So a Republican thinks the odds of warring with China are ‘very high’. Michael McCaul of Texas argues that the US will protect Taiwan and China will invade it. Taiwan was fought over by the Europeans, invaded and traded with by China (after a lot of the populations had died of diseases) and annexed in…
Month: January 2023
Resignation
Our government here in the UK – with an unelected Prime Minister and a self-destructive crookedness that only comes with regimes not governments, started today with tax avoidance and a dismissal. But that is not why I am resigned. Political theory weighs heavily upon experience and past practice and with Russia losing the first round…
Playing Games With Nature
Countries don’t care. Leaders just wish to keep their populations happy with their leadership. Even here in theory a Prim Minister could in theory stay in power for life if the people voted for then every election. In the US at least there are limits. Now we see how these leaders strip the plant in…
A magician, a parrot and a ship
A third rate magician is doing magic shows on a second rate cruise ship. The pay is good, the accommodation is comfortable, the food is excellent, and the two show a day workload is easy. All in all, it’s started out as a great gig except for one glaring issue. The captain has a talking…
People Are On The Move
Over 25,000 years ago people were on the move, crossing into the Middle East and into what was to become Europe and stretching our into Asia over hundreds of years. There were few existing people to stop them and why they moved – to find food or safety from climatic conditions – we don’t know…
Human Rights
The odd thing about rights is that they don’t exist until we enshrine them in law – until, in other words, they are given. The history of the world, if there is such a thing, may be described as struggle for rights over the past ten thousand years. A struggle that continues to this day…
Handling the Rich
Someone asked me why rich people go into politics. My answer, that power makes one even more wealthy and is an aphrodisiac for vanity, doesn’t seem quite enough. The financial system we have devised over millenniums does not limit wealth but it punishes penury. This is obviously unfair in the extreme. It seems to me…
Prodigy
I remember as an ignorant 11 year old not thinking Mozart being able to write out a symphony note-for-note after one hearing at the age of 4, nothing special. I have seen many children brilliant performing through the years in music, visual arts and mathematics. Prodigious literary talents are rarer. Alexander Pope was a Latin…
Horoscopes
It is almost the Chinese New Year and like all festival the human brain latches onto it as some moment of renewal and hope. The Millennium celebrations were much the same as people looked back at how far Europe had come in 1000 years. Depending on your definition of far, of course. But astrology is…
The Sun is Shining
but there is frost on the ground and the car is iced over. Spring is not that far away but the winter is still gripping the ground. The bees have survived so far and I am thinking of increasing the hives and taking our first honey this year. These seem small considerations in the world…