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intelligentsia v. intellectuals: where are we up to now?
Thursday, January 14th, 2010I’m reading this book on the Russian revolution. It’s very interesting and readable, and not too long (406 pages- well you know, Russia is a big place). The third chaper, entitled “The Intelligentsia”, I found rather alarming- not only were some of the tenets of socialism and/or communism noticeably reactionary and ill-considered (by all means [...]
Life lessons from Sartre and de Beauvoir
Sunday, January 11th, 2009I’ve been reading Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley, which was a very interesting and entertaining read, especially considering the rather dry and serious characters of its two famous protagonists. Here are a few of the ideas it sparked for me:
Relationships:
There is no way J-P Sartre could have maintained his “freedom” [...]
two approaches to improving safety
Monday, December 29th, 2008note: this post is specifically NOT about the rights and wrongs of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is a discussion I don’t find very productive, for reasons that should be clear from its content.
This is from a column in The Times:
Many observers object that the airstrikes are disproportionate: the weekend body count was one Israeli killed, [...]
Hitler reborn over the net: a nerd but clearly quite insane
Friday, November 28th, 2008My son absolutely loves the Hitler meltdown meme on youtube. If you don’t know about that, and why would you really (unless internets are your job), it’s a scene from the 2004 German film Downfall (Der Untergang) where Hitler is in the bunker and he finds out he has lost the war and goes ballistic [...]
Kundera on the political mindset
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008More Milan Kundera, from another interview (1984):
…the subject of news is by definition politics. For me, one of the most striking facts of modern life is the extent to which journalism – the news – has taken over the culture. Culture has been subjected to a vision of the world in which politics holds the [...]
Milan Kundera on politics
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008I’m reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and came across this interview from 1985:
The danger that threatens us is the totalitarian empire. Khomeini, Mao, Stalin – are they left or right? Totalitarianism is neither left nor right, and within its empire both will perish. I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech [...]
random post: political uncertainty, Britishness
Thursday, November 6th, 2008My computer conked out. There are a number of annoying things about that, such as no instapaper for storing articles like this one down the sidebar, the delete button being in the wrong place, the letters needing more hammering than on my computer so I miss some out quite often, and not having access to [...]
all change! somewhat
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008I can’t be the only person quietly rolling my eyeballs at all the confidently self-affirmed over-excited people who really believe that sixteen impossible things are going to be happening before breakfast every day now for the rest of their lives…
It’s called being old, I think.
Well, congrats to Obama; I thought you would do it [...]
They think it’s all over
Thursday, October 16th, 2008I’m very much liking what Chris Yeh has to say about the campaign; intelligent, balanced, insightful. I have been predicting Obama would win since April 12th 2007. On January 7th this year, I said it again, noting that I didn’t think it would make much difference who was in charge anyway. Which shows how random [...]
yellow shoes
Monday, October 13th, 2008This one is from Topshop, and it’s £55.00.
The Target version, $19.99.
The Topshop one is leather, so it will breathe and age much better, and I’m really not sure how you can compare them value-wise.
I tried to post about the election, but it’s really hard to follow closely when your ears are full of sand. [...]
