Kester Brewin

Interesting debate going on about charitable giving in the UK. The recent coalition government’s budget set a cap on the amount of money that people can give and get tax relief for…and charities have responded with concerns that this will reduce the amount of money they receive. In a weird parallel story, a supermarket have [...]

Some thoughts to share on sharing thoughts… “If you have an apple, and I have an apple, and we exchange apples, then you and I will still have one apple. But if you have an idea, and I have an idea, and we exchange ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” George Bernard [...]

Interesting piece in The Independent about the battle over the right to remain anonymous online – especially as waged in World of Warcraft recently. That’s not a world I have ever ventured into, but many many have, and, as Rhodri Marsden sets out: Female players were particularly concerned, very aware that revealing their gender could invite [...]

A really nice series of images from David LaChapelle for iD magazine (ht Barry Taylor) What I like about them, as Barry says, is that the new lens with which these images have been shot forces us to reappraise scenes from the gospels that have become over-familiar and domesticated. The story of the woman washing [...]

I’m currently enjoying one of Zizek’s new books, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce – an allusion to Marx’s introduction to his Eighteenth Brumaire in which he wrote: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the [...]

Whenever a gift is given, an invisible cargo is exchanged with it, loaded with semi-conscious messages about power-relations between giver and receiver. Offering an expensive gift to someone can be a power-play: I am rich enough to give you this. Even letting someone out into traffic can carry the same message: I am more gracious [...]

There is only one thing on the children’s minds: presents. There has probably been only one thing on many of our minds these last few weeks: what to buy for who? How much is appropriate to spend? What did they give me last year? How will they think of me if I give them this? [...]

An excellent discussion starter here from Michael Sandel (The BBC’s 2009 Reith Lecturer) on the limits of the market. In it he discusses what should and should not be sold, raising some very interesting questions about surrogate pregnancy, prostitution and hard labour. His point is made best, I feel, in relation to war: would it [...]

One of the podcasts I subscribe to is the BBC’s More or Less – a weekly look at the numbers behind the news. Teaching Mathematics one is always in need of some relevant applications, and this has it in spades. Their recent episode on sustainable energy was very interesting, but fell into the trap that [...]

Interesting piece on Radio 4′s arts flagship Front Row this evening, concerning etiquette at classical concerts. There has been some consternation among the classical faithful that a new breed of concert-goers are filling the seats, and they simply don’t know when to applaud. Etiquette has it that one doesn’t at the end of movements, only [...]