Columnists

When India’s Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the government’s budget this past February, he trumpeted the country’s vault into modernity. Economic growth is 8.1 percent and is projected to rise as high as 10 percent next year. India has completed its “Golden Quadrilateral,” a multi-lane highway that links New Delhi in the north, Calcutta in the east, Chennai in the south, and Mumbai in the west. The collective wealth of India’s 311 billionaires jumped 71 percent in the last year. -more-

During the last time American political jurisdictions openly maneuvered to keep African-Americans from voting—for you young readers, we’re not talking about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, but Alabama and Mississippi in the 1950s and early ’60s—there used to be a joke told by black comics about the black fellow who came back home to South Carolina to register to vote after spending many years in New York and Philadelphia, a bachelors degree in American history from Temple and a masters in government from NYU in his pocket. -more-

I know you’re out there. You who are easy prey for handywomen and contractors. You who don’t fix things. Yes, I know you’re there. Well come out of the closet and go boldly where your uncle Filbert never went. Where you mother never dared to tread. Today we are going to hang something on the wall. Yes, You CAN do it. -more-

There’s a lively side discussion going on within a California native-plants email list about how to garden with the least impact. -more-

April is National Poetry Month and I unintentionally celebrated it last week with a visit to Manhattan. -more-

The more scientists learn about non-human cognition, the blurrier the boundary between the human mind and various animal minds seems to become. And I’m not just talking about tool-making, intention-guessing, empathetic chimps. Some remarkable findings have emerged from the study of birds—and not necessarily the kinds of birds you’d expect. -more-