I get a fair bit of mail querying on one subject or another I've covered in a page, whether mentioned in passing or I've taken a more diligent shot at the subject. For example:

I'll start with an example of the typical response I write to the feedback that page generates. Following that: a sample of the feedback.

Continue reading "draft vs. registration for the draft"

It was at the end of my first year of travelling, 8 months in Australia followed by 3 months in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. I was in Los Angeles, my staging ground for entering North America on the way to Vancouver, spending a week or so in Santa Monica. There was something both comforting and vapid about walking Santa Monica's 3rd street promenade with its upscale shops and bars, with upscale tourists and locals promenading past street entertainers and the homeless hoping for some of the former's disposable income. It was rich and beautiful, poor and sad all rolled into a microcosm of the culture I was re-entering. (A couple years later, I would be there again, and while dining on take-out Thai would think of the Genesis song, The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging). At the hostel, travellers from all around the world sat unblinking in the TV room, watching the day's popular sit-coms and hardly breaking a grin.

And I was reading Chomsky again. The result was the travelogue entry Land of the . . ., which generates some feedback from time to time...

Continue reading "I've been reading Chomsky again..."

In 1995, while in Japan, I spent about 24 hours in Hiroshima, a city of memorials. The most common phrase on the dozens of memorial plaques mounted on various monuments around the city is At 8:15 AM, on August 6, 1945...

I wrote extensively of my experiences there in my travelogue. The following feedback is in response to Pika Don.

Continue reading "If you don't want to pay this cost, don't start a war."

The snippet above originally appeared as a preamble on the Critical Texts page soon after I created it in the aftermath of 9-11. Black Bear Review published it in a slightly altered form in Issue #34 Spring/Summer 2002.

Presently listening to:
One Of These Days - Pink Floyd - Meddle (05:56)

The most uplifting and inspiring feedback I've ever received...

Presently listening to:
Firth Of Fifth - Steve Hackett - Genesis Revisited (09:37)

I was near the beginning of a 6-month, 6,000 km cycling tour across China, and beginning to feel comfortable enough about the political/social/cultural landscape and history to make some observations. The result eventually became Shanghai'd in Shanghai, an entry in my travelogue. But first it was posted to my travel mailing list, and a friend responded to it.

Below is a conversation begun by a visitor to Are You Afraid of the Dark,
an eJournal entry written in Japan, 1995. The entry is an East-meets-West discussion of the difference between western science's view of energy, and that of the eastern mystics.

I should probably create a category on this blog for feedback to my websites. No, in fact, I know there will be plenty worth reprinting here. New category coming up.

I should create a subcategory for feedback to Hanoi Jane never stayed at The Hanoi Hilton alone.

warning: language

Alex, if you're still listening, you'll be happy to learn that the US has now made the top 10 -- and Canada has slipped to third -- all without the merger of our two fine countries, as reported by the BBC
p.

Presently listening to:
No Woman Around - The Philosopher Kings - The Philosopher Kings (03:33)