Monthly Archives: December 2016
Westworld is Haunting My Mind
I’ve just started watching Westworld (just the first three episodes so far) and it is seriously getting to me. It is far, far, far, far better than the okay but horribly dated movie from the 1970s. That was okay but … Continue reading
Warsaw Carol, 1939
Today – the most depressing Christmas Carol ever! Another of the carols with music by Zbigniew Preisner, the text to this is by the Polish author (of prose, poestry and opinion) and diplomat Stanisław Baliński (1898-1984) who left Poland after … Continue reading
Get Ready for Christmas Eve
Today’s Christmas Carol (and all the rest though Sunday) is from a 1999 collection by the Polish film composer Zbigniew Preisner entitled My Carols for the End of the Century (Moje kolędy na koniec wieku). He wrote the music for … Continue reading
Why Multiculturalism Ruins Everything
A big problem with multiculturalism is that everything devolves to a least common denominator. If a school takes students religious dietary restrictions into account within a multicultural setting it will be reduced to veganism (which makes no one happy) because … Continue reading
Snowflakes and Wafers
Today’s modern Polish Christmas Carol is from Grzegorz Turnau one of the leading practitioners of the old sung poetry genre. The song compares the snowflakes (płatki) falling on the grey city with the ritual of opłatek which is the heart … Continue reading
When Christ is Born
And now for something completely different…. some modern Polish Christmas Carols. I’ll do one each day through Sunday. The first is a modern arrangement of a traditional carol (all the rest will be modern). The singer is Anna Maria Jopek, … Continue reading
The DNA Made Me Buy This Dress!
Pretty much all addiction narratives seem to be about relieving people from the burden of responsibility. The very concept of addiction itself serves to relieve the addict of responsibility and most medical models of addiction and AA are also about … Continue reading
The Secret of America’s Success with Immigrants
I think the reason for this is actually pretty banal. Americans mostly don’t do deep, lifelong friendships. This is probably because they generally prefer wide social networks with lots of shallow relationships (nb I do not use ‘shallow’ here with … Continue reading
It Was Thirty-Five Years Ago Today
On December 13, 1981 the communist government of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) declared Martial Law. The short story is that between communist inflexibility and popular discontent with comunism (manifested by the Solidarity movement) the country was careening out of … Continue reading
Government Sponsored Human Trafficking = Slavery Without Work
Given the way the directions the world has been heading in, I’ve long wondered if a formal recognition of slavery in some form isn’t in the cards. Now I’m beginning to realize that it’s already here, it’s just that noone … Continue reading
The Worked Shoot 