Walking Commentary

Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023

Fake Memoir

Despotism and Contagion

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Saturday was another busy day in our ongoing limited isolation.

Breakfast was depressing. Our granola and coffee were excellent and the eating of them a luxury afforded more by ongoing luck than planning.

It was the continuing bad news of the devastation and the absence of leadership in Beirut that was upsetting. It was like watching a rerun of the clean-up after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. That was another disaster accompanied by excellent meals for remote observers. Unless I’m wrong to believe that many of us consume our news at meal times.

Reading bench (after Lutyens).
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Fifth Sunflower Poker

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I was watching a viral video of a 45th President trying to persuade journalist Jonathan Swan of an anti-virus response that was ‘better than the world’. That’s when one-time boss of Salomon Brothers came to mind. He was a securities trader who traded on your mortgage without security.

Michael Lewis wrote of John Gutfreund that it ‘was easy for Gutfreund to say money didn’t matter. He paid himself more than any chief executive on Wall Street … His attitude … towards the firm changed once he had cashed in his chips. He and others ceased to view Salomon Brothers as an instrument of wealth creation and began to treat it as an instrument of power and glory, a vast playground in which they could be the bullies.’ Liar’s Poker (1989) is still worth a read (or re-read) if you want to learn more about leaders who don’t let morals get in the way of anything.

The Ugly Library of Good Readings
Dún Laoghaire © Simon Robinson 2020
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Ingenuity Engines

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We were living in Houston when John H. Lienhard started broadcasting a novel radio series from the University of Houston. The Engines of Our Ingenuity is still a weekday National Public Radio program having been first aired locally on KUHF-FM Houston back in 1988. I used to listen to it as often as I could while commuting and I’ve often tuned to it when I’ve been back in Houston.

The format is simple. Each episode is a three minute story to illustrate how human creativity impacts culture. Today, there are over 3200 episodes on the website free to hear and/or read.

  • Sunflower, bee and a fish © Simon Robinson 2020
  • Peacock at buddleia feeding station © Simon Robinson 2020
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Time Changes

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There was a time when those travelling to Dublin or Belfast were treated equally badly in Heathrow or in any British ‘mainland’ departure point. All travellers were downgraded to being a threat. Everyone going to the island was treated with equal suspicion. Much the same happened in the US after 9/11. The terrorists know that the threat of terror always costs society more than the terror itself. Threat is the real terror. Threat leverages a cognitive bias. Humans are very poorly equipped to deal with perceived fears.

The bedside table remains busy.
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Imagined Futures

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This time next year, a week short of entering Rome on foot, I hope to be resting for a day in Viterbo, between Lakes Bolsena and Bracciano. Each of these lakes occupies the caldera of a dormant volcano and I will enjoy the sight of them.

‘So the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is true.’ (from Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman).

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