Random Thoughts

“Not only a new kind of community but a new kind of man comes into history with the development of the Jews.” (H.G. Wells:“A Short History of the World” Chapter 22 “Priests and Prophets in Judea”, 1922) Racism, “a new kind of man”, written by one of the brightest minds who did no less than predicting and warning the world about the second world war: “... ; and if the great war had not come in the form it did it would have come in some similar form – just as it will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in twenty or thirty years’ time if no political unification anticipates and…

I was not supposed to start this piece using the pronoun ‘I’. But, I did it on purpose anyway. I wanted to remove all pretense to being a captain of normalcy as fast as humanly possible. Put it this way: if the rules of writing were really that important, then how come the people who teach them are not known for being great writers themselves? Anyone who is capable of great writing would not waste too much time trying to teach the rules of writing - like a rote priest or a hobgoblin of small minds. Instead, as per the example of George Orwell, or Herman Hesse, or maybe the named but…

Today is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Rooster, 2017. I am addressing this in particular to North American friends, since yesterday evening on TV we saw Michael Portillo on one of his great railway journeys, travelling through the state of Kansas.  In one of his enounters, a young Native American man, in full costume, performed a “prairie chicken” dance from the Blackfeet of Montana. This dance represents the male of a species of Tympanuchus, more strictly a type of grouse, but generally referred to as the “prairie chicken”.  His dance was so impressive and bird…

I am spending a post-wedding vacation in the Dominican Republic these days, and very slowly the stress level in my veins and muscles is leveling down. As you might imagine, I am still reading my emails and checking things here and there, but I do that with a slightly more careless attitude. Many of the emails I skip or overlook will haunt me for the next few weeks, i am sure - but for now, I can't be bothered. One of the things that I can't get around is leaving this blog alone, though. It just does not feel right to not post anything at all (I hesitate to use the adjective "meaningful") for…

The Guardian, or as it is more affectionately known to its readers, The Grauniad, seems to think that it takes a native Russian speaker to write 'f' as 'ph'. Almost certainly, a native Russian speaker wrote the original material, correctly transliterating the Russian “f” as “ph”. Er, no! Any English person with a good education would, on hearing over the telephone the business name 'Alfa', write it down as 'Alpha'.  That is the normal English spelling, not only in England, but in many countries.  It is the favoured spelling of 'Alpha and Omega' in the Bible.  In the respected…

I am happy to report, with this rather unconventional blog posting, that I am getting married on January 12. My companion is Kalliopi Petrou, a lyrical singer. There will be no huge party involved in the event, as Kalliopi and I have lived together for some time already and the ceremony will be minimalistic. None the less, we do give importance to this common decision, so much so that I thought it would be a good thing to broadcast in public - here.Kalliopi is younger than me, but we seem to be a good match in a number of ways. We share a love of music, of astronomy and stargazing, and of…

The STENDEC Puzzle Ever since BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust vanished on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, the ending of its final transmission - STENDEC - has continued to puzzle experts and amateurs alike. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947.  It was not seen again until wreckage was discovered in 1998 by two mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato.  The wreckage was found about 50 miles (80 km) east of Santiago. What is missing from the many reports of the accident is the likelihood that the…

If I wanted to create a fake news story – I would lead with a sensational headline. Something that would incense and shock the readers and be extra “clickbaity”. Perhaps a hook about a teenager getting raped to death. That should get some serious traffic. That seemed to be the approach taken by New York Time’s journalist Michael Moss back in in January 2015 when he wrote “Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit” skewering the US Meat Animal Research Center (US MARC). Moss began investigating the USDA-research facility after being contacted by Dr. James Keen, a disgruntled ex-…

The Pitch and the Pendulum (Pace1 Edgar Allan Poe) Some people take comfort in the back-and-forth sway of the political pendulum. It is part of the greatness of our ‘two-party system’, they contend; it reflects the American aversion to extremism on ‘either side’. For the mainstream media, charting each degree of the pendulum’s swing is the essence of the 24-hour news cycle. New Internationalist Magazine, November 2010 It has been argued too many times to need a citation that opposing parties in a demoracy are merely two sides of the same coin.  That concept puts me in mind of…

Did Donald Trump Really Win Bigly? Did President-elect Donald Trump Win Bigly, or did he suffer an attack of the mumpsimus? We all know that the Donald loves to use superlatives, but 'bigly'?  Really?  Well, no not at all really. We are all subject to preconceptions about our environment.  A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, right?  But we often miss-hear words and are puzzled by what we think we heard.  As Earwig O1 would say, "sailor vee"2. A superlative often used to denote 'a great amount' is "big-time".  If Mr. Trump had said "big-time…