We got to where we are because we are a rational, thoughtful animal. But those thoughts are of particular kinds – the kinds that come to us because of our nature. The kinds that make sense of the outside world by using our senses. The kinds our brains can comprehend. The kinds that we can…
Category: Quotidial
The Feudal Mind
There are few martial arts movies that I have ever really enjoyed.Knowing that martial arts began in India and are deeply rooted in religious beliefs the fare that the West is heir too with flying everything and heroism is not actually accurate. But I am struck as with movies made about knights errant or any…
The Simpler Life
Whenever my computer goes wrong I always seem to go into overdrive and worry. I recall when my pc first crashed on me and the hardware had broken I spent a week without the Internet after being on it for almost two years. I had withdrawal symptoms. Yet strangely enough when it happened again after…
Experience Shows
Thinking can be dangerous. I have always been a lover of close thinking – though never very good at participating – it is instructive to listen to people who can divide up the meaning of sentences and slice away at them as you might a cake with smaller and smaller portions. We can see an analogous…
If Only . . .
I was fascinated about six years ago to see a black and white picture of a machine moving an atom from one place in a lattice (I think it was a metal) to another place. The possibility of creating materials one atom at a time suggests the making of perfect crystals (one person suggested a…
Family Ties
It is often the case that no matter who hurts us in our lives, it is our families that have the ability to hurt or give us happiness more readily than that which we can imbibe and feel from other people. It is our families after all that know all our ‘buttons’ and press them…
Regime Change
The word dance done by politicians around the world not to want to change the regime in Libya (or for that matter any Muslim country currently undergoing upheavals this spring) because they do not want to give fuel to to al-Qaeda but nonetheless do want to support the democracy movement has its detractors. Not the…
Copycats
Human beings are great copycats. As soon as we find a thing that works hundreds of us all bound to become experts or a part of it, suddenly placing it in any of a series of mythic feelings and suggestions which then become a part of the culture. We invent a car and before we…
Why And Again Why
I read an horrific story on the Internet yesterday about a Libyan woman from one of the rebel held towns bursting into an hotel where journalists were questioning the regime, and revealing she had been gang raped by fifteen men. As Libyan security officials shouted in her face and bustled her out, I as did much…
How To Write a Masterpiece
There seem to be two main ways to choose the subject matter to a work that will be considered a masterpiece. In the first you choose a huge subject filled with human suffering and triumph with a protagonist or main characters that many people may associate with even though they have no direct experience of…