March 2009
2 posts
Decoding the Middle East: Part Two
Is there a clash of civilizations?
The topic of civilizations and their proclivity to clash with one another was popularized in the mid-to-late 90s, following the paper and later book by Samuel P. Huntington on the subject. It basically posits that there are incompatible sociological differences between broad regional civilizations, and due to this, there exists a major struggle between the East...
Decoding the Middle East: Part One
International Relations (IR), which is the fancy academic term for foreign policy, takes the precarious position of trying to juggle many, if not too many, factors and perspectives. The opinions that these vast perspectives justify, the values of which are often obscured by over-analysis, tend to be as simplistic as those conceived without as much (if any) forethought. While not openly discussed,...
February 2009
10 posts
Epidemic spreads to the University of St Andrews
The particularly virulent strain of stupidity that has recently surfaced on the NYU campus has now reached my university. The “St Andrews Solidarity with Palestine Campaign” took over Lower College Hall, which, as far as I know, is a building with a couple empty banquet halls.
The Palestinians are experts at bad press. Want to be respected as an independent nation? Try to side with...
10 Writing Tips
Presuming to be good enough to give writing tips, especially when practically unpublished, is admittedly deluded, but I’ve seen so many conflicting writing tips from so many good writers that I’m of the opinion that “tips” are something you should heed à la carte. Under this assumption, the more tips the better, which is why I’m providing ten I’ve found out for...
Altered States
I must admit that while I study and know much more about international politics, I have stronger interests in psychology and sociology. This shows in my writing, which usually is concerned with the psychological machinations behind and amidst political situations.
There’s an article in the New York Times Magazine about Allan Snyder and transcranial magnetic stimulators. Using these machines...
Romance
After an exhausting session of designing and setting up her new website, Becca has fallen asleep, leaving me to ruminate on the importance of Valentine’s Day. Leave it to me to come up with a sociopolitical argument on the subject that, while being quite Machiavellian, is also morally absolutist:
The West’s Greatest Weapon: Valentine’s Day
Invasion of the mall cops
I was originally planning on writing about how the film, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, was perhaps the greatest symbol of civilization’s decline or maybe just one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but in reading its Wikipedia page, I found something more interesting. Granted, I only could stomach sitting through less than half of the movie, but it was clear from every scene that this film was the...
Kindle Hype
This just amazes me. $360 for something that displays $10+ ebooks? One preview seriously claimed that at that price, it would pay for itself within a few months. I don’t know if he was drowning in the kool-aid or was being paid, but I hope the latter. Amazon, itself, makes this so uneconomical by offering super-cheap used books and I swear I’ve seen buildings that let you get books for...
Venues
I recently wrote a rather long post about philosophy that I was intending to publish here, but upon completing it, I realized my blog wasn’t the best place for that sort of thing. My amateur philosophizing doesn’t speak well of my self-awareness, anyway, but I’m still posting it, though, because if we don’t discuss and arrange our thoughts, we might as well not have had...
Piracy and the face of things to come
I’m of the school of thought that says if something’s offered for free, you shouldn’t pay for an alternative. There is a gray area, and I’ll admit that while I stream a lot of movies, I probably go to the theater and buy DVDs as much as I would, otherwise. I’ve spent a few fortunes in music, but I’ve downloaded the majority of my library. These industries still...
On limits
Creativity is overwhelming. Where do we start? Why should we start?
There’s something reassuring and encouraging about being able to funnel our creativity into established constraints. Why else would Twitter become so popular? All of its functionality existed in many places before it. Anyone could write short blog posts and use existing blogging platforms to interact coherently with others,...
There's no good way to do this
A formal treatise? Hello world? Maybe an apology, seeing as it’s the first post of yet another blog. This is actually a replacement for my previous personal blog, so it’s not really taking up any more intellectual space. My old blog was getting too bogged down in the culture of Tumblr, so I felt a fresh start was in order. If you’re wondering what Tumblr is, you’re probably...