LATEST THOUGHTS / NEWS
Posted on 31st July, 2025
Kelvingrove Museum is enslaved to prejudice
It is a very beautiful museum full of stimulating artefacts, and the day we went there was an organ recital too. Alas. my visit was blighted by seeing a large …
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Posted on 25th July, 2025
Teresa Teng 邓丽君
A former student of mine is a media entrepreneur working with the Teresa Teng Foundation of Taipei to relaunch the singer known as the ‘Eternal Queen of Asian Pop’. Teresa …
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Posted on 25th July, 2025
Returning home to Scotland
Last week, bumping into a MacGregor on the way to Japan, I found myself talking Scots. Or at least with what non Scots think is a Scots accent. It’s been …
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Posted on 25th July, 2025
Confucius’ birthplace, QuFu
In July 2025 I joined several hundred scholars and writers at the Nishan 泥山Conference in Qufu曲阜, the birthplace of Confucius, to discuss the meaning of modernization today. I was …
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Posted on 18th September, 2024
In My Grandfather’s Shadow: a case of inherited trauma
Angela Findlay’s In My Grandfather’s Shadow explores how post-traumatic stress disorder can manifest itself for generations after the original trauma. Her grandfather’s realisation that he had been a moral failure, …
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Posted on 18th September, 2024
WHY I AM A LEFTIST
WHY I AM A LEFTIST Our career politicians fling around epithets like ‘leftist’, ‘rightist’ and ‘populist’ as insults or accolades. So for the rest of us, the ‘normies’ (normal people) …
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