World’s Largest Employers (Washington Post)
Soothly We Live in Mighty Years
Today Liberty Plaza Had a Visit from Slavoj Zizek
“…There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like - oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?
Remember: the problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat. They will try to make this into a harmless moral protest….”
Soviet War Memorial Graffiti (Sophia, Bulgaria June 2011)
An early memory from Oxford
- An exchange between me and my soon-to-be logic tutor.
- Porter: Ah, Dr. Blamey, this is the Princeton exchange student -- Mark.
- Me: Hello, Dr. Blamey. It's nice to finally meet you!
- [sticks out hand to shake]
- Blamey: What are you doing?
- Me: Um. Offering to shake your hand?
- Blamey: Oh, I see. That barbaric American custom.
- Me: ... Well, I'm pretty sure we got that one from you guys [the british].
- Blamey: Ah, well it looks like you haven't moved on since then, hm.
For all my maynes and maynards: i already miss you guys :(
Nausea - Sartre
“Experienced professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafés, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels […]
Convenient past! Past handed out of a pocket! little gilt books full of fine sayings. “Believe me, I’m telling you from experience, all I know I’ve learned from life.” Has life taken charge of their thoughts? They explain the new by the old—and the old they explain by the older still, like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian Robespierre, and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell: when all is said and done, they have never understood anything at all … You can imagine a morose idleness behind their importance: they see the long parade of pretences, they yawn, they think there’s nothing new under the sun.”
“ The Bratz brand, which has remained number one in the UK market for 23 consecutive months focuses core values on friendship, hair play and a ‘passion for fashion’.
Bratz spokesman, The Daily Telegraph
Documentary about the science behind my thesis
Thesis related
We’re hard-wired to turn our lives into stories - how will we cope with the dizzying digital fictions of the future, ask John Bickle and Sean Keating
