Disjecta

I'm not great at blipping the throttle on down-shifts. I get it right about half the time. Recently, as the revs flared to match the road speed as I engaged third on a tight corner, it struck me that, relative to modern and future generations of drivers, I'm close to an expert on such arcaneContinue reading "Carpe currus: why now is the time to buy an idiot car"

No senior Tory in England nowadays would dare to wear a jersey like the one sported by Margaret Thatcher above. When I was a child, in the 1970s, had you told told me that, by the time I was middle-aged, we would live in a world where sane people would stand up in public, and,Continue reading "The triumph of hysteria"

Carrying no briefcase (since he never does any work), Mr. Frost grins as he hastens away from Downing Street, back to the warm embrace of the Daily Telegraph, where an ability to talk unrealistic shite all day long is viewed as a career In the social media age of individual "truths" and consensus bubbles forContinue reading "A career in politics? Being an idiot helps"

All armies do it, but the Russians took it to new depths.  In WW2, the front-line Russian troops reportedly were OK, but the drunken rabble that came in afterwards essentially were looters and rapists, on an industrial scale.This is harrowing testimony from a Russian WW2 veteran, describing the actions of his platoon in the formerContinue reading "Russia’s rape machine"

In February, the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, noted that "it was unequivocally true that the Russian Orthodox Church had encouraged Putin in his campaign ...[and that there was] ... collusion and corruption between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church." Patriarch Kirill, a former KGB agent, has described Putin's reign (and I use the wordContinue reading "The Tories want a sock-puppet bishop"

We live in a post-rational age. Oh sure, all the trappings of reasons still persist; but they persist in the way Christian churches still stand in England, and, increasingly, in Ireland, or the way courts are in a dictatorship – they look solid, but they’re hollowed-out theme parks for a vanished mental scaffolding – nobodyContinue reading "Rationality-fatigue"

In 2015, Scientists at the University of Helsinki discovered that listening to music can alter how your genes function. Scientists took blood samples from study participants before and after listening to Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K.216. They found that the music directly affected human RNA. Link to research <here>. Growing up, I listenedContinue reading "When an intro tune alters your DNA"

I heard this the other night on Dandelion Radio. It's an old shellac 78; pre-vinyl, so pre-WWII at least. It's by an choral group called Ukrainian Chorus, and the song is called Ukraine We Will Free. The tone is exemplary - no sentimentality, no posturing. Just dignified, spiritual, and resolute. There is something of theContinue reading "An old crackly 78 from 100 years ago"

About 15 years years ago, I remember having a brief chat with a Latvian of Russian parentage in a ski lift. He was young, rich, materialistic (his ski gear cost more than my holiday lol), shallowly-Western, and, of course, optimistic. But did he feel Latvian, or Russian, I wondered. He ducked the question. I persisted.Continue reading "Is the penny starting to drop about Russia?"