Kester Brewin

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 [...]

It’s probably just me, but you ever got all your laundry done, finally cleared out the utility room, got the whole lot ironed, and realised you don’t actually have the cupboard space to put it all? Dirt and excess. I’ve often thought about a year’s project based on Matthew 6 where I’d aim to give [...]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] | Power Religion [3] | Power Religion [4] So, how might we try to gather some of this together into a ritual, a performance, a remembering worthy of the rich tapestry of signs it suggests? I think, firstly, we have to humbly accept that we simply never will [...]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] | Power Religion [3] Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel, writes on page 273 that ‘With the rise of Chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encourage strangers regularly without attempting to kill them. Part of the [...]

Power Religion [1] | Power Religion [2] “It was in the farm-based lands of Europe that technology was evolved more quickly, and, connectedly, monarchies and power-structures and empires began to grow…. and eventually develop ships that could sail to other lands to pillage them.” And so, in this random series of musings bouncing off Jared [...]

Power Religion [1] You might be wondering what the hell the last post was about, and where I’m going with this. Join the club. In the previous post, I outlined Diamond’s basic thesis in Guns, Germs and Steel, and retold the story of Pizarro’s conquest of the Inca Emperor Atahuallpa. But what is the significance? [...]

It’s been out for about a decade now, but I finally got round to reading Jared Diamonds’ book Guns, Germs and Steel. I think it’s excellent. The basic thesis, for those who haven’t read it, is that humanity, having developed out of the same group of lucky apes a long time back, has obviously developed [...]

In my recent post about predictions for 2008, I was (not) surprised to find most of the debate being around the comment of the collapse of the Emerging project. Actually, I think it’ll be more about the language changing, but hey. What garnered no comment was the prediction about ’08 being the year when people [...]

Very funny! HT Jordon Cooper.

It’s was with enormous sadness I received the news that John O’Donahue has died. Martin Wroe, who had for so long championed him at Greenbelt Festival, sent me this email: Our friend John O’Donohue has died. John was on holiday in France with the family of Kristine, a wonderful woman he met at Greenbelt just [...]