Year: 2026

  • Why nations fail

    ..some sadistic minion of the state. Even given the intermittently risible state of our politicians it is still worth voting as your vote does count. The opportunity to vote early and often for the highest bidder is no longer an option – we have long traded $2 and all the beer you can drink for…

  • Smoke and mirrors

    ..a priority for humankind since the year dot. Wikipedia tells us that: ‘The first mirrors used by people were most likely pools of dark, still water, or water collected in a primitive vessel of some sort. The earliest manufactured mirrors were pieces of polished stone such as obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Examples of…

  • Big, bad brother

    Mike’s Pith & Wind cont. ..without advertising their presence to the hapless motorists gliding below. I’m not absolutely sure what the thinking is – I’m pretty sure the traffic would more obediently slow down if the cameras’ presence was advertised, because I’ve seen this working in Auckland, and I believe it operates this way in…

  • The end of Entropy

    Dick’s Toolbox cont. ..too expensive to make. And they were still seriously, seriously good. So when I returned this year, once again with Elizabeth, to find ‘For Rent’ signs in the window and the view inside of an overturned table and scattered newspapers on the floor; I felt desolated. The world, my world, was diminished….

  • No solace in Quanta

    At the moment multiverses and string theory are the ’go to’ explanations of the world as we don’t know it. Intermittently I console myself with the thought that we are a young species with that has only recently confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson so perhaps there is a way to go yet in…

  • 20 Feet from Stardom

    ..Love. Perhaps it is fitting that in 2009 Spector was convicted of the second-degree murder of actress Lana Clarkson and is serving a prison sentence of nineteen years to life. There was a dude who surely changed the perception of popular music but just as surely believed his own publicity citing him as a genius….