Nepal? I don’t know anyone in Nepal. Yet last week I received a courteous email from a physician in Nepal, asking my permission to translate an article of mine into Nepali. The topic: advice for older patients who need anesthesia. He wants to distribute it to patients and publish it in his local newspaper.
I asked how he came across the article. He said he was browsing online among anesthesia blogs and found mine, “A Penned Point.” Now “blog” isn’t a word Jane Austen would have recognized. It is a lumpish merger of “Web” and “log” and is generally defined today as a website on which an individual records opinions. The proliferation of blogs – like Tribbles – may be seen as a pernicious trend, but it demonstrates the power and reach of the Internet. Business Insider estimates that 22 percent of the people in the world own smartphones,...
