Author Archives: dowbrigade

About dowbrigade

Semi-retired academic from Harvard, Boston University, Fulbright Commission, Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manta, currently columnist for El Diario de Portoviejo and La Marea de Manta.

Insects and me

My long history with insects has mostly been one of unrequited love. They always seemed to want to crawl all over me, but the feeling was not mutual. My earliest memory of insects was playing placidly in our leafy suburban … Continue reading

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What I’ve been up to

All good storytellers know to start at the beginning and go from there. But covering the 7-year gap since my last blogging activity and for a few years before that my postings were so occasional as to constitute fruitless attempts … Continue reading

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Dowbrigade News Relaunches as GringoManaba

After a brief ten-year layoff, Dowbrigade News is relaunching from our Southern Complex somewhere on the Pacific coast of South America, say within one degree of the earth’s equator. I expect to post in English and Spanish, both my recent … Continue reading

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The Danger Down the Road

The current controversy over NSA oversight of, well, everything, seems a bit shortsighted. What worries me is not that the government is monitoring everything everyone is writing or saying electronically (still technologically impossible, given available resources) or that they are … Continue reading

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Global Neural Network Online Now

Last night we attended a lecture at MIT which once again reminded us why we keep returning to Cambridge after 40 years despite the weather. The event featured Wadah Khanfar, until recently head of the Al Jazeera network, and a … Continue reading

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CHIQUITO Y SUS ANECDOTAS

CHIQUITO Y SUS ANECDOTAS by Guest Blogger Norma Yvonne Moreira de Feldman Nuestro amado y querido Chiquito Feldman Moreira falleció rodeado del cariño y atención de su padre, mientras su madre estaba en Nueva YorK visitando a sus tios y … Continue reading

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Chiqui Gone But Not Forgotten

Chiqui FeldmanA Prince Among Pussies, a King Among Cats According to several of the world’s great religions, and backed by abundant empirical data, life as we know it consists largely of pain and suffering, salted with moments of enlightened inspiration … Continue reading

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Once Upon a Time in China

BEIJING — In a bizarre move, China’s television censors have issued new guidelines that all but ban TV dramas featuring time travel. In a statement (available here in Chinese) dated March 31, the State Administration for Radio, Film & Television said that … Continue reading

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London Burning

LONDON — The rioting and looting that convulsed poorer sections of London over the weekend spread Monday to at least eight new districts in the metropolitan area and broke out for the first time in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham, in … Continue reading

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Riot Redux

RICHARD SENNETT and SASKIA SASSEN from the New York Times say it much better than I did:  America is in many ways different from Britain, but the two countries today are alike in their extremes of inequality, and in the … Continue reading

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Authentic Ecuadorian Viche

This is the true, original recipe for shrimp “Viche”, a superlative seafood soup found only in the Ecuadorian province of Manabi, on the Pacific coast of South America. Although this version uses fresh shrimp, it is also made with crab, … Continue reading

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Manta Diary 3: Why are we here?

Ah, Manta. A jewel by the sea, combining (almost) all that I love about modern South America: an alternative reality to the Northern half of the continent, retaining that unique American robust and irreverent forward motion yet somehow sedate, private, … Continue reading

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