Yesterday I got home from Adelaide after attending a magic convention. Here are some impressions of this weekend of thaumaturgy.
The two and a half day gathering of magicians and magic enthusiasts started with a Close-Up show. It quickly became clear that this would be a weekend of card tricks, more card tricks and even some [...]
I have recently been introduced to ted.com, a great website that features “riveting talks by remarkable people”. One of the talks that I found very interesting is by J.J. Abrams, one of the creators of the TV series Lost. One of the most thought provoking things he says is:
Sometimes mystery is more important than knowledge.
A [...]
“Management gets the employees it deserves”, Carl snarlingly uttered as he returned to his desk. Natasha, with whom he had shared a cubicle for longer than they cared to remember, turned around. “What makes you say that? What happened?” Carl was obviously still upset as he threw his hands in the air. “This new guy [...]
Our researc topic for our expedition to Vietnam is Human Resource Management. As we are narrowing the topic down we found that local managers and academics are very interested in human resource management theories that are based in Western thinking.
They indicated that there is no Vietnamese human resource management theory and that they translate foreign [...]
One’s own is well hidden for one’s
own; and of all treasure troves, one’s
own is the last to be excavated . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra
Both the magician and the philosopher have arisen from the same archetypical and historical figure of the shaman. The anthropological record shows that shamans use technical and psychological principles, similar to those used by contemporary stage magicians, to aid there spiritual work.
I became interested in philosophy as a teenager by reading books about the history [...]
When I studied philosophy in the Netherlands, postmodernist thought was an important part of the curriculum. Now that I am studying in Australia, I am more exposed to the analytical philosophy tradition. (See also my previous article Schools of Thought). I have been reading some analytical criticisms of postmodern though and think some are missing [...]