Continuations

The reason Continuations has not had any new entries for a few days is that we went away on a family trip to the Virgin Islands. We have done a lot of snorkeling with the kids but in preparation for this trip we started to get Scuba certified. The theory portion of the certification included an extensive chapter on underwater plants and animals, which provided a great reminder of the mind boggling diversity and complexity of the ecosystem in the oceans. I am thrilled to report that two of us ...

Last week I was in London to spend time with the team from AMEE. On the flight to London, I read an article that provided a potent reminder of the importance of measuring CO2 emissions. The Independent had a big story on Methane gas being released from the Arctic sea floor off the coast of Siberia in far larger quantities than previously feared. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas (20x more potent than CO2) that was trapped beneath permafrost. The release of this gas is a great example ...

We just spent two weeks in India traveling to some of the famous tourist destinations including Varanasi, Agra and Jodhpur. It was an intense sensory experience of colors, sounds and smells that this blog post won’t even try to do justice. Instead here are some things that stuck out for me (in no particular order): First, India celebrates Christmas. This came as a surprise to me as India only has about 2% Christians and yet Christmas is a national holiday. There were Christmas decorations in ...

We just got back yesterday from an amazing family trip to Japan. We spent 5 days in Tokyo, 1 day near Atami at an Onsen, 3 days in Kyoto, 1 day in Nara and 1 day Kamakura. Thanks to many recommendations by friends ahead of time (including great foursquare lists) and wonderful hospitality by people living there we had many terrific experiences. Here are a few of impressions from the trip. The importance of culture and norms in shaping human behavior is powerfully on display in Japan. There are...

I am about to do something I haven’t done since becoming “hyper connected” - I am about to go off the grid. I will be traveling to a region sufficiently remote not to have cell phone coverage and there will be no wifi either. I am both excited and a bit nervous about this prospect. The excitement part comes from anticipating that I might relax more, have more time to think without interruption, more time for the people around me, etc. The nervousness arises from having a ton of things going o...