To one struggling to find a place in society and a shape to give to his life, a speech like this one by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is bound to be stirring. My favorite quote: "It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations." To summarize, for those of you too pressed for time to read the whole thing, Solzhenitsyn ( Read more... )

It has once more been reaffirmed that I can't go east of the continental divide without employers crawling out of the woodword to throw job offers at me. When I came home in September this year, at least half a dozen employment possibilities materialized during the first few days I was at home. This time, I didn't even make it off the plane in ( Read more... )

I tried to post this as a comment to the original post, but due to the Chesterton passage it was way too long ( Read more... )

I've always identified myself with kaleidoscopes ever since high school. I remember thinking about originality and how I tend to pick up words and phrases and slang expressions from people I think are cool, and I was despairing because I never seemed to be really original myself - I could only draw from things that I had already seen or heard or ( Read more... )

I started writing my autobiography recently. Given that I'm only twenty-two, I find that kind of pathetic. John Cusack said in High Fidelity, "Only people of a certain disposition are sure they're going to be alone for the rest of their lives at age 26, and we were of that disposition." Well, I guess I am of the disposition that at age 22 thinks ( Read more... )

To make myself feel like a less inadequate blogger, I'm going to transplant an entry from my offline journal. Look! Now my livejournal has two entries ( Read more... )

I can't decide if the omens for my first livejournal entry are good or not. On the upside, I was referred by Alex Zane - the acknowledged master of publicly posted philosophical commentary. On the downside, I have nothing interesting to write about. I suppose the deciding factor would be the fact that it's nearly four o'clock and I haven't ( Read more... )