Sunny Side Up

Thankfully none of my friends in Japan were hurt by the earthquake, tsunami and aftershocks, though everyone is in shock and everyday life i...

Trying to grasp the enormity of the cataclysmic series of horrors striking Japan - earthquake then tsunami then fire then shortages and outa...

From 「いざ！というときのためのサバイバル・マニュアル」, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Earthquake Survival Manual.

Eastern Japan earthquake-triggered tsunami washing ashore near Sendai (before the water became black with churned up soil, thick with debris...

Watched two amazing movies today, each of which resonated with one of the courses whose midpoint we've just reached. (Next week is Sprin...

The second film was Xavier Beauvois' "Of Gods and Men" ("Des Hommes es des Dieux"), the true story of a community o...

Misfortune cookie

Wow! My father's managed to get a bunch of Torrey Pine seeds to germinate. Curiously, the first set of needles in each case was 13 stron...

This is proving a bit of a woozy semester. That might be because being ready to go at 8 o'clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays means out the ...

Here's an amazing thing: triptropnyc will make you a map which shows how close places are in time, not just space, from anywhere in the...

Have you ever noticed how a new or rare turn of phrase suddenly becomes ubiquitous - and then you find yourself unable to live without it yo...

This is one of the most famous poles in the study of religion, the kauwa-auwa of the Achilpa (an Arrernte group) of Central Australia. Bald...

Here comes Spring!

I saw the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' "Nixon in China" not quite a fortnight ago. Somewhat to my surpri...

While we putter around over here, it's 1989 (or 1848?) in North Africa. It's epic. Everything could change. May it happen peacefully...

Until I heard my brilliant colleague Fran Snyder say this at an interfaith program tonight, I'd never realized: "The only person wh...

We finished the first section of the Aboriginal Australia course today, with a screening of Kim McKenzie's 1980 film, "Waiting for ...

In their retro comics style the brilliant RSA Animators illustrate a talk by David Harvey about the crisis of capitalism. See it happen here...

Remember our old friend Job? He crops up everywhere! Here's a midrash where the rabbis are trading interpretations of Levitucus 2:3-4: ...