Live while you are alive
A lady called Gwen recently wrote into the NPZr website as follows “With so many songs already written around the world, and throughout time, how the hell can anyone write a NEW song? Yet I hear a new song and I love it and it sounds new — but is it new? How could it be? There must be …
Continue reading ‘Is there such a thing as modern musical originality?’ »
Ambition, again I have a reasonably final draft of a book of rhymed verse ready for my wife, an excellent editor, to tweak the text. Before me is a short article by Julian Baggini in the Guardian Weekly (27th March), talking about vanity and writers. He points out that 150,000 books are published in England …
Continue reading ‘Ambition (and then we’ll move onto other topics).’ »
Yesterday we touched on charitable giving, the point of making loads of money and what you do with it. I thought I would digress a bit and discuss giving and the rich. A study two years ago found that a large share of Americans making $200,000 or more give only 2.8 percent of their income …
Continue reading ‘Tax, giving and the rich ( Part 2 in the discussion on ambition)’ »
A question from a regular reader: “What is the Epicurean view on ambition? In the past you’ve praised the social democratic policies of the post war governments in Britain, and they resulted in a better standard of living for most people. But due to high taxes and regulations, it was hard to become wealthy, both …
Continue reading ‘Is ambition detrimental to society? Part 1’ »
“Michael Young, the Labour politician who coined the term ‘meritocracy’, intended it satirically – conjuring visions of a callous dystopian future in which each citizen was judged solely on his or her intellect. Life for those at the bottom would be even worse than it is now. Imagine having to tell yourself: ‘I’m at the …
Continue reading ‘Meritocracy hurts. Does Mr. Deacon have a point?’ »
