Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

If  inequality doesn’t bother you a bit – turn away. If you believe it’s an obscenity that the rich can stash away £13 trillion in offshore investment accounts in order to avoid tax (http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-22/news/32788549_1_tax-havens-tax-justice-network-investment-bank) whilst the poor are ground into the dust, made to work harder every day and have their income reduced – this […]

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Mismatch by Peter Gluckman

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

This is a treat for anyone who is already convinced by the ideas of evolutionary biology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_biology) or wishes an introduction to them. Here is a question…Will people born in the 1990s in the developed world live as long as those born 60 years ago? The upward trend in life expectancy of the last century

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The Opium of the Intellectuals by Raymond Aron

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, PHILOSOPHY - The love of wisdom

Few works of economic and political analysis are worth reading 60 years after publication. The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955), by French intellectual Raymond Aron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Aron) is one of them. The author shows how noble ideas can slide into the tyranny of secular religion and emphasizes how political thought has the profound responsibility of telling the

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Mirror, Mirror by Simon Blackburn

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, PHILOSOPHY - The love of wisdom

One of my favourite contemporary philosophers is Simon Blackburn (http://www2.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/). A lot of this is to do with his willingness to address his books to a popular audience. He is never less than lucid and informative. I feel a wry but honest smile behind much of his commentary. His is a cool, powerful, analytical mind.

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Selfish Whining Monkeys by Rod Liddle

LIVING TOGETHER - Thoughts on Politics & Society

Journalist and polemicist Rod Liddle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Liddle) likes to ‘mix it up’. I heard about Selfish Whining Monkeys (2014) on Radio 4’s ‘Start the Week’ on Monday. It sounded enjoyably provocative. Here is the trade description: ‘With a sharp eye for the magnificently absurd, Rod Liddle sets light to modern-day Britain. In the western world, on

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Want You Dead

CRIMINALLY MINDED - Tales of the behaviourally challenged, FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

 In ‘Whispers of Immortality‘ by T.S. Eliot we find the following lines: ‘Webster was much possessed by death, And saw the skull beneath the skin, And breastless creatures underground, Leaned backward with a lipless grin’. Peter James might equally be described as ‘possessed by death’ because the word dead appears in the title of all ten

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