the illusion of lineages
An argument for human lineages being illusory
slow thinking
I increasingly feel that being quick-witted is overrated. What is it for? Being funny? We seem to be obsessed with speed in everything and that includes thinking. Perhaps this is part of our fixation with youth. Certainly, when I was younger, I was far more quick witted than I am now. One aspect of this was a ‘switch-blade’ memory: where I never found myself unable to retrieve the exact word when I needed it. I …
the kindness of strangers…
I’m in Kermanshah at the moment where it is raining gorbehah and sagah. To be able to inflict this (feeble) joke on you, I wanted to confirm what “cat” was in Persian and, since my bad pronunciation wasn’t doing it, and because my taxi driver’s English was rudimentary, I had to resort to making animal noises and feline impersonation (worse than rudimentary, I’m afraid). After an embarrassingly long period attempting this he suggested, cooly, in …
a bite of the cherry
It seems that those of us who live in the West may need to get used to the fact that our economies are not going to return to constant growth. The belief that things are going to always continue to get better – at least in the sense of a constantly growing GDP – has always been a fantasy: constant growth of the kind we’ve experienced, that consists of consuming the Earth’s resources, presupposes that …
Matryoshka
Lost in Venice in the aftermath of the war, Cherenkov just wants to put his head down somewhere and sleep, but her copper hair snares his eye. Beguiled and weary, he allows himself to be led through a quirky little shop within which lies a vast and hidden land where her family rule in ornate splendour, where his revolver is a marvel and his motives are questioned. Confusion and wonder abound as Cherenkov and his …
being Persian
I wrote this on 19_11_11, but the internet went down at my hotel and, with the interminability of adding photos to this blog on a slow internet connection, I decided to finish this up at home. I nearly cried when I walked into the main hall of the Imam Mosque in Esfahan – overwhelmed by the beauty of that vast space. Perhaps the effect would have been almost as powerful had it merely been a …
Chapter: A Stranger in Paradise
Information relevant to A Stranger in Paradise, the 2nd chapter of The Chosen
Chapter: Farewells
Information relevant to the 11th chapter of The Third God
Chapter: At Home
Information relevant to the 3rd chapter of The Chosen
an argument for scottish independence
(In the Autumn of 2014, the people of Scotland are going to vote in a referendum to decide whether they wish to separate from the UK. There are all kinds of arguments that can be made for and against this separation, I would like to add one of my own.) Humanity seems unable to focus on doing what would have to be done to head off global warming of 2ºC – and, the way things …