Friday, January 1, 2016

Recap and Reset

Since its inception in 2010, this blog has seen very few postings for several connected reasons. I tried to limit the blog to finished articles of a certain type, but a lot of my thoughts over the years have been expressed in active discussions on more interactive forums such as Facebook or Twitter. Also, I began to write actively on two other blogs - Brown Pundits and 3 Quarks Daily - leaving very little time or motivation to write finished articles for this blog.

Now, as a new year starts, I am going to make some changes, and use this blog in a more traditional way to express thoughts, propose ideas and invite discussions on an ongoing basis. Since I will still continue to be active on Facebook, Twitter and the other blogs, I will also use barbarikon as a place to consolidate what I'm writing elsewhere - of course, in addition to things written only for this blog. For example, if I post something that I consider significant on Facebook, I may also post it here. Interesting discussions on other forums may get summarized as well. And, of course, there will be links to interesting pieces published elsewhere.

The topics of this blog will come from the sciences, engineering, history, politics, literature, art, music and sports. The focus, of course, will still be on the themes that are of special interest to me: complex systems and networks, physics and cosmology, the sciences of the mind, artificial intelligence, the origin and nature of life, evolutionary biology, genetic history, archaeology, social and cultural dynamics, ancient history, religion, poetry (English, Urdu, Farsi, Hindi, and occasionally others), painting (mainly Western, Islamic and Indian), the history of Islam, political Islam, Sufism, esoteric religious sects, conspiracy theories, South Asia, the Middle East, American politics, books of certain types, ancient coins (mainly Islamic and South Asian, because that's what I collect), cricket, and many more. I hope it will turn out to be an interesting mix.

As a first step, I am going to try and find the articles I have posted elsewhere over the years, and post links to them here. In the case of a few especially interesting Facebook posts, I may post the entire piece verbatim. Some of my articles from sites such as chowk.com and Brown Pundits seem to be lost irretrievably, and that is no great loss!

So, dear Reader, here's to the future. Happy New Year!

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