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ON TELEVISION, archaeology showed us all it was possible to dig down a bit and discover fossils or ancient encampments from times lone gone. They always seemed to be digging, and this remains the case as far as I can ascertain.

In my humble opinion, this seems to suggest that if you leave something alone for long enough, it will become covered over. I think this is significant.

I was quite young when I first realised this was what had happened, and further enquiries provided a startling conclusion: man was at war with nature. It was a constant battle too, with no let up.

Anything that man left alone would corrode away to Read the rest of this entry »

IN a previous article posted on this blog, I attempted to show how easily we are manipulated by the wording of copyright restriction notices (see How Words Manipulate of January 2007). I wrote that article because it had become annoying enough in my mind and I needed an outlet.

Recently I have been getting annoyed by the rhetoric of the gutter press, magazines, web sites, radio and television — especially when journalists interview serious professionals who cannot resort to quips or soundbites, or when politicians are involved!

That is why I have returned to this subject. This time I want to concentrate on how we are manipulated by the spoken word — by what is known as Read the rest of this entry »

I AM going to argue here that things have gone wrong, and that responsibility has become misplaced. It seems to me to be the case that things are no longer what they once were, that things are no longer simple.

Allow me to illustrate: Bread is no longer just bread, there Read the rest of this entry »

ALBERT Einstein is credited with saying:

‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’.

This is often presented as “K.I.S.S. — or Keep It Simple, Stupid”. The idea of keeping things as simple as necessary is very often accredited to a Fransciscan monk from back in the 1300s — a chap called William from the English town of Occam (or Ockham) in Surrey.

William of Occam did indeed come up with a law of succinctness (parsimony) — but is this lex parsimoniae the same thing as advocating simplicity?

Read the rest of this entry »

ALL today’s politics and ideologies are in fact pretty new. It’s odd that we just take for granted ideas like Capitalism, Democracy, Communism, Socialism, Trades Unions, insurance, banking, and even parliaments as the norms.

However, the truth is that they are all experimental ideas — all of them are man-made, designed, thought up, devised, planned and contrived — and they are not very old, so they have not had a lot of time to iron out the wrinkles. Read the rest of this entry »

DEMOCRACY is a myth.

“Democracy” seems to be considered to be a good and desirable “thing” — some people even believe that it is a basic human right. Others think of it as being natural. Honestly, the way the media report it, you would imagine that there is only one clearly defined “democracy”.

For goodness sake: people are dying in the fight for democracy — yet it can mean almost anything; it is a myth — and I will prove it! Read the rest of this entry »

WE LIVE IN A BLAND WORLD. Devoid of personality, free from character and lacking in wit.

We have created a world of political correctness, of feminine sidedness and equality, an irrational and fundamentally dishonest world. A good question would be “why?” — but I suppose no-one is allowed to ask that! Read the rest of this entry »

‘MIAMI VICE’ has been incredibly significant. It was not merely a TV show; it changed the world, yet it remains relatively unheard of these days. I think it is high time this TV show got the credit for the massive cultural impact it has had ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

WHAT is it to be a man these days?

This is clearly a problem; something seems to have gone wrong — and I suspect it has something to do with selling products.

Take pop music for example, and compare this with an earlier time. Read the rest of this entry »

BINGE DRINKING is often in the press: “Something should be done about it”.

Any attempt to solve the binge-drinking problem must first surely attempt to understand why it exists and how it came about. Read the rest of this entry »