Category: Articles & Essays

We still, we still, rock you!

Articles & Essays

Anyone tempted to put the mockers on the rockers should remember that no one understands the absurdities of heavy rock like its fans and practitioners. You certainly can’t accuse Blue Öyster Cult of lacking a sense of irony when their opening song is “This ain’t the summer of love”, which they follow with another containing the line “Our best years have passed us by”. They even play “Godzilla”, inviting the taunt that they are dinosaurs, or even as Wishbone Ash’s Martin Turner’s kids call him, rock fossils.

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The Doomsday Clock

Articles & Essays

Our problem is that we are pretty good at dealing with our state-of-the-world anxieties, but bad at dealing with their root causes. Perhaps the growth of positive psychology has unintentionally exacerbated this by making us all more aware of what we can do to worry less, rather than what we can do to make the source of our worries go away. It is, after all, easier to conquer our fears than to vanquish the things we are afraid of.

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Don’t buy less, buy better

Articles & Essays

The narrative that Jesus came to save our economic skins was given extra credibility with news that retail sales in November were significantly up on last year, thanks to the shopping scrum that was Black Friday. This is a myth now more potent than the story of the baby of the manger. It persists, however, because it’s a story that is equally convenient for both defenders and detractors of the economic status quo.

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