Category: Culture/Books

Journalist

Arrow of Time Meltdown

Time after Time (IV)

Not Miles Davis nor Sinead O’Connor Richard Dawkins Amsterdam, April 25th 2021— Fling your arms wide to represent the whole history of evolution from the origin of life at your left fingertip to the present day at your right fingertip.  All the way across your midline to well past your right shoulder, life consists of…
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Miles Davis Time after Time

Time after Time (3)

Not by Sinead O’Connor nor Miles Davis by Richard Dawkins Amsterdam, 7 April 2021– Von Frisch tried the experiment of trapping his bees in his observation hive for several hours. They went on dancing. But he noticed something which really is almost too good to be true. As the hours advanced, the dancing bees slowly…
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Richard Dawkins

Time after Time (1)

What is it by Richard Dawkins Amsterdam, 21 april 2021–Notice that the Palolo worms achieve their synchrony not by simultaneously responding to a particular signal from the sky. Rather, each worm independently integrates cycles registered over many lunar cycles. They all do the same sums on the same data, so like good scientists they all come to…
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Time flies

Time Flies and no one to stop it

But what is Time? Amsterdam, April 2021– Time is not only a leading American weekly Magazine or the German Newspaper Die Zeit. It is much more. The concept of time is self-evident. An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a day of hours and a year of days. But we rarely think about the…
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Richard Dawkins Time

Thoughts about Time

What it is and why Amsterdam, 21 April 2021– I wished I had known Richard Dawkins long before, in order to be able to listen to him and his mesmerizing theory about Life, Happiness, the concept of Time. I wished I had been able to write his books, but that is not necessary. He did it all. …
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Torrey Peters

Who am I?

or Who are You? Jamal Ouariachi Amsterdam, April 9, 2021– Fascinating literary riots in the United Kingdom. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction is the novel Detransition, Baby by transgender author Torrey Peters. On Tuesday, an organization called Wild Woman Writing Club published an open letter to the award jury.  The group refuses to…
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Miles Davis Sketches of Spain

The Sketches of Spain: Concierto de Aranjuez

Lessons for Life Amsterdam, 25 Feb. 2021– When I once, long ago, privately met with the fabulous Miles Davis in Berlin after a concert arranged by Hans-Georg Brunner Schwer, he, among many other things said,: “It takes a long time to sound like yourself.”  That remark surely took its time to ripen and grow as I went on with life…
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Othello Shakespeare

Happiness to your sheets Shakespeare and Verdi

Making the beast with the two Backs Amsterdam, Feb. 25 2021– Long ago, really long ago, when growing up from a child to a young man, I became fascinated by a comment with a, for me then and at that time, strongly sexual connotation. A comment triggered as a lifelong and equally beautiful experience.  One…
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China New Silk Road

The Boys from Beijing

Perhaps you’d like to take some time to read and refuel on geo-political issues, [in other words] the relationships in the world. If so, allow me to introduce Peter Frankopan’s “The New Silk Roads”.  I’d strongly recommend however to put on your seat belts and check your air bags. Reading that book I felt as if I was being blown off my seat…
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Holbein

The Renaissance art illusion proving everything is a matter of perspective

By the 16th century, European painters had become masterful at crafting illusions of perspective, giving viewers an impression of lifelike, three-dimensional depth on normally flat surfaces.  Building on this well of Renaissance knowledge, a small handful of artists began pushing linear perspective further still, crafting works that required the viewer to occupy a single vantage…
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