September 2008
5 posts
people, books, and others
I have just finished reading The Book of Other People, which is a collection of short stories written by twenty-three fresh authors and edited by Zadie Smith. This made for entertaining and thought-provoking reading as I made my morning commute, and I can think of nothing more different than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which tired me. My only complaint with the collection concerns the redundancy of...
elle woods meets aristotle
I work at a law firm, and some might believe that I’m working there as a means by which to bolster future graduate school applications. That is not true; I am working there because I need to eat. Granted, it’s not the most impressive job, and I don’t do the most intellectual tasks while I’m at work, I think there is some practicality to working after graduation. After all, not everyone has...
invisible man
Two very important things have happened since I last posted: I quit reading War and Peace and became gainfully employed. I can’t help but wonder if those two events are inherently related. People talk about some mythical place after college called the real world, and apparently, this real world is more difficult than the imaginary world known as college. So I’ve transitioned from both imaginary...
August 2008
10 posts
the mind-body divide
I would prefer to watch the Olympics without the constant references to Michael Phelps. There are several thousand other athletes competing in the Olympics, and many of them interview a lot better than he does.
At this point, it is indisputable that Michael Phelps is consistently the fastest swimmer at the Olympics, and it’s even become a little boring to watch him race. I respect that he works...
“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think...”
– Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground
totez the best way for a narrator to introduce himself
comment away
At least two people have mentioned a need for comments on this page. Thanks to google and disqus, I have figured out a way to enable them.
anatomy of (an applicant's) melancholy
Why is it so difficult to gain acceptance into a prestigious professional school? One might go mad in an attempt to cultivate the perfect application. Elite professional schools fetishize renaissance (wo)men. They want the next Galileo, Cervantes, Fielding, Obama. There is some amount of glamour and intellectual status (obviously) associated with attaining advanced degrees, but the application...
war and peace; brooklyn and manhattan
Machiavellian and Hegelian theories put forth the idea that war and peace are mutually dependent. Theoretically, both war and peace are essential in maintaining a properly functioning democracy. They are two sides of the same coin—that coin being democracy—and with good reason, they carry different connotations.
We had our apartment-warming party in Brooklyn last night. It was fun,...
an abridged version of my thesis →
history and science
I am a recent graduate from Wesleyan University, now living in Brooklyn. For better or for worse, I double majored in History—with an intense concentration in Intellectual History—and Molecular Biology & Biochemistry. Yes, those two majors are intrinsically related despite what people may think. As intellectual historian Peter Watson contends in The Modern Mind, his polemical...
fun with words! →
more social networking
Writing about myself is more fun than writing cover letters and applying to jobs. And Justin asked me to join.