The Disappointed Idealist

Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit by Craig Oliver My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book is written like a journal, which sometimes can mean events are not presented as linked together. I found myself a few times having to go back to recheck the chain of events. David Cameron is presented in a very positive light and clearly the author has a very good opinion of him. I am not entirely sure it is justified. The part I appreciated the most was the realistic presentation of the bafflement of the Remain campaign in regards to the lengths the Leave campaign was willing to go to and the false information that was being spread around in the name of Leave. I think this is the sort of bafflement that remains to this day in regards to many other topics, which are being pushed around with aggressiveness and shared in the name of "free speech". This is the challenge of today's era of social media and Brexit was just one of the first visible examples. View all my reviews

Nothing But the Truth: Selected Dispatches by Anna Politkovskaya My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a book that needs to be read if not for any other reason than for us to remember what war brings. To remember what happens outside our zone of comfort to people just like us who had the misfortune to be born in an area where other nations' interest decided that a warzone must be created. This is what happens when nationalism and pride in your nation goes to the extent of not respecting other nations' right to live. In a world where most of the people reading this book have no worse worries than paying their mortgages and loans to buy cars and phones, there are people who don't even know whether or not they will live another day. And when the worst strikes, it doesn't even strike fast, because the people of which this book talks of are tortured in the most inhuman ways you can think of. And this happens while the Western society ignores it and numbs itself into oblivion. W...

It just so happens that yesterday I was talking to someone about this and then today I found this article: How Michigan literally poisoned an entire city to save a few bucks . I will let you read the details, but the conclusion is what needs to remain: "Being a cheapskate can be expensive indeed." The article is written from an economic point of view, so I will adopt the same tone from then on, but let's not forget the damage done to actual children and human beings, a damage which cannot be measured in money. But, by all means, let's be as cynical as the people making these decisions and let's just talk in terms of how much money these decisions will cost them (because, yes, money makes the world go round and health is a minor issue). We've just come out of a period of crisis. During this time lots of companies laid off a lot of people for reasons of cost-saving. I can totally understand the decision, hard as it may be for me as an employee, what I am...

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Thomas Sowell goes against the general trend of ideas promoted by today's society in this book and I appreciate that quite a lot. There is, indeed, a general fear (that he actually consistently criticizes) of attacking certain ideas that means that most of the intellectuals of today (as he very well points out) are actually, with different words, promoting the same trends and ideas. It takes guts to go against the trend and I like it. Generally speaking, the themes of this book revolve around the fact that intellectuals are people who speak without practical experience which means that in most cases, no matter how smart they are, they do not really know what they are talking about. But because they sound like they know what they are saying, they are influential in creating policies that in the end hurt the very people they are claiming to defend. I tend to agree with this idea. I also agree that in many cases the...

I am again using Cracked as an inspiration for a blog post, but hell. Whatever works. It all starts from  this article . It really makes a good point, as far as I am concerned, but I would raise yet another point. What movies do, is that in most cases they split the movie characters in The Good One and The Evil One. There are certain nuances, like The Good and Weak One who is afraid to fight unless properly motivated, the Evil Stupid One and the Evil Smart One. But basically you know around the half-time who you should root for and who will, eventually win the fight (because movies where the Evil One wins are rather rare - and even there the movie will leave a ray of light available, like in the True Detective Season 2 finale). The reality, however, is never that simple. You will not be able to tell who the Evil One is, the Evil One is rarely an actual person and it will rarely be as simple as just getting rid of the Evil One. OK, there are exceptions. There's Hitler, for...

...and I have seen two kinds of reactions:  1. People turning their Facebook profile pictures in rainbow colours  2. People dissing the whole situation with arguments like "next stop we'll be marrying animals", "it's not normal", "marriage is for religion", "marriage is for reproduction", bla bla bla  I fall under neither of the above two categories.  As a start-up point of my beliefs on gay rights, you can read my post on  categorizing people . I feel the need to expand on that with the recent explosion of social network statuses on the subject. So here we go: 1. Before we go any further, I would like to establish that gay people are  people . That means that they have the same rights as all the others (no more, but no less), same right to be upset as anyone would be when someone posts a public post saying that they are "anomalies" and so on. If you are wondering why some gay people make such a fuss about this, i...

It all starts with this link: 6 Outdated Myths Everyone Still Believes About Homosexuality Far be it from me to recommend a website like Cracked to influence your system of beliefs. But out of that entire article, I will quote one sentence that truly strikes a chord with me: It's situations like these that bring credibility to the concept of "pansexuality" -- being attracted to people, not genders. So why is it that we feel the need to categorize people based on who they prefer to be sleeping with? How would you like to be categorized for preferring blondes over brunettes (or the other way around)? How is that in any way relevant to the person you are, the way you are thinking, your brain? Is that what defines you as a person? Truly? Why is it that we make such a big fuss whenever an actor comes out as gay or bisexual? Why should that actor feel the need to do so at all? I could of course start a separate debate on why on Earth we would feel to know that about hi...

Because someone pointed out to me that I haven't posted in a while and because almost every movie has a message beneath the surface - and this one is not even that deeply buried. Cleanskin is a movie about an agent sent to clean up on the hush hush, basically an assassination job meant to eliminate the people behind a bombing attack. And when I read it like that it was not something I felt too inclined to watch - but I did anyway because it was brought to my attention that there might be more to the movie than that synopsis. What this movie does, however, unlike most action movies in a similar situation, is present both sides. The suicide bomber's evolution from an agnostic studying law to, well, suicide bomber, is presented in more detail than you would expect. And the sad part is, it makes sense. I will not sit here and reveal to you the movie and how it manages to make sense of something most Western people do not understand. It's hard to understand - when all y...

Fracking is a quite a controversial subject nowadays. People I know are taking different sides in this story, and both have arguments that could work. But here's where I stand: 1. It has not been proven 100% that fracking pollutes, or so say the ones that promote it or defend it. But has it been proven 100% that it doesn't? If not, don't we have the obligation to check that, BEFORE trying it? Because if it turns out that it does hurt people and if only just one person dies because of it - regardless of how much money is made over it - then it's just wrong. 2. Regardless of whether fracking is dangerous or not, the people who live in the area have the right to decide whether or not it happens. If they believe it's wrong, it shouldn't be done. If you really believe they're wrong, bring arguments, talk to them. Sending the army against a bunch of ordinary people who believe are defending their lives is just wrong. 3. We live in a world where everything ...

...it's funny there was no-one left to notice When they came for us. There's this movie . In it, a factory is closed down - replaced with another one. The factory has over 1000 employees - the manager has announced that he will keep about 300 for the new one. As a result of that, most employees did not protest the factory closure. Although there was only about 30% chance that they would be the ones that are kept, most of them went by the logic that if they play nice they will be kept. This is the logic based on which great masses of people are kept under control. They promise you a chance to not be affected by a bad change, if you don't protest. Based on this logic, in Nazi Germany people who were not antisemitic did not protest to persecution the regime was promoting - because they hoped that in that way they will not end up suffering a similar fate. The problem with adopting such an attitude is that it allows manipulative people to make changes that are agai...