Kester Brewin

Just a quick comment on the furore surrounding the potential strike by tanker drivers, and the government’s response on this… Seems to me that they have deliberately kicked sand in the air on this one in order to distract from the more serious news about shenanigans surrounding Tory party funding and access to the Prime Minister. [...]

I’ve been writing a piece about Alan Turing – who was born 100 years ago in June and was the godfather of artificial intelligence. His ‘Turing Test’ still endures as a fascinating ongoing game between humans and computers, whereby a computer can pass the Turing Test if it can convince a human interlocutor that they are conversing [...]

It seems that the current coalition government are determined to raise the revenue that’s required to keep our roads up to scratch by arranging an elaborate private finance initiative, which will probably result in the Chinese government owning contracts for road management. How can this possibly make sense? There must, one presumes, be an economic [...]

  I happened upon this video via a share the other day – three psychoanalysts in conversation at the Science Museum some months ago. It’s not a blinding presentation – little stuffy and the quality is not great – but I was really struck by the (near) opening words of the first speaker (around 3:50 [...]

The Smiths are 30 today. I know… some of you are going to do the default reaction and go on about ‘how depressing they are…’ Really, just get over it and actually listen to them, to the music. Even without Morrisey’s lyrics, Johnny Marr’s guitar parts are incredible. And I defy you not to crack [...]

Been doing some interesting reading around Jungian psycho-analysis. In particular, I was struck by a couple of passages in which he uses the language of ‘blockage’ – which connects with the terminology I have been using to describe piratic acts. In Modern Man in Search of a Soul he writes this: ‘As long as all goes [...]

One of those bizarre stories that makes you check the date carefully and make sure it’s not 1st April: homeless people are being used as mobile WiFi hotspots in Austin, Texas, during the South-By-South-West (SXSW) conference. Yes, you did read that correctly, and you can read the full report in The Atlantic here. That piece [...]

Been quiet here… which is probably a function of being very un-quiet elsewhere. So thought I’d mention a few of the things I’ve been doing / working on… Firstly, I have to mention The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach. It’s a big, wonderful novel which basically ate most of my time in the past [...]