There comes a time today when anyone who wishes to bring anything at all to public notice, be it goods to sell or books to publish or ideas to transmit, has to consider having a web site. With all the concomitant work and decisions on what to include and what to provide and who one’s…
Surprise Surprise
I was contacted out of the blue yesterday by a friend who studied physics at my university and with whom I have only intermittently kept in contact. I knew he married and has two lovely children and lives in New York but yesterday we chatted for a while and we discussed briefly modern philosophers and…
Area Code
It is strange to think that the United Kingdom, with thousands of miles of coast and sea view properties, has given an postal area code to every inch of sea. Almost as strange as through International treaty having three miles of the Atlantic all the way round as a buffer zone in which everything becomes…
We Learn
The greatest achievement of mind is memory. Through the use of memory we are able to learn and upon that resides the entirety of human history and everything we may become. But there is an inherent fascism in the way in which the mind learns. Because to the mind learning is all part-and-parcel of survival…
My Theory, Your Poison
There is much discussion going on in America and in other centres of religious devotion, about Evolution versus intelligent design. On the periphery are those who accept evolution but believe it to be the mechanism used by a god to make life. And pointing to leaps in the evolutionary chain and other things, they even…
The Older The Better
Many years ago whilst taking a foundation course at school on politics our teacher said of Aristotle that here was a man who could walk into the physics labs at school and do the four years work we were taught in one term (approximately three months). Not only is that an impressive assumption it is…
You’re Right.
This joke was told to me by a painter called Robert Lenkiewicz when I was fourteen, and he explained how the Hassidic Movement tried to impart knowledge and wisdom through the use of humour. “The couple were arguing in street and their Rabbi who was passing with one of his students, came over and asked them…
How Do We Begin
Starting a novel is easy when set aside starting a life. Putting aside the ‘when and where’ of conception and the decisions (or not) our parents make, just the fact that we are born knowing nothing and having to come to grips with the world from afresh puts writing a novel firmly in second place…
Paperweights
All a round our home there are stones. They all have a soft shape, some are multi-coloured and they sit on window sills and mantelpieces and are described as ‘paperweights’, picked up from beaches and walks around the world over the years. I am so used to them being here I sometimes forget they are…
Natural Motivations
People ask about motivation, and indeed look for motives, in all human activity. As if our desire to follow the rules of cause and effect must in some way contribute to why we think what we think, and how our thoughts contributes to our actions. It does after all make sense for a rational animal….