Nature is wondrous but also brutal. This brutality has fed into our psyche so deeply we think we need to kill but actually all we need to do is defend. We killed not just to save our own lives but to take life and we take it in such quantities it is true to say…
Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
It is probably true to say they don’t have any since the defeat of the Russian by the Mujahideen. I read on various UN sites and medical oversight pages that they cannot even appear on TV series. They cannot run café, or appear in public without a close family member (male) whom they are forbidden…
What is culture?
It is not TV, nor films. It is a way of thinking. Political landscapes develop over time at different speeds and depend upon the prevailing thinking. That fluctuates across generations and is not a steady progression but it is a steady change, no generation is exactly as the one that precedes it. Many times this…
Psychology
As a writer one of the few things I have shied away from is getting into the mind of someone who has done something barbaric. Something I, and more generally most people, would consider uncivilised and worthy if imprisonment if not execution. Trying to get into the mind of the man who just slaughtered people…
Ode
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; — World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s…
Made Up Celebrations
We still need to bring in the New Year? We still need religious festivals to break up the months and engage our minds about time moving? Is it all about marking the year with points where we can have a change of pace and enjoy something different to the usual days? It is odd for…
IRC
Internet Relay Chat is still used by many people though as a place to type in real time and get to know people it has been hugely superseded by other platforms. It gave me many memorable conversation ns in one of which a man was chatting about how he and his girlfriend had been having…
That Was cold
Over the holiday I had to get back from London to Cornwall and the trains were all rescheduled so I had to leave from Euston not Paddington. Like an idiot I did what the railway worked told me to do and got the train to Bristol even though I knew the arrival time of 11pm…
Too Sensitive?
Printing and editing a magazine about contemporary art is an interesting study when artists deal with the entirety of human experience. The endless friction caused can produce real hurt and the discussions can become angry and very frustrating. My most recent brush was using the image of a known Nazi. This, I was told, would…
The Old – The New
We now know that the human brain has been the same size for roughly 200,000 years. In a history that we think really got going 10,000 years ago with the extensive use of farming. We will never know the religions that came and went, the ideas that arose, floundered re-emerged or were lost. The art…