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Showing posts from 2011

Fireworks

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An open letter: Dear Mother Nature Tomorrow, at midnight (wherever they are on Earth), many human cultures will celebrate the start of a New Year. They will do it in all kinds of ways. Many will gather with friends and family to wish each other – and the sparkling wine industry – well for the year ahead. Some will go to places of worship. A little later, several hundred certifiable lunatics (including possibly – hangover permitting – the undersigned) will brave the cold of the North Sea for a (very) fresh start to the New Year. Some commendable individuals such as fire-fighters, police, paramedics and other emergency personnel will remain on duty, many to save people from or treat them for the results of their own stupidity – they don’t call this the silly season for nothing! But some will find it necessary to celebrate with fireworks. Not just the pyrotechnic rockets that are undeniably a joy to all in their infinite variety – particularly in the

Solstice

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Having traversed much of the globe, it never fails to fascinate me the way different people and societies solve essentially human problems and dilemmas. Then, once the differences in their approaches, technologies or philosophies are peeled away, what’s left is how remarkably similar they all are. Religion is the most obvious example. “Who am I?” “Where do I come from?” “Where am I going?” The simple necessity to make some sense of these quintessentially human questions is universal to Homo Sapiens. A consciousness of past, present and future. Just the fact that we ask these questions could be cited as one of those subtle things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. The answers we’ve come up with are as diverse as our hair colour. Yet I’ve not encountered even one that lacks a tenet to echo “love thy neighbour as thyself”. Some years ago, I interviewed an expert on prehistoric cave and rock paintings. He pointed out that w

Sea fever

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I’m not usually a “morning person”. Never have been. Ever since my days at boarding school, I would routinely seek permission for “late study”, enduring solo passage through the darkened corridors to enjoy the almost eerie silence of the deserted prep hall and for the first time coming to terms with being one  Acquainted with the Night . The years that followed included military service, university interspersed and overlapping with the restaurant and hotel industry and finally (for the last two decades and the foreseable future) journalism – none of the above is exactly renowned for the regularity of its hours. Initially subconsciously but later very consciously, as with many people with (in my case fortunately mild and managable) Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS), I have channelled my career choices toward those areas where my chronically anomalous relationship with “normal” sleep/wake patterns is an asset rather than a liability, like my penchant for night photography.

Distinguishing knowledge from information

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They say it’s changing slowly, however, for all the technology and multimedia at the disposal of educators today, I still see them producing people with knowledge that is so compartmentalised that in spite of all their certificates and diplomas, they struggle to think “outside the box”, even at the highest level. A few weeks ago, during a coffee break at a seminar at a Dutch university, I was standing listening to a senior professor and two associates discussing the sociological dynamics of today's interconnected world. Predictably, the current proliferation of social media and business networking channels was raised. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg Karmeliterplatz / Christofsgässchen,  Mainz, Germany. By  Karlheinz Oswald    2001 When breathing the rarefied atmosphere of academia, it’s nice to be able to relax the bullshit filter a bit but that doesn’t mean that I check it in with my coat at the porter’s lodge. So I was mildly surprised that, while

'Illegal immigration'

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Terminology is all-important; not just because of its intrinsic meaning but often because of its loading. Thus if you peel away the layers of a term you use every day, you sometimes find a slightly unsavoury and prejudicial core. As with 'illegal immigrants'. To start with, I have a fundamental philosophical problem with the term 'illegal' when it’s applied to human beings. Yes, it’s a matter of subtle semantics, but that’s what philosophers do. I simply believe that it is beneath the dignity of any human being to call them 'illegal'. Only a deed can be illegal, for which civilized society has a system of justice, trial and punishment. Someone might knowingly enter a country illegally or overstay a ligitimate visa and thereby make themselves guilty de jure of 'illegal immigration', but even if they are convicted of that offence in a Court of Law, do we have the right to label them an 'illegal immigrant'? The very term is loaded w