As it is New Year’s Day I originally planned on writing a reflection up on the books I read in 2019 or something of that sort. Then I saw this: True beauty always touches the deep heart. Beautiful Nepal with history, diversity and nature deserves a visit. Wish #VisitNepal2020 successful! @yogesbhattarai२०२० नेपाल भ्रमाण वर्ष सफलताको […]
Do not trust journalists. This is a hard thing for me to write: I am a journalist. I regularly write dispatches from abroad for various media outlets, and the occasional opinion commentary to boot. Yet I have trouble trusting journalists. Especially those who are not transparent about how they developed their understanding of the issues […]
Image Source Stanislas Dehaene’s Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts is a compulsively readable summary of the “global neural workspace theory” of consciousness. Chapters 1-2 are an especially useful summary of the last two decades of research into unconscious perception. If you are unfamiliar with the idea that your memories and perception […]
Image Sourc “We should continuously upgrade our understanding of Marxism and maintain steadfast pursuit of the great ideal and goal…. We should earnestly study, understand and believe these theories, and put them to good use. We should not be conceived or impetuous when we have won success and not waver or give up in times […]
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. —James Madison Dean Karalekas writes the following in his PhD thesis, Identity and Transformation: Perceptions of Civil-Military Relations in the Republic of China […]
Image source How wonderfully constituted is the human mind! How it resists, as long as it can, all efforts made to reclaim it from error! —Angelina Grimké In last month’s post on Chinese attitudes towards Hong Kong I had cause to mention Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier’s book The Enigma of Reason. At some point […]
Though strange to us it seemd At first, that Angel should with Angel warr, And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet So oft in Festivals of joy and love Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire Hymning th’ Eternal Father: but the shout Of Battel now began, and rushing sound Of onset ended […]
Felix Fenon, At La Revue Blanche (1940)Image source. It is a common observation that internet life and real life don’t really match. Spend a few hours on twitter and you will think America is a 21st century Weimar Republic. But spend time talking with neighbors and friends in the flesh and you find that this […]
One of the best histories I have had the pleasure to read is Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s. There are many things to love about this book. Allen wrote his history of the 1920’s in a jaunty, breezy style. When you pick his book up it is hard to […]
Sir Galahad in stained glass (1910) From Andrew’s Dune Church, Southampton, New York. (image source) That terrible bond, that most salutary of human bonds, those invisible threads of gold and light and blood attaching men sworn to a common endeavor! —Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years (1947) My life’s short course has brought me to many places, […]
