It’s obviously a time to be thinking about death — not ideal for someone who suffers from thanatophobia — but sometimes you have to think about death in order to accept the absurdity of life in the first place. All I can say is that it wasn’t me who started it. First, we had Lady [...]

…only I wouldn’t like to predict exactly how nigh. A huge particle accelerator experiment is about to start and a tiny group of people believe it could spell the end of the world. But why are we so obsessed with the possibility of apocalypse?BBC News Magazine In summary, the basic theory is this. The Large [...]

Well, not exactly, but I did receive a phone call from a nice lady at the BBC who had read my post on thanatophobia. For those of you who haven’t read that, and can’t be bothered to read it, here’s a one-paragraph recap: I suffer from thanatophobia. That’s the fear of death. It’s not a [...]

There’s this blogger I know who is dying; her body is giving out on her. I don’t mean she’s got something that will eventually get her; I mean she’s in that final Departure Lounge. And she’s writing about it in a way — like most of her writing — that is powerful, visceral and sometimes [...]

Imagine being told “you’re going to die!”. Not a pleasant thought, is it? And yet, that’s the reality of life. You are going to die. Possibly those of us who don’t suffer from thanatophobia don’t think about it very often, but it’s something which is acknowledged whether or not you like it. Which is why [...]

I came across a post today on the Goldfish’s site called Believing in Belief, where she talks about the Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion and her own ideas on faith. I just had to post something in response to that for two reasons — firstly because her stance seemed remarkably similar to mine, and [...]

I watched something on television about Stephen Fry the other weekend. Apparently it was his 50th birthday, which came as a bit of a surprise because while I might possibly have guessed that he was in his forties, he certainly doesn’t look 50 to me. But it says he’s fifty on the official Stephen Fry [...]

I went to a book-signing in Waterstones in Newcastle yesterday. It was, as you may possibly have speculated from the title of this post, a book signing done by Christopher Brookmyre. He’s written a number of books that are generally classed as ‘Crime fiction’, but that’s too simplistic a view: you’ve really got to stir [...]

I see the grey within and the grey without While from inside swells a silent shout I fear, I dread, I do confess That eternal boundless emptiness And here upon this long cold shore ‘Midst scattered people, I feel it more That all through life, through all the rain We feel the mournful aching pain [...]

This ties in to some extent with my previous thoughts on my thanatophobia, or at least it does in my mind anyway. There are two main views of consciousness. One, Cartesian duality, suggests that the mind is a separate and non-physical construct which influences the brain. In this case, the mind could easily be considered [...]