Author Archives: admin

It is one of the great scandals of American life. Mass incarceration is a fundamental fact in America today, on a scale almost unexampled in human history. There are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ – more than 7.225 million … Continue reading →

Excerpts from an article in the December, 2012 Atlantic Magazine by Jeffrey Goldberg titled THE CASE FOR MORE GUNS (AND GUN CONTROL) with additional comments by myself. About 40% of all legal gun sales in the US take place through … Continue reading →

(Excerpted from Time March 4, 2013 – Bitter Pill – How Outrageous pricing and egregious profits are destroying our health care by Steven Brill) A 47 year old man developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Self employed, they were unable to buy comprehensive … Continue reading →

SRI LANKA March 13 – April 2, 2013. HILL COUNTRY From Delhi, I flew via Chennai to Colombo. Within 20 minutes of landing, I had my luggage, Sri Lanka visa ($35 payable by credit card), gone through immigration, visited an … Continue reading →

HISTORY The problem here is that there are two completely different versions, depending on if you are Sinhalese or Tamil, the two biggest ethnic groups. The island’s location, its position along hundreds of ancient trade routes and its proximity to … Continue reading →

INDIA November 17, 2012 – March 13, 2013.

VISAS In my experience India has the most difficult visa application problems of any country (I’m sure there are worse, I just haven’t experienced them). The whole process is handled by private contractors, not the consulates. An online application is … Continue reading →

It is now the end of February and I have booked my flight to Sri Lanka for March 13. As a result, I will be in five states in two weeks – Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhga … Continue reading →

GUJARAT STATE Gurjarat (pop 61 million), originally settled 4000 years ago, went through the usual Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and British conquerors. It is slightly off the tourist trail and alcohol is illegal here. From Aurangabad, it was a tortuous 11-hour … Continue reading →

KERALA State Kerala State (pop. 35 million) is on the south-west corner of India. It is one of the more popular tourist destinations because of its great white sand beaches, general beauty (coconut groves, rice paddies, the famous backwaters) and … Continue reading →