treat to watch. In my two and a half years in Massachusetts, I had never spotted one. But this March, ...

It’s been eight months since I disappeared. This unplanned, unannounced sabbatical – after more than five years of posting regularly – happe...

A very happy new year to everyone! It was a busy but good year overall. I did not read as many books as I would have liked but what I did re...

In May 2007, I traveled with archaeologists from the University of Arizona to Chihuahua , the large, northern state of Mexico. At the time, ...

My family’s ancestral temple is in Swamimalai, a small town in the district of Thanjavur, in Tamil Nadu. The temple is unspectacular. The ma...

Life is busy as it is. But when on a quiet Sunday morning, you knock a cup of coffee (with a lot of milk in it) onto your laptop, it becomes...

I am back from a conference in Austin. I enjoyed the warm weather, the lively bars and pubs on 6th street (downtown), catching up with good ...

In December last year, I took a flight from Lima, Peru’s coastal capital, to Cuzco, the once splendid high altitude capital of the Incas. Cu...

Found this great video thanks to a friend on Facebook: There is a wonderful Friedreich Hayek quote at the end: "The curious task of eco...

It’s late October already. The air outside is cold and crisp, and fallen leaves, the currency of the season, are everywhere; the woods are a...

With the start of the new semester, I am kind of swamped; and there are plenty of other things going on too. Hence the lack of new posts. Bu...

KT Achaya writes in The Story of Our Food : The great Russian botanist, Vavilow, about seventy years ago, identified what he called "ce...

I finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan a month ago, and still can't (and do not want to) shake off its influence on my t...

1. Our relationship to the natural world is ambiguous. On the one hand, we are drawn to landscapes. We love to visit national parks; we like...

1. My friends know well that I do not drink much. In fact, I know nothing of the nuances: which glass suits which wine, the subtle differenc...

To the uninitiated reader, my travels can seem a little puzzling. Why Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia? A friend recently said I was traveling to ...

History is totally unpredictable. If you ask me how the world will be in ten years I really have no idea. One assumes it will not change muc...

Contrasts in the historical trajectories of different regions can provide fresh perspectives. That is why my favorite books are those that s...

This blog turns five today. I've enjoyed writing here immensely. Consider this an open thread; do post what you feel about this blog, wh...

I've been terrible about posting lately, and for that, my apologies. Last year, I was consistent with eight posts a month, but that kin...

Edward Wilson , yet again with a startling insight, in the 25th anniversary foreword to Sociobiology: The New Synthesis : Human nature – the...

El Alto is a Aymara city perched at the rim of the canyon in which the world's highest capital, La Paz , is nestled. So El Alto, at ...