SONGKRAN
For three days every year, Thailand transforms into a wet and wild party, the Songkran Festival. But this ancient festival is far more than just …
AMERICAN ILLITERACY
Forty-eight million adults in the U.S. read at or below the third-grade level, to use the blog’s title here, American illiteracy. Many of these adults struggle …
MELANCHOLY BUT POIGNANT
I could call this blog a melancholy but poignant moment that I should certainly take to heart far more often and, I suspect, many of …
DAVID BROOKS
The following column, written by David Brooks, a conservative in the traditional sense of the word, appeared in the New York Times last week. I …
PARIS
Cars have been banned from more than 100 streets in Paris. Tens of thousands of parking spots have been eliminated. Hundreds of miles of bike …
FRIEDMAN
I thought that this article by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times was an important analysis of the current political situation in the U.S. …
EDUCATION AND DEMOCRACY
The relationship between education and democracy and the education levels of the electorate could not have been brought into sharper focus the political events of …
QUEENSTOWN
Queenstown, New Zealand, has an audacious goal to become the first tourist destination on Earth to have a completely carbon-zero visitor economy by 2030. If …
MALAMA
The roots of malama run deep. Hawaii is the most isolated archipelago on Earth, a volcanic cluster of eight main islands, marooned 2,390 miles south-west of …
ELEPHANTS HATE BEES
Did you know that elephants hate bees? Around the world, spreading farmland is increasingly overlapping with elephant habitats, often resulting in dangerous interactions, as …