Kester Brewin

This month’s Believer documents a strange case from Hungary of audio-kinetic synaesthesia. The subject, whenever he hears certain words, ‘sees’ them as discrete and definite actions or gestures.
Colour synaesthesia is more common: sounds or numbers are seen as distinct colours, and some estimates reckon that around 1 in 23 experience it.
And I just wonder [...]

I enjoy most things about city life, but one of the perennial frustrations is noise. Light pollution, on the micro scale at least, is fairly easy to manage. We can shut our curtains or buy special blinds, and shut our eyes if need be. And, while some objects are foul to look at, we [...]

Two pieces followed one-another on the radio this morning:

MPs voted last night to remove the clause that required IVF clinics to consider the need for a child to have a father and a mother – essentially opening the way for women to have the treatment without any father-figure being present in the prospective child’s life.

And [...]

Shocking news today: the UK government is proposing to create a database of every phonecall made and email message sent. (Update – original article in The Times here.) Yes, you did read that right: that would mean the government would effectively be tapping every phone call and intercepting every email and monitor every page view. [...]

A wonderful letter in today’s Independent:
Sir: After a decade in which the electorate have been treated like idiots; when alternative political visions became a thing of the past and voting became a choice between different sets of accountants or fund managers; when a prime minister takes us into a catastrophic war based on lies, and [...]

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