Visiting Southeast Asia has always been on my bucket list. Fanatsizing about going maybe someday was easy; but I’ve never had the courage and initiative to start making it happen. So when Inna agreed to a (minimum) six-month work assignment in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), I had to make the most of the opportunity and visit her there. And so the trip ( Read more... )

There really needs to be a corollary to Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, stating that website maintenance is a constant (and un-winnable) battle against the Stupid introduced by other people.

Usually this involves a lot of quiet fuming while cleaning up the ( Read more... )

Most of you know that in 1984 I founded an Internet-based magazine for aspiring writers called DargonZine and ran it until a couple years ago. I have to say, there’s nothing quite like amateur fiction. As ably demonstrated by the following unedited passages from some of the rough drafts that ( Read more... )

Quote: Dr. Adikaram said that there were famous scholars - Tripitaka acharias - who could recite by heart entire sections of the Tripitaka, and one may have read and re-read all the Buddhist texts and yet remain a crook or a murderer. Dr. Adikaram added, if one could at least understand one word of the Buddha like Appamada that would be sufficient ( Read more... )

One of the most useful sites I’ve found for writers is
( Read more... )

In recent months I’ve seen at least three college graduates on my friends list type “loose” when they meant “lose”, or vice versa, and it’s just as common an occurrence for the people who write for my magazine.

I find that surprising. The two words are completely distinct: in meaning, in part of speech, and in pronunciation. It shocks me that ( Read more... )