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Year of the Tiger
It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fightRisin' up to the challenge of our rivalAnd the last known survivor stalks his prey in the nightAnd he's watchin' us all with the eye of the...
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The battle for the future is worth fighting
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. (Lenin)I had forgotten how hard the way up can be. The literature on bipolar...
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¡Qué viva México!
Off to Mexico for five days... out into the thin polluted air of Mexico City... the Periférico, usually loaded with the evening commute, is flowing steadily on a Wednesday afternoon. Out at...
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The filth and the fury
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked ... (Allen Ginsberg - Howl)In the academic year 2007-2008 I used to work for a research institute in Germany,...
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The ashes of memory
In the late spring of 1945, a group of resistance fighters watch the Brenner Pass, hidden in the forest, on the steep mountain range dividing occupied Northern Italy from annexed Austria. A long column...
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The riddle of the anarchist watermelon
The anarchist movement is, by its own definition, an extremely composite and heterogeneous entity. Still, one can trace certain broad currents as they developed and differentiated along its roughly two...
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Of waves and particles
The devastating magnitude 9 earthquake with tsunami that hit the Northeast of Japan, and the unfolding nuclear crisis at the Fukuchima Daiichi power plant, is a human tragedy of immense proportions,...
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Mixing memory and desire
April is the cruellest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.(T.S.Eliot, The waste land)Roman Polanski - Macbeth (Banquo's ghost)Yes,...
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City Lights
Choose your enemies carefully, for they will define you.Make them interesting, 'cause in some ways they will mind you.They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends,they're gonna last...
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Dream and the Underworld
One of the most interesting modern developments of Jungian style psychology can be found in James Hillman's book "The Dream and the Underworld". Starting from the classical psychoanalytic premise of...
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Books not t-shirts!
There is an online petition whose text reads as follows:Caltech used to have one of the very best scientific bookstores in the country. Three years ago the Caltech administration, without consulting...
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the challenge of Job
Perhaps Antonio Negri, better than anybody else, is the philosopher who can speak the words of Job in our modern time. The atheist, communist philosopher who spent a good part of his life in jail for...
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Eminence and demise
The strongest poison ever knownCame from Caesar's laurel crown.(William Blake, Auguries of Innocence)William Blake, Book of Urizen, 1794I have been, in one capacity or another, associated to the world...
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The dreams of others
Méfiez-vous du rêve de l'autre, parce que si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtes foutu (Gilles Deleuze) Science is a vast tapestry woven out of a texture of shared dreams. It would not...
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The Gramscian Golem and the horizon of meaning
Golem returns! Let us imagine a follow up to Stanislaw Lem's story of Golem XIV, the artificial intelligence created in the service of the military, who refuses to perform its duties and, having grown...
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the Chrysalis
Christopher Gaston "The Chrysalis", 2012 Phase transitions, we call them in Physics. In our everyday existence, we recognize them as sudden rips in the texture of life, catastrophic transformative...
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mourning the MOOC
Coursera: "Philosophy and the Sciences", The University of Edinburgh (no longer available) I am recovering from a veritable MOOC addiction. It started a few months ago, when for some reasons I kept...
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The Invisible Pachyderm: Ageism in Science and in Radical Communities
There is a big Elephant in the Room, a large old pachyderm nobody is willing to see. Certain widespread prejudices that have been entrenched in the scientific community since time immemorial have come...
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Who counts as a futurist? Whose future counts?
A shorter version of this text appeared as a guest post on the Mathbabe blog.For a good part of the past century the term "futurism" conjured up the image of a revolutionary artistic and cultural...
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The trouble with Oomza
I just read Okorafor's remarkable novella "Binti" that recently won the 2016 Hugo award (scruffy and rabid puppies of all kinds notwithstanding). The main character is a young student, on her way to...
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Mathematicians and the Moral Responsibilities of Science
Three years ago I was giving my plenary address at a posh conference in Shanghai, all luxury and splendor in one of the most beautifully futuristic cities in the world. I was content enough to...
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those rifles buried in memory lane
It's been exactly twenty years to the day since my mother died. A life of inextricably high complexity, out of which it is difficult to extract a coherent memory portrait. In light of the current...
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The Privilege of Escape
Umberto Boccioni, Quelli che Vanno, 1911 So I did it... I am comfortably resting in a nice high-rise apartment in the center of Toronto, with a new very comfortable scientist job (in many ways even...
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the Polar Star and the Life Endgame (elegy for a departed friend)
When you approach the age of ninety, death does not come unexpectedly: it is the silent shadow that walks with you, that you get to know intimately long before the final encounter. Such is the nature...
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Мир без тебя
Двадцать лет ты был моим лучшим другом, Юрий. В лучшие и худшие времена моей жизни я приходила к твоей двери. У тебя всегда были слова, которые исцеляли. У тебя мудрость, милая улыбка. В этом году,...
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