Building Lifeboats
Building Lifeboats
The job now is no longer to turn the ship around. We don't have the wheel, and those who do will not listen1. The task now is to build lifeboats. To build resilient spaces in which fragments of humanity can survive. Yes, it would be better to try to save everyone. But that literally isn't in our power. We can, each of us, only influence the locality in which we live, and the people in that locality who are willing to listen2.
This essay is incomplete; it is part of an evolving train of thought and will be revised.
The Biodegradable Tricycle
The Biodegradable Tricycle
One of the design goals of my tricycle is as a prototype for sustainable transport. To be sustainable, it has to be fully recyclable, and the simplest way to make anything fully recyclable is to make it biodegradable: nature will do the recycling for you.
Metals, of course, aren't, in the strictest sense, biodegradable, although all except gold will eventually degrade in the environment, typically by oxidation, and the metals I'm likely to use oxidise into not especially toxic oxides; but in any case metals are valuable, and pretty easy to collect and recycle. I'm not guilting about using metals.
The Point of No Return
The Point of No Return
This evening I have been listening to one of Manda Scott's podcasts and thinking about my failure in trying to lead the village's planning working group, and about the cognitive dissonance underlying my Tricycle project. I suspect this essay will be a grim read; it's not well formed in my mind as I sit down to write.
Tricycle construction notes and resources
Tricycle construction notes and resources
This isn't a normal blog post. Normal blog posts are typically rarely updated. I intend to update this fairly regularly as ideas occur to me.
Composite techniques resources
Was Charlie Kirk a Christian?
A person by the name of Charlie Kirk was shot dead on a university campus in Utah, USA, this month. This piece is not a defence of his assassin. No one should be killed for their political opinions. However, the claim has been made — not least by Kirk himself — that Kirk was a Christian. As an ex-Christian, and as someone concerned with both theology and ethics, I want to examine that claim.
What are my qualifications for deciding who is and is not Christian?
I have none, and do not decide. I am agnostic precisely because I believe that it is blasphemous to make any strong claim about the numinous. I shall set forth the evidence, and leave the decision for you.