I have often wondered why people lie. I am told it is because it works, it hides embarrassment, it comes with an agenda, all of which means we gain something and that something is positive for us. I have thought about this this past ear because clicking through the news outlets I am struck continually,…
Author: Daniel
Availability
We are all sued to making ourselves available for work and the stresses and strains of being equally available to close family. Time, it appears, while not actually existing in the wider sense is very much all we have in our own sense. And it is that time, our time, that seems to me to…
The Religious Mind
I was asked once who did I look to for authority as I was an atheist. It was an interesting questions because I had never looked further than my upbringing. I had read English poets and poets in translation, I had read most of the famous writers of Europe and dissected their knowledge of the…
Memorials
Abraham Lincoln said it better than anyone at Gettysburg when he pointed out that while one mourns the dead, the best way to respect them is to fight on for what they believed and see their greatest dreams realised. “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground….
There IUs No Such Thing As Good and Evil
There are just human beings. There is so satan and no god and no eternal cosmic battle, there is just an intelligent ape-like being grappling with its actions and not doing very well. Ascribing its actions to beings of immense divinity and power obscures the rationale it gives itself for certain actions. It foregoes any…
Pricing Art
I was interested recently when an artist and critic priced a painting by an unknown artist at £2000. The painting was a late work. While in an auction eight years ago a painting by the same artist when he was a young man was priced at most at £250. The former was pricing the work…
Resets
The United Kingdom has a problem: the extreme racist vote of Brexit is still holding its trade back at a time when trade is seen as the only way to dig itself out of the hole privatisation has placed it in. Investment has not been as big as it needed to be from the private…
Forgetfulness
I drove a lady for a respite lunch this afternoon and chatted to her about her life. She had lived all over the world with her accountant husband and neither of them can remember much about it. I tried to ask her what she thought of Paris, how she found India but she was unable…
Iran
I loathe war. It is the most hateful aspect of human activity even if it is an expression of our human personality. I also dislike rabid religion that wishes the whole world to be made in its image and subjugates individuals to ancient traditions that were not informed by deep knowledge or any science. And…
Internet Research
Most research done by the public these days is a matter of reading one or two articles or watching one or two videos they find. They don’t do much more research on those writing or talking than reading the cv on the site. They don’t then write to a leading academic in the field to…