Sunday, 15 January 2012
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Nationalism draws on the primal, pre-intellectual aspects of the human being.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
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No one I know has the kind of wisdom Paul Graham has, let alone who could articulate it if they had.
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
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From incompetent policemen to eccentric lawyers the Italian legal system fell short of the mark.
Thursday, 25 August 2011
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Hardly a day has passed in twenty years when an Apple device hasn’t serviced me in some way.
Monday, 18 July 2011
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The so called red-top newspapers in the UK are a cultural menace, a corrupting influence on the national psyche.
Friday, 24 June 2011
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It is seriously questionable whether society’s attempts at redress following an atrocity help the victims much.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
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That future generations will be saddled with the debt of the current one is as it has always been.
Monday, 21 February 2011
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The religious stories, myths and beliefs were there to provide a kind of antidote to the troubles of life.
Monday, 21 February 2011
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The no’dours contrived a humour to throw off the stigma of their natural dourness.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
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People are on Facebook just to be on Facebook and not for any deep-seated value that comes from the experience.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
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There won’t have been too many philosopher-types who were charismatic, attractive and heroic.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
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It may be adversity which helps build emotional immunity.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
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The motion that religion is a force for good in the world was defeated 68/32.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
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When I go out into the world I am reminded constantly just how rude and impolite and close to violence many people are.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
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I thought this legislation wouldn’t fly and was surprised it got through Parliament.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
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Perhaps it is only me who is too much bothered by the manner of the Scots.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
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COAST has been set up to establish Scotland’s first no take zone in Lamlash Bay.
Friday, 5 November 2010
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I was always sceptical about political proselytising.
Thursday, 19 August 2010
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The baby-boomers live out their own missed opportunities through the kids by encouraging show-biz fantasies.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
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Seth’s thinking suggests that good ethics are good for business too.
Thursday, 27 August 2009
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It’s not what you do but the environment in which you do it that ultimately determines success.
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
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In the 18th century Edinburgh was the Boston of its day, host to the brightest minds.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
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A life-enhancing miracle is passed over while a toxic menace gets them out in support.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
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Sometimes the truth just doesn't do.
Monday, 15 June 2009
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The supermarket represents an amazing triumph over nature's ruthless insufficiency.
Friday, 22 May 2009
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Punishing people by imprisonment is insane.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
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Sharing on the online social networks runs counter to the norms where people tend to preserve their privacy.
Thursday, 5 March 2009
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A society which encourages competition is likely to breed higher levels of anxiety than one which prefers equality.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
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Over the past twenty years the corporatists have turned society into one characterised by greed and acquisition.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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The malevolence of the snake-brain knows no respect for morality, subtlety or insight.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
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The bankers pocketed the proceeds from their folly but so far they have escaped jail.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
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In an enlightened world a person’s skin colour would matter nothing.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
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The Enron disaster and the banking crisis exposed the corruption of corporate culture generally.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
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Did bankers go back to being the conservative, risk-averse, salaried safe-players they had always been at heart?
Sunday, 14 September 2008
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The huge artist who spans the globe is almost certainly an endangered species.
Sunday, 17 August 2008
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People are over-stimulated to the point of nervous exhaustion by stuff coming at them from speakers and screens.
Monday, 14 July 2008
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With no mass there are no greats.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
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Middle society is rearing a cotton-wool generation unable to properly negotiate the world it will inherit.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
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The idea of a people opposed and different to another people is as dangerous to humanity as it is beneficial.
Monday, 4 February 2008
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Capitalism is not an idea but a base reality.
Sunday, 16 December 2007
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There is little moral difference between our armies killing people and terrorist ones doing the same.
Thursday, 6 December 2007
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Spending and consuming are wealth generators as Adam Smith would doubtless have agreed.
Sunday, 2 December 2007
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It's curious how a person so formidably intelligent in lyrics can be so lacking in insight when speaking.
Thursday, 29 November 2007
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It might have been helpful had Blair been able to make arguments of more substance.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
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Seems banks have all kinds of cushions, no less the tax-payer who has to bail them out.
Monday, 29 October 2007
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Cynicism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of the Scottish mentality that it forms the basis of its every action.
Thursday, 23 August 2007
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There might be something of the macho-academic in Hitchens’ showing off his knowledge prowess.
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
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Art and religion become objectifiers of inner disturbance.
Saturday, 16 June 2007
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The moment comes and goes but memory lasts a lifetime.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
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Racism is a species of tribalism and humans are deeply tribal to their cost.
Thursday, 31 May 2007
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Spirituality would involve good relationship and acts of intelligent generosity.
Sunday, 27 May 2007
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All important is to recognise feelings and not suppress them.
Sunday, 13 May 2007
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Humans don't like that nature finally gets the better of them.
Thursday, 31 May 2007
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John MacMurray was a more worthy influence on Blair than I suspect Professor Layard could ever be on Gordon Brown.
Monday, 12 March 2007
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There is no requirement to continue satisfying deficiency needs beyond the base amount.
Sunday, 11 March 2007
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The penal system and its attendant culture demonstrates an almighty lack of imagination.
Saturday, 10 March 2007
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There is nothing not measured ultimately by how it makes you feel.
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
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Everybody is racist to some degree consistent with their emotional and intellectual deficiencies.
Tuesday, 30 January 2007
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Humanity's great shortcoming is its defective emotional make-up.
Saturday, 2 December 2006
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All genuinely creative people are technicians. If they weren't they would create nothing.
Wednesday, 22 November 2006
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Used properly drinking is a worthy addition to life. Misused it is a disaster.
Thursday, 16 November 2006
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The instincts of the corporatist are bureaucratic, predatory, and competitive concerned with power and control and beating the next guy to the punch.
Wednesday, 1 November 2006
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There is a subtle coerciveness about the modern world.
Tuesday, 31 October 2006
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Faith and belief could be replaced by knowledge.
Sunday, 22 October 2006
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The so called social networks lack some of the essenial aspects of connection.
Saturday, 21 October 2006
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The first commandment of humanity has to be a commitment to humanity itself.
Thursday, 12 October 2006
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The beloved self-actualisation of Rogers and Maslow sometimes seems little more than hopeful mythology.
Wednesday, 11 October 2006
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Most people tacitly agreed with Thatcher about how human nature is: essentially self-serving.
Wednesday, 11 October 2006
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It's not marauding hordes of barbarians that bring down the culture but the ordinary ignorance of ordinary people.
Thursday, 28 September 2006
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The need for a proper relation to exist when it comes to transactions is truly Marxian.
Thursday, 28 September 2006
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Rationality is a small thing with huge import.
Friday, 22 September 2006
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The prospect of your work being important enough for people to want it and pay for it was always remote.
Friday, 15 September 2006
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With sex on display those with deeper seated inadequacies are reminded that they can never measure up.
Thursday, 13 July 2006
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These men were bankers who played at being business men and stumbled over the line of legality.
Wednesday, 5 July 2006
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The modern individual is just as conformed as any other.
Sunday, 14 May 2006
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The optimum society would be justified in maintaining its systems with ruthless coercion if necessary.
Tuesday, 7 February 2006
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In the wake of feminism, women need to update their attitudes to childbirth.
Wednesday, 1 February 2006
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The human mind is a delicate instrument damaged by the myriad deficits visited upon it down the ages.
Monday, 30 January 2006
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With Gray and Dawkins you get the feeling they are just as fundamentalist as the fundamentalism they eschew.
Sunday, 22 January 2006
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Only societies which have learned how to sustain comfort might attain a relaxed mindset so as not to feel constantly threatened.
Tuesday, 10 January 2006
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Education elevates and pop culture denigrates.
Thursday, 5 January 2006
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The genetic inheritance of hundreds of generations of damaged individuals steeped in deficiency is passed on.
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
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The baby-boomer generation was given a legacy of riches which it has squandered like a son of the manor who has no sense of perspective.
Wednesday, 28 December 2005
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Bad acts need to be exposed and embraced rather than exiled in order not to be consistently subject to their ill-effects.
Friday, 23 December 2005
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Honesty like most others things requires skill.
Friday, 23 December 2005
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Maturity is about responsibility, being broad-shouldered enough to carry ones own weight appropriately.
Wednesday, 21 December 2005
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I think a full recognition that life does and will end, is part of a broader appreciation of it while it lasts.
Sunday, 18 December 2005
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To have drink acceptable and drugs not is a nonsense.
Tuesday, 8 November 2005
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A Scot can feel as much a Brit as an English person while still not fully integrated.
Tuesday, 25 October 2005
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There is a silly bias assuming that those who have been oppressed are somehow morally elevated because of their subjugation.
Tuesday, 6 September 2005
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Surely the main benefit offered by democracy over other systems of government is limitation of power.
Saturday, 20 August 2005
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Bad systems depersonalise to such an extent as to betray the idea behind their initial purpose.
Monday, 8 August 2005
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All the weaknesses, frustrations, corruptions and distortions that have been passed down the generations are allowed to proliferate in families.
Monday, 8 August 2005
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The more easily one adheres to convention the more easy it is to fall quite naturally into a karmic cycle.
Tuesday, 26 July 2005
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With respect to emotional intelligence humans are where early civilisation was with its intellectual evolution.
Friday, 20 May 2005
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An accurate awareness of feelings is required which depends on a degree of analysis and introspection.
Friday, 20 May 2005
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Slots get filled regardless of quality or importance.
Monday, 25 April 2005
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We are lucky to be born within the wisdom of liberal democracy with all its attendant benefits.
Sunday, 24 April 2005
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I think enforcement has never been a great way to get people to do what they should do.
Wednesday, 20 April 2005
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Let them risk their own money from their own pocket such that failure would be a genuine threat.
Friday, 15 April 2005
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The addiction to burning desires and treacherous, often potentially ruinous pursuits, is still too much dominant in us.
Thursday, 7 April 2005
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Burns’s legacy is an impressive body of work: songs, poems and letters as worthy and valuable as any in the English language.
Monday, 4 April 2005
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By most accounts the old Pope seems to have left the Church in a worse state than he found it.
Wednesday, 23 March 2005
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With a better comprehension of what makes us tick emotionally we would be better able to temper action more appropriately for mutual benefit.
Tuesday, 22 March 2005
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It has taken a long time to get even close to where it is individuality and character that determine a place in the world.
Monday, 21 March 2005
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The essential factor at the heart of money is trust.
Friday, 11 March 2005
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The potential madness that is tied up in deep-rooted conflict can be partly alleviated in an unconventional life.
Saturday, 5 March 2005
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Humans without a meaningful spirituality are lesser beings.
Wednesday, 23 February 2005
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A true spirituality would be linked to enlightenment and would make a marked contribution to the overall well-being of the human race.
Saturday, 19 February 2005
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The idea that street life is somehow reflective of anything creative, essential, vibrant or collective is nonsense.
Friday, 21 January 2005
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You should define your responsibilities carefully and not allow yourself to be pushed into unwelcome burdens that are largely the agendas set by others.
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
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Zuboff and Maxmin would like to see an emphasis on not so much what a product is but on what the experience of buying and using that product actually feels like.
Wednesday, 19 January 2005
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A truly caring community would be able to rear children to something that approaches the best of their potential.
Tuesday, 18 January 2005
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Listening to the believers trying to explain one feels almost embarrassed for them.
Wednesday, 5 January 2005
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The warriors and systemizers have taken over from the thinkers and philosophers.
Wednesday, 29 December 2004
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It is a little ironic that change and progress are often in the hands of damaged people.
Thursday, 23 December 2004
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People sense an opportunity to score points by producing the family/parenthood ticket to collect the free kudos.
Sunday, 24 October 2004
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Morality is about what you do and not what happens to you.
Monday, 18 October 2004
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It is a community’s capacity for violent enforcement that provides its authority.
Saturday, 14 August 2004
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To make a mythology of evil does more harm than good.
Tuesday, 10 August 2004
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Demons are psychological entities which in their energised form manifest as errant behaviour and with consequent ill effect.
Thursday, 29 July 2004
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The inner life of feeling, spirituality and psychological wholeness is not something the zeitgeist is very adept at encouraging.
Thursday, 29 July 2004
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The emotional life is much neglected and needs serious appraisal but the intellect’s contribution to that should not be downplayed.
Wednesday, 28 July 2004
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I prefer exceptionals, those who have it in their personalities to effect change and make a difference.
Tuesday, 27 July 2004
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There are many people who have strong racist impulses and hold racist views.
Monday, 26 July 2004
Motherhood Is The Happy Ending
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Motherhood is always restrictive for a woman whatever its psycho-bioloigcal benefits.
Saturday, 24 July 2004
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Our nerves are so constantly up, so over-stimulated by the sheer relentless pace of modern life, that we never return to calm.
Monday, 19 July 2004
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The idea that a person is not a legitimate human being simply because their parents never signed some dubious contract is totally absurd.
Sunday, 18 July 2004
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The Scots are far more likely to take the route of self-interest and not risk the sacrifice that might come from a broader, ethical position.
Friday, 9 July 2004
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Many of the things that are useful and worthy to people come from not living in the moment but from being outside it.
Friday, 2 July 2004
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Considered political philosophy, good legal systems and sophisticated social systems didn’t come easily or quickly.
Thursday, 10 June 2004
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When it comes to writing about your experience it’s the telling that’s important, how you put the words together, ahead of the actual story itself.
Saturday, 5 June 2004
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Questions are seldom neutral and so answers are to some extent already prejudged.
Thursday, 3 June 2004
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Political correctness is about morality.
Monday, 24 May 2004
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Values are nearly always prejudicial and in service to a particular mindset and should be open to challenge.
Wednesday, 19 May 2004
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Katy is unattractive in the extreme, almost ugly, dead-eyed and sexless.
Tuesday, 18 May 2004
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Have we managed to substitute the old and pretentious for the new and obnoxious?
Monday, 10 May 2004
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All mindsets can be hard to shift but are shiftable nevertheless.
Saturday, 8 May 2004
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I have known from my own experience persistence to be put down as a dubious trait.
Sunday, 2 May 2004
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People put themselves out there only in order that they can meet someone to go in with.
Thursday, 22 April 2004
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That language of the moment is openly selfish suggesting the prevailing ethic is that you do whatever you can get away with, take whatever you can.
Monday, 19 April 2004
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It’s time to look at better possibilities for the production and the funding of the arts away from the dominant concerns of business.
Sunday, 18 April 2004
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If barriers have to be erected and participation restricted let it only be sometimes.
Monday, 12 April 2004
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You go forward in your contrived notions and alongside that are the actual events that make the difference as if unconnected.
Monday, 5 April 2004
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Gornick talks about self-knowledge and learning to know what you can live with and what you can’t and why.
Wednesday, 24 March 2004
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No matter how many bad relationships, ruined careers, screwed up psyches and screwed up kids, motherhood still demands sanctity.
Monday, 15 March 2004
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Eventually humans will come to realise that to be so enslaved to their procreative impulses is not very clever.
Sunday, 7 March 2004
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Psychology’s got a hammer so there’s a tendency for it to see every issue like it’s a nail.
Thursday, 4 March 2004
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If it was left up to policemen most of us would be in jail just to make sure.
Tuesday, 24 February 2004
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Ellis thought that human beings rendered themselves crazy by harbouring too many crazy thoughts.
Wednesday, 18 February 2004
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You advance the world such that you leave it richer than you found it.
Saturday, 14 February 2004
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If you’re going for some enterprising thing in Scotland you’ll find the dynamic undermined by innate restrictions.
Tuesday, 10 February 2004
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It’s hard to work out why some people are successful and some not.
Thursday, 5 February 2004
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The more you want, the more you want.
Thursday, 22 January 2004
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People who still use tainted language are assumed either not to have given the issues any thought, or worse, are still invoking the prejudices.
Thursday, 5 February 2004
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We need to examine the dark side if for no other reason than to keep tabs on it.
Monday, 22 December 2003
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There are two types of people: those who live within themselves and those who extend themselves.
Sunday, 7 December 2003
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The postmodern with its overt self-absorption is more honest and as such might be a better foundation from which to build.
Thursday, 4 December 2003
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Those who have a talent for getting recognised are not doing anything so much different from celebrated types in previous eras.
Saturday, 8 November 2003
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There are many who do what they do semi-reluctantly, scared or too lazy to summon the energy to do what they would prefer to do.
Tuesday, 4 November 2003
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These days I could virtually write the script for every encounter.
Tuesday, 14 October 2003
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A therapeutic solution to emotional difficulties has more in common with religion than it does science.
Tuesday, 14 October 2003
-
Malik sees the downside of diversity and becomes embroiled in its negative aspects.
Friday, 10 October 2003
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I think that racism exists in everyone to some degree.
Saturday, 4 October 2003
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If you want to find something of interest in pop culture you just have to look for it and like anything else worth doing cultivate that interest.
Thursday, 2 October 2003
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The line below which behaviour is deemed to be unacceptable could well be pushed higher.
Monday, 5 May 2003
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Too many Scots are afraid to articulate their weaknesses with humility.
Tuesday, 25 March 2003
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Anyone with even half a degree of cynicism has a low expectation when it comes to politicians.
Tuesday, 25 March 2003
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Humans are always going to be drawn to bigger notions than nature capitalism.
Wednesday, 12 March 2003
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I agree with Pinker and believe there are innate dispositions.
Wednesday, 5 March 2003
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Every system of law requires enforcement.
Wednesday, 5 March 2003
-
One generation pays for the freedom of the next, invariably in blood.
Tuesday, 4 February 2003
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Jackson is now seen as a likely paedophile by the idiot mass in a culture where any kind of cross-generational interplay can trigger a moral panic.
Friday, 31 January 2003
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Society needs to be protected from moral imbeciles looking for an outlet for their hatred.
Tuesday, 28 January 2003
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Trust is fragile and requires constant fostering.
Monday, 27 January 2003
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Trying to get around grief is unhealthy.
Friday, 24 January 2003
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We are entering an era where the soul-less man triumphs, the man who sees things only in terms of his immediate benefit.
Tuesday, 21 January 2003
-
It seems like businessmen and their marketing sidekicks scheming away in hidden offices and boardrooms are slowly taking over the world.
Wednesday, 15 January 2003
-
People tend to be intimidated by things which are different.
Sunday, 12 January 2003
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Banks should be public entities run by civil servant types.
Saturday, 11 January 2003
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By the mid 90s we had set the tone for the coming age.
Monday, 2 December 2002
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I speculate that at some abstract level our lives are made up of a complex series of matrices all interacting.
Thursday, 28 November 2002
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There will have been many good men who gave their lives to fighting the elements.
Monday, 25 November 2002
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Control is a big part of the human enterprise.
Sunday, 24 November 2002
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I look forward to the day when there is virtually nothing you can take from a person’s ethnicity that’s in any way an indicator of the kind of person they are.
Friday, 22 November 2002
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The Marxian position was an attempt at a scientifically sound analysis of humans and their socio-economic environment.
Sunday, 17 November 2002
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Star-maker television bypasses the integral dynamics of the entertainment business, the difficult, unpredictable terrain where most won’t venture.
Wednesday, 13 November 2002
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Playing power games and summoning the dark side is part of being successful in the world.
Sunday, 10 November 2002
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The days of the domineering male are numbered.
Thursday, 24 October 2002
-
In the 60s and 70s.if you subscribed to pop culture it stood you apart from the mainstream.
Thursday, 17 October 2002
-
Perhaps Jacques represents the voice of a generation growing old and feeling nostalgic for what used to be.
Tuesday, 15 October 2002
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I doubt now if I would encourage a young person to take the risks associated with the creative life.
Friday, 4 October 2002
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The Scots would do well to learn how to criticise themselves.
Sunday, 22 September 2002
-
Gill says “Model Behaviour” is voyeuristic and exploitative.
Wednesday, 11 September 2002
-
Schama lays into the Bush people for being conservative, pseudo religious and in tow to scoundrel capitalism.
Tuesday, 27 August 2002
-
People need a beaten track as a way of orientating themselves and someone has to beat that track.
Tuesday, 6 August 2002
-
The greater part of the television audience is middle aged.
Sunday, 21 July 2002
-
Goleman says there could be many types of intelligence.
Sunday, 14 July 2002
-
Economic power gave rise to the celebration of ordinariness prevalent in the culture.
Tuesday, 7 May 2002
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It’s less important where you go or who you’re with as long as it’s somewhere with someone.
Sunday, 27 January 2002
-
Society has to accommodate the fact that most of those in it will under-perform and be a drain on the system.
Saturday, 19 January 2002
-
I dislike Ayrshire’s deprivation mentality.
Tuesday, 15 January 2002
-
“There is a generation of young adults who live their lives in a complete moral and intellectual vacuum.” (India Knight)
Friday, 4 January 2002
-
People like my grandfather, in the context of emergent feminism with its preference for softer males, seemed like dinosaurs.
Friday, 4 January 2002
-
Behind the hospitable and friendly exterior of the Celt lies something quite dark and sinister.
Thursday, 3 January 2002
-
As we import America’s aggressive ways for business we impose them on a social fabric devoid of cordiality.
Friday, 28 December 2001
-
Most people my age and younger offer nothing. Their relationship to the world is about what they can take from it before what they can give.
Sunday, 16 December 2001
-
The media has become so bloated that modern culture is created and dictated by it.
Thursday, 22 November 2001
-
Everything is pitched now to the biggest market even if that means the lowest common quality.
Wednesday, 14 November 2001
-
Seven things to be contemptuous of in our rubbish society.
Wednesday, 14 November 2001
-
In “The Republic” Plato outlines what he thinks would make for the good society. This is my take.
Monday, 10 September 2001
-
I grew up listening to the gospel according to Shaw from my father.
Tuesday, 20 March 2001
-
One who engenders trust contributes to the overall good, one who doesn’t detracts from it.
Monday, 7 August 2000
-
During the cultural changes of the past forty years the moral terrain has undergone something of a site clearance.
Wednesday, 12 July 2000
-
Some quotes from a Guardian piece.
Sunday, 18 June 2000
-
One is apt to behave within the family in ways unacceptable out in the world.
Saturday, 18 March 2000
-
The new government has exposed the extent of backward looking forces lurking in the depths of Scottish culture.
Sunday, 14 November 1999
-
Burns has been hijacked by an old and dusty Scottish conservatism.
Saturday, 18 September 1999
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Stuff that bothers me.
Sunday, 1 August 1999
-
Under the surface of most Scots is a narrow-minded, self-seeking, ultra-conservative bigot. (James Macmillan)
Saturday, 10 July 1999
-
What’s needed is dynamic knowledge and that is inseparable from action.
Wednesday, 24 March 1999
-
Respect for agreements is the backbone of human society.
Saturday, 6 September 1997
-
Diana Spencer is now the great heroine of our times.
Sunday, 25 May 1997
-
Yesterday the shared hopes of several generations came together to anticipate a once in a lifetime experience.
Sunday, 11 May 1997
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“It’s a new dawn, is it not?” (Tony Blair)
Wednesday, 19 February 1997
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Genius or asshole?
