Israeli blitzkrieg

I feel a sense of irony - can anyone else feel it?

Intelligence as metaphysics

"The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Paul Pillar, the CIA's senior Middle Eastern analyst from 2000 to 2005, argued recently.

Dogmat gets his dream job

I have been employed as a bicycle messenger. This is very exciting, since it was my childhood fantasy to be paid to ride my bike (ok, this is not the Tour de France, but let us leave those small details aside).
The bad news is that, apparently, many couriers are on heroin. The good news is that the last London courier to die 'in the line of duty' was back in 2004.
My training is this afternoon, and I should start tomorrow.

One year on

The information superhighway's slowest vehicle has been trundling along for a year now. Allez dogmat, allez!
Blossoming in the aftermath of horror, like poppies in the trenches, dogmat has endured a whole year of shaky consumer confidence and uncertain futures markets. Bravo!

"the Consul needed a drink..."

There is a pub two doors down from where I am staying, which I ventured into yesterday. A proper Irish place, promoting not live World Cup but live Gaelic football. The barman strolls over to me: "What tickles your fancy?"
This question was made all the more funny by the lad's scruffy countenance and three day old shiner. I began to imagine a bare-knuckle boxing match, horses milling about in the background...though he probably got it in a karate class, or being mugged (is nothing sacred anymore?)

I settled down to try to read Nietzsche and Philosophy over the blaring folk music. It wasn't difficult.

Retrato de Oscar Morineau, 1936 (Diego Rivera)

What on earth has dogmat been up to?

I have arrived in London. Before coming here, I spent my final weeks in Coventry mostly in a pleasant 'pub' on campus, drinking, smoking and talking 'philosophy' with other students too jaded to want to do anything else. I was re-acquainted with Tome, discussing Bergson and the thing in itself. I also spent time with Favela, who reawoke my interest in Neil Young (and other things which I don't care to mention).
Yes, it is true, I got my results, but they were poor, very poor, except for the dissertation on perception which stumbled into a fair mark. On the plus side, Axel outdid himself - and everyone else - proving that 'marijuana and David Lynch' is not a recipe for disaster after all.

I put my nose around the door of Tate Modern the other day, but I only looked at the Francis Bacon, whose paintings I have never seen - dare I say it? - 'in the flesh' before. I have made the embankment my new home, sitting around with my flask of coffee, reading Lowry's Under the Volcano, and dreaming of ice cold cerveza.
I've not been reading much lately, though I did delight in consuming a book called - mysteriously - La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant, written by a mysterious man named Jean-Baptiste Botul, and recommended to me by M, who was introduced to this marvellous thinker by one of his mysterious co-conspirators.