Author: KB
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There Was No Blood | Religion and Identity
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Not the most romantic of movies, but we went to see There Will Be Blood last night. It’s a terrific movie. If you haven’t yet seen it, do. No matter how big your plasma screen, you’ll need to see this one on the big screen. Oil, Crude and Spiritual, are the two things two men…
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So This Is What The World Wants: One Dimensional Men? | Bartlett and Williams
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As the Archbishop heads for Synod this afternoon to defend himself and, according to some exaggerated reports, save his job, I’ve been mulling over exactly why he has been under such pressure for his comments on Sharia Law. Even the shallowest examination of him as a man would reveal a hugely intelligent thinker and a…
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Rowan Williams and Sharia Law
Archbishop Rowan is getting huge amounts of flack for his comments on a selective use of some parts of Sharia law in certain communities in the UK. Typically, his arguments, based on some serious reading, have been caricatured and turned into shock headlines. Which suggests he was perhaps ill-advised – this sort of reaction was…
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Car Commercials | Fantasy
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There’s a simple rule to follow if you want to make an ad about a car: make it total fantastical. Don’t mention traffic jams. Don’t mention the boredom of driving along motorways, the taxes and the emissions, the noise or anything else. Instead, make the car like a robot, or a dog. Make it jump…
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Flocking to the Cities
Sorry been a bit quiet here. Kids’ birthdays, other writing projects… stuff. Anyway, a piece on the news caught my ear yesterday. Apparently a long-term study of the hunting habits of peregrine falcons has found that they have evolved their methods and are now increasingly hunting in cities at night. The thinking is that they…
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Close Small Schools, Open Large Prisons?
The last couple of days have seen local government proposals to close hundreds of small village schools in the England, and central government proposals to build Titan ‘super-prisons’ in England and Wales. Both policies seem in doubt now, as central government has written to local governments reminding them of their obligations to keep small schools…