As I wrote in the last post, I’m a tangle of complexes. Why didn’t I know this before? Lately I’ve been examining how my own self-awareness has changed over the years. I suppose you could call this self-awareness-awareness.
For years I would sometimes have bad moods of a particular kind, and during those moods my thoughts [...]
I’m argumentative, it’s true. Is that bad? I can’t resist taking a stand, taking sides and making a case. So, in that tradition, in this post I’m going to make a case for argument itself, because I feel it’s under threat. Actually, I feel a rant coming on, rather than a reasoned argument. So be [...]
I listened to a Radio 4 programme on the Great Man-Made River project in Libya. For the moment at least, you can listen to it here. It’s the mother of all water engineering projects, and as I’ve said before in this blog, I have an odd fascination with this kind of thing. Apart from anything [...]
March 25th is the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Act, “An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade”, the Act of Parliament which outlawed the trading of slaves. It was the first of three Slave Trade Acts, and slavery was actually abolished only with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The Central Office of [...]
Reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy I’m struck by his intellectual generosity and fairness. He goes out of his way to extract the best from all kinds of ideas, including those that are easily rejected in the modern era, in the light of science. The book is a classic but it is widely criticized [...]
I think I’ve noticed a contradiction. Paul and I were discussing religion recently, and I said that a religion is hardly worthy of the name unless it, and its followers, try to spread it. Paul said no: perhaps you can subscribe to a religion because it’s right for you, with no claim as to its [...]
I must record Brian’s apparently original theory as to why Glasgow is more friendly than Edinburgh. But first, some background. I have always enthused romantically and vaguely about Glasgow’s atmosphere, usually contrasting it with Edinburgh’s. I will say, whenever the subject arises, that Glasgow is more friendly, that it has an exciting edgy atmosphere, that [...]
The other night we interviewed a prospective flatmate with the help of a good friend of Laura’s, the lovely Kris, an Australian nutritional expert. Our interviewee was Australian himself and fresh off the boat, so perhaps Kris’s Oz-related small-talk put him at his ease. So this guy Daniel – despite having an irrational fear of [...]
Read an article in the Times today by the conservative intellectual Roger Scruton which asserts that environmentalism is truly a conservative, rather than a radical, cause, and that it would be more successful if it were proselytized from this standpoint. In my post from March 3rd I write about Scruton and conservatism, and about this [...]
In his little piece Mountaineering as a Life Style Danish mountaineer Jan Elleby answers the question why climb mountains? with this:
Curiously enough this question is only posed by people, who have not climbed any mountains themselves. For if you by yourself have experienced the adventures and quality in life that mountaneering may offer you, then [...]
