Friend or Foe ?
Watching Star Wars; “A New Hope” & “The Empire Strikes Back” on May 4th (Star Wars day) was thought-provoking as it involved aliens, droids and humans in peaceful coexistence. Most evidence and trace of aliens can only be found in Hollywood, science fiction, and conspiracy theories while science research hangs on to shreds of evidence which suggest we rethink our long held expectations of aliens. Humanoid robots, on the other hand are fascinating, high tech, intelligent creatures which are already part of many societies and in some cases have already become man’s other best friend going by their mutually
Art, museums and Biebs
The Louvre in France is once again the most visited museum in the world for the fifth consecutive year, 9.7 million visits last year; that’s a lot. Pickpockets managed to close it down anyway which is very funny. Also in the news is the Anne Frank museum, not many people have visited the Anne Frank House and some, especially youngsters may not even know who she was but thanks to Justin Bieber, some Beliebers probably do now. The museum isn’t one of the most visited in the world but with over a million visits yearly it ranks second to Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands which is quite impressive considering the fact that it is a non-art, local history museum. More impressive is the story of
The slippery slope fallacy
I’ve been pondering over the slippery slope argument and how it relates to marriage equality for a while now, never knew it was one of the many logical fallacies in philosophy/ethics neither did I know well reasoned arguments have been made for and against it by those who feel strongly about the matter which made me a little disappointed but that’s okay after all, I’m no philosopher or lawyer. In this context, it simply means; if you open the gate for one, all will flood in. Now that’s a scary thought but never mind, if you’re feeling worried, all you need to do is find reasoned arguments made in favour of marriage equality in the context of the slippery slope fallacy and you’ll be fine. If you go on to seek reasoned opposing arguments, then you might end up getting confused but better
Mortuary respect: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum
The reaction of Britons to Margaret Thatcher’s death was one of the most fascinating days on twitter and the blogosphere in general; total disregard for respect for the dead was on display. The foreign minister of Australia suggested she was racist, a female MP was extremely careful not to refer to her as a woman, street parties were held, Ding Dong the witch is Dead made it to the top 10 but narrowly missed top spot in the UK singles top 100, the instagram memes were really creative, even the Respect MP encouraged people to show a lack of respect. It left me wondering why it is still considered a taboo to speak ill of the dead afterall, the dead could care less what the living say and besides
To be, or not to be?
I had a lively debate on Scotland’s independence referendum holding on the 18th of September 2014 with a Yes Scotland campaigner last week, for some reason it was relieving to discuss the issue without touching on the north sea oil reserves. I had been spoiling for this debate for a while and upon sighting them at the usual spot, I approached them. They seemed to know I was coming for one of them briskly approached me, my first question to him was “are you guys really really sure this is what you want?”. The calmness with which he answered was borderline arrogant and creepy like it was the umpteenth time he’d
Women, tech and the glass ceiling
I narrowly missed donglegate which must have been a trending topic on twitter at some point, but thanks to the vergecast, I still managed to pick it up in time. Interestingly, Sheryl Sandberg’s story was just dying down; both relate to women, tech and the workplace and ended with a rough outcome for one and sweet for the other as the former lost her job while the latter’s book got a lot of publicity to become a bestseller. Tech companies are overwhelmingly male and once regarded as “no woman’s land” where those who venture in can rise to the top but no more than the glass ceiling allows them, there’s even a joke that you can practically smell the testosterone when you walk into one.
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