Who are you calling Horatio?

Music is Wah Wah by James and Brian Eno

There appear to be many rabid opinions regarding the un-trialled use of the Death Penalty at the moment. I know there are probably situations in which I might be pushed into accepting its use but they would be very extreme situations and of course probably very personal to me. The use of lynch-mobs in Trafalgar square has been suggested in this vicinity though this was triggered from a discussion of the costs of high-profile trials. No emotion! Just save some money and hang-em-high. Sick hey? Of course I am on the comedown from To Kill a Mockingbird. Stand a while in another person's shoes.

How big is the world? We each think we know the world but there is so much outside our understanding that we can never be fully aware of all nuances of behaviour. I don't mean any super-natural stuff, just cultural differences. Even walking down a road adjacent to your own can throw up differences that make you feel uneasy. This may be wrong but my estimate is that most people have a mind-view of the world that is about as big as the town in which they live. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth ...". Get over it and accept the world for what it is before a misunderstanding over a type of cake causes World War III.

Take it personally and we will judge you on your reaction. In some dark alley where no one has been for a hundred years we find the debris of the Century before last rotting into homogeneity; all is black dust and mud, paper, food - all turned to a uniform gunge. Just a few feet away, today's technology races by, sending eddies and vortexes into this empty place, lifting the few remaining bits of paper. Take your mind away from this to the change of green life, the forests and plains forever re-arranging into new things. The wind refreshes the trees - takes the dead skin from the ground and filters it through the oceans. Man has stifled the planet; his cities are baffles in the movement of the atmosphere and currents. One day when the great movements of water over all the seas have moved and we lie frozen in the stillness of a new natural cold war, we will look back on the hear and dust with fondness.

I toast the future. Sat by the massive flow of water, I see electricity and light from the sun as all we need to live. We will launch ourselves into space until our satellites have filled the sky and stolen all the sun to grow the food we need. At the LaGrange points our modern Puck will sit and girdle the solar system in minutes, driven by magic and mechanics. They tell me numbers are the most important thing; not doing things but numbers, writing down what you have done and telling everyone. Stifle science and drive ambition down; this pessimism kills us all. Anarchy joins at the top of the circle.