Tag: writing
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Erving Goffman: Memories, method and metaphors
If you do sociology or, indeed, any social science whatsoever, you’ll come across the work of Erving Goffman. I have done too but never engaged with it as much as I should have done. This was brought back to me when I talked with somebody who once shared a taxi-ride with Goffman and chatted with…
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Let there be light!
We recently visited Derby and, for the first time in forty years, I actually went into the Cathedral. It doesn’t look very prepossessing from the outside, but boy the inside is great. It is full of light. It was built in 1725 and reflects and interacts with the ideas and values of the Enlightenment era. I…
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Vibes: From new age to new algorithms
The other day I was talking with a friend and moaning about writer’s block. My friend said: “You are into words and metaphors and stuff. What’s one small language puzzle that’s been nagging at you lately?” I blurted out: ‘vibes’. My friend replied: “Write about that then”. Lots of people have written about that word…
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Being all at sea
It’s summer, but it isn’t. It is intermittently grey and rainy and stormy, with a few days of sunshine in between. In another year without a summer, namely 1816, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or so the myth goes* …. If she could sit in the Villa Diodati in gloomy weather and write, why can’t I,…
Making Science Public 