I forgot to have a thought yesterday. I did have dinner with some interesting people and facilitate their work on an interesting project, but I still should have had a thought.
Author Archives: John
Brother Will’s in Town
My brother Will arrived last night, and he’ll stay will us for the next couple of months. He’s been playing baseball in Lithuania, and blogging about his experiences here. We’re so excited to have him in town. Today we took him on a walk around the neighborhood, went to Wudaokou to check out Chinese schools […]
Is it all about the oil?
One thing that really bothers me is how it often seems impossible to achieve candidness in political dialogue. A great example of this is that I’ve never seen the question of whether or not the war in Iraq is “all about the oil” discussed in an open and honest forum by people who are in […]
Something
I’ve decided that I’m going to write something here every day. Something, no matter what it is. I’m a voracious consumer of information, and am bothered when I think about how little I produce, and how rarely my reflection gets out of my head. I’ve thought to myself that the two most important habits I […]
Funny or Scary?
Or maybe both? Rep. Duncan Hunter has introduced the “Restore Patriotism to University Campuses Act”, which would cut off federal funding to Columbia University in retaliation for hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are more and more things like this happening that I can’t decide whether to categorize as funny or scary. Would it be […]
Tuesdays with Morrie
In addition to On Writing, I also bought Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie for 11 kuai outside of the Chaoyangmen subway station. The fonts on each page are all the same size, and the pages aren’t distorted, but the subtitle on the front cover reads “an old man, a young man, ife’s greatest lesson”. Rather […]
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I picked up Stephen King’s On Writing outside the Chaoyangmen subway station a week or so ago before meeting Ray for lunch. The paperback cost eleven kuai, it came wrapped in plastic, and the words on some of the pages were large and somewhat distorted, as if the book had been lifted off of the […]
Miracle at Philadelphia
Miracle at Philadelphia surprised me. I picked it up at Mike’s place on a whim, along with a pile of other books that looked interesting. It sat on my shelf at home for a couple of months before I picked it up one day to start reading. The 1966 original publication date turned me off, […]
The Audacity of Hope
My grandmother gave me a copy of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope for Christmas this year. I finally got around to reading it while filming in Fujian last month. In short, at this point I’m probably going to vote for Obama. First of all, the book is a great read. It’s organized into broadly-titled […]
Pandora’s Dillema
I’ve spent much of this year on the road, and one of my favorite parts of the day has been waking up in the morning and typing www.pandora.com into my browser window (I know, I should make a bookmark, but with auto-complete I usually end up just typing “pa”). Pandora is an internet radio service […]