Learning by Heart He recited a short poem to meWhich he had learned by heartNot to impress or intimidateMe, or anyone else, But just in case one yearSpring might be late in comingAnd he need cheer his friendsSaddened by the dearth of birdsong. Or perhaps for that moment in loveWhen he would be struck speechless,When…

Greetings from sweltering Karachi, As some of you know, I am spending the summer in Karachi. It's my first trip to the city of my birth in almost six years, and I've already been here a little over three weeks now. Here are a few things, picked rather arbitrarily, which I find to be very…

by Norman Costa (Note: I do not use the real names of people, nor do I identify the specific Ashram. I changed a few details. The purpose is to protect the privacy of the individuals. Readers who are familiar with this Ashram will probably recognize it.) What the Heck is an Ashram? Ashram is a…

My father died four years ago today. At the time, my sister Azra published a shorter version of this obituary in Karachi's leading English newspaper, Dawn: –S. Abbas Raza MEMBER OF PAKISTAN CIVIL SERVICE, RESPECTED AUTHOR AND INTELLECTUAL, SYED ALI RAZA DIES AT 91 by Azra Raza Syed Ali Raza, Retired Director, Ministry of Foreign…

So here we are, celebrating our 5th Newton's Day at 3QD. Along with Richard Dawkins, we independently and simultaneously came upon the idea of celebrating Newton's Day on December 25th in 2004, and each year since then I have written a little something about Sir Isaac. Here are my posts from 2004, 2005, 2006, and…

by Evert Cilliers There are two political figures in America who are masters of self-invention. One is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The other is Barack Obama. Arnold invented himself as a body builder, movie star, and Governor. Barack Obama invented himself as a black man, Christian, and President. (A quick aside about self-invention. It's not starting over,…

by Jason S. Bardi The holiday season is upon us, and spending the weekend at the relatively unconnected house of a close relative makes me long for all those modern conveniences I take for granted: cell phones, PDAs, digital cable, and high-speed wireless. Lack of wireless is going to force me to find an internet…

In reverse chronological order: Expand the Police Force, in Dawn, 9/2009 Defending Dictatorship: Another View on Pakistan, in n + 1, 3/2008 The Bhutto Dynasty Must End Now, in Foreign Policy in Focus, 1/2008 Welcome to America…You’re Under Arrest, in The Smart Set, 1/2008 [S. Abbas Raza’s writing for 3QD can be seen here.]

I am a nerd. I used to be an engineer and so I like calculating stuff in my head. I hardly ever use electronic calculators, even when exact calculations of something are needed, preferring to do them by hand (try it, it can be a soothing thing) on chit’s of paper, backs-of-the-proverbial envelopes, etc. But…

by S. Abbas Raza Akeel Bilgrami is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. Professor Bilgrami went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and got a Bachelor’s degree there in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. In 1983 he got his Ph.D. from the University of…

Ram Manikkalingam is visiting professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam. Bilgrami’s paper is centrally located within the contemporary debate about the global divide between “Islam and the West” that is popularly called “the clash of civilisations”. This debate is motivated by the question – “why do they hate us?” – posed by…

by Jason S. Bardi Approaching 1:00 a.m. on Monday morning, I am wondering if I will get my first blog post finished (’twas due 45 minutes ago). I have that desperation that anyone who is up past midnight has, and because of this, coupled with the fact that the story I am telling concerns a…

by Beth-Ann Bovino A walk through the lower east side in New York can feel like Spring-cleaning at mom’s house. Back then mom would have a “Tag Sale, and everything, including my favorite childhood dreams, was priced to sell. Each item would have a tag on it. A stuffed animal from my crib priced at…

by Ahila Sornarajah Stuck in a traffic jam in hot, dusty and dynamic Chennai (formerly Madras) recently, I started thinking about the far away elections for the Mayor of London and what this will mean for Londoners. While America is obsessed with the groundbreaking race for the democratic nomination between Clinton and Obama, we’re proud…

I HAVE WRESTLED WITH AN ALLIGATOR, I HAVE TUSSLED WITH A WHALE If I could meet one person in the world, it would without question be Muhammad Ali, and I would probably collapse in a pool of blubbering tears at his feet, such is my worshipful admiration of the man. The first time I remember…

Review of Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up by John Allen Paulos You may know the (almost certainly apocryphal) story of an 18th century encounter between the brilliant Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and the French freethinking encyclopaedist and philosopher Denis Diderot: Diderot had been invited to the court…

You may have noticed that I have been posting more poetry recently at 3QD. This is not because I have suddenly become more literate, but because my friend Jim Culleny has been sending me poems almost every day. In addition to having exquisite taste in poetry, Jim is himself a distinguished and fine poet. In…

A couple of days ago I had posted a video of the famous Pakistani singer Habib Wali Mohammed singing a poem written by the last, and ill-fated, Mughal emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Earlier today my wife was listening to it and asked me what the words mean. I told her I would translate…

The title of this post is a translation of a Latin inscription on Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb. This is the fourth year that we at 3QD celebrate the auspicious 25th day of December as Newton’s Day, an idea that we coincidentally came to independently on the same day as Richard Dawkins proposed it. (Newton was…