Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
Science and experience both tell us that it may become harder to learn as we get older. On the grounds that it’s never too late to learn, I was thinking about science books overnight. Which is the best? Could it be The Selfish Gene? Or perhaps The Periodic Table? Maybe The Emperor of All Maladies? Or Factfulness?
So I thought a web search would help remind me of some that I have read. Where better to start than the annual Royal Society Prizes for Science Books?
Isn’t it ironic that my brain started making it’s own free associations at a time that social free association is proscribed?
It started again when there came a pier walk first thing this morning. And with that came a waft of stale urine from long closed public conveniences.
‘Rosebud’ was an enigma: the dying word of Citizen Kane, finally explained at the end of the film. Similarly, there was a Rosmeen question that came to be resolved shortly before our father died. As Orson Welles wrote in 1975, denying that his Kane character was modelled on media tycoon Randolph Hearst ‘There are parallels, but these can be just as misleading as comparisons.’
Libran Writer posted earlier this year about a visit to see an exhibition in Margate. The post was ten months ago, which seems almost as hard to believe as that the visit itself had occurred exactly a year before. Since I’m married to Libran Writer, you won’t be surprised to learn that I was there too. We had stumbled into the show the day before the official opening so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. What a treat that was.
It’s a shame that not everyone has the opportunity to visit New Zealand. Sometimes, our planets align and there are multiple reasons to do something. Let’s face it, visiting the other side of this planet requires unusual alignments.
The story of K. This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic is an excellent informative read. Go to The Atlantic and read what Zeynep Tufekci had to say on September 30. And perhaps read her many other articles since the pandemic hit.
