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Month: December 2016
Who is Nick Nicholas?
A2A by Michael Masiello, Edward Conway, Jean-Baptiste Bertrand I can neither confirm nor deny that the following is a depiction of Michael and Edward encouraging me to answer this question: The brutal history behind some of Parliament’s unusual traditions | Metro News (And I mean, if it did, then which of Edward and Michael would […]
Are there Mafia in Melbourne?
Yes. In fact, Melbourne is a stronghold of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia: Honoured Society (Australia). Their main business these days is drugs. They will turn up in the papers maybe once a year. There was also the spree of Melbourne gangland killings from 1996 to 2010, in which the ’Ndrangheta was only one of […]
Where should I start with Shostakovich?
Symphonies: The 5th is the standard introduction to Shostakovich. The 9th is small, but has all the hallmarks of true Shostakovich. It’s how I got started. The 7th is populist (rat-tat-tat-tat-tat), but its slow movement is sublime. The 24 Preludes and Fugues have something for everybody. Answered 2016-12-19 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Where-should-I-start-with-Shostakovich/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
How does everyone accept that they are going to die someday and there’s nothing they can do about it?
If you are a believer in a religion with an afterlife, as others have said, you are doing something about it. If you’re an atheist? You accept it the same way you accept other unpleasant facts about life. Grudgingly and gradually. When I was in my late 20s, I resented the fact that one day […]
SEEN: The Founder
The Founder (film) – Wikipedia—The Founder (Rotten Tomatoes)—The Founder (2016) (IMDB) Just seen. Biopic about Ray Kroc and Richard and Maurice McDonald. Good, well crafted film, I thought. Amazing and subtle performance by Michael Keaton. Susceptible to the cliches and annoyances in plotting of a biopic, including the mandatory flashback setpieces (though the setpiece here […]
What’s your favourite Christmas carol? Why?
I got a related question in my feed a few weeks back. I passed, but I kept thinking I should answer. Yesterday, Tamar and I had stopped off on the way to a work Xmas BBQ, for her to pick up cheese and for me to pick up caffeine. The shopping centre blasts out Christmas […]
What are the funniest nicknames you’ve been given over the years?
In the order that I recall then: The delightful Australianism Nicko: only once from a blokey geography teacher. Acka Nicka in my local high school (where I mercifully only stayed a year), because of my premature acne. Nick Squared in my elective high school, because Nick Nicholas. NSN as an undergraduate, because I used to […]
What were the long-range effects of Nixon’s foreign policy?
The world was blessed, that a US president should take so much interest in foreign policy, and stake his posterity on it. The world was cursed, that Nixon was that president, and he squandered so much of his foreign policy on political point-scoring. From my reading: His biggest legacy was opening up China, and he […]
Was the Ottoman empire the ISIS of the 14th century?
Matthew Franklin, Jakub Handlíř and Tomas Rocha Martins are completely correct. If you’re looking for an equivalent to ISIS in the 13th or 14th century, you’re looking for an agent that is not abiding by the then extant international rules of conduct, and that is reviled universally, by coreligionists and outsiders alike, as being beyond […]
The phrase “everyone’s entitled to their opinion” annoys me. What can I do?
There are people on this thread who are calling you a snob, too. Screw ’em. You have an aesthetic. You have a grounding for that aesthetic, that you can (I hope) articulate and defend. Hopefully, it’s an aesthetic that’s also aware of its own contingency and situatedness, and has no pretensions of immutable truth. People […]