Four months and only a measly two posts to show for it. C'est grave, non? It occurred to me today upon my return to Boston from a two-week trip abroad that my grand idea for an exclusively research-oriented blog was noble in conception but totally uninspired in execution. Let us put to rest this failed experiment and return to the 'eloquent delinquent' for there is a dizzying array of topics to muse on so let me begin (I apologize for the interruption but nonetheless welcome you back). As I have already mentioned I returned today from a modest vacation to western Europe where I had the good fortune (enhanced considerably by excellent hosts) to visit the following majestic locations: southwestern Germany (the bustling financial center of Frankfurt am Main, the Rhine River valley region between Koblenz and Mainz -- the idyllic heartland of German romanticism, and the enchanting medieval town of Heidelberg), the Netherlands (the wildly cosmopolitan urban center of Amsterdam, the historic `college town' of Delft and the unofficial capital Den Haag (The Hague)), and finally beloved Paris. The trip presented me with an opportunity to temporarily transcend the American universe and to peer into life across the Atlantic via several major centers of western European civilization. Among the main differences I noticed of the European lifestyles (compared to North America which I am most familiar) were: the acute awareness of historical context, sustainability and joie de vivre. Let me explain each in turn. The specter of WWII looms very large in modern Germany even after sixty years of relative peace and I came to realize that the government has made great efforts to purge its dark past from public consciousness and accordingly gone the way of extreme political correctness. In Germany as I learned one must never mention the National Socialists or call into question the legitimacy of the immigration policy that has brought millions of unintegrated foreign labor to the geographic center of Europe. A sense of uneasiness with many issues such as these is pervasive and is written into the frustrated and also stoically muted faces of the ethnic Germans who it seems have never been allowed to full reconciliate with their past. In Paris, I vividly remember newspaper stands dotting every square of the city showing the voracious appetite of citizens to be kept abreast of their surroundings and nightly news featuring massive strikes by blue collar workers and multiple political tv shows involving ordinary citizens. Amsterdam was chock full of cyclists, special `coffeeshops' and something I found to be quite melancholic: window shopping for prostitutes.