I have had occasion to visit hospitals quite a bit in the last five years in the UK. Whilst we can always pick holes in services offered, and even services purchased, it is overlooked by those who complain just how amazing are in historical terms, free health care actually is, even in America the fountain…
History And Future
We know an increasing amount about how human beings work as groups, the kinds of stresses they face as individuals and how reason and nature play off together. We know enough to counsel people and help them through trauma and loss, we know enough to write books that they read to help them understand ‘themselves’….
Beyond The Physical
I was recently arranging to purchase some letterpress items, from fonts to composing sticks, in order to look at making some elements of the printing process by hand. At the same time I have on my shelf an old DVD burner kept because inside it somewhere is a laser, and old hard disc with a…
Too Scared To Think
I was just watching a video that posits the ‘facts’ that the birth rate in Europe is an average 1.3 children per couple and that historically anything less than 1.9 is an irrecoverable birth rate leading to the decline and disappearance of a people. The UK is actually 1.8 and apparently America is even less. The…
Heroism
Since time in memorial heroes have been thought by most to be those who do not retreat, who put themselves in danger of their lives. In the annals of heroism fighting to the death is but one, and then maybe not the finest one, of which human beings are capable. There is a story of…
Cynical Me
Cynicism is deeply bound up with human ideas of practicality and in many ways feeds off our insular view of our ‘living conditions, in the widest possible meaning of that phrase. So when someone says all politicians are corrupt they are referencing not only the history of political careers and how corrupt so very may…
The Art Of Walking
When I was nine the nearest post box to our house was one mile away on the crossroads with the main road to the nearest large town, ten miles away. It made a suitable country walk with the dog whenever we had to post a letter. I was reminded of this today when I went…
What Matters
Sometimes we look at the past and forgetting the way in which things were manufactured, or how rare certain materials might have been or even expensive, we raise a smile at what people thought important enough to give as presents. Some of the traditions (the father buying the house for the newly wedded couple) have…
Connections
I used to wonder as the Earth was whizzing through space what happens when we hit the odd dust cloud, or radiation hikes, to our brains and to our bodies. I was interested because the whole idea that we are free individuals makes little sense as you look at the universe as a whole as…
Petdom
I was talking today with someone who argued that having pets – mostly dogs and cats but it applies across the board – is just another form of bling. The cost of feeding the animals that eat meat, in lives of other animals, and planetary degradation is huge – billions of animals, millions of acres,…