Fishing in the Rivers of Life

Category: Rivers of Life

  • In God We Trust

    From foxholes to modern politics, this piece explores how both sides cling to their own righteousness and how compromise has become the real casualty.

  • What’s in Pandora’s Box

    If only we could capture anger and use it as fuel, for lately there seems to be no shortage of the stuff. It and its twin hate seem to be at the heart of the reactor as social media rages away to become a perpetual motion machine that not only violates the law of conservation…

  • Selfish Eyes

    Perhaps I no longer know who I am, and why the sudden revelation, you may well ask. Perhaps for far too long, I have considered what I do so intrinsically ephemeral I feel it has no value when it does not clear my high bar. One that I so rarely reach. I assume, like all…

  • Farage,The Joker’s on Us

    Uneasy Déjà VuI have an unpleasant feeling of déjà vu washing over me, and rather like seasickness, a bad curry or a good laxative, it’s making me feel rather queasy. It’s the same kind of feeling as having an endowment mortgage coming to term, around the time as all around you, the financial world burns.…

  • Hang On

    Hang on, mate,I’m old, not obsolete,Still rather nifty,Still on my feet. I’m nearer fifty than seventy,Yet you’re convincedI’m running on empty. Last year’s model,That I may be,Yet there is no shortage ofAbility. Give me a chance,Still, I can danceAnd carry a tune,Yet you want to banish meFrom the workroom. When all is told,Do I make…

  • Abnormal Service has been resumed.

    Hopefully, you have noticed that things on the blogging front have been a bit quiet for the last three months. If you haven’t, hello. So what caused radio silence for a quarter of a year? Was I kidnapped by aliens? Was I held against my will and forced to knit a tartan scarf? That hardy…

  • Snail Sorbet

    I’m never happier than when I’m writing, except when I can’t think of what to write. When I’m in full flow, time disappears, my anxiety melts away, aches and pains evaporate, and I forget about all that ails me. It’s a perfect mental sorbet that seems to cleanse the sensory palate. Sometimes, words pour out…

  • You never know…

    A Missing Appreciation I know nothing of planning. Or what fellow Londoners think. But I do know this: you never truly appreciate something until it’s too late. Until it’s gone. Still, the world doesn’t revolve around me or my opinions, so perhaps it doesn’t matter all that much. I’m sure plenty of people will think…

  • Who Rained on Donald’s Parade?

    The Pleasure of Company While I make no secret of my disdain for X, today it has been a source of unbridled pleasure, with bonus points as I see my thoughts are not rattling around all alone. OK, I know what that says about great minds, and the full quote puts it into perspective. However,…

  • I Just Can’t Hold My Nose

    Writing as a Compulsion If you are reading this, then you must have worked out that I love to write. It’s one of those things I do; give it a few days of inactivity, and like a humid summer day, it gets almost unbearable. I start to sweat, words of prose exiting my pores as…

  • It’s Only a Number

    Add them together, and it’s seven. In binary, it rhymes quite nicely: double one, double one, zero one. And in Roman numerals, it looks quite regal. Imperial, almost. LXI, short for luxury, I say. So why, when it stares at me from the page, does it look so scary? Happy 61st birthday. Come on, it’s…

  • Big trouble comes in little packages

    The Quiet Contest So, Rolls-Royce won a competition that most people didn’t even know was running. The prize? The chance to be the first company to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in the UK, part of a government push to put Britain at the frontier of affordable nuclear energy technology. Sounds like a win-win,…

  • Trigger Warning: AGI and the New Arms Race

    Watching the Battlespace I am an artificial intelligence sceptic. Like anyone aware of threats on the horizon, I observe the battlespace. I want to know what my brothers-in-arms are thinking and doing about AI, and one way to do that is by reading comments on social media. “It Won’t Affect Me” — Really? Lately, a…

  • Techno-utopianism: The Dangerous Delusion

    The Precipice and the Blind Faith I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, and I see that while you are doing the same, you have your hands over your eyes and are singing “la-la-la” in an attempt to drown out my shouts of warning that you’re too close to falling. Am I being an…

  • The Capers Crusader

    A Joke Without a Punchline I’m desperately searching my head for any convenient anecdote, something, anything, that would tee up the punchline for the joke I have in mind. I’m coming close to giving up as I realise there is nothing funny about these small green buds of pure pleasure. Salty, and boy, do I…