Looking at the Corruption Perceptions Index 2012, it’s clear that corruption is a major threat facing humanity. Corruption destroys lives and communities, and undermines countries and institutions. It generates popular anger that threatens to further destabilise societies and exacerbate violent conflicts.
The Corruption Perceptions Index scores countries on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). While no country has a perfect score, two-thirds of countries score below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem.
Daily Archives: December 9, 2012
Peter Thiel And Rene Girard
“I suspect that when the history of the 21st century is written circa 2100, he [Girard] will be seen as one of the great intellectuals” – Peter Thiel
When Blake Masters was posting his great notes on Peter Thiel’s lectures at Stanford, I found myself fascinated by the influence of Rene Girard.
Girard’s an original thinker. I’m not fully persuaded by his worldview: it explains a lot, but not everything. I’ve summarized his views here.
1. Mimesis determines what you want: In Girard’s view, people have appetites, which are your basic evolutionary needs: e.g. hunger; and desires, which are all other wants, e.g. the desire for a diamond ring. Girard’s belief is that people form desires based on what others around them want.
This is known as the ‘mimetic mechanism’. People take their cues from the people around them. They use other people as ‘models’, and (subconsciously) want what other people want, while rationalizing the whole time. In the diamond ring example, companies like DeBeers create a want artificially, and it catches on like a virus. People want diamond rings because other people want them, but they rationalise it by saying “it shows that my partner loves me”.
Ethereal Macro Photos of Snowflakes in the Moments Before They Disappear
Russian photographer Andrew Osokin is a master of winter macro photography. His photo collection is chock full of gorgeous super-close-up photographs of insects, flowers, snow, and frost. Among his most impressive shots are photographs of individual snowflakes that have fallen upon the ground and are in the process of melting away. The shots are so detailed and so perfectly framed that you might suspect them of being computer-generated fabrications.
They’re not though. The images were all captured using a Nikon D80 or Nikon D90 DSLR and a 60mm or 90mm macro lens.