The scene is a riot, on the first day of May, 1517. It would later be known as Evil May Day,or Ill May Day. An angry mob, mostly comprised of apprentices, marched through the streets of London, their passion inflamed … Continue reading →

Podcasts were my gateway drug into audio books. Some time around 2007, I started listening to more books than I read. Some of my first audio books were Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, beautifully read by George Guiddall. I often listened to those books while wandering around the Maltese countryside, so that place and those [...]

If you follow me on GoodReads (and you should), you will know that I give big kudos to writers who try something unique and out-of-the-box. The Broken Circle is that without question. The Broken Circle is the first book in the Potluck Yarn trilogy by Cheryl Potter. From the moment I cracked the cover and [...]

The post The Broken Circle: Yarns of the Knitting Witches Book Review appeared first on A Lot of Loves.

Walk Like a Mountain: The Handbook of Buddhist Walking Practice by Innen Ray Parchelo published by Sumeru Books  is a comprehensive guide to walking as a Buddhist practice for all levels and flavours of practitioners. Essentially a ‘how to book’ it provides information on the physical side of meditative walking such as posture, hand positioning, [...]

Here is an example of why you should never judge a book by its cover.  Or it’s title, actually.When I was asked to review Paleo Fitness, I agreed, but mostly because I thought it sounded absurd, and couldn’t imagine what it was going to be about.&…

I’ve been sick for 10 days now. I’m tempted to go on and on about my symptoms, but you can only get away with that if you blog regularly about interesting things, and blog only occasionally about being sick. Since I haven’t been blogging much lately, I don’t think I can get away with a [...]

It’s been too long since I’ve posted and there’s so much to cover!  Things both good and bad so…. triumphs and tragedies seems like the right kind of post.

There’s been a lot of stress lately.  I came down with a miserable cold right befor…

In researching my latest book, I’ve been reading about predictions for the future: what will happen in technology, science, politics, government and medicine. It’s pretty fascinating what some see coming at us for the next 10 to 100 years. There … Continue reading →

Venerable Thubten Chodron is a notable author, Buddhist monastic and the founder/abbess of Sravasti Abbey, a meditation community in Newport, Washington. She also hosts the Bodhisattva Breakfast Corner channel on YouTube which I highly encourage you to check out as well as her website which is chock full of information. It’s quite remarkable how often [...]

Late spring, Saturday night, sitting here surrounded by the trees and garden in full bloom, everything lush and full of life, my view from the front porch of verdant trees and garden, everything so very green. Peaceful. Relaxing. Would that … Continue reading →

We drove to Barrie for a funeral yesterday. I don’t feel right writing about it in this space because the story of this life isn’t really mine to share. I am really only mentioning it in terms of context, but I will say that yesterday was a very long day and that the world is sadly [...]

Book by Jimmy Connors

Who needs vampires when you can romance eagles, coyotes, even the odd ghost?

Book by Edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

Book by Eve Ensler

Book by Stephen Grosz

Book by Brenda Ashford

Bob Plamondon on his new book, The Truth About Trudeau:Though, should Justin become PM, Pierre would slip to runner-up position.

Bob Plamondon on his new book, The Truth About Trudeau:Though, should Justin become PM, Pierre would slip to runner-up position.

Bruce Bawer writing at FrontPageMag gives us a glimpse into Sweden’s socialist paradise gone drastically wrong.  He also relies on research done by   Jon Sjunnesson  in a new book “The Swedish Story”.   The article is really worth reading in full to give us an understanding of how brainwashing  from early childhood into the socialist mold is easily accomplished by a socialist state  and how generation upon generation of Swedes know not how to act independently from what the State dictates.  Orwell’s “1984″ is Sweden’s “2013″.

Europe is slowly committing suicide,  but Sweden is plainly determined to do itself in faster than the rest. Earlier this month, on a visit to Lagos, Nigeria, Sweden’s Minister of Finance, a fellow named Anders Borg, made one of those staggering comments, drenched with contempt for one’s own nation and culture, of the sort in which Swedish officials excel. Paying tribute to the beauty of Nigerian women’s colorful attire, Borg couldn’t just leave it at that; he felt compelled to use the occasion to complain that his own countrywomen too often wear dull, black outfits. Speaking with a reporter for Expressen, he expressed the hope and expectation that in ten years’ time his own country, and Europe generally, will look far more like Africa. It’ll be more multicultural, he explained, and thus better……


….Indeed, it’s a measure of the utter irrationality of the modern religion known as multiculturalism that a Western politician like Borg is able to lavish such praise on an overpopulated, underdeveloped African country whose very name is synonymous with cheesy Internet scams; a country that has a life expectancy of 47 years, a 32% illiteracy rate, a political culture rife with corruption, and a deplorable human-rights record; a country where twelve of the 36 states are governed according to sharia law,  where over a hundred people perished in Muslim riots over the 2002 Miss World pageant, and where jihadist violence has taken hundreds of lives in recent years…..


…..Take education. Of course, real education means, above all, helping students learn how to think critically. In a country like Sweden, however, schools and universities are primarily sites of indoctrination whose purpose is to create good socialists. If the Swedish system celebrates kids who are great at sports while all but punishing kids who stand out academically (“Excellence of bodies yes, brains no”), part of the reason is a fanatical devotion to equality of result, and part is an awareness that kids with first-rate minds are potential critics of the system. Hence socialism’s preference for mediocrity over excellence……….


…….In Sweden, the brainwashing starts early – not in school, but in day care. No fewer than 85% of Swedish children under age three are in municipal (or municipally administered) day care. This figure is probably the highest percentage in the world. …


……“Meek as sheep”: that’s how Sjunnesson describes his fellow Swedes. They’re afflicted with a “silent conformism,” the result of a “spiral of silence” driven by a “fear of exclusion” and a perceived need to maintain a social order founded on perceived consensus views. Whether the perceived consensus views actually are the consensus views doesn’t matter: “When no opposing views are heard, people do not believe there are any even if they themselves dissent.” …….


………Then there’s the story of how a frank Fox News report on the Islamization of the city of Malmö led an irate member of Parliament to demand that the Swedish counterpart to the FCC close down Fox News’s operation in Sweden. As Sjunnesson sums it up: “freedom of speech means little in Sweden.”……


……….In socialist countries, after all, the state doesn’t exist to serve the people; the people exist to be shaped into unquestioning servants of the state – servants who accept that the state is them and that they are the state. In such countries, it’s taken for granted that there’s no need to place any limit on state power or to provide mechanisms to protect citizens from that power, because, by definition, as Sjunnesson puts it, “the state always is good.” We may mock the European Union for banning jugs or bowls of olive oil on restaurant tables, but this is what socialism does: the powers that be need to have their fingers in every pie, need to minimize the number of situations under which freedom may actually be experienced, need to accustom citizens to a society in which their lives are increasingly regulated. They need, in short, to create a country in which the land and the system are, in the minds of the general public, one – a country, that is, in which the people simply cannot imagine the nation itself without the socialist state…….