I’m studying a subject on law and ethics at the moment, and we’re trying to work out answers to complicated questions. What does it take to keep people doing the right thing? What consequences can be built in to a system so that people are motivated to do the right thing? We build giant, unaccountable […]
Author Archives: cafedave
near end
There is much to be grateful for in the palliative care ward, which makes those moments that deviate from this path the more noteworthy. Take, for example, this interface decision that was taken on the display of this morphine pump: essentially, a device that pushes down very carefully and consistently on a syringe until the […]
13 unnamed movies
In response to a recent FB challenge, here are some movies with no titles, that have been significant to me in some way.
missing the obvious
I’ve been burning the candle at both ends a little at the moment even after listening through to the excellent audio book of Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The lessons of “the sleep book” were that sleep is been more important than I thought it was, and is linked to better and worse health […]
Create an account
In what was fast becoming a meta-conversation, I found myself explaining to the (by the voice) older gentleman on the phone what he needed to tell another person they’d need to do to use a particular website. I told him he would need to “create an account”, a term I was sure everyone would know. […]
What Jesus said about money
When we think about what Jesus said about money, there are a lot of words in the New Testament that overlap with the idea of money. Here’s a quick graph from a Logos search on “money”. You can see a bunch of Greek words in the pie chart, some from the gospels, some from elsewhere […]
Ploughman’s Lunch
One of my favourite things to order from an eating establishment is a ploughman’s lunch. It sounds like an ancient meal, something from a simpler, agricultural time. I remember buying a book that collected a series of sermons from Charles Spurgeon from the 1800s – the John Plowman talks – there was a whole group of […]
Photo-taking and changes to memory
Via challies Our obsession with taking photos is changing how we remember the past. If you’ve ever worked through an old photo album with a friend or family member, you will have noticed the way the old photos tap into the stories that have come to be associated with that memory. But now, we are […]
lessons and seahorses
I was surprised to see a facebook event invite from a uni friend to a memorial service for his wife. With his dark sense of humour, and their relative youth, I thought this was just an amusing way to get in touch. It was not. Life was, in this case, demonstrated as far more fragile […]
meeting in a premium mediocre space
There’s a phrase that I keep coming back to when I’m spending time with people; premium mediocre. It’s was brought back to front-of-mind by a friend, originally attributed to this long, mildly sweary article from 2017 which – on re-reading – starts out talking about the features of mid-range dining options, but is much more of […]