What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Perhaps the best advice about how to act next in any complicated human situation is to be wary of acting in the way you are told to act, however respectfully one listens to and hears out the advisor. Keep in mind too that the advice will … More The best advice is to, by all means, listen to advice but be wary of acting as it prescribes that you do.

What things give you energy? Philosophers tell us that Aristotle used the term ἐνέργεια (it transliterates as ‘energeia’ – the possible root of the work ‘energy’) in a very different way to the use of the word in modern science, whether that be in physics, chemistry or biology, where it names various kinds of measurable … More If we thought as much about what energy is for as about seeking selfishly for the ideal sources of it for our individual selves, a world that is going bad might get better.

Which topics would you like to be more informed about? The TV Series of Ragnarök (Netflix) On Norwegian TV it made sense to call a series Ragnarök that was based on a community on the fjords that learn the hard and irreversible way the effects of climate change, and environmental / ecological degradation on them … More Is Ragnarök on its way? It is but if we ‘knew’ that and were fully informed by that knowledge, we would be urging Governments to act – and now!

What would your life be like without music? The sound of the concord or discord of the world are only unheard in the cold of a tomb. There is no life where music does not happen, for the nervous system is attuned to the to a range of sounds that align with feelings of security … More “The man that hath no music in himself,/ … Let no such man be trusted”. We can’t escape the ambiguous personal politics of music.

How do you celebrate holidays? Given I am retired, I have to redefine the term ‘holiday’. But, why not start with the term holiday itself. The Word Press question-setter follows precise grammar (though that precision is rather dishonoured in everyday use I think) by using the plural ‘holidays’ in this question here to refer to … More A celebrant of the holy days of retirement. Some thoughts about the fate of ritual in a world defined by scheduled work.

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail. I was a student at UCL in the early 1970s and in my first year had a room at a single-sex University of London residence near Kings Cross (it’s lost to history now in lots of ways and replaced by a glossy privatised version of student … More If the way to a straight  guy’s heart is via his satisfied stomach, this was some failure to woo. A student day’s tale.

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life. It is almost certain that Socrates never said, as people sometimes believe, anything like, ‘All I know is that I know nothing’, but then can we we truly ever be certain about anything. How people came to believe he said this is explained in … More I wish I had believed about myself what Socrates was said to believe about himself when Plato quotes him as saying, “I neither know nor think I know”.

How often do you walk or run? We are just leaving York where we have been visiting a second-hand book fair, but I thought about this prompt in the hotel room; the rain at the time was beating down outside and I thought responding to both stimuli: “It would be silly to go for a … More Forget your exercise routine. Get yourself a Daisy.