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Category Archives: Comment
The Tech Bros are Coming for Our Wind
Should AI Data Centre Roll-Out be Phased and Linked to Renewable Installation? In the dreamy and often overlooked backwater of Dumfries and Galloway, on the site of the former Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station near Annan, an AI Data Centre is … Continue reading
Posted in Comment, Dumfries and Galloway, Environmental
Tagged ai, Artificial Intelligence, energy, sustainability, technology
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A Night at the Coach and Horses
History, Witchcraft, Slam Poetry and the Banality of Evil—Or Maybe Not? ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’ That is a rendering into English of words allegedly spoken by Napoleon Bonaparte. Or so I was told as I waited … Continue reading
Posted in Comment, Dumfries and Galloway
Tagged Biff Smith, Hannah Arendt, Performance Poetry, poem, poems, poet, Poetry, Poets and Pints, Robert Fergusson, Scottish History, Spoken Word, Witch Trials, writing
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This is the Way the World Ends
Reflections on AI, Agency, and Human Responsibility. I was ten years old at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and, to be honest, the drama of those events largely passed me by, eclipsed in memory by the assassination of … Continue reading
Posted in Comment, Environmental
Tagged ai, AI and Geopolitics, AI Regulation, AI Safety, Artificial Intelligence, chatgpt, Climate Change, Existential Risk, Human Agency, Nuclear Disarmament / CND, philosophy, Progress and Its Discontents, technology, Technology & Society, US–China Relations
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Deiseil – Dancing in Time: Reclaiming a Lost Rhythm
An Event at the Kirkcudbright Fringe, September 2026 That’s deiseil, pronounced jay-shal, Scots Gaelic for “ready!” So! Are you ready? A strange boy is weavingA course of grace and havocOn a yellow skateboardThrough midday sidewalk traffic Why on earth should … Continue reading
Between the Echoes: place – home – Lewis
A Memoir by Angus Macmillan We live in an age of change. That is obvious to us all and becomes more so with every passing day as one gets older. Indeed, the world in which one first became conscious can … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Comment
Tagged Books, history, literature, outer-hebredies, Poetry, scots-gaelic, subsistance, writing
4 Comments
Get over it! Move on!
The furore—indeed, near hysteria—that I detect in public debate over Jason Arday is striking. It now seems clear that the Cambridge Professor was rather creative in constructing the CV he presented at his interview. Yet the outrage expressed in subsequent … Continue reading
Transported
Observations from a meeting advocating the reopening of rail links in Dumfries and Galloway. Anyone who lives in Dumfries and Galloway will be aware that a railway line once spanned the region, snaking its way from Dumfries to Portpatrick, with … Continue reading
Friday Portraits
A Sitter’s View of the Matter In September of last year I had to run an errand which took me into the studio of artist Hugh Bryden. I found him surrounded by the output of his work. Canvases, linocut prints, … Continue reading
Posted in Comment, Dumfries and Galloway
Tagged art exhibition, contemporary Scottish art, Dumfries, Dumfries and Galloway, Friday Portraits, Gracefield Arts Centre, Gracefield Studios, Hugh Bryden, Jackson Browne, portrait painting, Sandy Robb, sitting for a portrait, The Crown, Tom Lindsay
3 Comments
Water, Water Every Where, Nor any drop to drink
I may not have been paying much attention in my school English literature lessons, but these lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, seemed suddenly to resonate with a number of themes which have been capturing my recent extracurricular … Continue reading
The Long, Slow Death of Attention
Whilst we agonise over which horsemen of the apocalypse to fear most, social media destroys our ability to deal with the challenges they herald In 2011, whilst working at Dumfries and Galloway College, my attention was drawn to a video … Continue reading →