Commentary
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Dampening the Hacker’s Fire
Ten to fifteen times a day, seven days a week, I receive a mail from my server - where this small blog is hosted - warning me that someone, somewhere, is trying to break into my system and take over what I have built during the last few years. I could, perhaps, feel a certain level of pride that my server, out of all the servers in the world, has been selected for this elite attention....
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No Birthday Cake
I had plans for today, carefully made well in advance. As I wrote in an earlier post, I was going to give out a special lunch for my work colleagues, to celebrate the end of my sixty-fifth year of life. Those plans had to be cancelled, and new plans made: the union has called us out on strike for a day and there is a certain obligation involved; I pay my dues, and it is for this reason that I pay those dues....
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Taking to the Streets
As a child, when I still imagined that television was interesting, I sent a great deal of my time ensuring I would not have to go to bed too early by watching the adult programmes; that is, those documentaries and news bulletins which I equated with being an adult, as opposed to what we now understand to be adult (sexual / violent) content. I gained, over several years, a very solid view of what the world was like: Thunderbirds was never going to be able to rescue us....
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Stone by Stone
Freemasonry is, partially, built upon a system of symbolism which is used to assist with ethical, logical and philosophical discussion and learning. It takes a raw recruit, or candidate, into its Masonic workshop as an Entered Apprentice; rough and unready for what is to follow, for the learning process, for confronting new ethical and humanitarian ideas. Symbolically, this new candidate is shown as being a rough stone, fresh from the quarry, torn out of the mother rock, and unprepared. ...
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The Big Gold Nightmare
I met a North American from the United States in a small town in northern Germany a few years ago. He was sitting on a bench under a tree in what passes as the town's main square, where the May Tree is erected each year, and looking very sorry for himself....
