The poet who died

Darwin made one of the greatest discoveries in the whole of science.  But what is not so generally appreciated is that the accounts by the young Darwin  of his sublime experiences of nature in South America in his Beagle Journal, at  a...

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Great Canal Journeys

Great Canal Journeys is one of my favourite shows on TV.  As they sail canals 'meandering happily along' through 'havens of tranquiliity' and 'timeless landscapes'.   She is every gentle refined upper class lady you ever knew.  He is...

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There are no answers in economics

 There are no answers in economics.  Capitalism gives us extreme differences between rich and poor. Sixty-two people owning more wealth than half the world’s population is both obscene and ludicrous.  Its claim that the market distributes goods with maximum...

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How useful to find a few randy old billies to hand

So Alan Johnson is to go to prison.  I know nothing about this particular case so we can only believe that Johnson is as guilty and the girl as innocent as the jury say they are.  Yet is something...

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I have become completely disillusioned with the Green Party

I have become completely disillusioned with the Green Party.  If like me you think that the scientists are now unanimous, or certainly virtually so, that the current  climate change is man-made, that we and the rest of the planet...

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Darwin’s Beagle Journal is amongst the most poetic writing in English

Loveliest of Men:  Darwin and the tragedy of The Origin of Species – the poet who died. By Thomas Jackson.  Kindle £2.72 Paperback £4.99 Amazon and bookshops.     Darwin made one of the greatest discoveries in the whole of science.  But...

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God must already be a person

 The universe began 13.7 blllion years ago in an explosion of hot gas.  By 380,000 years later it had cooled sufficiently for nuclei and electrons to start combining into atoms.  It seems nonsense to say they just happened to...

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Reflexivity and the individual encumbered by fallibility

 Reading George Soros’s The Crisis of Global Capitalism with great profit.  Reflexivity and the individual encumbered by fallibility  are marvellous concepts.  Indeed, I think I might add it to my personal list of great books:  Adam Smith’s Theory of...

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The new discoveries science makes…

 The new discoveries science makes are sometimes so astonishing, so overturning of everything that had previously been in the mind, they cast all previous discoveries in so different a light it is almost as if those discoveries had never...

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Hey the Spanish Armada is in the Channel…

Hey the Spanish Armada is in the Channel !!We are reviewing the situation every five yearsHey Hitler is in France !!There are more important issues.  the economy for exampleHey we've only twenty years to halt climate change !!Let me...

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