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I’m a fan of George Orwell. I think one of the most important pieces of writing in the English language, for example, is his set of rules for how to make the perfect cup of tea. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether people can really make a cup of tea, and therefore participate in civilised [...]
Archive for the ‘Personal moment’ Category
January 10th, 2013
In 2007 the Italo-Canadian artist Cosimo Cavallaro secured free publicity with the condemnation by idiot American Catholic reactionaries of his harmless chocolate Jesus. Here in Spain, you can have an entire chocolate Nativity scene, as a normal expression of commercially-tinged religious sentimentality. In fact a whole 1,450 kilo sugar Nativity Granada, in a chocolate factory [...]
December 16th, 2012
Category: Personal moment, Teaching
Why would a teacher lay down her life for her students? At one level, such bravery is unfathomable. At another, it’s the most sensible thing in the world.
December 9th, 2012
Category: Personal moment, Psychology
At an annual conference, I have lunch with a colleague whom I don’t know very well. When the bill comes he says that he paid when we had lunch once before a few years back, and he even remembers the approximate amount. I pay the bill, tip generously to make it equal to his prior [...]
October 18th, 2012
Category: Personal moment, Watching Conservatives
Dinesh D’Souza is a loathsome character. It’s still unbecoming to take pleasure in his fall from a misdemeanor sex scandal.
October 14th, 2012
Category: Health and Medicine, Intellectual disability, Journalism (Online and Otherwise), Personal moment, Sports
Most reports of Alex Karras’s death noted that he had dementia, but not that he attributed his dementia to his years playing in the NFL. Nor did they mention that he was one of the players suing the League for concealing what it knew about the long-term effects of concussion. These omissions do a disservice [...]
October 8th, 2012
Rilke’s idealised death, and his actual one: a question on terminal care for the election..
October 2nd, 2012
Category: Personal moment
I have been too consumed with a tumble of emotion and memory to write about the passing of my dear friend and colleague Griffith Edwards, a towering figure in the addiction field for more than 40 years. NYT caught some of his magic with its obituary, and along with his other friends I am working [...]
September 22nd, 2012
Category: Personal moment
This is so spectacular that I couldn’t not pass it along to RBCers. The photo was taken under thick ice by George Karbus as the Arctic was being bathed in the colors of aurora borealis. Courtesy of the UK Telegraph. Wow.