Posted inGeneral

The Rain during Covid-19

* * * The rain has such precise teeth. She nibbles down the paths and through the bushes, along the gutters and around my veranda chair like a cat. Who knows that she is gobbling us up, swallowing us down? When will she finish?   When eyes smell the stillness and see the music, droplets […]

Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGender violenceGeneralHealthMediaTech

Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’

The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]

Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGeneralHealthLifestyleNews/PoliticsTech

Education policy and the future of water

On Tuesday, I watched a video on the deteriorating water situation in the Arabic state of Jordan, which foregrounded to me the imperative, that countries give a central place to essential concerns such as the continued availability of water in their education programmes, from primary school through high school to universities. Unless they pay urgent […]

Posted inEnvironmentGeneralHealthMediaTech

The possible destruction of the world as we know it? (And Vaclav Havel’s far-reaching insights)

On a virtually daily basis, one is confronted with more dreadful news pertaining to the destruction of the world as we know it – or knew it – by forces that seem to be, almost irrefutably, related to anthropogenic climate change in the shape of global warming. For example, a report on Yahoo News (27 […]

Posted inGender violenceGeneralMediaNews/PoliticsTech

‘Dark technology’ and human ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’?

In the later 19th century there was a protracted debate among thinkers of various stripes about the question, what ultimately determines human actions — ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ — a debate that is still going on today. But while it was then influenced by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, on the one hand, and empiricist […]