© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

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My bleak predictions for the years ahead

At the beginning of each year I used to make it a custom to write a list of tongue-in-cheek predictions about things that might happen in the 12 months to come. I tried to make the lists pertinent, but also somewhat funny. I tried to include some big-picture, global predictions but also a lot of  “in jokes” for people in my home country and city. Faced with the blank wall of 2023 I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. I can’t look at the trends that have swollen through the past few years and pretend I…

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Read more about the article The bodyguard has killed the hostage

The bodyguard has killed the hostage

Winston Churchill said that, in wartime, Truth was so precious she had to be attended by a bodyguard of lies. It’s a picturesque figure of speech, satisfying in its faithful representation of reality but also ominous – to me anyway. Ominous because it makes me wonder what happens to the members of this bodyguard when they are no longer needed. Are they sacked? Made redundant? Put aside until the next war? Or do they decide for themselves that their role is always vital, that the war never really ends and that truth is theirs to do…

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My theory about conspiracies

A conspiracy theory is when you think that some people are working together against the interests of others. In modern language a “conspiracy theorist” is understood to be a person with unreasonably paranoid beliefs about implausible conspiracies. It’s a label with negative connotations of mental illness and wrong-headedness because we know that some mental disorders are accompanied by paranoid conspiracy beliefs. I’ve known a few people who have abused too many drugs and wound up thinking everybody was conspiring against them. People on the radio were talking about them, they believed, and one guy who was…

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