An exception

(I came across this draft from a few years back, when the idea of Milei as president of Argentina was almost absurd.)

I came across Luis Novaresio’s interview with Javier Milei. In the first few minutes, the journalist is interested in the economist’s love for his dog (“my son”); he mentions that when he was down, literally lying on the floor, his dog was the only one that didn’t kick him (in other words, humans abandoned him, but not his animal).

These things reminded me of an idea from the prince of paradoxes, and with this idea, that I have a beer in the fridge.

Whatever a human being is, he is an exception. If he is not the image of God, then he is a scum of the dust. If he is not a divine being that fell from the sky, he can only be an animal that lost its head. […] A human being is always something worse or something better than an animal, and the mere argument of the latter’s perfection does not affect him. In sex, no animal is chivalrous or obscene. Also, no animal has invented anything as bad as drunkenness… nor as good as drinking. (G.K. Chesterton)

Lady in the Water

Twelve years ago I wrote a short entry about this movie: that it fascinated me. I never understood exactly why. I’ll try to do it in this new blog post.

It’s an American movie starring Paul Giamatti and Bryce Dallas Howard, and the music was composed by James Newton Howard. It was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, known for directing The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and The Village, among other award-winning and well-known movies. However, Lady is not one of them. Being a financial disappointment, it received negative reviews from critics for many factors. However, one of them surprised me: some considered it a comedy rather than a drama. I recently found an interview to Shyamalan after the 10th anniversary of the movie. Asked the obvious question, he said not only that he loves it, but also that if his house was burning down and he had to grab a few movies, Lady would be one of them.
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“Voters are all the same”

In a few months, in October 22, Argentinians will vote for representatives and senators. When we face an election, of any nature, and specially when it is important for our life (and the lives of others, like in this case), it is common to consider the different options and assess what implies to choose one choice and reject the others. However, as a parallel step, one cannot stop learning and change, if necessary, his/her way of considering options, and this is based directly on experience. In the first step you assess the options (job offers, a technical decision, our career, whether it is time to have kids or not, the candidates); in the second step you assess yourself (as a professional, as a fathers/mother, as a citizen). Without this second part, which is personal, there is no growth.
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For they live reality profoundly

I just watched a great interview to Ernesto Sábato, an Argentinian writer, author of The Tunnel (among other books), championed by writers like Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene. After graduating with a PhD in physics, he quits science and communism, and dedicates his life to writing and painting.

A student once asked him about some sociological and historical aspects around another of his books (On Heroes and Tombs). Sábato replied that “a great novel is the one that considers those great characteristics of man: the question about God, loneliness, resentment, envy, love, the problem of death. These aspects are eternal, and that’s what the Ecclesiastes means when it says ‘nothing is new under the sun’; the man’s heart is eternal. All other aspects in a great novel, including sociological and historical ones, are almost a pretext.”
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