the best aggregator online

Check out aldaily.com (Arts & Letters Daily Online). This is far and away the best aggregator of news & commentary from around the world. In fact, it's hard to believe that it has never gotten any hype.

we're back

I won't take back all my whinging about Delhi... But it did occur to me that the place takes the blame for all my personal travails while I'm here. Maybe it ain't so bad. Consider: Every time I land at the airport, I always feel a sense of satisfaction at the burnt earth smell you get through the cab window on the drive home. (That's after I finish fuming about the guy who wrestled with me over my bags in expectation of a mandatory tip). Was Hong Kong really so great, or just the city where I fell in love? Was New York boosted as the home of my discovery of--for want of a less pretentious phrase--an intellectual life? Was Boston merely the refuge and escape from terrible career ennui and the site of hope that even I, with my dull, problem-free middle class, white childhood, could be a writer? Maybe so, Delhi. Maybe so. Still, I'd like some good things to happen here soon.

free speech

I don't know why everybody got so exercised about India's recent blog-blocking fiasco. Personally, I've always wanted to be banned. Now my dream has come true. Too controversial! Scandalous! Shocking! Dangerous! Any suggestions on how to fit this into my curriculum vitae?