When minimalism becomes the sign,not of simplicity of life, but of opulence of style and materials. Minimalism has to ‘disambiguated’ by a long list in Wikipedia, for it has a specialist meaning in specific domains and sub-domains of knowledge. My suspicions that most might answer this question in terms of it being about one or … More Minimalism: Essence or Style.
The walk was short but I didn’t know that when I parked up on Warren Street between Twelfth Street and Eleventh Street (pit villages and towns oft have numbered streets, lined on each sides by redbrick terraces, rather than names – perhaps to emphasise the fact that they housed such numbers of men, in the … More Walking to the ‘The Playhouse’ at Horden from Warren St. to see Hamlet in the First Quarto
‘What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?’ This question is stuck in the mud of illusion, for as Thomas Hardy said, in a work no-one ever reads, “if a way to the Better there be, it Begins with a Full Look at the Worst’. There … More ‘What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?’ This question is stuck in the mud of illusion, for as Thomas Hardy said, in a work no-one ever reads, “if a way to the Better there be, it Begins with a Full Look at the Worst’.
In the loosest of uses of the word ‘moment’, I want to identify a ‘moment’ as that period of time over which I realised that reality is constantly reshaped by the means of its description. It is the kind of ‘moment’ that might be used as an answer to the title of James’ Baldwin’s novel … More It is the kind of ‘moment’ that might be used as an answer to the title of James’ Baldwin’s novel ‘Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone’, wherein moments have duration and measure in so many domains including measures of time and the quality, rather than quantity, of our attention to a phenomenon: the time scales, for instance, of narrative, history and self-awareness wherein ‘reality’ is at a premium.
‘People stared at the narrow limits in front of them, until they neither saw nor heard the rumours at their own border’.[1] Historical novels invent our interest in underrated lives; the likes of which might once have been lived by someone now forgotten, nevertheless. Is Bryher a neglected novelist in part for that reason? A … More ‘People stared at the narrow limits in front of them, until they neither saw nor heard the rumours at their own border’. Historical novels invent our interest in underrated lives; the likes of which might once have been lived by someone now forgotten, nevertheless. Is Bryher a neglected novelist in part for that reason? A case study based on their novel ‘Roman Wall’ (1955) and the borders of the ‘historical’ novel.
What is ‘local’ and what is ‘custom’: selecting for preservation is the practice of dominance not community. But who selects and who interprets what it means? Probably Wordsworth is the primary poet who turned his back as an individual artistic sensibility, and he, of course, was called the Egoistical Sublime by Keats, on global trends, … More What is ‘local’ and what is ‘custom’? Selecting for preservation is the practice of dominance not community. But who selects and who interprets what it means?
Not to take action matters if you add to the ‘moral void’ around decisions about acknowledging atrocity or suffering. ‘Looking out for one’s personal advancement’ and the persistence of ‘the moral void’: this blog aims to look beyond, with the help of Stanley Cohen’s (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering, the conclusions of … More Not to take action matters if you add to the ‘moral void’ around decisions about acknowledging atrocity or suffering. ‘Looking out for one’s personal advancement’ and the persistence of ‘the moral void’: this blog aims to look beyond, with the help of Stanley Cohen’s (2001) ‘States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering’, the conclusions of mid-twentieth century social science including those of Stanley Milgram and the studies of ‘passive bystanders’ prompted by the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese.
It is an ancient theme, as ancient as the first epics of war between tribes and peoples that certainly precede Homer but refined by the Romans into a dream of men as made of steel, flexed into active form by fire. Hence though Homer’s The Iliad mourns war in telling of it, Vergil’s The Aeneid … More ‘quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes;’. It bores me that we still think of men as stuff to be excited by targeted hate, and targeted hate alone
When I was but a child, the sport that filled those small flickering monochrome and then early colour TV screens was wrestling. It was killed off as a ‘sport’ when it was revealed that most of it was engineered for purposes of exciting spectators with over-exaggerated characters (‘Big Daddy’ and ‘Giant Haystacks’ for instance) with … More From irresponsibility to organized competitive play (and / or choreographed display).
In reading this question, the contemporary and most frequent use of the word ‘complaint’ will be uppermost, which is mainly related to an expression of grievance or satisfaction leading to seeking a means of redress from the person or institution providing those goods or services which are found faulty or dangerous. It is part of … More From making myself feel better by expressing my suffering to finding a means of redress for a grievance.
Professor Anne Rasmussen at Kings College London Professor Anne Rasmussen wrote a blog on the Kings College London website in July 2025 summarising the results of a study by herself with Tobias Heide-Jorgensen and Gregory Eady (University of Copenhagen), using AI generated models of online post types that had qualities deemed to ‘more productive’ of … More The plea for improved ‘communication styles’ still needs to take into account the fact that the ‘truth’ is not always a ‘compromise’ between ‘opinions’.
The 1990s were a problematic period of our history, in which technocratic governance began to see the best one could hope for in an expression of group goals: The Blair ‘New Labour’ government’s lauding of the ‘principle’ (for such they thought it was being bereft of any other which they labelled usually as ‘Old Labour’ … More Why ‘having a mission’ matters in modernity! If it does?
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