Adulthood

Pankti Shukla

Someone once said: “youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.”

When you look at the sky, you see the endless blue ocean. You try to figure out where it would end, and your rational mind would say “silly, blue is infinite!” That’s what our human life is like; stages from childhood to old age and in the end one last ragged breath,  before our body would go limp.

Being adult is difficult, harsh sometimes.

Every morning, when I open my eyes to the so called new day, I feel like closing them again and stay in bed. I want to curl up into a ball and forget what lies ahead of me. But, I get up anyway, and start my day; wishing for things to only get better.

I have got a busy life and routine from Monday to Friday. I am a sane…

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Crazy Family, Crazy Country

The Arts Mechanical

My extended family is nutso.  The evidence that I’ve seen is that goes back all the way to when we left Beeford in York in the mid 1630’s and got on a tiny boat to a new land.  The evidence is pretty clear.  After all what kind of person puts his barn’s construction date on the roof, in slate, in 1897, before the Wright Bros. even thought of airplanes. My family, of course.

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Brian Blade Fellowship

Jazz You Too

Brian Blade Drums
Melvin Butler Sax (Soprano), Sax (Tenor)
Jon Cowherd Piano, Wurlitzer
Dave Easley Pedal Steel
Daniel Lanois Mando-Guitar
Jeff Parker Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic)
Christopher Thomas Bass, Bass (Acoustic)
Myron Walden Sax (Alto)

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High Speed Rail Addressed By International Forum

News from the International High Speed Rail Association Forum, which brought together 286 participants from more than 20 countries in Kyoto on November 17.

Describing high speed rail as ‘a game changer’, IHRA Chairman Masafumi Shukuri said that it had the potential to transform society. He pointed to the Tokaido Shinkansen, now in operation for 52 years, suggesting that there was still a need to leverage the transformational impacts. Chairman Emeritus of JR Central Yoshiyuki Kasai noted that the line had created a single belt of cities that was the foundation of economic success for Japan.

In a video message Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said construction of the Chuo Shinkansen with superconducting maglev technology would revolutionise high speed rail in the 21st century and create ‘a corridor of regional revitalisation’. Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport & Tourism Keiichi Ishii believed the maglev project would change the national economic and social landscape, creating a ‘super mega-region’ and connecting 70 million people.

IHRA Vice-Chairman Torkel Patterson reported that high speed rail had advanced considerably in the last two years with commitments to develop lines in India and between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. ‘We are not sure how they will be done, but they will be built’, he said.

There is a need for co-operation, but this was no longer a certainty in a world coming to terms with drastic and unexpected changes exemplified by the Brexit vote and the arrival on the scene of President-Elect Donald Trump.

There’s Nothing Moral about Stop the War

Soft Left Politics

Making the case for war should always be the last resort. An intervention should only be motivated by our duty to save lives.

The world is now interconnected by global social media and corporate media outlets. An atrocity cannot happen that we will not hear about.

The question is do we just stand by and allow it to happen?

For many on the left, post-Iraq War foreign policy is one afraid to answer that question. Humanitarian intervention, even in the case of human atrocity, is ‘bad’ because any Western intervention creates only more chaos and instability.

The solution must merely be a political one, longer and driven by discussion.

Yes, we must search political solutions where they exist. But the left have forged a supposedly leftist position in which one is ‘anti-war’ to the extent of apologising for fascists, tyrants and terrorists – and ideologically opposing any intervention, even when…

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