November 2010
1 post
£14 9s 3d for tuition fees? Bring in a cap!
We study Newton and Darwin - but not how they managed their student debt
The Times Online
November 5 2010 12:01AM
He is the very model of the kind of student the Government seems to have in mind: he graduates and goes on to make a pile of money - even though he had to struggle to fund his way through his studies. A reluctant farmer, he was fined 3s 4d at the age of 16 for allowing...
October 2010
1 post
In defence of our noble humanities
The humanities are a satnav system for exploring civilisations across time and space
The Independent
Monday, 18 October 2010
Everyone who has ever studied any “humanities” subject at university will have had the experience. I can remember it happening to me twice. I was writing a PhD thesis at the time called “The Knowledge of Ignorance” – a title plainly asking for...
August 2010
1 post
The Phenomenology of Ugly
Opinionator
Exclusive Online Commentary From The New York Times
By ANDY MARTIN
August 10th, 2010
This all started the day Luigi gave me a haircut. I was starting to look like a mad professor: specifically like Doc in “Back to the Future.” So Luigi took his scissors out and tried to fix me up. Except — and this is the point that occurred to me as I inspected the hair in the bathroom mirror...
June 2010
1 post
Surfin’ Safari
Review New York Times
By ANDY MARTIN
Published: June 9, 2010
A nomadic Californian surfer once took a wrong turn somewhere in Europe and ended up at the Berlin Wall. His faithful board still slung across his back like a guitar, he gazed up at one of the border guards, ensconced in a tower behind a machine gun and miles of barbed wire, and yelled out, “Man, you are bummed, because you will...
March 2010
13 posts
My blogs on honey bees, Marilyn Monroe, Deep... →
andymartinthewriter.com →
Mini-article about Jean-Paul Sartre’s love letters
Here is the mini-article about Jean-Paul Sartre’s love letters published in The Times, February 13th.
It was like discovering a lost Inca ruin. Buried in a cardboard box in Manhattan, at the Morgan Library. While researching a book, ‘What It Feels Like To Be Alive’, I recently came across a bundle of forgotten philosophical love letters from Jean-Paul Sartre to a young American woman, Sally...
Existential Lessons on Love
1. Why do we even need a lover?
Sartre sketched a chimerical being with two sets of eyes and two pairs of arms and hands. ‘Each of us can point out to the other what he or she sees. Otherwise we allow a whole host of unperceived things to pass us by.’ Where you go, ‘I have the impression that I have eyes there too.’
2. Why I don’t love you just for your body‘
God knows how much I love your...
I Loved These Two Books
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/inherent-vice-by-thomas-pynchon-1764863.html
and
Lee Child, 61 Hours
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/61-hours-by-lee-child-1923461.html
Science: Waiting for the God particle
The Times, January 2, 2010
My friend’s question was direct: “Have you found the Higgs boson yet?”
We were standing in the shade of a jacaranda on the campus of Caltech in Pasadena. An attractive blonde particle physicist had returned from CERN in Geneva. Naturally, my friend Alan Weinstein (I like to think of him as W. Einstein) would ask her about the so-called God particle. She laughed with...
Pacific heights: North Shore of Oahu hits the...
Waimea Bay’s waves are legendary but yesterday brought the biggest swell in years and a dramatic surfing contest. Andy Martin reports from Hawaii
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
What’s happening?” yelled a woman leaning out of a gridlocked car. “Waves – huge and incredible waves!” replied one of the thousands of spectators lining Waimea Bay on the Hawaiian island of...
BBC RADIO 3
BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting my memoir of ‘Jacques Derrida, My Mentor’ on Tuesday March 23 at 11pm. Can be picked up on the web for a week afterwards or downloaded here when I get the CD…http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rjymj
No Tracks In The Snow
I wanted to make a splash with my first article on Drift, so I thought I would have a chat about surfing and life with one of the most interesting men on the planet. As it happened, Stephen Hawking had other plans. But the man who did eventually give up his time for Drift is Andy Martin – a professor of French at Cambridge University; author of ‘Stealing the Wave’ and ‘Walking on Water’, as well...
1,576 Steps (Heaven Help Me) to Clarity
If only King Kong had known about the Empire State Building Run-Up, where for one miraculous if masochistic morning each year people are allowed to climb the inside of the landmark building, he and Fay might have lived happily — if asymmetrically — ever after.
That’s what I was thinking as I stood on Fifth Avenue at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, staring up at the Empire State in all its glory, waiting for...
HOT NEWS FROM HOLLYWOOD
Will Frears, the theatre and film director, is making the film of Waiting for Bardot. Next year’s Oscars are in the bag.