Language changes. The factors in the change range from new words coming in from abroad and influxes of immigration giving new idioms and flavours, the natural propensity of the human brain to simplify spellings to match pronunciation and simple mistakes which by usage or disinterest in rules, become the new rules. Whatever the reasons without…
Month: November 2010
What Leaders Become
You hear the promises politicians make to you for your vote, to see them break or refine or redefine those promises once in power. Do you ever wonder why? Do you think it is because those that seek power lack integrity? Do you follow Tony Benn (a British politician) when he says “I don’t want…
Singing Is Good For You
My mother always sang throughout the house. There were times, not restricted to when we moved and got the record player out to play her collection of singles, when the music went on and she would sing whilst doing the housework, or just sing. When I was four apparently I was jigging around to some…
Relating To Technology
Human beings are creatures of emotion and feeling, and it is interesting how that plays out in our relationships with technology. It is no accident that people name their cars, fight over remote controls, dandify their mobile phones nor is it any accident that a lot of detailed study goes into making technology ‘graceful’ and…
Pslam Of Life
This was one of my grandfather’s favourite poems: A PSALM OF LIFE WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST TELL me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream ! — For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real !…
The Luck Of the Luckless
When the battle of Waterloo was on a knife edge the Prussians who had been watching came in on the British side thereby giving them their narrow victory, and setting in train a whole century of British supremacy in the world. One of the things the explorers who sailed round the world wanted to find…
Single Community
There is a tension in the way people think between the fascination and epic quality of one person representing great and noble qualities in a lone life; from the knights errant of the Europe to the Ronin of the East taking in Gurus along the way; against the need to be in a community. It…
Running Out Of Space
The present owner of the garden next door to me has applied to cram in two starter homes with underground parking. The owner lives two hundred miles away and obviously this application has nothing to do with providing anyone with a home but for making a lot of money out of the increased value of…
Predicting the Future
In a recent rerun of Star Trek some of the dialogue of William Shatner mentioned the ‘first colony’ on some planet ”in 1992′. In the heady space age dawn of 1968 that must have seemed like an achievable and worthwhile goal, and when you think of what 1992 was really like it gives one pause…
Shell Cases
Digging out my mother’s letters to scan I came across a shell casing I had not seen in years. It is pretty big and stand quite happily on its own with a fountain pen in it. It is made of brass and has M Vn on its base. The V being five in Latin. On…