David Hadley's Blog, page 19

Monday Poem: The Frozen Fields

The Frozen Fields We drift through mists that hide the day. The night will close in on us, and the cold Will make us huddle protectively inside. The rain will fall, almost frozen, hard Like the ice of sadness that freezes Then shatters the delicate heart of one Who has known love and seen its

The Philosophy of Bacon Sandwiches

‘Each donkey is unique in its own way. Then again so is each mandolin. However, approaching the wrong donkey with the wrong mandolin is not recommended. Nor – for that matter – is approaching the right donkey with the wrong mandolin.’ As many of those who have studied philosophy will recognise, those are the wordss

Recommended Read: The Boy on the Bridge (The Girl with All the Gifts #2) – M.R. Carey

The Boy on the Bridge (The Girl with All the Gifts #2) – M.R. Carey Notes: Although, this book is classed as the second book in the Girl with All the Gifts series, this story precedes The Girl with All the Gifts (TGWATG) by around 20 years. The great thing about the original TGWATG storys

A Domestic Goddess

Obviously, it was not what was originally envisaged. But, as you probably know, very few of these things are, especially not if that original envisaging is mostly instigated through the medium of advertising. Once an old advertising slogan went along the lines of ‘it does what it says on the tin.’ Mostly though, things haves

A Real World Out There?

This world is not the world I remember. It has been some years, how many I do not know. But it goes beyond that. Changes over the time I’ve been away I could expect and understand. But this – these changes – go beyond mere alterations made by the passage of time. Something fundamental iss

Recommended Read: How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking – Jordan Ellenberg

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking – Jordan Ellenberg Notes: This is an excellent and thought provoking book about mathematics and its application to everyday life. It begins with a fine example of its subject matter when Ellenberg describes how a mathematician, Abraham Wald, helped the US air force solve as

The Sensual Mathematician

It is usually not until after the age of puberty that we realise just how sexy the number 7 is. After that, it seems we become obsessed with mathematics and seeing numbers in all their naked glory. Back in the days before the internet how many of us used to lie under the bedcovers ats

No More Stories

It used to be so easy. I would find the women. I would discover their closely-guarded secret. Then I would weave a story around that one thing they desired more than anything else. I would tell them the story I’d made for them. They would show their gratitude, happy someone had come along into theirs

Recommended Read: The Complete Works (Oxford Shakespeare) – William Shakespeare

The Complete Works (Oxford Shakespeare) – William Shakespeare, Stanley Wells (Editor), Gary Taylor (Editor)   Notes: I’ve read all the way through this about three or four times now, and I’m currently reading it again, on and off. Each time I read it I find more reasons to come back to it again. There iss

How Cheese Made Civilisation Possible

Many people these days are familiar with how evolutionary psychology has shaped the human mind. For back in the early years, when humans were small groups of hunter gatherers, there was little or no naturally occurring cheese to be found. Those who did discover the natural cheese deposits began to mine it and develop thes