Author: opoudjis

What is your favorite composition by John Adams?

By: | Post date: January 10, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Music

It’s still Nixon in China for me. I have a soft spot for Short Ride In A Fast Machine, even if it is all flash. Harmonilehre, as a third pressing of Mahler. Grand Pianola Music, for the sheer impudence of it. (Lolapalooza does that too.) Answered 2016-01-10 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-your-favorite-composition-by-John-Adams/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

What is the coolest way to handle a man hitting on your girlfriend/wife?

By: | Post date: January 8, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Personal

So, me and the missus are on our honeymoon in Europe, and our travels take us to Florence. My wife, an Under the Tuscan Sun (book) tragic, wants to retrace her steps from the last time she was in town, through San Gimignano, Siena, Orvieto  (in deepest darkest Umbria), and Cortona. Actually, Orvieto was my […]

I have an impression that some Aussies are overly ‘patriotic’ or over-loving their country. Is this true?

By: | Post date: January 7, 2016 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

Other respondents have argued that Australians are not overly patriotic compared to Americans. They are dismissing patriotism as the preserve of bogans. However 20 years ago, bogans did not express patriotism any more overtly than the elite; and wrapping yourself in the flag, particularly during a race riot like the 2005 Cronulla riots, would have […]

Is the bible just a history book or is there more to it than that?

By: | Post date: December 30, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture

Are they all not just history books concluding to have some moral message to help us live our lives? Because if this is true, then life should be put first before religions. And nobody should take a life of a preacher or one dedicated in a path to understand religion. It’s secondary is it not? […]

How often do you have to write formally and with proper grammar at your current job?

By: | Post date: December 28, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Personal

I’ve switched careers from being a humanities academic to being a business analyst. Currently I’m more a data analyst with a sideline in IT architecture and policy. The clarification is important, because business analysts are more human-facing than data analysts. I switched from natively writing in Dickensian paragraphs, to natively writing in dot points. My […]

Is Hawaii a common honeymoon destination for newly married Australian couples?

By: | Post date: December 22, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

My wife has been consistently advocating for Hawaii to anyone she knows, and we did in fact get engaged there. But we’re not typical of Australians: we’ve both lived in the States, and we’re not drawn to Indonesia. (Which is why she needs to do advocacy.) That said, Hawaii was full of Australians when we […]

What is it like to live in Irvine, CA?

By: | Post date: December 15, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Countries

I lived in Irvine from 1999 to 2001, though it doesn’t sound like much has changed since. I was in my late 20s, an urbanite, with no car. It was horrid. Irvine had just gotten Safest City in America status, with zero murders in the past year. After a few months there, I took to […]

What are some interesting facts about Western Australia most don’t know?

By: | Post date: November 24, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

Western Australian (or as Victorians unaffectionately call them, Sandgropers) don’t really act like they want to be in the same country as the more unwesterly states. I remember Dick Smith jams falling afoul of the Buy West Australian campaign, because their jams were bottled in Victoria. And in 1933, they almost got their wish: Western […]

What is it like to have the same first name as your last name?

By: | Post date: September 27, 2015 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Personal

Not that big a deal, although I think it’s meant I’m not as emotionally attached to my surname as I could have been. (I’m more attached to the “Dr.” 🙂 The surname hasn’t been in the family that long anyway. The jokes I hear when I’m introduced to people get old pretty quick, so I […]

Epictetus, Discourses I 1

By: | Post date: February 2, 2011 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Culture
Tags:

Well, I don’t know if this is a good idea at all. But this is one of my favourite passages of Ancient Greek. Rendered in GoAnimate, with pseudo-Laurence Olivier Text-To-Speech. Epictetus, Discourses I 1, in the Loeb Oldfather translation from 1925.

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