This chapter provides further evidence of Ahab's superstitious nature and gives the Pequod's mates an opportunity to think about their surprise shipmate, Fedallah. Ahab has given permission for the crew to capture a right whale because (as Flask reports) Fedallah has...
9 October 2011 6:15 a.m. Gulf Standard Time (GST) The alarm goes off. I think to myself that back in New York, where it is 10:15 p.m. EDT, it is still October 8, and I am still in my forties. I remember that, when I turned 40, it was not even a month after...
Here in Abu Dhabi (as in many parts of the world aside from the US) we write today's date this way: 11-9-11 I like the symmetry of that, which won't be repeated for another hundred years. It makes today special among anniversaries of 9/11. The next 11-9-11 will...
One of the things that I have loved about attending the Candidate Weekends at NYU Abu Dhabi is hearing about all the different kinds of music that the candidates have on their iPods. So I'm asking for help from those of you who have attended one of the weekends: I...
I picked up the first two seasons of the television show Freej at one of the duty-free shops in the Abu Dhabi airport. Freej is a 3D animated cartoon produced in Dubai, which has been a big hit in the Emirates since it debuted in 2006. The series depicts the lives of...
By all accounts, the lecture that I gave for the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute on Wednesday night went well. The title of the talk was "Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism, and the Promise of Literature." Like Joanna's lecture on the Silk Road, it took place at the Al Mamoura...
Zoroastrianism was mentioned in John McCain's interview last week on the ABC morning television show The View. (It happens at 2:10 in the YouTube clip above.) Trying to get McCain to talk about the implications of his choice of Sarah Palin to be running mate, Whoopi...
"The greatest late September collapse in the history of major league baseball is now complete." That's what Mets' announcer Gary Cohen said after Luis Castillo struck out to end the team's 162nd game, an 8-1 loss in which the Mets trailed 7-0 after the first half...
On the eve of the 2006 World Series, with an important national midterm election looming soon afterward, it's worth reconsidering what the literary scholar Jacques Barzun wrote half a century ago: "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn...