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Doreen Ketchens and Ricky Riccardi

Good to see Doreen &c. featured in the latest issue of OffBeat. I’ve spoken to her several times when I’ve come across her cnr. Royal and St. Peter. As she says, she is typically asked “‘What do you have new?’ So we try to do an album every year.” This article sheds much light on Doreen’s…

T. E. Lawrence: Patron Saint of Motorcycling

Lawrence of Arabia’s last ride. Steve “On Any Sunday/The Great Escape” McQueen would be at his side as will Henry Cole. And if you’ve every wondered about the origin of motorcycle helmets, here’s a nice article from Neurosurgery entitled “Lawrence of Arabia, Sir Hugh Cairns, and the origin of motorcycle helmets“. Would I wear a…

Adam Smith: Eighteenth-Century Polymath

Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a polymath with several of his key concepts and theories either having modern counterparts and/or “enjoying” empirical support. Smith wrote about the origin and proper use of language, grammar, the history of astronomy and ancient physics, moral philosophy, music, dance, and poetry, and; economics. Despite the very wide variety of topics…

Baron Corvo aka Fr. Rolfe

Born on this date. If you appreciate the anarchic A Confederacy of Dunces you may well enjoy Rolfe’s super funny and outrageous novel Hadrian the Seventh. A classic in its own right is A. J. A. Symons’ biography of Rolfe, The Quest For Corvo. Below: Alec McCowen as Hadrian the Seventh, Mermaid Theatre, April 1968 winning his…

Herb Simon and Wim Wenders

Here’s an interesting discussion paper that caught my eye. I couldn’t resist a title with Simon and most improbably, Wenders, in it. Ethics is then also involved. As Wenders emphasised, freedom is at risk when the capacity of self-reflection and self-elaboration becomes weaker: when humans are not autonomous in their capacity of thinking and deciding…