Thoughts, Links and Wishes

My good friend Simon has started a new blog. The focus is on climate change and climate science, but it's written for the general audience. Read his opening post about an encounter with a US customs agent and that agent's opinion of his commander and chief.

To my Jewish readers I wish you a Happy Pesach. May it be a meaningful reminder of the freedoms we enjoy and the sacrifices that have been made for those freedoms. Those wishes apply to the non-Jews in the crowd as well. It is truly a universal holiday.

Consider how fortunate Americans (and citizens of democracies everywhere) are in this article I've been meaning to link to for a while. In "Washington Stories" , Anne Applebaum tells bittersweet stories of a few foreigners and what the nation's capital means to them:

And yet Washington is also a very real home, both permanent and temporary, to many people whose sole desire is to live an ordinary life -- to study, to work, to talk about what they please -- but who cannot do so, whether in Mali, in Russia, in Iran or somewhere else. Every once in a while, and for no particular reason, I try to remember how lucky I am to have been born here, where the possibility of living such an ordinary life is so easily taken for granted.


Happy holidays and happy spring! May you celebrate wherever you are.