Category Archives: Briefly

The Jungle is Neutral: Review

The Jungle is Neutral, by F. Spencer Chapman The memoir of a British lieutenant in WWII Malaya who conducts guerilla warfare against the Japanese. It’s not a very gripping story. All the successful guerrilla work takes place in the first quarter of the book, and from there on it is one long anticlimax of malaria, […]

The Road to Mecca: Review

The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad Asad lived an amazing life which he describes beautifully. Meetings with future kings of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iran before their ascension, espionage into Fascist-controlled Libya and British Iraq: Asad covered a lot of ground. He nests his recollections like the 1001 Nights, one scene inside the other, […]

Husbandry

Husbandry has been on my mind.  Hijabman has returned to blogging with a focus on his role as house-husband to his growing family.  An admirable occupation and one to which I aspire! Not everyone thinks so.  The idea of a man giving up his career to be a house-husband gets plenty of resistance, particularly among […]

Unbelievable Advice

      One day Mullah Nasruddin entered his favorite teahouse and declared, “The moon is more useful than the sun”. An old man asked, “Why Mullah?” Mullah Nasruddin replied, “Because we need the light more at night!” You can always count on the famous, well-traveled Mullah Nasruddin for unconventional wisdom.  Hoja Nasruddin tales are […]

International Poetry Translated

If you’ve enjoyed my feeble attempts to translate Malay poems and songs over the years, perhaps you’d like the Poetry Translation Centre.  Contemporary poets of Asia, Africa and South America are translated into English by a two-step process: a native speaker translates the words literally, then the poets of PTC render it in poetic English. […]

Why Most Mass Murderers are White Men

“White men from prosperous families grow up with the expectation that our voices will be heard. We expect politicians and professors to listen to us and respond to our concerns. We expect public solutions to our problems. And when we’re hurting, the discrepancy between what we’ve been led to believe is our birthright and what […]

suicide, expatriation, or revolt

The higher education bubble will not pop because student loan debt is not dischargeable.  There are no bills in congress on the horizon to address the student loan problem.  The government won’t fix it because it is making money:  Not only are student loans not a burden on the federal government, they’re a good investment. […]