David Hugh-Jones' blog

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NP: Dubliners, Dirty Old Town

So I went out last night with the guys and got into an argument with Sonya. She’s nice, she’s doing a JD/PhD. Anyway she was all like how the US should subsidize the arts because, you know, the oiks are ignorant and don’t know what real music is and the best music of the past century is apparently Steve Reich. And in Europe they manage things so much better….

So the Europeans piled in, basically along the lines of “You don’t know what it’s like, we live with these f***ing 1950s institutions and the parasite unions and nothing f***ing works and….” It was funny man, you’ve never heard such freemarket vehemence as from the European cognitive elites. And this led to about a two hour long discussion about is there any hope for European political science and when are they gonna get the goddamn monkeys off our backs. And my final conclusion (as you may guess I am hungover) is that like Mar said: it’s very cool to be a European.

Congrats to the MEDS people 

... all of you passed your prelims. W00t!

Great songs for expats in America 

Elvis Costello - New Amsterdam
Proclaimers - Letter from America
Prefab Sprout - Hey Manhattan (or Faron Young)
Sting - Englishman in New York... no, wait, he's a c***.