My family and I recently made a spur-of-the-moment trip to Beijing. My wife and I met in Beijing and spent several years living there. We still have a number of friends there. In fact, they’re probably the closest we have. Close enough that when we texted them on Saturday morning to let them know we were in town they all met us for dinner on Saturday night. Continue reading
Month: August 2017
On First Looking into Keats’s Sonnets
I want to talk today about Keats’s sonnets. I’ve always liked Keats—it’s hard to imagine not liking Keats—but I’ve mostly read his odes. Is it possible to graduate from an English-language high school without reading “Ode to a Grecian Urn?” I certainly hope not. But I honestly can’t recall ever reading any of his sonnets except for “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” I didn’t know what I was missing. Continue reading
The Pornographic Gaze, Smartphones, and Virtual Experience
[UPDATE 8/10/2017] This post has drawn a great deal of attention. It seems that recording things with our cellphones is not only something we all do but also something we all feel ambivalent about at times. I almost didn’t upload this post because I was afraid it would be read in black and white. I was concerned that I hadn’t succeeded in presenting a sufficiently nuanced view. Reading the responses I received–even though they were all positive–I felt sure I had failed 🙂. Continue reading
Kangding Summer
The river’s roar is the subtle backdrop to everything in Kangding 康定. Five hundred—even a thousand—feet up the hillside it’s still there, echoing endlessly between the valley’s mountain walls. Continue reading
Abandoning the Human Machine
I recently read a very informative article on the move toward an “extended synthesis” in genetics and evolutionary theory that would move beyond the notion of the “selfish gene” propounded by Richard Dawkins (see the article here). Continue reading
Ten Thousand Li 