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Saturday, July 07, 2012

Drowning in Memories


Without risk there is no faith, and the greater the risk the greater the faith. -Kierkegaard, That Brother in arms of Orwell

Humanity demands that I stop for a minute … Today is exactly 32 years since I escaped from Czech and Slovak Socialist Republics to Austria. It is not every day one emerges alive when crossing the Iron Curtain. When is death not within ourselves?... Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and alseep, young and old. Sole survivors might often be thought of as anonymous, but we never want to be voiceless. You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you. It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one. War and Peace of escapes.

Character is destiny. All is One Most Orwellian of Orwell’s successors

Any subject can reach a state of worship that threatens criticism and free thought. So noted Christopher Hitchens, that most Orwellian of Orwell’s successors.

He is often called Orwell’s heir because of his fervent love for the writer. In the end, Christopher Hitchens was the most important Orwellian thinker since Orwell. Christopher Hitchens, one sees that his persona is oddly like that of Oscar Wilde’s character Lord Henry Wotton from The Picture of Dorian Gray: loved by an assortment of people for assorted reasons, often when they cannot square with him on something else. Like Wotton, Hitchens was popular with individuals, not because they agreed with him, but because they disagreed with him. When faced with the cultivated erudition, wit, conviction, and eloquence such that “Hitch” displayed, peacocking before a podium or a writer’s desk, one couldn’t help but fall like those in Dorian Gray who despised the hedonist Wotton, and yet couldn’t stay away from his conversation. It’s hard to say where Hitchens’ greatest popularity lies, but much Hitch-love comes from his status as the successor to George Orwell. Orwell’s manner, if anything, was the opposite of Hitchens’ strut. But the two are compared because they both criticized the Left from within on matters of international policy, albeit in independent ways. Hitchens broke from the Left over the so-called war on terror, quitting his literary homestead, The Nation, and making particularly derisive comments about his comrades. These actions were viewed as the strongest individual leftist dissent by a writer since Orwell’s infamous break over the Spanish Communists and the Soviet Union. To boot, Hitchens offered strong, vocal admiration for the elder English author and polemicist, and invoked Orwell on matters of principle and ethics regarding his own conservative turn. Indeed, the two are similarly noteworthy for their incorporation of morals into their politics.

For a lot of people, their first love is what they’ll always remember. For me it’s always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don’t let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental … there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn’t be doing one’s job if one didn’t itch to prick…

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• · · · Comedy is an essential part of any play. Without light how can we possibly create shadow? It's like a painter rejecting yellow. - Frustrations happen when expectations go unmet, but by changing your perspective, you can transform frustrations into solutions. Here are three ways to fill a glass half empty... Fill a Glass Half Empty; Somewhere in the world, a desperate user cries out for a UX hero. In the city, a lost tourist is looking for his hotel using a poorly designed app. In a nearby apartment, another man abandons his cart before making his first online purchase. Down the hall, his daughter struggles to complete a research paper using disorganized and unusable websites. An epidemic of unproductive web experiences is sweeping the city leaving a trail of disappointment and desperation in its wake. The world needs a hero. It’s time for each of us to rise up and say “I am that hero!”

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• · · · · · We don’t feel the force of the uncertainties felt by our predecessors The Olympics and Beyond; After many years of debate and resistance the Canadian legal profession is finally accepting that compulsory professional development is a necessity And the Learners Shall Inherit the Earth