“If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.

And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot … no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into insensibility; imagine a figure, half angel, half devil, all human …

Slouching hopefully towards Tadfield… .
… forever.”

Reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. This is how you end books.

Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

Roger Ebert wrote these wondrous lines for his review of the Tree of Life, itself an epic. Roger Ebert remains the first guy in history to win a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism.

I’ve gone back to reading Wodehouse this past week and I’m back in gushing fanboy love again, not that there’s any other emotion you can feel with him. Wodehouse is the Master. “ Still the funniest writer ever to have put words on paper ” as Hugh Laurie called him. This is about the most understated compliment you can give Wodehouse.

What amazes me each time I pick up a Wodehouse book is the wonderful prose. Nobody writes like that anymore. There are lots of funny writers, but none can make you grin absurdly like him. As an example to his starkly different prose:

“What ho!” I said.

“What ho!” said Motty.

“What ho!  What ho!”

“What ho!  What ho!  What ho!”

After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

See what I mean? Hilarious.

Wodehouse was one of the early writers who relied on situational comedy. He created hilarious situations for his characters...

In my favorite article of all time, George Packer mentions what is arguably Peter Thiel’s most famous quote: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.“ In other words, according to Thiel, technology progressed, but not in the right direction. Technology reached a standstill, or there is a stagnation currently.” I don’t consider this to be a technological breakthrough,” he said (of his iPhone). “Compare this with the Apollo space program.“

I’ve thought a lot about this statement, and what it means. Is it right, and are we really stagnating? Or is he completely off-track? Most people think its the latter. We’ve got virtual reality, drone delivery, 3D printing of houses and body parts. There’s progress, however incremental on almost all fronts. Technology has crept into every aspect of existence. There is progress, and lots of it. As Thiel’s "intellectual sparring partner”...

Or rather, the fundamental problem that Public Policy aims to solve.
Clickbaited you there, didn’t I?

Public policy is that branch of politics that aims to solve problems a civic society faces. It is problem-solving, on a government level. So what is the main problem that Public policy or policy analysts aim to solve?

I think it is the attempt to improve the psyche of a nation. It is finding ways to make sure the collective thought of the nation is progressing. How do you design policies that ensure that this generation and the successive generations do not litter on the roads? How do you implement policies and laws to ensure we follow traffic rules? Successive governments and policymakers have tried and failed to incentivize us to stop littering or stop spitting. But we all know how that’s fared. So how do you do it? I have no answer. But its worth thinking about ; that this is the...

I just invented that word.

Just a short update to the blog that I finally have a good 2 months to give to writing here before I get very busy again. I’ve neglected writing, or borrowing posts I think are good and putting them here, for far too long. I don’t even remember when my last update was, and if it was in 2015.

I’ve thought of a couple things to write about, which I will focus on for the next month and a half. Public Policy, film-making and its criticism, books and other stuff is on the table at the moment. I plan to write short posts but I usually start and before I blink its 2000 words and a nice long Slate-level rant. So I’ll make it a rule to keep it short , close to 500 words and shorter, but a promise that I will not make many edits. Let’s see where this goes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

• Paul Hawkens (2009)

What follows is an excerpt from a book. Well, a fan-fiction.

“There’s a tale I once heard about some students who came into a physics class, and the teacher showed them a large metal plate near a fire. She ordered them to feel the metal plate, and they felt that the metal nearer the fire was cooler, and the metal further away was warmer. And she said, write down your guess for why this happens. So some students wrote down ‘because of how the metal conducts heat’, and some students wrote down ‘because of how the air moves’, and no one said ‘this just seems impossible’, and the real answer was that before the students came into the room, the teacher turned the plate around.”

"Interesting”, said Professor Quirrell. “Is there a moral?”

“That your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality,” said Harry. “If you’re equally good at explaining any...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Mlu7sHEHE

Introduction

The link above is of a debate held by the Veritas Forum, on the search for truth. The Forum describes it best:

Join [N.T. Wright](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N._T._Wright) , [Peter Thiel](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel), and moderator Ross Douthat in a discussion on hope, technology, politics, and theology.

This Forum considers the question “what is the hope for humanity” but what do we mean by this? In today’s modern culture, with all our technological and social advances, where is our hope most soundly placed? Is it even wise to hope for, or imagine, a better life? What does faith, or the absence of faith, have to do with any of this?

N.T. Wright is a venerable British scholar, an authority on the New Testament. Thiel, to take Joss Whedon out of context, is a “ billionaire genius philanthropist ” investor. To see such...

In the first season of The West Wing, an American plane with dozens of U.S passengers is shot in the air by Syrian fugitives. President Bartlet, played by the extremely versatile Martin Sheen, now has his first test as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States. He has a really interesting discussion with his Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry. Penned by Aaron Sorkin, what follows below is the transcript of said discussion, taken from Wikiquotes.

What I really love about Sorkin is the idealism in his characters, their response to crises, and the faith the characters have in each other. Its uplifting, which makes for good television of course, but I like to think that he writes, hoping to provide for more than entertainment to his audience, whom he considers intelligent and capable of keeping up with his whirlwind of a pace. His signature quick-witted writing, dishing out facts one after the...