It is very true when people say nothing changes. It is almost as if the great changes are so fundamental they happened a long time ago and now we are left with cosmetic changes that people think carry vast amounts of significance difference, which they do not. So the difference between the wheeled cart and…
Does Poverty Exist?
I live in what was, two hundred years ago, the poorest dwelling you could find. Two houses put together, one-up-and-one-down with open fire places. Houses built for farm labourers who were expected to spend at least eighteen hours a day in the fields and on the land. The wives kept house and had babies. Yet…
Jacques Cousteau
I always loved Jacques Cousteau and his team when I was a child, growing up with his marine research aboard the Calypso. They always seemed a friendly bunch of people and nothing was beyond them as they investigated what was going on at all the depths and in the all the seas. And it seemed…
Lacking Skills
I love working with painters because my stick creatures never really manage to hit the mark. I recall my mother when she was younger knew the artists Sheila Fell, who tragically died quite young, and she used to pick up Sheila’s charcoal and pencil sketches from the floor and hang them on her wall. She…
Watch Your Language
It is everywhere, the endemic use of language to support a particular world view. I thought about this seeing someone ask if China was the greatest threat to the USA. Look at that word. Threat. Loaded with menace. It is filled with visions of ‘yellow men’ pouring out of tunnels to invade the USA. Challenge…
Can You Imagine
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a photograph of Julius Caesar just after he landed in Briton standing with one of the ‘Prits’ by a flag of Imperial Rome? Or to see Michelangelo hammering away at some large piece of stone out of which is emerging a hand or a head? To hold a black…
We All Get Tired
After all isn’t that what coffee if for? Tiredness is a part of life, just as energy is its mainstay, and there is not a lot to choose between being physically tired from too much labouring or mentally tired from too much thinking. Life is an exhausting business, even for those of is us who…
Caught In The Rain
I remember a car enthusiast saying to me that given how badly people drive it is amazing how few accidents their really are on British roads. Drivers are always compensating for other drivers mistakes. Which is a skill since none of us choose who the drivers around us are or what medication they are on…
The Competition
Evolution is all about competing interests and (I say in an aside) the evolution of religions is proof positive evolution is a strong theory because our ideas evolve just as our bodies have done. Social networking is all about competing for people’s time, in fact the whole Internet sales regime is trying to attract one’s…
The Death Of Communism
Political ideas do not appear out of thin air. Marx himself thought the communal ideas he discussed would emerge naturally out of the industrialised countries as the population grew tired of boom and bust and the greed factor ruling the lives of the countries’ economies. There are those today who think Western countries will become…