The Castle Grounds Whitstable: No Spirit of Place

The Castle Grounds Whitstable: No Spirit of Place: "I miss the wooded area over by the road, which has been replaced by what appears to be a garden centre, and the weird bit of box hedging around the statue of the Milk Maid, which served no purpose whatsoever, but was quaintly eccentric in an old-fashioned, English sort of way."

The Hypostasis of the Archons: Gnosticism, The Roman Empire and the Myth of Christ

The Hypostasis of the Archons: Gnosticism, The Roman Empire and the Myth of Christ: "The archons imprint their model on us, their dead world. That’s what we see through the eyes of the ego: a dead world. A world of objects, of things, bereft of life, hollow, empty, meaningless. A world ripe only for exploitation. A purely economic world. A world in which some humans have the power of life or death over others, a world where we can go to war for possession of a commodity. A world in which men and women, adults and children are slaughtered for the economic benefit of a few."

Landscape and Possession

Landscape and Possession: "When a ghost enters a man we say he is possessed.

But what if he is already possessed and he no longer knows it?

What if the mind that he carries around in his head isn’t his real mind at all?

What if it isn’t just one man, but all of humanity that is possessed? Possessed by the demon of possession, in fact, by the mistaken belief that anyone can ever own anything."

The Trouble with HubPages

The Trouble with HubPages: "The pressure is on for self-promotion. I’m sure you get people sitting up all night writing some generic comments on as many hubs as they can find in order to promote their own hubs. This must make for some very awkward relationships as on-line self-promoters promote themselves on other on-line self-promoters self-promoting hubs. Who’s promoting who here?"

We do the work. Someone else takes the wealth.

Economics is easy to understand. Wealth comes from human beings. It’s as simple as that. It comes from human beings engaging with nature in an intelligent and productive way in order to make all of the things we want and need. It is work that makes wealth.

Read more here: http://hubpages.com/hub/We-do-the-work-Someone-else-takes-the-wealth

The End Of The World As We Know It

You may have heard people talk about 2012. Some people say it is the year when the world will end.

By Steve Andrews & CJ Stone

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It

The Power of the Light

CJ Stone tries an alternative therapy that is set to cleanse his soul and aura. The question is: is he evolved enough to step into the light...?

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Power-of-the-Light

Hair Pie

Crosby Stills Nash and Young sang a song about it. In those days hair was a revolutionary statement. But what's its purpose? That's the question on CJ Stone's mind.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Hair-Pie

You Can Write To King Arthur

King Arthur is this ex-biker, ex-soldier, ex-builder (not necessarily in that order) who had a brainstorm back in the eighties and decided he was King Arthur, after which he donned a white frock and a circlet, and has been causing various kinds of trouble ever since.

I wrote a book with him once.

http://hubpages.com/hub/You-Can-Write-To-King-Arthur

LSD Refugees

I've just taken LSD. For the first time in 25 years. That little brown drop of liquid, placed on the end of my finger and ingested some 30 minutes ago, is about to play havoc with my sense of self...

http://hubpages.com/hub/LSD-Refugees

Columns III: War and Asylum

In the controversy surrounding the issue of asylum seekers, we tend to forget some of the very real human stories that lie behind it. It's too easy to see it as an "issue" and to forget that these people are human beings, with mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers who love them, with hopes and aspirations just like ours, who suffer just like us, who laugh just like us, who dream just like us, and who die just like us.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Whitstable-Times-Columns-II

Baghdad Girl

She is fifteen years old and she has just finished her exams. She likes cats. She has a blog which consists almost entirely of pictures of cute little kittens rolling about on well-tended lawns, or relaxing, stretching and yawning, or playing with balls of wool. She is like most teenage girls the whole world over.

Her name is Raghda Zaid and she lives in the United Arab Emirates. She used to live in Baghdad.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Baghdad-Girl

Columns IV: Welcome to the Future

These days we seem to be under the quaint illusion that the progress of civilisation is the same as technological innovation.

Every day there are hundreds of new products on the market; from mobile phones that take your picture, to palm-top computers the size of cigarette packets; from cars without pistons, to video streaming; from vacuum cleaners without dust bags, to "Blue Tooth" technology that allows you to use your computer in any location. All of this is seen as "progressive", as if the accumulation of more and more gadgets was really the measure of human worth.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Welcome-To-The-Future

Computer Troubles

I’m very worried about my computer. It’s been doing some very odd things of late. I tell it to do one thing and it does something else. It’s like a recalcitrant teenager throwing a permanent paddy, stamping its foot and going off in a virtual sulk.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Computer-Troubles

Atlantis

“...for these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable… Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others…”

With these words, from the dialogue of Timaeus, written in about 360 BC, the philosopher Plato would unwittingly launch a deluge of speculation, investigation, argument and counter-argument, that has lasted the better part of 2,500 years.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Atlantis

Samhain and Cider

Samhain. Halloween. The season of darkness. Grim clouds scutter like thin grey rags under a sombre sky. This is the time of the ancestors, the time of the ancients, when spirits roam the land. The time of the dark awakening.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Samhain-and-Cider

Vlad the Impaler

“Tepes” means “Impaler”. He got his name because impaling was his preferred method of execution. This is how it was done. The victim had his legs yanked apart, by horses attached to ropes, and then a sharpened stake about the size of a fist was inserted between the buttocks, up the anus. The stake was greased with pig-fat to allow ease of inserting, and to stop the body shock that might cause the victim to die too quickly....

http://hubpages.com/hub/Vlad-the-Impaler

Angels of New York

We came in on the George Washington Bridge on the Interstate, but you could see the city long before that, from deep inside New Jersey somewhere, the jagged line of skyscrapers flashing between the hills and trees...

http://hubpages.com/hub/Angels-of-New-York-Part-I

Sweet Nothings

They are just here, that’s all, in this place of borders, on the threshold of becoming. What do their faces tell us? Are they sisters? Are they friends? It’s not clear, even, when these photographs were taken. There is an archaic quality about them, as if the camera is a time machine and we’re looking through the lens to another time, another era, maybe a century ago.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Sweet-Nothings-The-Small-Schoolgirls-of-the-Borderlands-in-Eastern-Anatolia-by-Vanessa-Winship-A-Review

The Power of the Light

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Power-of-the-Light