David Hadley's Blog, page 44
September 21, 2016
The Guardians and the Village
From up there, he saw the village spread out below him, just behind the small narrow beach and trapped there between the sea, the cliffs, and the swamp behind the village that kept Shakesbridge separate and isolated. Up here, his ancestors had built the Tower; they claimed to watch out for invasion from the sea.…
September 16, 2016
The Universe and Duct Tape Theory
Embrocation Danglybits is probably the world’s leading expert on the various aspects of what is now known as Duct Tape Theory. As we all know, the universe is many billions of years old, and as with all things of a certain age, bits of it start to drop off every now and then. Naturally, some…
September 14, 2016
The Many Ways of Truth
Some stories are like that, though, strange in the telling. Some people do not trust stories, thinking them inferior to the real, to what they like to believe is the truth. The truth, though, is never that simple. There are many truths, many ways of seeing the world. Some of those ways are better than…
September 9, 2016
Political Controversy in the UK
Tablecloth Swollenmember is probably the UK’s most prominent ordinary Member of Parliament. He has never held any of the high offices of state, or even any lowly cabinet position, despite being one of the longest serving Members of Parliament in Britain. As many former government ministers and political correspondents have pointed out, the UK has…
Free Kindle Novel: What Dreams May Come
FREE for the next Five days: What Dreams May Come Click here: Universal link Dreams are dangerous things. After a mental collapse forces him to sell his software company, entrepreneur Stephen Parker retreats to the quiet coastal village of Stoneyhaven, hoping to rebuild his life. Soon Parker discovers how dangerous dreams can be, as…
September 7, 2016
Where this World Turns to Shadow
This world has so many secrets it keeps hidden around corners, in dark places, under the shadows, beyond the ability of eyes to see or fingers to reach.
Shona knew many of those dark places, those hidden shadowed corners, but not all of them. Even though she was now beginning to feel her age, she knew she would never find them all. This world was like an enormous tangle of wool. Untangling one thread left so many more tangled yarns, more than enough for any one lifetime. More than enough for...
September 2, 2016
The Secrets of Britain’s Most Popular TV Cooking Programme
Dysentery Seasonalrelish is probably the UK’s latest leading celebrity cook. Her signature dish – the fish finger and tomato ketchup sandwich –according to food experts and TV critics alike – has revolutionised the whole genre of TV cooking shows.
As we all know, cooking programmes on the TV are a form of food porn. People watch these programmes not so much as a guide to how to do it themselves, but as a replacement for doing it themselves. Like porn, it is a displacement activity when the re...
September 1, 2016
The cultural turn | Books & Essays | spiked
FromSpiked:
…culture wars are proliferating, entrenching, deepening, because, over the past half century, the cultural domain has been thoroughly politicised. And with culture now established as the main site of political conflict, what was once largely private is now unquestionably public. In other words, the different ways in which people live their lives, indeed express themselves – their consumption habits, their leisure pursuits, their intimate relationships, their idiolects – have beco...
The Virtues of Inwardness: Reclaiming the Life of the Mind in a Politicized World | Quillette
From Quillette:
Perhaps our belief that the intellectual is synonymous with the political is less an eternal fact of human existence than a symptom of our own hyper-politicized times.
Source: The Virtues of Inwardness: Reclaiming the Life of the Mind in a Politicized World | Quillette
