What, Why & How do we Know ?
I’ve been sitting on this link for a while, an Independent piece by Andy Martin on his interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s someone I’ve kept at arm’s length through the whole recent Islamophobia period – care is needed when unpicking the political correctness of anti-Islam / Islamism rhetoric and campaigns. Islam has a problem … Continue reading “Trust in Ayaan Hirsi Ali”
I’ve had actual language lessons in maybe four non-English foreign languages at various times, studied a couple more as a precursor to needing to learn them and looked-up some basic vocabulary in a couple more for travel reasons. More generally, I’ve taken longer term interest in etymology, particularly from Proto-Indo-European roots and sometimes Sanskrit sources as well … Continue reading “MML – Me & My Languages”
Andy Martin has written another great piece for The Independent. Topical – as in Piers Morgan and the usual opinionated #Celebs / #Trump / #Brexit / #Corbyn bollocks that fills all our bandwidth – but spot on with the underlying subtlety of what is really going on. We’ve lost perspective of real truth, we’ve got … Continue reading “Without Hypocrisy All is Tautology”
Had almost a two week blogging hiatus, despite being very active all over social media – some idiot called Trump/Brexit/Corbyn? And indeed reading books as well as on-line reads, but all very fragmented with no effort into linking and synthesising. It’s fixing the idiocy – received wisdom – that really interests me. Still can’t find … Continue reading “A Matter of Taste”
I’m mid-reading on several avenues at once right now. After having read the first two of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher collection, Killing Floor (1997) and Die Trying (1998), I went on to start Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2004) I needed an intellectual fix after Child. Well crafted drivel selling 100,000,000 copies and counting, but … Continue reading “Reacher Echos Eco”
Link-rot used to be a big problem for early web-loggers, but since everyone (inc mainstream media) started used standard blogging and micro-blogging CMS and storage of content became practically free, most web content sticks once it’s posted. Permalinks usually are. Problems do still arise: Having reviewed / recommended Andy Martin’s writing over the years, my … Continue reading “Broken Links”
I’ve been a fan of Andy Martin’s writing for several years. I also loved his little advertising film recruiting for his home department of modern languages at Cambridge. Here a selection of previous reviews: [Camus / Sartre Fight Club] [Surfing 9/11 USA] [No Students Were Harmed] [Cosmic Man] [Logic as Autism] [And more …] However, … Continue reading “My Lee Child Shaped Hole”
Just a quickie riff. Whether is gender differences – male vs female cognitive difference anyone? – or race, or religion or whatever … 1950s Superman says don’t vote for Trumphttps://t.co/On2VfwH95D pic.twitter.com/fzweNV5UjT — Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) October 27, 2016 Difference matters. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that “significant differerence” is THE fundamental … Continue reading “Valuing Difference”