Category Archives: News

10 things I’ve learned from the Greece-Eurozone crisis

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1. A country’s economy does not exist in isolation, even if the country does.
2. People use subjective narratives to interpret what they don’t understand. Those narratives often have more to do with the values of the narrator than reality.
3. Political systems are a buffer for emotional responses. When they fail to do that, we call it a “political crisis”.
4. Stock markets depend on psychology more than economics.
5. There are only so many words to forecast impending doom; you then have to recycle.
6. Economic partnerships are connected by convenience and necessity; they can quickly become alliances of mutual exploitation.
7. World-changing decisions can be down to no more than human fatigue.
8. Negotiation is a natural lubricant for human interfacing; between countries, it’s shear stress.
9. “Union” is a fickle term.
10. There are different kinds of wars because there are different kinds of weapons.

Short stories translated into Spanish

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A great guy named Diego Rivero has taken it upon himself to translate some of my short stories into Spanish. He has already done a few of them:

Open Doors  (original here)

Say Cheese (original here)

Fired (original here)

He’s also translated some of my stories on Lablit.com. You can find all of his work here.

As he’s planning to translate more, I will be adding links to his translations to the original stories.

Diego is now designated an official Awesome Person and needs to receive Internet high-fives from everyone.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The energy that the Microscope’s fans show both humbles and motivates me.

Thank you, Diego!

— Nik

Justice

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As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death sweep across the world, Christians are faced with a bit of a conundrum. Is it justice? Is it murder? How should we feel/respond?

For anyone interested, these are my thoughts so far on the whole thing. I hope they might help.

  1. Justice, like everything else in a fallen world, is always incomplete. As Christians, we understand that better than anyone – if God pursued instant and complete justice, none of us would be here now.
  2. The Bible has something to say about social justice alongside with mercy. It tells us that it is instituted by God (Rom. 13:1-4). Should we then not rejoice when a smidgen of God-instituted social justice, although vastly incomplete, is upheld?
  3. I would wish with all my heart that the headlines this morning were “BIN LADEN CONFESSES CHRIST AS SAVIOUR – TURNS HIMSELF IN”. But they weren’t, nor will they ever be. And we cannot deny that God, in His sovereignty and providence, must have something to do with that.
  4. The take-home message for us Christians who long for fulfilled and perfected “broader” justice, is to:
  • i) hope even more for the full restoration that God has promised us and live accordingly
  • ii) remember that we have received mercy and not justice and behave accordingly
  • iii) pray even more earnestly for the penetration of the gospel into countries and cultures where religious beliefs lead to tremendous oppression, social injustice, and waste of human life.

Ugly duckling

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It’s times like this that make Biology worth studying… Attack of the mutant ducks! This is real news, by the way.

Wuthering heights

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For those of you who may have not noticed, the UK is a bit windy today. You know, people lifting off their feet, cars moving from their parking lots, rooftops falling etc. Of course, in Bradford people are so used to the gales that it’s business as usual. When buildings start falling, we might call it a day.

Nine people have already diedand shipping companies are telling their boats to stay put, while Scotland has apparently seen its first bad snow this winter. And it looks like it’ll get worse – “cold snap” they call it, as in “snap-freeze”. Anyone seen The day after tomorrow?

Anyway, I thought I’d be a good blogger and blog some news. If the Isles are wiped off the map tomorrow, it was not Bin Laden. Probably.