Just over sixty-four years ago, on June 3rd 1950, a pair of French mountaineers, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal, stood on the summit of Annapurna, the world’s tenth highest peak. It was the first time mountaineers had succeeded in climbing a peak above eight thousand meters altitude. The French pair’s trials and travails were notContinue reading “Of Annapurnas and Men: Maurice Herzog’s Epic Lives On”
Category Archives: Politics
Maureen Dowd Lays Her Mile-High Bum Trip On Us
It might have been predicted, with probability one, that in the wake of Colorado legalizing marijuana, we would be inundated with tall tales of reefer madness sweeping the state, scouring the slopes and plains of that mountainous land like one of those snowy avalanches that sometimes afflict its more outdoorsy folk. That moment is nowContinue reading “Maureen Dowd Lays Her Mile-High Bum Trip On Us”
Why You Hate Work (And Will Continue To)
Tony Schwartz and Christine Porath tell us why we hate work. (“Why You Hate Work“, New York Times, May 30, 2014; the “You” in their title article is less inclusive than it appears, for the primary focus of their study is white-collar workers. Still, perhaps there are lessons here to be learned by all.) TheirContinue reading “Why You Hate Work (And Will Continue To)”
Causation and the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon
In reviewing Joel Greenberg‘s A Feathered River: The Passenger Pigeon’s Flight to Extinction (Bloomsbury, 2014), and in particular in noting his analysis of the causes of the mass disappearance of the passenger pigeon, Elizabeth Kolbert writes: [G]reenberg isn’t much interested in the mechanics of the bird’s extinction. Even if there was some other contributing factor, he observes,Continue reading “Causation and the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon”
From Santa Barbara to Badaun: Misogyny and Masculinity
It’s been a bad week for women. They found out, in sunny California, that when they do not dispense sexual indulgences to those who seek (or demand) them, they can provoke murderous rages; they also found out, in India’s central provinces, that their bodies remain to be taken by others, used, and then finally, strungContinue reading “From Santa Barbara to Badaun: Misogyny and Masculinity”
Keep Marijuana Illegal; It Might Be Used to Aid Sick Children
This is how morally depraved the anti-marijuana legalization debate has become. The New York Times reports: For the fifth time in seven years, the State Assembly on Tuesday passed a bill legalizing medical marijuana, backing a measure that would far surpass a program Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced this year. But with less than fourContinue reading “Keep Marijuana Illegal; It Might Be Used to Aid Sick Children”
My Mother’s Books: Symbols of Resistance
Among the many old books on my shelves are a couple of dozen especially battered ones. Some belong to my father’s collection (I will write on these on another occasion); some belong to my uncle’s. And then there are another two, especially fragile, their pages browned and brittle, also brought back from India, just likeContinue reading “My Mother’s Books: Symbols of Resistance”
Saba Naqvi on A Supposed Crisis of Indian Secularism
Saba Naqvi has offered an interesting critique of Indian secularism; in it, she writes of the need to: [C]onfront the great crisis of Indian secularism, that is now so hollowed out that it makes it easy for communal forces to grow….Indian secularism is not about some utterance of the soul as a Jawaharlal Nehru may haveContinue reading “Saba Naqvi on A Supposed Crisis of Indian Secularism”
Waiting for Jury Duty: Crowd Observation Notes
A curious fact about the crowd enduring the interminably long wait to be called for jury duty selection at Brooklyn’s State Supreme Court building today was how its interactions slowly began to resemble those of passengers on an airliner stranded on an airport tarmac. Before lunch, some folks had already dozed off (I had takenContinue reading “Waiting for Jury Duty: Crowd Observation Notes”
Urban Climbing: Over And Above A Dead-End World
If you are hankering for a serious attack of nausea consider viewing the Channel 4 documentary Don’t Look Down (featuring James Kingston) or the RT documentary ‘Russian Daredevils’ or, perhaps, best of all, go to Mustang Wanted’s webpage. The folks in these documentaries are ‘urban climbers’ – young folks, invariably men, who free-climb up skyscrapers,Continue reading “Urban Climbing: Over And Above A Dead-End World”
Samir Chopra 