student blogger

Some time ago, while still in Italy, one of my assignments for the ‘Philosophy of Science' course was reading ‘Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond- a physiology and geography professor at UCLA. The size was not promising, at all, but the content was anything but boring.

The book opens with Diamond describing his meeting with a New Guinean tribe chief who, whilst they were walking on a beach, asked him: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?".

With the word ‘cargo' meaning ‘material goods', the question gains a huge reach in the professor's mind. So, reformulating it, the question is: "How and why have all these differences between groups of people developed?". It is a really big question that some people have preferred to avoid by labeling others as ‘inferior' giving a start to racist theories, which Diamond wants to disprove with his whole argumentation.

The title may mislead the reader, the main argument is not about war or anything similar. ‘Guns, germs and steel' are actually the closest reasons why some groups of people throughout the world are more developed than others. It might seem rather obvious, but these are just the closest reasons.

Malala Yousafzai attended her first day at school in Birmingham, yesterday. She described this day as: "the most important of my life", and I believe it should represent an achievement for all of us and a reminder of the struggles of people in other countries.

The braveness of a Pakistani adolescent, who was shot in the head by Taliban for asking education to be granted to girls in Pakistan, has to remind us that what we have is still denied in other places.
However, the irony is that while in some parts of the world people risk their lives to gain access to education, somewhere else the importance of a hard-won historical right is denied.

I often happen to hear youths lamenting because they have to study: it is too boring and useless.
I see so many teenagers, forgotten by their parents, wandering around the city smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and ‘acting cool'. None of them has a dream, a purpose, a motivation and the more I witness this, the more I think about Malala and how differently education is conceived today in modern societies.

I have always loved animals, sometimes more so than people honestly. If you compare the behavior of some individuals to that of your pet, you can't help but feel that animals can be much kinder than some humans.

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way; bearing that in mind, it seemed very strange to me that given the circumstances, some animal-lovers, while very kind to animals, looked at them in two completely different ways. The first: kind, cute, harmless ANIMALS. The second: delicious, juicy, medium-rare DISH OF THE DAY. Basically, they have the ability to transform according to their surroundings, in this case, a Restaurant or a Petting Zoo.

Why do some people who adore animals, feel completely fine with eating them?

1. Disassociation

A few months ago a friend strongly recommended me to listen to a music album called ‘An Awesome Wave', by debuting Cambridge-native band Alt-J. It took me some time to take his advice, but it eventually turned up as one of the best musical choices I have ever made.

The first listen may not be so exciting. It can seem like you are listening to an alternative-indie band with a very soft and comforting sound, but which doesn't stand out from the whole bunch of rather experimental emerging groups who have tried to succeed over the last few years with their debut albums. Luckily I decided to listen to it a little bit more patiently - always give music a second chance - and this time it didn't disappoint.

The first track ‘Intro' gets the listener into the atmosphere of ‘An Awesome Wave' (the album's name) which will rise through the whole record - vocals "One, two, three...Yeaaaah!" make it even more chilling -, before ending with the very intimate song ‘Taro', where the tide lowers and good vibes reach their peak.

The recent film from polemical director Quentin Tarantino, ‘Django Unchained', is a ‘Spaghetti Western', a genre that emerged during the 1960s. It is a story about a freed slave, who with the help of a German bounty hunter sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. This critical review will focus on two characters that play a pivotal role alongside the hero Django (played by Jamie Foxx).

Django´s Wife

The ‘captive' Broomhilda, is the principal motor of the story; Django desires revenge on those who tortured her and the will to rescue her is what compels him into the adventure. The story is typical of Westerns films; what is known as the ‘captivity narrative'.

Usually the white woman, representing the values of Christianity and civilisation, is held captive by savages who, through torture and rape, put in peril the values she represents. She is finally rescued after courageous resistance to physical and psychological exploitation. However, in the complicated ideological bloodbath of Django´s story, Broomhilda´s rescue does not represent the triumph of civilisation over savagery, or the opposite.