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The first thing you notice about Amber Fort  is not its size, or even its beauty. It’s the way it rises. High above the dusty plains outside Jaipur, the fort appears to grow directly out of the hillside. Honey-colored stone stacked with purpose, confidence, and the quiet authority of centuries. From a distance, it feels less like a monument than a presence. Something that has always been there. Something that remembers. The road up to Amber winds slowly, climbing past elephan

This image was generated using artificial intelligence and is intended as a conceptual illustration. It does not represent a real building. In Part 1 of this series, I explored the idea of philanthropy as it once was - an act of generosity grounded in service rather than donor recognition. In Part 2, I turn to a contemporary example that brings those questions into sharp focus: the recent renaming of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine following a historic philanthropi

The first thing you notice at the Amber Fort, just outside Jaipur in India, is the light. It slides across the honey-colored stone in the late afternoon, catching on carved arches and mirrored halls, softening the heat of Jaipur into something almost theatrical. The second thing you notice is the couples. They appear gradually, as if summoned by the light itself. Young men in tailored sherwanis . Young women in embroidered  lehengas  so intricately worked they seem less like

This image was generated using artificial intelligence and is intended as a conceptual illustration. This essay begins a six-part series exploring the changing nature of philanthropy in veterinary medicine and higher education. It is not a critique of generosity, nor an argument against giving, but an examination of how money, naming, and influence now intersect in ways that shape institutional identity, professional values, and public trust. Across these six pieces, I will l

One of the small shocks of spending time in India is the queue. Or rather, the absence of one. You stand patiently, believing in the invisible contract of first come, first served. You wait. You inch forward. And then, quite suddenly, someone steps in front of you. No apology. No eye contact. No sense that anything unusual has occurred. At first, it feels rude. Even personal. A tiny moral breach. But after a while, you begin to suspect it isn’t rudeness at all. It’s somethin

We were sitting at the dinner table at a hotel in Jaipur when my mate Tony, a true blue Aussie, asked: What do you think about celebrating Australia Day? You see, it was January 26 , a public holiday in India when the population celebrates Republic Day , which marks a defining milestone in India's national journey . The day the Constitution of India came into force in 1950, formally establishing the country as a Sovereign Democratic Republic . Australia Day  is observed each

Veterinary Terminology  is a reflective series about the words veterinarians use. How they arise, how they drift, and how they quietly shape professional thinking. This is not a series about catching errors or enforcing purity. It is about noticing habit, distinguishing precision from convenience, and preserving the language that allows a profession to think clearly. Few words in veterinary medicine feel as harmless, and are as routinely misused, as: Leg . Everyone knows wha

When I look back at 2025, I don’t remember it as a year of shocks. I remember it as a year of   confirmation . Many of the forces shaping the pet industry had been building for years, and in 2025 they became harder to ignore. Capital behaved differently. Regulation became more visible. Consumers revealed their limits. Professionals showed signs of strain. None of this arrived suddenly, but together it marked a turning point. From where I sit, 2025 felt less like an inflection

Veterinary Terminology  is a reflective series about the words veterinarians use. How they arise, how they drift, and how they quietly shape professional thinking. This is not a series about catching errors or enforcing purity. It is about noticing habit, distinguishing precision from convenience, and preserving the language that allows a profession to think clearly. Veterinary medicine is built on language. Not decorative language. Not comforting language. But working langua

Two worlds divided by a single fracture. On one side, vocation, trust, and continuity. On the other, scale, control, and extraction. What breaks in between is not efficiency, but care. This is the lesson-set that doesn’t appear in pitch decks or exit memos, but it’s written all over 2025. Veterinary Medicine Is Not Infinitely Scalable Private equity (PE) entered veterinary medicine assuming it behaved like other service industries: standardize processes, centralize decision-

There are numbers we calculate with, and some numbers that find us . 444  belongs to the second category. You notice it on a clock - 4:44. On a license plate. On a receipt, a stock ticker, a page number you didn’t expect. At first, it feels like coincidence. Then it happens again. And again. Eventually, you stop dismissing it. Why 4 Matters at All Across cultures, the number 4  has long been associated with structure , balance , and   order . Four seasons. Four elements. Fou

Veterinary Terminology is a reflective series about the words veterinarians use. How they arise, how they drift, and how they quietly shape professional thinking. This is not a series about catching errors or enforcing purity. It is about noticing habit, distinguishing precision from convenience, and preserving the language that allows a profession to think clearly. Veterinary medicine depends on language in ways we rarely stop to examine. We use words to localize lesions, d

Every generation leaves fingerprints on language. Some are elegant. Some are clumsy. Some are deeply irritating to anyone over the age of about forty. And every so often, a word, or in this case, a number , appears that feels less like communication and more like a shared wink. In 2025, that word was 6-7 . Or 67 . Or six sev-uhn . According to the annual Banished Words List  from Lake Superior State University, 6-7  has officially been declared cooked , 1 a slang term that i

You hear the word everywhere now. Spat out as an insult on cable news. Dropped casually at a dinner party. Used as shorthand for everything I don’t like about the world right now . And yet, for a word that gets so much airtime, woke  has become oddly hollow. More signal than substance. More heat than light. So, it’s worth pausing to ask: what does woke actually mean? Where the Word Came From Originally, woke  wasn’t political branding or culture-war theater. It came from Bla

On the 20 th  of June 1980, Australian singer/songwriter Peter Allen  debuted his new song, I Still Call Australia Home , at the opening of the Sydney Entertainment Centre. I still call Australia home- Peter Allen (Video Version 1) - YouTube Allen then went on to perform it again at the 1980 Victorian Football League Grand Final with more than 100,000 people in the Melbourne Cricket Ground as well as being broadcasted live across Australia. I Still Call Australia Home would g

To be true blue  is to be loyal , trustworthy , steady , and unaffected . No performance. No pretense. It’s about character under quiet pressure . In Australia, true blue has long been shorthand for: Mateship without sentimentality, Fairness without moral grandstanding, Equality without hierarchy, and Decency without needing applause. A true blue person doesn’t announce their values. They live them. I have been away from Australia for much of the past fifty years.   Distanc

The Texas State Capitol rises from its hill in Austin with quiet authority. Its pink granite dome glowing warmly in the sun. It looks permanent. Inevitable. As if it has always been there. But the stone tells a longer story. The Journey of Value The granite that built the Capitol came from Burnet County in the Texas Hill Country, quarried from Granite Mountain near Marble Falls. It was cut, shaped, and hauled east by rail in the 1880s. Nearly 190,000 cubic feet of stone, each

Veterinary medicine has begun to talk about burnout openly. That, at least, is progress. We name compassion fatigue . We circulate wellness resources. We encourage resilience, balance, mindfulness, time off. And yet, year after year, the problem worsens. More veterinarians leave clinical practice. More technicians exit the field entirely. Morale erodes. Distrust deepens. The profession feels strained in ways that no yoga class or wellness webinar seems able to repair. Perhap

We all know someone who prides themselves on being sure . At first glance, certainty looks like strength. It feels like a solid floor under our feet. But certainty without adaptability  - the refusal to adjust when reality changes - is less like a solid floor and more like concrete shoes in a rising tide. That’s the heart of the idea behind the phrase: Certainty without adaptability is a dangerous illusion . Psychologically, certainty is warm and comforting. Certainty: Reduc

A close friend who I have known for many years considers me to have well-developed perfectionist tendencies . He was being polite! He recommended a book ( Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff) in which author Richard Carlson suggests that perfectionism is more often a source of quiet suffering than excellence. As I look back on a fortunate life and career, I realize that Carlson has a point. Perfectionism often disguises itself as virtue. It tells us we have high standards, that we