Category: Uncategorized
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Drawing the Line(ker)
Apparently, according to someone who claims to have known him for thirty years, Gary Lineker (BBC football pundit) is no “rabble-rouser”. Apart from using a term which should set sensitivity meters a-flicker, it is nice to have confirmed something that is probably blatantly obvious to anyone who has any kind of inkling of who Gary…
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My Hope is My Home
Oceans lie before me; Waves crash the shores of my soul. Tossed from crest to crest; My hope is my home. Lightening splits the coal-black sky, Showering shadows upon the deck. And ghosts dance their curse and envy At my hope, at my home. The clash and clap of thunder; The shrieks and howls of…
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A Love Poem
I’m staring at you with my eyes closed,Holding you with empty arms.I listen to the silence of your wordsAnd, in my stillness, we dance. I live for you, all alone,Loving you in a single bed.My pillow lies for you,Filling the emptiness beside me. My days are yours to kindle,Yours are the scents I smell.You are…
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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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Transcendence
Both Darren Mooney, over at them0vieblog, and Keith Phipps of the AVClub, firmly locate The X Files in the 90s. They cannot be faulted for doing so, either. Every time we see a laptop or a mobile phone, we know where we are in time. Mooney goes further, identifying the whole series as capturing the…
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Where have all the flowers gone?
God is in His Heaven and all is well with the world. To slightly misquote the great Robert Browning. Except He isn’t anymore, is He? It isn’t entirely the fault of the postmodernists – the First World War didn’t do much for the devotion to the Supreme Being – but, whereas the war had unforeseen…
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Juliet and Romeo
Ah, romance! Don’t we all long for a touch of romance? Maybe this is why Romeo and Juliet has long remained one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. And this despite its not being very romantic! Let’s be honest, outside the orchard, when the people with whom Romeo interacts are not out of reach, standing on…
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The Reality of Fiction
The number of times I have heard over the years, when I ask my students about the nature of fiction, that it isn’t true or, even, that it is lies. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. It is not hard to understand why students might think fiction isn’t true; they attend Science…
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A Die Hard Christmas
As the Christmas season approaches, it behoves one to trot out at least some of the tried-and-true Chrimbo tunes and movies to help engender the appropriate degree of merriness. Where better to begin our preparation for the Season of Goodwill to All than with that perennial favourite ‘Die Hard‘, a film which is so full…
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Extremism
The extremist is a person who has abdicated responsibility for the Self. To be the best possible person, we must, each of us, become the authors of our own narrative. To do this, we must first accept that we are stories begun by other storytellers; that our own narrative is but the continuation of a…
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