The founder/sole owner believes “titles don’t matter” and it’s more important to focus on the responsibilities each person has.
Hmmmm. Well, I suppose they are designating responsibilities, but I think this is all rather heading into Tyranny of Structurelessness territory, no? which is what I feel about a lot of these 'flat' structures where they ( Read more... )

I was reminded, during a conversation this evening, of noticing somebody commenting on a post I think on Facebook about the Marlowe attributions for bits of Shakespeare that Shakespeare was an uneducated oaf from Stratford who didn't write Shakespeare anyway, and realising from the name that this was someone with FORM on 'they did not write it, ( Read more... )

A certain noted atheist (whom I will not name, since it's not about him and I'm not sure how reliable the attribution is anyway), is alleged to have recently stated that 'teaching children about hell was worse than sexually abusing them'.

I really do not get the mindset that thinks you can rank abusive things done to children (or indeed, any bad ( Read more... )

Have been given to speculate, on the basis of a discussion happening in a locked post on someone else's journal, that me personally I'm pretty obtuse re social dynamics, in/out groups, etc.

At least, that is, in the present and as concerns the hedgehog, because I can so see these things in historical and archival contexts.

This may, of course, ( Read more... )

Currently reading a novel about a nurse who trains at the (Not) London Hospital in the East End of London, sometime during the interwar period. I.e., the same hospital that featured in the TV docudrama Casualty 1907.

About which I fulminated that they might have the medical details spot on, but the social ambience was RONG, RONG, RONG, far too ( Read more... )

On the one hand, Dear Mariella this week had me going aaaaargh, because it's another of those 'there is huge Issue in this relationship and yet the enquirer claims that apart from this Honking Great Monster in the Room it is a great relationship', and on the other, wincing thinking that some of those issues are not entirely dissimilar to certain ( Read more... )

Over the weekend was reading a biography of Stephen Potter, the originator of Lifemanship/One-Upmanship.

His books on this subject are amusing, but also a bit disturbing in their representation of social dynamics. They are probably rather more disturbing in the context of learning that Potter and certain of his friends already having had for ( Read more... )

Have been given to think by various things hither and yon, about people who desire to be cool, and therefore look at the cool people (or the people whom they perceive to be the Cool Kidz) and go and do likewise. Except, getting it wrong either ever so slightly or by massive degrees. Partly, sometimes, it seems, because they are taking their idea of ( Read more... )

There was a piece in the most recent Time Out (London edition, not yet online) concerning Peter Manseau, who, though not himself Jewish (agnostic offspring of a former Catholic priest and a nun), won the National Jewish Book Award. (Interview here and guestblogging here). Which, given the debates on cultural appropriation... gave me to ponder.

On ( Read more... )

This was very very good, and I recommend it (as I do all of Norma Clarke's work) even though Pilkington's life was actually rather depressing. She married v young and her husband sounds creepy and on the make in various ways and started chasing after other women and finally set Laetitia up so that he could break in on her in presumed adultery so ( Read more... )