Archive for the ‘Politico’ Category
Aww, so the little white girl wants to make a difference? Or: The intimidating world of changing the world
Plenty of young people have dreams of changing the world, making a difference, having a purpose in the wider world. Realizing this goal seems more accessible the more the world shrinks, as if maybe through our interconnectedness and supposed knowledge of each other we can somehow bring about change, that we’ve learned enough to avoid [...]
June 1st, 2010Tamil Tiger warfare via… Rambo: thoughts on the complexity of South Asia
Location: Woodstock, Georgia Subject: the subcontinent; South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh) Reading material: William Dalrymple’s The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters (Oakland: Lonely Planet Publication, 2005) Impetus: Class, History of Modern India and South Asia Dalrymple’s travelogue The strange thing about getting my book list for this class back in January [...]
April 18th, 2010I’d like to buy the world a Coke…
Delivering peace, one Coke at a time… “What the world wants today” is both that elusive peace, and a Coke, as the commercial famously puts it. Buying a Coke is one form of peace, I guess; but how else do we define it? War, in the name of peace… The thought is bewildering, paradoxical, and [...]
March 4th, 2010Danger and escape along the Tumen River: North Korean refugees, the struggle to survive, and the effort to tell their story
Laura Ling and Euna Lee must have quite a story. What they have recently published, in the form of an Op/ed in the LA Times, is a brief explanation of their reason for being in that part of the world, and a narrative description of how and what happened when they were detained by North [...]
September 8th, 2009Flying kites
The Kite Runner has already been read by millions, translated and subsequently read in dozens of other languages, but I have only just read it. The book was published in 2003, a ripe time in history for considering the Afghan people, and studying their history and culture in detail, if not to completely understand, at [...]
May 21st, 2009Eating Chinese
In my Understanding Asia class (required for my Asian Studies minor, and one of the most engaging classes I’ve taken), we’ve been studying Asian-American literature for the last two weeks. We’ve been looking at several major elements: 1) what does it mean to be Asian-American, and to what extent do you remain Asian while at [...]
April 21st, 2009My bread-and-butter
Having finished the first half of the semester, I have finished writing one of the two main research papers that have been assigned to me this spring. The first was the easier one, and also the less interesting of the two. The second is the one I turn to now, to focus my attention and [...]
March 8th, 2009Economies on edge
Just read this on “The Economist” Web site; it is a pretty interesting opinion piece on the bail-outs, the financing and investment collapses, and the world-wide effect now rippling through. While I don’t agree per say with all of the author’s diagnoses, he does bring up some little-known points about the money markets of the [...]
October 7th, 2008Pulverize, v. socialize
As we sit back and watch the 2008 election unfold, Obama reminds us of what the current administration has done win Iraq; whether or not you or I choose to agree with his plan for removing US forces, one thing should be clear from it’s example: we have absolutely no business in Iran, unless that [...]
June 21st, 2008