K. Kumar's Blog, page 3

Panama Canal Revisited

Panama CanalA photo posted by K Kumar (@sicstrap) on Apr 24, 2016 at 5:05pm PDT

I made a second trip to the Panama Canal after reading a book about its history. And looking at it a second time, I see how easy it is to take the canal for granted. It is such a magical piece of construction that it almost seems to fit right in the landscape, as if it was always there. I think that is the lasting effect for me, that the canal has such great utility and marvelous construction that we take it for gr...

Protect the Children

Coming from the Cold

Support the Police

Book Review: Dreams in Kratocracy

Dreams in Kratocracy by Wilde Blue Sky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dreams in Kratocracy is a complicated and, at time, intriguing book that takes in place in Europian, or Europe of the future. The main protagonist is Beech, a police officer who uncovers the truth about a train crash that injured a political contender. Fiona is a journalist who becomes Beech's partner in a quest to expose the truth and stay alive.

Overall, this book was a challenge for me. It seems to want to be a science fiction, ac...

Mosquitos in Jamaica

Source: Jamaica ObserverZika is threatening Jamaica, but so is dengue and other mosquito borne diseases. But because Zika is what people are talking about, it gets a lot more attention. This is not particularly noteworthy, but I thought this anecdote was:

“The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads the Zika virus is generally found in and around places where people inhabit. Persons are urged to search for and destroy mosquito breeding sites by getting rid of old tyres and containers in which wa...

Mexico City

I was recently in Mexico City, the fifth largest city in the world. I stayed near Zocalo in the centro historico, near the Bellas Artes, Palacio Nacional, and the Plaza de la Constitucion.



During the Friday of Semana Santa, they shut down the Plaza and erected a baseball field in the center of the grass field. In the morning, there was a procession of Christ that started at the Catedral and made a circle around the Plaza. Christ carried a cross, while the Roman soldiers harassed him. Every twe...

Killing the Messenger

Killing the Messenger is a story about a journalist from San Jose who writes an article about a supposed link between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras, and drug abuse in low income communities. It is an enticing story, both the movie and the actual story, but they both come up short. The problem is the story isn't really true, it is a combination of false narratives and half truths weaved into a conspiracy. But the journalist is so compelled (and self righteous) towards his version of the truth, t...

9/11

I have been reading the 9/11 Commission report and I came across an interesting passage:

Bin Ladin understood better than most of the volunteers the extent to which the continuation and eventual success of the jihad in Afghanistan depended on an increasingly complex, almost worldwide organization. This organization included a financial support network that came to be known as the "Golden Chain," put together mainly by financiers in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. Donations flowed thr...

More from The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914

These are a couple of interesting quotes from The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 :

Once, in describing his method of executive leadership, Roosevelt remarked to a friend, “When I make up my mind to do a thing, I act. A good many . . . call me jumpy and say I go off half-cocked, when, as a matter of fact, I have really given full consideration to whatever it is that is to be done.”

In the autumn of 1904, with the situation on the Isthmus un...