TJDempsey

It has begun! The week I've been waiting for since... Um... I guess since around May last year! O-week! Orientation week at Curtin University. My week has been filled with scenes of bustling, sun-soaked courtyards, teeming with acne-ridden, snapback-rocking students fresh out of high school. I'm 25. I hadn't really given the significance of my … Continue reading Week One so far.

I read recently - most likely somewhere in Meditations' thorough footnotes - that Marcus Aurelius slept on the floor. He was Emperor of Rome, but he believed in frugality of living as a means to keep himself grounded and faithful to his post. And just today, I was reading about the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu's 2400 year-old … Continue reading Hardship.

You know what I really, truly love? Self-proclaimed 'Spartan-style' endurance runs and obstacle courses. I'm sure you've seen them advertised. The 'Spartan Race' website, found here, is packed to the brim with grit: a jet black background, peppered with solid, bold and high-impact fonts with plenty of capital letters, hashtags and motivational periods. Grey-scale portrait … Continue reading “Sparta”.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate." It's somewhat ironic - words such as these, so elegant, charming and evocative, are responsible for striking fear (and usually loathing) into the hearts of young high school students across the Western world. I came across this line a long … Continue reading Writing.

I've read a few dystopian novels in my time - Orwell's 1984, Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World to name some - and I'm sure that I'll have read a few more before this decade is out. The concept of exploring the impact of modern day phenomena in a not too distant future through our growing experience … Continue reading Book: Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’

[This post was inspired by a great article by Tim Boyle published in June last year for the Sydney Morning Herald. Article link is here.] Last night, Roger Federer wrapped up the Australian Open with his 20th grand slam title win, at the frankly astonishing age of 36. It was a five-set affair, with ebbs … Continue reading On boredom.

I've decided to write a small piece on each book that I read, for the dual purpose of both reflecting on the book itself and to encourage me to dig a little deeper after I finish. I'll try to do one of these a month, but it really depends on my speed of reading in … Continue reading Book: Louis Theroux’s ‘The Call of the Weird’

"History is bunk." - Henry Ford It is a somewhat counter-intuitive idea. The idea that the past has relevance to the future. A friend of mine recently lambasted me for my continual reference to things past. With an air of exasperation, she demanded to know why I insisted on always looking backwards when all we … Continue reading On past and future.

Lately, a particular thought of mine has been increasingly recurrent: As society learns to incorporate a rapidly expanding and increasingly complicated list of technologies within itself in the name of progress and the future, the gap between those with the skills required to understand these technologies and everyone else who merely sink into an elevated … Continue reading A note on the pace of the world.