No Sacred Cows
Scepticism served medium rare
Category: Uncategorized
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The deeper and broader thought becomes, the harder it is to sustain the rigid binaries on which much of the populist right depends: native and foreign, deserving and undeserving, loyal and traitorous, normal and deviant. “Us” and “them”. Greater understanding reveals causes, alternatives, competing perspectives and unintended consequences. It makes scapegoating more difficult because it…
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Why Did British Political Debate Become So Superficial? Watching France 24 or Euronews discuss Brexit can be a mildly disorientating experience for a British viewer. Not because they are always right, or because European journalism is somehow immune from bias, laziness or theatrical nonsense. It plainly is not. Germany has Bild; France has BFM TV…
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“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful”. There are days when time seems to lose its edges. Nothing especially wrong, nothing dramatic, no bad news, no crisis, yet by late afternoon one has the distinct impression that the day has somehow passed without ever properly declaring itself. A few essentials done, several not done,…
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Today’s attack at Bondi Beach was, according to early reports, aimed at a Hanukkah celebration. If that is confirmed, it will be yet another example of something humanity has failed to confront honestly. Religion has repeatedly given stupid people an excuse to commit unspeakable atrocities against their fellow humans. Not because faith uniquely creates violence,…
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Escape from Eight Hours of Techno Torture, to Sanctuary at the Macaca Beach Bar We came to Khao Takiab for a peaceful night by the sea. Softly lapping waves reflecting the full moon, a light breeze, a swim in warm water. Instead, we found ourselves with a front-row seat at a deafening eight-hour Full Moon…
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The early morning songtaew was peaceful. A lay ascetic sat opposite me, quiet, composed, radiating the sort of calm that makes everyone else behave for once. No drama. No noise. No need to pretend the world is listening (as in the earlier blog). Fast-forward to the return journey, where tranquillity died a swift death. In…
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A man climbed onto the baht bus today who could have walked straight out of the early chapters of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha – the years when Siddhartha leaves his comfortable life with his father, the Brahmin, to join the Samanas[1], the wandering ascetics who strip existence down to hunger, silence, and sheer will. This was…
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I seem to have checked myself into what can only be described as a vintage survival capsule. One of Hua Hin’s old stilted piers, the sort the municipality has been dismantling for “encroaching on public land” since roughly the Late Bronze Age. Some have already gone. This one is still here through sheer bloody-mindedness and…
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When even solitude needs a tripod. One man’s dawn swim meets the selfie apocalypse. After an hour’s swim at dawn in glorious solitude, the sea smooth as glass, the horizon glowing like molten silver – I thought I had the beach to myself: two kilometres of unspoilt quiet. Then, inevitably, modern civilisation arrived. A lone…
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By night, this stretch of the Gulf of Thailand becomes a quiet constellation of green and blue lights. The bright beacons strung along the horizon are squid-fishing boats, their powerful lamps suspended high above the decks to draw the squid towards the surface. Each light may be visible from as far as fifteen or twenty…
No Sacred Cows 