Do I really ‘want’ to read more books by Naguib Mahfouz? The psycho-cultural limitations in creating and destroying the  desire to read & the ‘vital necessity’ of reading. Prompted by his 1975 novella Heart of the Night (trans Aida A. Bamia, 2011, The American University in Cairo Press). Naguib Mahfouz (2016). “Sugar Street: The Cairo … More Do I really ‘want’ to read more books by Naguib Mahfouz? The psycho-cultural limitations in creating and destroying the  desire to read & the ‘vital necessity’ of reading.

Rhetorical questions are those which ask you to assume a lot of meaning before you answer them. ‘Where can you reduce clutter in your life?’ First of all I must assume I accept a common definition of clutter. Yet there is no definition of this word that is culture-free and value-free. It assumes notions of … More The fallacy of ‘allow not nature more than nature needs’. The danger of reductionism and a blunt Occam’s razor.

Seeking streak numbers growth’s an affliction Just to find a topic from the day’s hoard That captures my taste for fact or fiction, Won’t bore me! Try be the freeway billboard?

Okay, said young Tithonus, to the goddess of the Dawn, as she senses that this boy has prominent qualities that make him worth the effort of capture – ‘but as long as I can live forever’ he says. At which the Goddess possibly smiled. Humans never work their wishes through do they? Tennyson says it … More A very long life? ‘Tis ‘A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream / The ever-silent spaces of the East’

A Whited sepulchre with corpse in box, A philosopher (in need of Botox), Can other colleges boast this – a deal done, Won! University College London Here in the grossest monarch’s finest build Its spires aspire still, to values instilled By Forster, except from Cam’s fens one midge Sings, “‘Tis I alone own Kings College … More Colleges attended – a doggerel response