Tag Archives: books
On Visiting Myopia
Posted by on Apr 13, 2019
This week on Facebook: I add this as part of my 2019 April posts on political and economic themes, in which there are two reprises that are not quite the same as the originals. However, in this post, both the article on Friday and Ian Buckley’s essay Learning from Adam Smith quote the following caution from economic historian John Kenneth Galbraith.
Corporate executives and their spokesmen who cite Smith today as the source of all sanction and truth without the inconvenience of having read him would be astonished and depressed to know he would not have allowed their companies to exist.
My first reprise has minor alterations and he original can be read here, what follows is essentially as it was written. Read more of this post
On Visiting Myopia
Posted by on May 13, 2017
This week on Facebook: I thought the quote that Freedom meant freedom from material want too difficult to answer although I did try, but notions of freedom and material wants come with such a variance that any general answer would be virtually impossible and any specific answer dependant on how the quote was interpreted. This became apparent from an interesting exchange that developed between Colin and Scott in response to my published article on Monday. Read more of this post
What is Right With the World
Posted by on Sep 12, 2015
The rooted hope of the modern world is that all these dim democracies do still believe in that romance of life, that variation of man, woman and child upon which all poetry has hitherto been built. The danger of the modern world is that these dim democracies are so very dim, and that they are especially dim where they are right. The danger is that the world may fall under a new oligarchy — the oligarchy of prigs. Read more of this post
Whom the Gods would destroy
Posted by on Oct 4, 2014
My posts on matter considered obscene, reminded me of the 1930 case when Sir Ethelred Rutt K.C., had the misfortune of appearing before a full Bench of magistrates on behalf of the headmaster (a clergyman) of Eton College. Certain publications had been found at Eton College by a Police Constable Boot in his zealous discharge of a special warrant, whereupon the headmaster was charged under Lord Campbell’s Act, England’s first obscenity statute. The headmaster admitted that the publications kept on the premises were to be ‘sold, distributed, lent, or otherwise published’ – within the meaning of the Act – to the students under his charge, who were from thirteen to nineteen years of age. Read more of this post
Banned Book Week 2014
Posted by on Sep 18, 2014
In 1988 the case before The Supreme Court of Hustler Magazine and Larry C. Flynt, Petitioners v. Jerry Falwell was about the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court ruled that; “The fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas.”
A Literary Trip
Posted by on Jul 5, 2014
A recent post on the introduced me to the book Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. I had heard of the book but hadn’t read it or any other works by this authoress. Intrigued by ‘Aunt Ada Doom’s glimpse of “something nasty in the woodshed” that left her traumatised and confined to her room for decades, utterly dependent upon the Starkadders’, I went in search of the book and came across a review by ‘Anna’ on things mean a lot – a reading journal Read more of this post
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”
Posted by on Jan 3, 2014
The recent flooding in Britain brought the author Cowper to mind. No: not the poet William Cowper, nor John Cowper Powys who was a prolific novelist, essayist, letter writer, poet and philosopher; a writer of enormous scope, complexity, profundity and humour. Rather, John Middleton Murray who mostly wrote science fiction under the pen name of Richard Cowper, writing Profundis with much humour. Read more of this post
Banned Book Week
Posted by on Sep 28, 2013
Banned Book Week is the United States’ national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read, this week libraries and book stores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship (see more information on Banned Books Week). Read more of this post
