Published on
30 June 2010
I would first of all like to thank the Thomas More Institute and its Director, Andrew Hegarty, for giving me the opportunity to speak here tonight and also for giving me the time and resources to work on this project, in addition to his valuable help. I am also forever indebted to my supervisor, Prof. […]
Published on
25 May 2010
Why Croatia? Croatia is a small country with a more than usually complicated past and, for non-Slavs, a more than usually complicated language. Croatia is beautiful. It is varied. It is the ideal spot for a holiday. But we must keep things in proportion. Taken against the backcloth of crises shaking the world – nuclear […]
Published on
28 April 2010
What has happened? – The rising demand for euthanasia, assisted suicide and ‘the right to die’. Over the last few years there have been a number of cases of death by ‘euthanasia’ or ‘assisted suicide’ and an apparent increase in requests for a ‘right to die’. Dignitas takes ill and not-so-ill people to Switzerland, where they can […]
Published on
24 February 2010
Modernity in music is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon. The much-used word ‘modernism’ is also a catch-all definition which leaves questions still hanging in the air. It is a word, like ‘socialism’ or ‘spirituality’, that can easily be hijacked by partisan voices who then claim ownership of it and thereafter imbue it with their own narrow, […]
Published on
9 December 2009
What is a genome? The fact that many diseases can now be traced to genetic makeup makes sequencing of personal genomes a useful diagnostic tool. This legitimate endeavour, together with recent developments in next generation sequencing techniques, is dramatically altering aspects of clinical practice. In the UK, the rise of personalised medicine is evident from […]
Published on
11 November 2009
I retired about six years ago and have since been engaged on a number of projects as project developer (with the usual quota of failures) and so have been following current developments in banking and business as more of an outsider. I wanted to place the idea of ethics in business in a philosophical context but shied […]
Published on
23 September 2009
We are here to talk about a man who elevated attacks on Christianity to a high art – or rather lowered his high art to attacks on Christianity. At age 50, Tolstoy declared he was giving up literature to teach the world how to live. Consequently, half of his life’s work is non-fiction – a 45-volume […]
Published on
26 January 2009
Introduction It is a commonplace that one of the main problems with developing countries is that their societies, starting with their leaders, are corrupt and that until and unless this corruption is eradicated these countries do not have a hope of achieving even a modest level of development. For example, Niall Ferguson in his introduction […]