Ged Carroll

Category: oprah time | 書評 | 서평 : 文芸批評

  • November 2024 newsletter

    November 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my November 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 16th issue. 16 is a low power of two which saw it used in weighing light objects in several cultures. For instance in the British Imperial system of weights 16 ounces were in one pound. This lived on far longer with…

  • October 2024 newsletter

    October 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my October 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 15th issue. This is the second year that I have written about Hallowe’en sharing my Mam’s recipe for barmbrack – an Irish household standard. When I lived in Hong Kong, the locals enthusiastically adopted western Hallowe’en culture with local amusement parks…

  • Cocaine Cowboys + more things

    Cocaine Cowboys Cocaine Cowboys by Nicola Tallant tells the story of the Kinahan organisation. The Kinahan organisation is a group that wholesales and retails illegal drugs in association with other organised crime groups. Tellant explains how deprivation, geography and economic growth fuelled drug trafficking and abuse in Ireland. Isolated council estates and economic hardship drove…

  • September 2024 newsletter

    September 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my September 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 14th issue. When I lived in Hong Kong and dealt with Chinese accounts, the number 4 was considered unlucky, rather like 13. 14 is even worse due to it sounding so similar to ‘is dead’ or ‘will be dead’ or ‘will…

  • August 2024 newsletter – unlucky 13?

    August 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my August 2024 newsletter, this newsletter marks my 13th issue. When I lived in Hong Kong; four was the unluckiest number. 13 featured in confucian beliefs and in tai chi. In western culture 13 has a similar reputation. The status of 13 goes all the way back to Babylonian…

  • July 2024 newsletter

    July 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my July 2024 newsletter, this newsletter which marks my 12th issue. I hope the wettest part of the summer is behind me. This time last year, I didn’t set out to get to 12 issues. I thought I would try three and see where I got to. You’d think…

  • Media virus by Douglas Rushkoff

    By the time Media Virus came out, Douglas Rushkoff was a public intellectual with the same kind of cultural impact of Simon Sinek back in the 1990s and early 2000s. I went back to read Media Virus for the first time in decades. The book design feels very dot com, with neon colour details a…

  • Dogfight by Fred Vogelstein

    The story Dogfight tells feels much more recent than it now is almost two decades on, and yet so far away as smartphones are central to our lives. Back in the mid and late 2000s Silicon Valley based journalist Fred Vogelstein was writing for publications like Wired and Fortune at the time Apple launched the…

  • June 2024 newsletter – legs 11

    June 2024 newsletter introduction Welcome to my June 2024 newsletter, it’s been a bit of a mad month with the European Union elections foreshadowing a rightward lurch in policy direction. The snap call for a French general assembly election and the bizarre spectacles happening in the campaign efforts of the UK general election. And before…