One could easily mistake the names Francis, Goretti, Harry, Ingrid, and Joseph for the names of a bunch of digital nomads passing through Portugal in recent times. Yet these are the names of storms, or diluvial nomads, which have become regular visitors to Portugal, with varying degrees of impact: more or less gusty and rainy; … Read more
Review: We Must Begin with the Land: Seeking Abundance and Liberation through Social Ecology by Stephen E. Hunt (Zer0 books, 2025) Environmentalists find themselves in the paradoxical situation of living in a golden age of radical ecological thinking – even as our global economic system blasts through one climactic tipping-point after another, more or less … Read more
Science in itself appears to me neutral, that is to say, it increases men’s power whether for good or for evil. – Bertrand Russell (from The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914-1944 (1968), Vol. 2, Letter to W. W. Norton, 27 January, 1931). What is Science? That is about as readily answerable a question as ‘What … Read more
The voice on the other end of the line was shaky and uncertain. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked. My wife had come upstairs with the phone just as I was getting out of the shower, ‘It’s your father,’ she said, eyebrows to the ceiling. My father and I have a good relationship now, a better … Read more
Listen to Part 2 (Bonus Episode) by subscribing (from just €5 p.m.) on Patreon. You can also listen to Part 2 (Bonus Episode) by subscribing (from €15 p.a. for all episodes) on Apple Podcasts. Did COVID-19 originate from a pathway connected to China’s trade in wildlife-for-consumption, or did laboratory activity trigger the pandemic? Where do … Read more
Bonus Episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-episode-ii-100102849 Or via apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep4-lockdowns-thinking-in-one-dimension-with-guest/id1728086643?i=1000648655188 In early 2020, Sunetra Gupta was quietly working on a universal influenza vaccine as Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, while finishing her sixth novel. By then, a new coronavirus had been discovered in Wuhan, China. In response, she and her group produced a paper suggesting, … Read more
In Ireland and the UK, Anti-vax sentiment, or vaccine hesitancy, along with deteriorating trust in the medical establishment, has set the stage for a coming plague. As a consequence of a recent outbreak of measles in the UK, Irish GP’s are now being encouraged to inform Public Health officials of suspected measles cases. The reasons … Read more
Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile The cause of, or men of, the Emerald Isle. From William Drennan’s ‘When Erin First Rose.’ (1795). The intense green colour of much of the landscape of Ireland – the so-called “Emerald Isle” – bears testimony to Garrett Hardin’s assessment that ‘As a rational being, each herdsman … Read more
When the Irish government via the HSE (Health Services Executive) introduced a Chronic Disease Management programme into general practice, and offered to pay G.P.s for running with it I thought that at last Irish general practice was moving away from its original reactive model and embracing a NHS-style piece work-approach. We could now show our … Read more
When the day becomes the night and the sky becomes the sea, when the clock strikes heavy and there’s no time for tea; and in our darkest hour, before my final rhyme, she will come back home to Wonderland and turn back the hands of time. The Cheshire Cat. There are very good reasons why … Read more
Evolution by natural election is the ‘greatest idea ever’ — a view which has been well set out by Julian Huxley (1961, 1964) and which I share. It is, In my view, the greatest idea as it provides a key concept to make sense of us and our world. In its essence it is simple, … Read more
Irish Times health correspondent Paul Cullens reported on February 13, 2023 that a disturbing 1,300 patients had ‘died over the winter as a result of delays in hospital admission from emergency departments, according to an analysis of Health Service Executive data.’ This followed a longer article by Cullen the previous Saturday exploring what is driving … Read more
In 1841 the population of county Leitrim stood at 155,297. By 1901, however, it had fallen to 69,343, dropping further to 41,209 by 1951, before reaching a nadir of just 25,057 in 1996. The 2022 census records a population of 35,087 – a significant increase, but still a staggering 77% reduction on the 1841 figure. … Read more
Jonathan O’Brien of City Kayaking says they began taking litter out of the River Liffey ten years ago. In that time he’s seen a change in the river. City Kayaking was launched in order to offer people access to water activities in Dublin, but in the beginning there was a lot of what we used … Read more
The Stone Age didn’t come to an end because they ran out of stones. Similarly, we should be building an economy where we ‘use’ resources rather than ‘use them up’. The human species must change its profligate ways, and radically reduce the level of extraction required to fuel our needs and desires. The economy is … Read more
’From my experience of my patients on the front line since March 2020, I estimate that between 1% and 10% of the Irish population have suffered from a serious traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidal ideation as a direct result of the government instigated media propaganda and lockdown, which works out at between 48 000 … Read more
In October 2018, I wrote an article for the Irish Medical Times entitled: ‘Acid Test-are hallucinogens finally shaking off their taboo?’ The impetus came from reading Michael Pollan’s How to Change your Mind (New York, 2018), Michael A.Lee’s Acid Dreams The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond (New York, 1985) … Read more
Standing outside a Dublin hostelry in the drizzle, I fell into conversation with an Ulsterman who arrived with impeccable republican-socialist credentials. I assumed, this would make him sympathetic to the recently vanquished Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. I breezily opined that the long-serving MP for Islington had been the first post-War Labour leader to challenge a … Read more
Foremost among Utopian absurdities, we had the false promise of ZeroCovid. This continues to inflict untold damage on millions of lives and livelihoods that have been lost along the mystical path to salvation. Although the ZeroCovid leaders identified themselves with logic and rationality, the fanciful idea of every country excluding an influenza-like virus appears to … Read more
‘Harold Evans used to say that an investigation only really began to count once the readers – and even the journalists – were bored with it’ Alan Rusbridger: who broke the news? In New York city on Easter Sunday 1929, in a premeditated move, a group of women brought the annual parade to a halt … Read more
