The first book to analyze why India's caste system has authoritatively endured for so long, this path-breaking text provides, for the first time anywhere, an exhaustive analysis of the historical predecessor to caste: the ancient Indian varna system as it was laid out in the Vedic literature. Presenting a revisionist overview of the way the religion of the Veda is to be understood, Classifying the Universe demonstrates that social classes were systematically reduplicated in taxonomies that organized the universe as a whole. The classification of society, in which some groups were accorded rights and privileges withheld from others, could thus be represented as part of a primordial and universally applicable order of things. Social hierarchy, argues the author, was in this way subtly but powerfully justified by recourse to other realms of the cosmos that were similarly ordered, and this essentially religious understanding of varna is the key to comprehending the Vedic world-view in all its complexity, and the persistence of its power in the social realm.

In 1985, a Beirut Car Bombing took place in front of a mosque killing 45 people and injuring 175. That year Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader. In Bangladesh, a tropical cyclone and storm surge hit and killed approximately 10,000 people. Meanwhile, a volcanic eruption in Columbia killed 25,000 people and riots and protests against apartheid policies continued in Townships in South Africa. In 1985, the first mobile phone call was made in the UK and British Scientists discovered a hole in the earths Ozone Layer. Later that year, a Delta Air Lines Lockheed TriStar crashed at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, killing 137. It was a bad year for plane crashes as Japan Airlines Flight 123, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, crashed into Mount Ogura, in Japan, killing 520 in the world's worst single-plane air disaster. Four people miraculously survived. The "Achille Lauro" was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and American naturalist Diane Fossey was found murdered in Rwanda in that year. In America, the Unabomber killed his first victim, and odd as it sounds, Route 66 ceased to be an official highway in 1985. I kept writing in my own messed up world. I had lost love, but found love again. My first book was too dark according to some. My second book was too light and comical for others. I went back to writing what I had experienced or seen in my life. I wrote on a small tablet that I carried around to work and any where I went. My problems weren't as big as those going on in the world, but they impacted my life enough to put them on paper. I was still working on the art of chewing up words and spitting them out into poems and prose on paper. I was Cuttin' Teeth.

In 1975, I registered for the draft and graduated from high school. That was the year that Saigon fell and the United States pulled out of Vietnam. I had dodged the bullet and headed off to college. My classmates were Vietnam Vets and Journalistic Rebels ready to change the world. The rest of the 70's was filled with the Cold War, Jimmy Hoffa disappearing, the Jonestown Massacre, the Soviet invasion of Afganistan, and the development of the nuetron bomb. For me, it was time to question our existence and our purpose. These poems written late at night, on pieces of scratch paper, became Letters From The Hole.

In 1984, the first Apple Macintosh computer went on sale. I was still using a Smith-Corona typewriter and doing retypes for every edit. The first release of Barnacles was actually done with waxed newspaper columns and traditional paste-up. That year, the U.S. attacked Nicaragua and President Reagan called for an International ban on chemical weapons. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated while 3800 people were killed in the Bhopal disaster. Thousands were injured and 600,000 more would later die. My problems seemed so insignificant. I had just gone thru a divorce and found out that there is a thin line between love and hate. I had been told that my first book "Letters From The Hole" was too dark and depressing. However, they read my poems in college English classes, so I kept writing. The verses that I scribbled on pieces of scratch paper and bar napkins became "Barnacles," the pieces of my life that stuck and were extremely hard to scrape off.