The Sunni search for self-respect
DeepDipChina’s President Xi Jinping has mentioned his passion for Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea on several occasions, most recently during a speech in Seattle on his September 2015 state visit to the United States.
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The Old Man…
The decline (and fall?) of the term ambassador
DeepDipThe other day I spent some time at the dentist. I waited for the newest CAD/CAM technology to work its wonders and outfit me with a perfectly adapted crown within half an hour. Meanwhile, I perused the glossy trade magazines one finds in medical…
Hitler’s swerve
DeepDipGeorge Friedman specializes in the analysis of international conflicts and is CEO of the renowned private intelligence corporation STRATFOR. His credentials notably include studying the potential for a U.S.-Japan conflict after the collapse…
EU and Greece: would game theory have helped?
DeepDipGreece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has written books on game theory and “conflicts in economics.”[1] Does this qualify him as a skillful negotiator? Leaving aside the fact that he also qualifies himself as “libertarian-Marxist”…
The re-invention of yoga tradition
DeepDipThe UN General Assembly on 11 December 2014 adopted without a vote a resolution commemorating 21 June as the International Day of Yoga.
Addressing the UN General Assembly on 27 September 2014, the Prime Minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi had…
Clash of civilizations up close: the case of Pakistan
DeepDip
Arguably, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947,[1] with its concomitant massacres and massive population movements, can be used to highlight a “civilizational fault line” between the Islamic and the Hindu cultures. Unsurprisingly,…
The speed of cultural change
DeepDip“Irish voters have decisively voted in favor of marriage equality, making Ireland the first country to do so through the ballot box. Only one of the 43 constituencies voted against the proposal.”[1] In other words, both rural and urban voters…
Sunk costs have zero value
DeepDip(An elegy on the Greek “problem”)
But when he came to himself he said, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough to spare, and I'm dying with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will tell him, 'Father, I have…
Worlds that vanish – unnoticed
DeepDipThanks to the internet, nothing is forgotten nowadays: or is it? As we returned at sunset to the port of Hydra, I took this photo:
One notes the reflections in the hand-made window panes. As the glass sheet is pulled, rather than rolled,…
Do ideas have genealogies?
DeepDip
In a recent essay,[1] the Italian philosopher Giorgio AGAMBEN outlines the “genealogy” of the concept called dispositif,[2] tracing it to Hegel and other precursors. I was perplexed.
One of the origins of the term is in genetics. It…
What can the Amazons teach us?
DeepDipIt is a fact – even though it may have escaped the New York Times – the Amazons were real fighting and warring women of the Scythian steppes that extended from the Danube basin all the way to Mongolia. In the last ten years, advances in…
Sifting through the midden of IBRD yearly Reports
DeepDipBy sifting through middens, archeologists find information about the daily life of long gone cultures. Linguists have applied the same principle to IBRD yearly reports, and they too have come up with interesting findings.[1] Discarded words…
