Tim Parks’ “Pen in Hand”
We should read: “with a sense of wonder and curiosity at the general and implacable human determination to fill endless space with dubious mental material when life is short and there are so many other things to be done”.
Generation Wars
On Friday 20th September, I joined the children, parents and teachers gathering in Manchester for the Climate Strike where Mayor Burnham proudly announced: “Our generation has failed you. I’m not arguing with you. We are giving you your voice and power.”
Book Bites: Mark O’Connell’s “To Be A Machine”
Some of these futurists have taken Enlightenment reasoning and twisted it to a quasi-religious adherence to a technological future… as redemption. Distorted in a post human mind-set which condemns humans to be inferior, presented as a kind of system failure or flaw that only technological superiority can correct.
A Declaration you MUST sign… or else!
One of the key climate protest organisations recently revealed that “Populations covered by jurisdictions that have declared a climate emergency amount to 141 million citizens, with 43 million of these living in the United Kingdom.
Book Bites: Jing-Jing Lee’s “How We Disappeared”
Described by Xinran as a “brilliant, heart-breaking story”, this is indeed a well-crafted, harrowing tale that interweaves a modern narrative with the war years.
Milton’s Paradise Regained
If we are to build a new city, then Milton Keynes represents the experiential cornerstone. It symbolises the kind of bold, creative masterplanning that we desperately need but haven’t seen the like of since those crazy days of the 1960s.
Home and Huawei: 5G tech and international security
This is a call-to-arms to America’s allies in a shifting geopolitical world in an attempt to instil some loyalty and solidarity.
Extinction Rebellion – the new Millenarian Cult
Shouting: “The End of the World is Nigh” used to be the preserve of eccentric elderly doomsayers with sandwich-boards. Cue David Attenborough. But it is depressing that so many young people have accepted the baseless assertion.
Book Bites: Peter Magyar’s Pen Zen Diaries
At its simplest, this book will teach you to draw and to learn from the process; with simple line studies and ink renderings. “Architects,” he says, “should aspire to reflect and invent the best of the present, and weigh its value in the future”.
Book Bites: Sennett’s ‘Building and Dwelling’
Anyone who thinks about the City and its relationship to people, should be interested in this book. It is complex in the same way that a city and its relationships to people is complex.
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