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Category Archives: Interesting People

Michael Totten on Belgrade and Serbia

This post is a about Michael Totten’s report “A Dark Corner of Europe” Part 1. You need to read this article for this post to make sense. Michael Totten’s article is mostly very good article, and I, perhaps unfairly, am focussing only on the negatives here.
Michael Totten is a great independent journalist who I [...]

Ivo was right about Facebook

South African journalist and pundit Ivo Vegter has rapidly become one of my favourite daily reads (his is one of the 30 surviving feeds in my “daily” list that once numbered 300 feeds).
One contemporary cultural phenomenon that he was dead right about is Facebook. In 2007, when Facebook was peaking, Ivo started [...]

Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight

Please watch this powerful and beautiful short speech by Jill Bolte Taylor about how she came to observer her own stoke as it happened, and how it transformed her life.

TED | Talks | Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight (video)

Cultural insights

In March 2003, social psychologist Richard Nisbett published his groundbreaking book “The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why“, which challenged the received wisdom that all human groups perceive and reason in the same way. He came to the conclusion, based mostly on observation and social psychology studies,  that Asians and Westerners
“Have [...]

W. Heath Robinson

From Wikipedia: “William Heath Robinson (May 31, 1872 – September 13, 1944) was an English cartoonist and illustrator, who signed himself W. Heath Robinson. He is best known for drawings of eccentric machines and “Heath Robinson” has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption.
Loved this cartoon he drew during [...]

Hotties in peril

I noticed that one of the people recently sentenced to 6 years hard labour in Chad in the orphan smuggling case is none other than French hottie and sometimes actress Emilie Lelouch (above).
Luckily for us, before Emilie started her career as a orphan rescuer/smuggler, she was a c-list actress who likes to shed [...]

The city and its impact on our genes

INSTANT EVOLUTION: The Influence of the City on Human Genes by Howard Bloom, Visiting Scholar, New York University.
Howard Bloom is a genius. I rate him as one of the most interesting living intellectuals. He is an intellectual idol of mine, king of the The Omnologists, polymath, gentleman and scholar.
Just look at any of his [...]

What I would have do to have been there…

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

“Last Friday, The New Criterion and Britain’s Social Affairs Unit hosted a conference at the Union League Club called “Threats to Democracy.” The papers and discussion from this conference will be edited for publication in an upcoming issue of the magazine.
It may seem like just another day at [...]

Autonomics weblog launched

Jason Bates is one of the smartest people I know and now he has a blog!
Get over to the Autonomics Weblog for an intellectual feast!
[This is a placeholder notification. Autonomics and Jason deserve a detailed post but I am unable to write it now.]

A giant falls: Steve Den Beste

Is it all over? USS Clueless is barely updated. Steve is terminally ill. End of a fine era.