Author: markwithanx
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Palestinian Doom
According to annefrank.org, one mustn’t liken “what Israel is doing to the Palestinians” with the “systematic extermination of Jews by the Nazis”. Such a comparison is “not only inappropriate, it is also wrong and offensive”. Well, golly gee, we wouldn’t want to offend a state engaged in genocide by implying their strategy is just not…
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Imagining Science
When once we might have followed the yellow brick road on our way to meet the Wizard, today we must, instead, follow the science. No destination is identified; it is enough that we follow whither it leads and for an indeterminate amount of time. Which seems more reasonable, following a specific root, to a specified…
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Who Benefits?
It seems like a great idea, doesn’t it? Wars are fought over borders, so let’s lower them. Boundaries keep us in as much as others out, so let’s break them down. Identities limit us, so let’s make them so fluid as to be meaningless. It’s a grand scheme, this freeing the world of all that…
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It Takes Two to be Victorian
Any look back at the Nineteenth Century must be prepared to reconcile dualities. Not that the double nature of the age will ever be pacified; rather, it is the viewer who must find a way to accept the two sides of the spinning coin – the Heads and the Tails together. In a century that…
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Carbon Footprints
According to an online calculator, my carbon footprint is 3.83. Which, apparently, makes me and the average person from Turkey quite a bit less than almost everyone else – except the average Thai. Those Californians should be ashamed of themselves! 22.5! What are they doing? Smoking the stuff? But, of course, shame is the whole…
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Abandoned Development
The COVID lockdowns have caused an increase in mental health issues in young people. Or is it social media that is responsible? Maybe it’s a lack of broccoli in their diets! There seems little doubt that young people are showing a greater propensity towards mental ill-health. This is good for those whose job it is…
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The Essential Question
Justifiably, the Women’s Movement has fought long and hard for what, in reality, they should never have had to fight for. It must be galling to any woman who considers what they have had to earn over the past couple hundred years – not least for the strange ideas they have had to believe about…
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Shane is Dead! Long Live the Pale Rider!
Shane is the first movie I ever saw in a cinema (or, at least it is so in my memory). Not, I hasten to add, upon original release. I can’t remember the year, but I was quite young. We went with the school so, whatever else I might say about education in the Seventies, to…
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Thinking About Type
$2billion dollars and 2 million people annually – two numbers to consider when thinking about type because they represent the amount earned from the number of people who take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator each year. Staggering numbers, to say the least. The numbers imply that personality typing is an established method of gauging, quantifying and…
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Meta Matters
The project of modernity is over and the metanarratives have been shuffled out the door, which was promptly slammed shut behind them. In the postmodern world, there’s no need for those ideas which seek to impose from above dictates that limit, enclose and restrict. Now is the time of freedom, self-expression and individuality. Even those…
Mark with an X 