Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda
From this interview with Joseph Tainter: And so individuals need to take responsibility for their own ignorance. As I said, our species did not evolve to think broadly in terms…
The current New Yorker features a piece by Brooke Jarvis on the maybe-extinct, maybe-not Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. About fifteen years ago I had a cryptozoological phase, with occasional relapses.…
There is a famous anecdote told about Enrico Fermi, when he asked why there was as of yet no evidence of intelligent life from other planets despite the statistical likelihood…
This Elizabeth Kolbert article from the New Yorker on carbon capture is a few months old, but still well worth reading. It is sobering to read how many of the…
In September 2016 I posted “No green to be seen: a biodiversity desert on Slievenamon” about the void that was a conifer plantation on Slievenamon. David Elias, at his blog Dispatches from…
LEARNING HOW TO SEE AGAIN By Josef Pieper (translated by Lothar Krauk) from Only The Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation Man’s ability to see is in decline. Those who…
In a letter of 12 August 1977 to Robert Conquest, Kingsley Amis wrote: The Faber Book of Non-Trendy Verse has been easier and is going faster: a careful look through…
In the months before Ecuador I was all about The Uses of Freedom–or Der Gebrauch der Freiheit if you’re German. Late at night I would look at the words of…
Séamus Sweeney 