Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

The Grand Budapest Hotel as allegory

March 21, 2014

I’d recommend watching Wes Anderson’s new film before reading on. I’ve only seen it once but I think The Grand Budapest Hotel is an allegory for the first half of the 20th Century and the fall of the British Empire. A hotel makes a good a metaphor for the world: people are checking in and out […]

categories: reflections
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Kant, and Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics

March 14, 2014

I’ve started Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics MOOC on Coursera. I’m probably most sympathetic to Kant’s thought, particularly his idea that we should… Always recognise that human individuals* are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. – Immanuel Kant Singer gave two objections to this which he framed as being fairly mild problems […]

categories: essays, philosophy
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Getting published – talk by Alysoun Owen, editor of The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook

February 8, 2014

Alysoun’s talk focused on the changing landscape of publishing, self-publishing strategies and what publishers have to offer. I was particularly interested in ‘how to hook an agent’. What she had to say was pragmatic and at times sobering. Suffice to say a lot of people write but not many make much money at it. Fine […]

categories: reflections
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Thinking time

January 24, 2014

When you pause to think about it, time is obviously a measure of change and not a cause of change. Holding my infant son and pacing the bedroom to keep him from screaming, I looked at my wife’s bedside clock and tried to guess when I could reasonably expect to get some shuteye. Maybe it […]

categories: philosophy, reflections
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Nostalgia for the nameless

January 9, 2014

My parents are leaving the town I did most of my growing up in. Recently, I found myself thinking about the stream that runs through the woods behind my old school, behind retail outlets now boarded up. As schoolboys, my friends and I were in the habit of building dams. Our method was simple and cheap […]

categories: essays, reflections
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