Minds and Borders
MIGRATION AND PHILOSOPHY PANEL – OXFORD, 14 NOVEMBER. A discussion on Minds and Borders at Lady Margaret Hall, starting at 7pm. On the panel with me are Meena Dhanda and John Worrall with Christopher Shields chairing.
ReadAuthor: Julian Baggini
How important is luck?
It takes great illusions of personal potency to deny the role that luck plays at many key junctures in life, and in history. Nonetheless, few look hard enough to see that luck lurks in pretty much every nook and cranny of our existence…
ReadSex, pies and videotape
Back in 1977, Alexander Cockburn coined the term “gastroporn” to describe the way in which looking at food and cooking provides a kind of substitute pleasure – and a titillation – for actually eating. The cinema has been a rich source of another kind of gastroporn, a fantasy world in which we watch the sometimes literal coming together of food and sex. It has provided some wonderful movie moments as well as some truly cringeworthy ones, but it provides as little insight into actual sex as Oompa-Loompas do into the day-to-day working lives of chocolatiers.
ReadMilk and alcohol
Two pieces commissioned by the New Zealand Food and Drink Council, published at Food Navigator Asia. The first is on the comparative price of milk and sugary sodas (14 October), the second on regulation as a tool to reduce alcohol consumption (21 October). I had complete editorial control of both pieces.
ReadWhat can dreaming tell us?
Life is therefore like a dream, not because it is an unreal nothing, but because it is a very real something which will vanish into nothingness the moment our consciousness ceases.
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