Wow.
Dementia leads to the saddest goodbye ..
/
Friday, May 9 /
An uncle of mine has had Dementia for more than a decade and I feel this is such a terrible thing to happen to someone. Life is very precious and these cartoons by cartoonist Tony Husband who tries his best to give a honest account of watching Dementia steal away his father. A beautiful tribute.
Credit: Take Care, Son, by Tony Husband
"Life is Not a Science"
/
Tuesday, May 6 /
"I think I did figure something out. 'I' equals all of the 'if's added up over time. The 'if's, those are the possibilities. That's infinite for all of us. Every day, there are just millions of them. Time, that's finite for each of us. No question there. Maybe if you divide the choices by the amount of time you have, the real 'I' can emerge, depending upon those choices. So, in the end, all I can say is, you can't figure out a person. Definitely not yourself. You can't maximize a life. What you can do is try to be honest in the choices that you make. Be true to yourself. No matter how embarrassing those choices are. Life is not a science. I realize that. But if I told you I don't have a point system of some kind, I'd be a liar. Look, I'm a guy who does palindromes and tells jokes about leather jackets. Because that gives me some meaning, at least for now. You know what? I apologize for none of it, because the unexamined life is not worth living, man."
- Demetri Martin
It’s your life
/
/
“It’s your life — but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.”
Attended: EU FOREIGN POLICY - NEW CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
/
Wednesday, April 30 /
The most interesting insight for me was that future threat to the EU will not come from the East but from the South. Putin, according to Stefan Lehne, is a rational actor and as with all rational actors he will ratchet up the temperature but does not a big way. Too much money and too many houses owned by wealthy Russians in London make it very difficult for Putin to act without any regard. If the a plus-zero actor (EU) and a Zero-sum actor (Russia) have competition, it seems Russia will win according to game theory.
Ernst-Sucharipa-Memorial-Lecture given by Stefan Lehne (Ambassador; former Director General, Political Affairs, Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs; Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Europe, Brussels).
Diplomatic Academy of Vienna
Visited: Essl Museum
/
/
The best part of the visit was checking out Austrian artist Deborah Sengl's installation that combined history, literature and contemporary art in a “ratty” way. With some 200 stuffed white rats, she is staging The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus in 44 individual scenes. A year well spent.
ESSL MUSEUM of CONTEMPORARY ART
An der Donau-Au 1
3400 Klosterneuburg bei Wien
