Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 33
October 26, 2016
Don’t floss, peel veg or wash your jeans: 40 things you can stop doing right now
Source: The Guardian
If you’ve ever washed out a wound with saline instead of tap water or requested an x-ray for lower-back pain, you’re a fool. According to a list drawn up by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, both practices are pointless; doctors only go along with them because they’re terrified that you will turn on them if they don’t. The list of useless procedures runs to 40 items, covering everything from wrist fractures to palliative chemotherapy, and has been released in the hope that medical professionals will eventually reconsider using the treatments.
Leading doctors list dozens of procedures that ‘give no benefit’
But medicine isn’t the only area where we’re coerced into taking action unnecessarily. Here are 40 more things you shouldn’t bother doing.
Banned
When censorship begins, it’s often just a difference of opinion except one opinion’s stronger than another, like private and vested interests, moral crusaders, people who believe they know better than everyone else what is good for them. Then they start to burn books, separate people. Me? I follow the banned.
October 25, 2016
When Tomatoes Were Blamed For Witchcraft and Werewolves
No other vegetable has been as maligned as the tomato (and it is a vegetable, by order of the United States Supreme Court). We call tomatoes killers. We call them rotten. We call them ugly. We call them sad. To find the reason why, you have to go back to the 1500s, when the humble fruit first reached European shores (and it is a fruit, by scientific consensus). Through no fault of its own, the tomato stepped into the middle of a continent-wide witchcraft panic, and a scientific community in tumult.
Enough, already
Seventeen years ago, a friend of mine, the late writer, psychic and witch, Sandra Ramdhanie recruited me into a group of like minded individuals, all intent on extending our knowledge of the world and to use that knowledge for the good of others. Sandra ordained me a high priest witch in a friendly gathering at my apartment that year. I remember, it was Halloween.
Witches are one of the most traditional as well as mysterious entities we associate with Halloween. When you think of a Witch, it’s easy to conjure up an image of an old, ugly, hook-nosed woman, stirring up a steaming potion that is brewing away inside a cauldron. Of course her usual sidekick, the proverbial black cat is probably not far away as you envision the witch clearly in your mind’s eye. Have you ever wondered where this sordid image of a witch actually started? Did such vile beings really ever exist, or is this whole business of a hideous, green-faced, evil sorcerer just one fabricated myth? Here’s a look back at the history of witches and witchcraft.
Transformations
Having super powers is one thing; sure, there are adjustments to be made, like doors strengthened and then there’s all the public recognition and celebrity nonsense but it’s all the revolving door costume changes, the transformations, just to do the job, like as if you couldn’t do it without them.
October 24, 2016
Gather no Moss
There have been a whole lot of column inches wasted on Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. But, to paraphrase another great bard, William Shakespeare, it is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Of course, Dylan has his champions and his detractors. What great artist doesn’t? But he didn’t ask for this award. The Nobel people decided to give it to him.
Now some Swedish writer, Per Wastberg, a member of the Swedish Academy that chooses the annual winner, has called Dylan ‘impolite and arrogant’ for not acknowledging the award.
Not quite right, Per. A mention of the award did appear, very briefly, on Dylan’s website but was taken down, just as abruptly. I’d like to think that decision was Dylan’s and I really hope now he doesn’t accept the award or turn up at their award ceremony in December.
Dylan would not be the first artist to do so. One of the most famous refusals came from the French writer and revolutionary thinker, Jean Paul Sartre and he explained, very clearly, his reasons for doing so.
October 23, 2016
The internet is still actually controlled by 14 people who hold 7 secret keys
It sounds like something out of a Dan Brown book, but it isn’t: The whole internet is protected by seven highly protected keys in the hands of 14 people.
And in a few days, they will hold a historic ritual known as the Root Signing Ceremony.
On Friday morning, the world got a good reminder about the importance of the organization these people belong to.
A good chunk of the internet went down for a while when hackers managed to throw so much traffic at a company called Dyn that Dyn’s servers couldn’t take it.
Artificial
In the same second as the distant flash, Hector’s arm exploded in a burst of flesh and tissue. As his assailant hesitated, distracted by his target’s pitiful howling, Hector leaped from his crouched position and crushed his opponent with the shattered limb, as artificial as his reaction to its loss.
October 22, 2016
Social Fretwork
Last month, my poem Social Fretwork got chosen as one of the top poems of the September Wildsound Poetry festival in Toronto (https://festivalforpoetry.com/2016/09/24/social-fretwork-poetry-reading-by-dermott-hayes/) but I was less than happy with the resulting recording of the poem. So I recorded my own version.
Incidentally, you will notice the link above, to the Poetry Festival, says ‘social-fretwork-poetry-reading-by-dermott-hayes’ but that’s inaccurate. That reading is not by me.
THIS ONE IS…
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