May 2012
8 posts
3 tags
“The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as...”
– Daniel Webster
4 tags
“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions as attempts to find...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
5 tags
“A ship in a harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”
– John A. Shedd
10 tags
The Case for Coding
As I have mentioned before, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to start learning how to code. Before the start of the year I had a vague idea of why coding was valuable, but I always assumed that I could always count on someone else, who’s brain didn’t bleed upon clicking ‘view source’, could handle it. A whirlwind of reading on the topic since then has made me realise how wrong I...
4 tags
“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to...”
– Woody Allen
4 tags
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion”
– Abraham Lincoln
3 tags
“The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of...”
– Stephen Fry
16 tags
Of Fish, Trees and Lemons
“Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Einstein
A great feel-good quote, particularly welcome in these times of hardship. Unfortunately, in these times of hardship, the pond has all but dried up and a generation of fish is being forced to climb trees for a living. In the 3 months...
April 2012
3 posts
15 tags
The Earth is NOT full
My New Year’s resolution this year was to do as much as possible of the following things: write blog posts, learn code and watch TED talks (if you haven’t heard of TED check it out immediately!). Recently however, I watched the first TED talk that I didn’t like: “The Earth is full”, by Paul Gilding. To save you from watching, the summary of Paul’s talk is “there are too many of us, we...
13 tags
Macedonopoly - travel with no agenda
Those of you that I have pestered enough to read this blog on a regular basis (thanks mum) will know that after a recent trip to Krakow I swore off drinking in London – asserting that my money was better spent on holidays in poor Eastern European countries. Soon after making this pledge I booked a trip to Macedonia. It may seem an unusual choice for a holiday, but the beer averages at...
11 tags
Pack late and pack less
Tomorrow, I go to Macedonia for 5 nights. I haven’t packed yet – and nor do I feel like I need to. This is the sort of thing that drives my well-organised mother mad, but maybe by explaining my thought process will bring a few more of you over to my side. So instead of packing (or sleeping) I will sit here and write this blog post.
My first gripe with packing started when I...
March 2012
7 posts
10 tags
In Defence of Advertising
I work in marketing – when I tell people that I occasionally get this reaction: “oh so you try to trick people into buying crap they don’t need?”. I find criticism in this vein annoying and ignorant, but it isn’t just misguided pinkos that hold this view – the belief that advertising has no inherent value (and is even detrimental) is held by a huge swathe of society, including...
8 tags
Unintelligent Design
All hail the flying spaghetti monster! Worship Him! Obey Him! Be Touched by His Noodley Appendage for He is THE ONE! WWFSMD?
That last part stands for “What Would the Flying Spaghetti Monster Do?” and no I haven’t gone crazy. Pastafarianism is a parody religion invented by a man called Bobby Henderson in response to the introduction of teaching Intelligent Design in Kansas State...
6 tags
All Work and No Play (gives Jack generalised...
How much fun should you allow yourself? It’s a question I often ask myself as I try and strike the right balance between progress in my career and the temptations of a social life. ‘Just one more game of FIFA’, ‘another episode of Mad Men’ or staying out drinking past midnight – these are all pleas my right brain makes to my left brain a few times a week (and good old lefty usually...
7 tags
Mirror Mirror on the the Wall Street
The stock market is the pinnacle of our modern market-based economy; the world’s sharpest minds and highest fliers moving dizzying amounts of money in a testosterone-laden, coke-fuelled frenzy of mathematical gymnastics. Situated in the wealthiest cities in the richest countries of the modern world, stock markets have incredible power. They can turn two students working out of their...
18 tags
Cracking on in Krakow
Just over a week ago 7 of us set sail for Krakow, Poland for what resembled a stag party with no stag. Not all of our time was spent drinking – we actually covered a lot of cultural ground. The juxtaposition of intense fun at night with the overwhelming sadness we felt at Schindler’s factory and Auschwitz made the whole trip seem very surreal. Rather than give you a chronological...
7 tags
Kony Cacophony
“Who or what is Kony?” – the question that approximately 99% of people in the Western world were asking themselves today when they started seeing their Facebook newsfeeds dominated by links to this video. If you haven’t seen the video, I really urge you to watch it – not only is it a powerful message, but as a lesson on how to speak to the Facebook generation it is astoundingly good....
6 tags
Hope amidst the gloom – The silver lining that...
Croppertunity - The Chinese word for ‘crisis’ also means ‘opportunity’. The Chinese, being the Zen masters they are, understand that there are two sides to every coin. The worst times bring often bring out the best in people: without a villain there cannot be a hero. Furthermore, bad situations are surprisingly consistently followed by good ones: Word War II, despite being obviously one...
February 2012
2 posts
7 tags
Greed is Good (Unless You’re Human…)
Economists are obsessed with the idea of ‘Homo Economicus’: a model of human behaviour which assumes that we are rational, self-interested and able to make judgments which lead to our desired ends. This is the backbone of Economic thinking, and explains a surprising amount of human behaviour. However useful this is at predicting behaviour in aggregate, calculating what Homo Economicus...
2 tags
Introduction
As my friends know, I almost always have an opinion… though fairly regularly I find myself coming full circle and arguing the complete opposite point. Not one to be constrained by contradiction, I am only semi-ambivalent. Writing this blog is an attempt to solidify my thoughts, by recording them on the internet and letting the trolls do their worst…
