The Cosmic Hologram

Harari is replaced by Jude Currivan, discovered on You Tube, her latest book The Cosmic Hologram arrives via Hive, your ethical alternative to the tax avoiding, bookshop destroying, worker exploiting Amazon ... not just bookshops but most of the High Street under threat if we allow it ... Hive promotes local independent bookshops and donates cash on every sale to support them practically ...

Before leaving Harari, who claims to meditate for two hours every day, an observation on his residual conditioning, which allows the dismantling of Syria as part of the ongoing U.S. plan to rearrange the oil fields to their advantage, to be referred to as the Syrian Civil War ... lazy language, though perhaps not different from calling the 1936 military insurrection, supported by the Catholic Church, to destroy the democratically elected government, the Spanish Civil War. Harari also, though identifying as a liberal secular Jew, finds it acceptable to characterise the rogue state of Israel, which has ignored dozens of warnings fron the UN over its violation of human rights, as a civilised nation. Still, his book is worth a look, along with his previous Sapiens and Homo Deus ...

Currivan's cv is compelling, with a combination of scientific training, including an Oxford Masters in Physics, focusing on quantum and cosmology, and a sense of the numinous starting at the age of five and miraculously surviving through the rigours of an academic system geared to suppress ways of seeing not currently in the mainstream ...

The book is hard going for one not used to scientific concepts ... and swiftly disposes of the Many Worlds Interpretation, a story faintly integrated into the W&D worldview. .. an infinite and eternal universe also is disposed of ... the problem of what lies beyond dealt with by positing our universe as only the latest in an infinite cosmic plenum ... let's see how the rest goes, though she is quite persuasive ...

Meanwhile, morning walks turn bracing as snow arrives beautifully on the hills ... a snowy owl flies close by magically. .. feet think they are resting with two or three hours walking daily, legs happy to move and whole organism fires up for its own sake each day and in preparation for longer stages with full pack in Spring ... March or April maybe ... as for looming EU exit it's unclear why a crisis is called for ... what exactly will change except for different queues at passport control ... delays on freight ins and outs as tariffs are sorted and maybe a new smuggling opportunity all round, especially on the proposed new EU land border in Ireland, though an all Ireland solution might look attractive to some if not the DUP ... all the more reason to encourage a referendum on the question ... after all they manage to play rugby under one banner without any noticeable problems ...

What with reading, walking, visiting and occasional minibus driving time passes gently and spaciously ... this retirement idea a liberation indeed ...