Temporarily on the Paleo Diet and other Me-Related Things

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions; if you want to change something in your life, start now. There is no good reason to wait until New Year or a birthday or some other milestone. That said, over the last few years something has happened to me around New Year: I’ve had break-ups, been…

Holy Ghosts: ghost stories

“We are entitled to some muddled thinking now and then” said my new friend, Steve (fake name). Steve is an atheist, with a certain amount of superstition he can’t get out of his head. By that I mean Steve doesn’t like to say that he is an atheist because that might cause something bad to…

Transience and My Hobbies

I lift weights. That’s not facetious, I mean I go a gym and I lift up precisely weighted and shaped lumps of metal called dumbbells. As a result I am very strong, for my weight class (under-80 kg; under 176 lbs). I am not strong in any absolute terms, or even on the human scale…

Women Aren’t Funny?

It is always fun to disagree with Christopher Hitchens. And from what I know about him, he won’t mind at all that I have the audacity to disagree with him even though he’s dead; he won’t mind anything much at all. But he did once write an article called “Why Women Aren’t Funny”, which skips…

Technology Review: massage chairs

While I was at Allgeau airport I found a few Euro coins in my pocket, and you can't exchange coins. So I obviously used the dead money on a massage chair available at the airport: €2. And it wasn't bad. It does, rather disturbingly, remind me of the massages I give, so it's another step…

Chilli Cherry Hot Chocolate

I was stranded in an airport a few weeks ago because I turned up extremely early to a remote airport in Germany. I was there 9 hours before check in. I passed the time with many things, one of which was flirting with an Irish girl who was on a much earlier flight to Dublin.…

Are Atheists the New Vegans?

On a blog called Gravity Bites, an author called Brian wrote a piece that argues that atheists are more likely to consider veganism, and that they should. The argument is interesting. Again, I'm not going to add much. The argument is that, as an atheist, you are less likely to conform for its sake; you…

Why No Funnies?

“Why no funnies?” asked no one who reads my blog. Although, it is a good question. I do think I’m funny. So why am I not funny on this blog? One of the answers is structure. I am not a joke-telling kind of funny; I am a conversational kind of funny: banter. Not the my-friends-accuse-me-of-being-sexually-inappropriate…

Only Boring People Get Bored

I get bored. I have been bored. But I think I have gotten to the bottom of what bores me. By now, regular readers will know I believe quite strongly in the value of distinguishing the external and celestial universe filled with things and with truth from the internal, mental universe filled with feelings, emotions…

Margaret Thatcher’s Funeral, and a ‘cuppa tea and a wad’

I was born in 1989, so I’d be lying if I said I have formed my opinion of Margaret Thatcher. Any opinion I try to form would be formed through social constructs, hearsay and events I wasn’t there to feel the proper feelings about. She does certainly appear to have left a legacy I don’t…