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Jack’s Blog

  • Are they taking the Mickey?

    If it had been April the First everyone could have laughed. If you were a science fiction reader or a pro-life activist maybe the lips were puckered and the eyes narrowed as the news came out that mice have been modified, genetically, to run kilometres instead of metres before being exhausted, to eat like a… Know More

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  • God “guess what I’ve heard!”

    Over the last few years, as technology has moved from pen to typewriter, to typewriter with a memory and finally to the computer into which I am presently feeding my thoughts, a certain set of possibilities and potentials have been put in train. Whether it be with a text on a mobile or a sudden… Know More

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  • Drink? Fat chance!

    Our physical selves are much in the news these days. By 2050 the majority of UK citizens will be clinically obese. At the same time the current epidemic of binge drinking has been augmented by middle class quaffing. And it, too, is projected to get worse. As a sometime resident of a village near Guildford,… Know More

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  • Fancy an Affair?

    Notes on Japan: 7 There are outlets in some of the major Japanese cities, called Alibi shops. These are purveyors of apparently innocent goods. They comprise the full range of city souvenirs – from any destination but the one in which you may be shopping! In Kyoto, for example, you can buy chocolates, mugs, paper… Know More

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  • The Neanderthals and their Nuclear Clubs

    Notes on Japan: 6 In my last post I raised the question of how nations could become psychopathic. Why take this despicable, cruel alternative rather than a more benign route? Each year, on the anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb, the Mayor of Hiroshima sends a telegram to every head of state, reminding… Know More

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  • Gotcha! 250,000 killed in American bombing!

    Notes on Japan: 6 When you have been to the Peace Park in Hiroshima you wish that every politician in the world could be dragged to its museum and made to look at the images of devastation following the dropping of the atom bomb on the city. A quarter of a million people died here… Know More

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  • Tips for eating

    Notes from Japan: 4 One of those irritants that keeps me consistently inflamed in life, is tipping. In our UK, class-ridden society the argument is rarely about the principle of tipping, it is about the degree: whether ten percent or fifteen percent, usually. I have a non-mathematical friend who argues that inflation means that it… Know More

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  • Zen garden, Kyoto

    Notes from Japan: 3 Outside Kyoto, up in the hills, there is a Zen garden some 500 years old called Riyoanji. I saw it at a fairly early hour – that is, before the tourist buses arrived. The setting is peaceful, in the middle of hectares of lake and trees. I viewed the rectangular artifact… Know More

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  • Not just a load of old bollocks…

    Notes from Japan: 2 In Innsbruck there is a memorial to the Emperor Maximilian in which a series of statues, larger than life, clutter the side walls of a little church. They all represent heroes of one kind or another and are cast in gunmetal black. Curiously, one of them is our own – or… Know More

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  • Bums on seats

    Notes from Japan:1 Cultural differences have their honeymoon period in the eye of the visitor, during which there can be a clarity of detail that, over time, melts back into the flux of the every day. Living with family members rather than as a tourist enables one to stay clear of the well worn grooves… Know More

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