He listened. The speaker started with a natural forest. A gorgeous, maddening, complex, survived-of-the-fittest, multi-species, layered, organic feedback pathways, mycella-ridden delightful speckled sunlight happy, violent/eating/parasiting/singing insects/birds/people, robust kind of a forest. They followed with a timber forest. A straight-laced, single specied, splatted down, polygonally-bounded-tree-age-contoured, money spinning, automation hugging, zen simple, database-like, timber-producing, silent, vulnerable all-lined-up-in-rows […]

The campaign which won last year’s referendum for the UK to leave the European Union immediately dissolved, and in the process kindly open sourced some of its innovative canvassing software VICS – blog post, github repository. This afternoon, prompted by a chat with Incubator of Change (a Liverpool based think tank working on new ideas […]

In the late 1890s – the story goes – an ordinary boy in southern India heard an uncle mention the name of this holy mountain. Arunchala! Just this, just the name, started pulling him to it. The mountain is meant to be, literally, an incarnation of the deity Shiva. Then, a while later, for no […]

Last night I watched Charlie Brooker’s news recap of the year. As I watched, the humour leavened things and left me entertained. But in my sleep, my mind has realised it had made me pretty angry. So a brief change in tone for this blog – a rant! Charlie – both you personally, and you […]

I went on a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation course in the Goenka school, at Bodhgaya in Bihar province in north India.  It was a complex event – my emotions and thoughts about it have often changed dramatically in a day. This blog post is more in note form than a cohesive, final account. 1. Silence For […]

He took my hand. “Follow me. Move fast. Don’t stop.” I’d spent the early morning looking round the tranquil mosques of ancient Champaner at the bottom of the holy hill. (This is a good guide to them, plus I left a comment on buses which might be useful. It’s in Gujarat, west India, a little north […]

A two year old draft blog post I just found, which is too good not to publish. Age leavens its earnest attempts to be ahead of trend. New computer technology used to be my relaxation, my hope. As the world has changed, that comfort has gone. We grew up in a digital village. Now we’re […]