September 2009
39 posts
Hitchhiking in the West Bank. Gaza strip. Drinking with Scandinavians. Listening to plans for two states, two states then Palestinian eradication, restoration of the British Mandate, and more. In the meantime, Livy.
“The inferiority of play is continually … offset by the corresponding...”
– Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
Thinking/Reading
Modes of reading shifted towards what necessary for work. Scanning for small bit of information needed is paramount. And also, slow careful reading. What I need now (and used to be best at) is reading and retaining large amounts of information and occasionally stopping and applying archived questions to new mental datastore. I seem to have lost this over the past year, but hopefully can regain. I...
He was back to the code. His advisor told him that his plan was the most ambitious he had ever seen, then increased the project length. It will be a long and busy year. Tea has arrived, finally, and upon receipt of his paycheck, he will purchase another version of Beethoven’s late string quartets. For now, the trance music takes over; his mind blends with the machine.
“When wheat is ripening properly, when the wind is blowing across the field, you...”
– Norman Borlaug
“To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict...”
– St. JM Escriva
The Approach
Discussing approaches to various types of texts and realizing that I approach philosophical literature in a different manner than literary, often through secondary literature which summarizes main points, whereas I use literary criticism only to elucidate non-transparent difficulties in texts or esoteric references. Do others follow in my footsteps (or I in theirs) ?
Ich fühle Riesenwollust / Stürmisch in mein Hetze dringen.
“Except during moments when they got carried away, the leaders of Israel’s...”
– Martin van Creveld, Sword and the Olive, P. 247
“Nu allerst lebe ich mir werde,
sît mîn sündic ouge siht
daz reine lant und...”
– Walter von der Vogelweide, Palästinalied
Peter Saint-Andre | American Winter →
“The book shows me clearly what I fled from when I devoted myself body and soul...”
– Einstein to Broch, regarding his book Virgil
“When the buy-in is large enough, one continues gambling even after he realizes...”
– Collected Streeling Lecture Series, P. 433
“Just why is there so much debt in the Anglo-Saxon world? Bankers and regulators...”
– Ben Funnell, FT (via John Robb)
He sat in front of me, sipping a glass of Brandy. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he commented, gazing out the steel paneled window at the burning city. The flames leaped from building to abandoned building, catching the remaining occupants in the brutal heat, leaving in its wake only burnt cinders. You could not hear their screams of agony from such a distance, only the cool breeze...
“Given the choice between paying many thousands of dollars to a traditional...”
– IBID — Why did they need to mention classical Chinese poetry experts?
“In recent years, Americans have grown accustomed to living amid the smoking...”
– Washington Monthly | College for $99 a Month
ACT vs. REST →
I meet gay Germans, fend off thieving janitors, prepare grad school applications, research the local sex trade. As yet, little experience therein. There is time.
My primary thought-train directed instead towards English translations of German philosophical terms, leading to a rejection of a stream of egotistical philosophy to which I had become increasingly attached. The perfect egoist owns all,...
Pink Floyd | Let There Be More Light
Brian Ulrich | Dark Stores →
“[T]he IDF’s almost Pavlovian tendency to resort to force whenever...”
– Stuart Cohen, Israel and its Army (P. 158, 2008)
“The 21st century will be… Chinese.”
– Ernst Juenger, December 31, 1978
“It felt so good to finally say, ‘Kill! Kill all the Nazis!’” a 20-year-old...”
– The Local | Tarantino’s ‘kosher porno’ thrills Germany
“When governments reach the point where they are borrowing to pay the interest on...”
– Nouriel Roubini (in Forbes)
“[T]he single most remarkable thing about Obama’s foreign policy is how...”
– George Friedman, Stratfor