Blogs

I see dinosaurs every day. So do you. We call them birds. Hone addresses What We Don’t Know. What We Can, and What We’ll Never Know. He cites John Maynard Keynes Dictum: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind’. The study of fossils from tens of millions and millions of years ago is finite. The number of palaeontologists studying dinosaurs Hone suggests would comfortably fit in a research institute in the UK studying health. China has the...

I lost this book and found it, which added a bit of emotional heft. On the cover, Daniel Kahneman’s publishers remind of us of three things about Thinking, Fast and Slow based on print size. The International Bestseller, Winner of the Nobel Prize and quote, ‘a lifetime’s worth of wisdom’. On the 5 th November 2024, a large group of people got to place a small bet. They could bet on a narcissistic, psychopathic, rapist, tax dodging, cheating, dim...

The economy in Britain is doing quite well. We have spent the last few years at a growth rate of about 1 per cent. That's not excellent but it's not a recession. There is no shortage of people who can afford a car. Most of the problems that we have with parking restrictions or with traffic jams come with having too many cars on the road. I am 59 and can remember clearly back to 1971. When I was a child, half the people we knew had a phone and...

Bobby White: seven marathons, seven continents in seven days. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75e3dny5ygo I’ve been following Bobby White’s story. It helps that I know him. He’d walk past me in the street, but we played in the same team for a wee while. I also played against his dad, Bobby White. He was a great football player as well. And they’d a younger nephew and cousin. Bobby White, naturally. They all played centre forward for some...

Story and Poem of the Week, with Inspiration Point, posted by di-hard Thank You so much to everyone for all the wonderful writing this week. I have particularly enjoyed the stories written for and about children/teens, including : Marandina's engossing tale set in England's West country unfolds in two new chapters. If you love Alan Garner and Susan Cooper you should read this : https://www.abctales.com/story/marandina/prophesy-immortal-witch-10...

You’re probably wondering why I’d want to be part of the audience in a case-study session with playwright and screenwriter, Stef Smith, since I’m neither playwright nor do I know who Stef Smith is or was. Yeh, well, writing is writing is my answer. I might learn something. I’m a Catholic. So it would be no great surprise to me if Jesus was sleeping off another resurrection in bed upstairs. While the Virgin Mary was poking around in the kitchen...

Wow ! Having struggled with this for years, I'm bowled over by the number, and diversity, of the entries. 19 in all. We've had entries including army buddies and ABC itself, Buddhists, babies and ballet, cooking, DNA, Eastenders, fish, fabric and financial advice, the Olympics, sailing, sci-fi and sheep, and two lots of zebras. Almost an alphabet of subjects in itself Oh and one backwards .. It's difficult to pick a favourite, they were all so...

Unexpected death Sometimes, disappointment feels like embracing the unavoidable death you anticipated would come crashing through the roof of your room, only to find it had slipped in through the door. W.H. Auden (1907-73) Epitaph On A Tyrant Perfection of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And he was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he...

You know this story which is part of the attraction. You get hurt and you get hard. Poet, Seamus Heaney pairs the theme. Pains become armour walking hand in hand with history. Rocky chases chickens and punches cold slabs of meat in a freezer while chasing his dream of becoming heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Djokovic after winning one of the most brutal Grand Slam finals in tennis history celebrates with a square of chocolate. I must...

Don't forget tomorrow is the last day for entries to the Alphabet Challenge ! So far, we have had 13 very eclectic entries showcasing the wide variety of ABCers' imagination and vocabulary. Can we squeeze any more out of those little grey cells ?