George Steiner on secondary culture in 1989
Each day, via journalism, via the journalistic-academic, the inherent value, the productive powers the savings embodied in a creative currency, this is the say in the vitality of the aesthetic,…
Category: collapse of complex societies
Der Untergang (Downfall) – reviewed for SAU Blog, April 28th 2005
Downfall loomed large in 2005 as a cultural phenomenon. Perhaps, at that point, the fact that some of the survivors of Hitler’s bunker were still alive made it all the…
2008: “Driving in my car” -Clive Thompson on erasing traffic jams
Having recently rediscovered my postings on the Stirling Behavourial Science Blog, I am finding some interesting (well, to me anyway) posts I wrote and totally forgot. Such as this: Clive…
Janan Ganesh on “history’s luckiest generation” and J G Ballard on the moon landings
In today’s FT weekend there is an interesting column by Janan Ganesh (who I previously featured on this blog) on how, given our times are in so many ways disconnected…
Decomplexifying Society – Joseph Tainter, George Monbiot, Paul Arbair, John Harris
A while back I posted some thoughts on Joseph Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies”. which, coincidentally, I finished in the week of the Brexit poll. The French writer Paul Arbair…
Tristan Gooley, observation and cognitive bias
Recently my brother gave me a present of Tristan Gooley‘s The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Tracks and Signs. I have read various Gooley books over the years, and to some…
“the primacy of the material world over the digital”
From Janan Ganesh’s “Notebook” column in the FT, 29/10/16 (firewalled): As the internet stirred at the turn of the 1990s, its distance-closing properties were talked up. Speculative accounts of the near-future…
The Bacchae of Baghdad at The Abbey Theatre, April 2006 – piece from SAU Blog.
Original here. A decade ago, “updating” Greek tragedy was going through of its periodic spells of fashionability. The bogeyman that was George W Bush was not infrequently the target of…
Séamus Sweeney 