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Jack’s Blog

  • The Courage of Convictions

    Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid is a rather piquant quotation from Franklin P Jones. Watching the domino demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa where thousands march in the face of guns is a humbling experience. It is too easy to see small figures on a tv screen and… Know More

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  • History is egg-shaped

    When I was a boy in Durham I used to go egg collecting. The tallest risk-laden trees for rooks’ eggs, sinking marshy waters for those of the black headed gull and flimsy attic floors for a starling’s ice blue oval. The lure of the colours, shapes and sizes, the art of blowing them, the need… Know More

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  • On shellfish and the selfish

    Paris in early February. Cold, clear and sunshine arriving by late morning. The whole city has a half-awake feel to it. Somnambulistic shopkeepers powered down, the lights in their eyes barely glinting. But the restaurateurs know that people have got to eat, especially the tourists who have come on cheap breaks and the business people… Know More

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  • History: It Never Lets You Go

    Sometimes you encounter these odd triangulations in your life. As if it has all been a dream from which you have woken, temporarily. Three bits of your life juxtaposed, though years apart and from different countries, even continents. I am on a Virgin Atlantic plane heading to London from Accra. This us MA what happened.… Know More

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  • You too can be a great musician

    Both of my sons are musicians. One plays and creates using a number of instruments some of which he makes and the other composes using electronics. The older started with piano and the younger with guitar. They went to teachers, off and on until their teens. Somehow both managed to cross that divide into which… Know More

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  • Myopia and mortality

    There is little motivation among societies’ leaders to take a long term view when establishing policies. That is why we have environmental disasters, genocide, diseases, poverty, multinational corporations overruling the interest of ordinary folks, bank collapses etc etc. Everything is measured in terms of their own lives and their own comforts. It is not just… Know More

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  • The drying of the will

    The hot, dry winds from the Sahara still blow across Accra. The dust gets thicker and the attempts to stave it off become more desultory. Any notion you might have that equatorial Ghana is plush with forest, dripping water, snakes and crocodiles must be relinquished immediately! It is an effort to keep vivacity going through… Know More

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  • The dust settles on Accra

    I was reminded of Dickens’ Bleak House this last week because Ghana is experiencing the Hamatan. It is dry and the sir is full of Sahara dust. Read the quote from the beginning of Dickens’ novel and substitute dust for fog, and you get the picture! Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows… Know More

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  • Lies, damn lies and poor interpretations of statistics

    Funnily enough, when I was flying back from Japan, I saw a programme called Freakonomics based on the book of the same name. I hadn’t read the book but understood it was a lateral look at the myths that can abound when people make wrong inferences from data. Well, two outcomes that stuck in my… Know More

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  • The Disease of Disney and the Solace of Zen

    Japan is an oyster whose pearl is the asceticism of Zen and the consequent aesthetic of minimalism. Thousands of years of philosophical struggle with the eternal questions of existence and thereafter run a deep course beneath its modernity. I have to admit I am deeply affected by it. It needs protection from the global consumerism… Know More

    Read more: The Disease of Disney and the Solace of Zen