david's web-log

misadventures at harvard medical school

The Big Picture Peru

A post based on The Big Picture blog at Boston.com.
Note: I have recently revised the blog to update various design dilemmas. This post — one of my favorites — has been made into a static page at the following URL:
http://www.davidcflood.com/static/bigpictureperu.html

Stubbornly exercising democracy

I have recently been engrossed in Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Report, which was published in 2003. The report is an exhaustive, frank, and sometimes horrifying confession-of-sorts about the country’s civil war from 1980 to 2000. The paragraphs below are my translation of the final section of the report’s preface. (No translation appears to be available [...]

In defense of Fabrice Tourre

Look, I’m not a big fan of Wall Street either. I think the money they make—and the bonuses they dole out—are way out of line with their true value to our nation’s economy. To turn a Street-speak expression on its head: Where’s the “value-added”? Here is what I wrote in December in my post “Solely [...]

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A weekend in Huánuco

This past weekend, Nora and I took a trip to Huánuco, which is the name of both a city and departamento (like a U.S. state) in central Peru. At the recommendation of our friend Roger, we visited a rural area called Shismay and stayed at a spectacular hacienda-turned-hotel, the Casa Hacienda Shismay.
The pueblo of Shismay [...]

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Foto del día

My Pisco Sour recipe

The famous Pisco Sour cocktail (photo from El Comercio)

Robin Kirk has written that “it takes a stubbornness, perhaps arrogance, and a certain faith in the face of long odds to write about someone else’s country.” I could hardly agree more. And Kirk’s maxim is perhaps most true when it comes to writing about food, where [...]

Foto del día

Foto del día