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Despatches from the throne
There's that thing some fellow said about leading horses to water. This particular afternoon at work I had just discovered that attention spans were quite similar to horses in their reluctance to drink. The general environment wasn't helping either. For a start: Whoever came up with open-plan office layouts - I'd bet he was the sort of enthu-cutlet whose idea of a quiet afternoon is to be the only dinosaur in the Smithsonian when schoolchildren visit. • • •
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Scribbled notes from the sea coast
"That's the difference with trains, especially the open window ones, I suppose. You can be physically within, yet mentally in your own world throughout the journey - the breeze, the rhythm and the fleeting sights acting as a natural barrier to being fixed to a place. On the contrary there's too much "noise" (in the sense of a signal to noise ratio), too much interaction with flights - that by the time your own train of thought has left the chaos, you're interrupted by a sickeningly sweet voice hastening it back into the economy-class interiors. Asking you whether you'd like peanuts or pretzels with your coke" • • •
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Soft power and soiled linen
It is going to be very, very interesting to see the outcome of this election. Most of the world has been sitting up and taking notice of the 2016 Presidential election in numbers unsurpassed before. But what everyone had been gazing at until the campaign started was a country whose image had been built by its soft power over the past few decades: The average person in the nineties looked at America and thought of successful free enterprise, a country of hard-working entrepreneurs, wide roads and Hollywood. Today, that image lives in the minds of a smaller demographic less frequently exposed to the news, but nothing had rocked the boat so severely as to endanger it completely. For, despite all the disdain America received over its healthcare system, its gun laws (the lack of them) and what was seen as a relentless pursuit of capitalism, a large majority of the world still looked at its free shores of materialistic pleasure with not-so-secret admiration. They respected a country that was built not on a narrow definition of its citizens, but on the promise of happiness for anyone who could work hard to be successful. • • •
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Agreeing on how to disagree
I've had my fair share of arguments with sensible people over nuanced topics. More than the outcomes themselves, what I will remember is the inherent respect in a debate between two individuals. The willingness to listen to someone whom you disagree with, even if you look down upon them. • • •