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Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

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judith butler

Ant Rites

March 7, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

Shame

I was very disturbed by the recent image of a scion of Irish horse trainers sitting on a dead horse, smiling and finger signalling V for victory. I truly grieved for the horse. I can’t say why this two year old picture ended up in the recent news but it had a huge effect on me. So much so that this is my third journal in a row driven by my reaction to that single photo and the relatively mild sanction imposed by governors within the equine industry.

Scratch and Sniff with a friend last year on the family farm.
These are working pets that rotavate and fertilise the soil.
And there are two because good farmers know that pigs don’t do well alone.
[Read more…] about Ant Rites

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: bbc, booklink, dublin international film festival, horses, john berger, judith butler, movies, rené descartes, tadgh o'sullivan, victor kossakovsky

Grievable Pigs

March 6, 2021 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

There may be a photo out there somewhere of me sitting by a deer, holding the rifle I used to shoot it dead. That’s because I was brought up as a hunter and such a photo would have been a trophy. In truth, my family started my hunting early.

My preferred trophy: Andrew Carnegie donated the 1905 cast of the Diplodocus skeleton to the Natural History Museum in London and I was lucky enough to dine beneath it several times.
[Read more…] about Grievable Pigs

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: fishing, hunting, judith butler, karachi, natural history museum, photos, the pig site, travel, ungrievable

Controlling Robots

August 12, 2020 by Simon Robinson 2 Comments

New gatekeepers have emerged to fill the vacuum created by a media increasingly needing ‘likes’ for a codependent life-support system based on advertising revenue support. Such codependency is maladapted and objectivity is a price the media seem prepared to pay. The Bellingcat group is good place to look for accurate reporting. But how did we get to needing citizen journalists for our truths?

This Morning’s Walk in Dún Laoghaire.
Third and final view, it was clearer than yesterday but not quite Summer.
[Read more…] about Controlling Robots

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: bellingcat, isaac asimov, judith butler, ungrievable

Ignobility Index

June 16, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

We heard the siren call of the seals this afternoon. Pod, rookery or harem, there were upwards of a dozen of the pinnipeds basking in the diffuse light on rocks exposed by a very low tide.

It was befitting of Bloom’s Day to see the seals in Sandycove where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904. ‘A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round’ was his description of Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. Could this have been inspired by the Sandycove ancestors of these seals?

Sandycove Seals
[Read more…] about Ignobility Index

Filed Under: Anchoritism Tagged With: başak ertür, bloom's day, booklink, china, climate change performance index, corruption perception index, gapminder, george monbiot, hans rosling, james joyce, johns hopkins, judith butler, photos, pre-crime, the guardian, turkey, ungrievable

Non-obviousness

April 29, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I sat down to write about non-obviousness as a thought experiment. I’d cleared my desk of a litter of barely legible notes, making room for a Gedankenexperiment and a second cup of strong coffee. These notes were written in bed in the dark between 4 and 5 this morning. That’s a trick I learned from Lia though it’s taken me twenty years to put it into practice. 

Then my phone almost saved me from myself. I was contacted, though not tasked, to see if there were any giraffes in my study. A safari of this kind required I reload an enormous back-catalogue of photos into Lightroom which left me with time and coffee-energy to write up a non-obvious journal entry.

Giraffes found in my study from Masai Mara in Kenya and Fota Wildlife Park in Cork.
The lower Irish giraffe is a scarf idea for simonscarves at FabHappy
All photographs © Simon Robinson
[Read more…] about Non-obviousness

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir, ManRom2021 Tagged With: fota, judith butler, lightroom, masai mara, Maslow, oscar wilde, patents, photos, safari, ucd, ungrievable

20 Lines

April 3, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

What thoughts and whose ideas have a value?

Lia bought 20 Lines a Day by Harry Mathews recently. Stendhal had commented that “20 lines a day, genius or not, was a good place to start”. I was deeply impressed by Scarlet and Black when I first read it perhaps 40 years ago. A conversation with Gerry Hanley in the bar of the Delgany Inn elucidated from him that Stendhal got him writing with those same words. I had only just finished reading Scarlet and Black and was quite surprised at the coincidence, his bringing Stendhal up over a pint, my knowing who he was talking about. But I didn’t write 20 lines a day. Maybe that was a good thing?

[Read more…] about 20 Lines

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: an whitehead, booklink, Covid-19, gerry hanley, harry mathews, judith butler, photos, popular, stendahl, tim harford

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