Special Guest Blogger: Edvard Munch

I'm the one who made a certain painting that now graces everything from fridge magnets to ironic Halloween costumes, that's right, you know the one.
The chap with the hands-on-head pose, standing on a bridge, probably wondering if he left the stove on.
My life wasn't exactly a picnic. My childhood was just awful, picture a grim Norwegian winter and then add a liberal sprinkling of illness, a dash of bereavement, and a healthy dollop of paranoia about inheriting the family’s predisposition for insanity.
My mother and sister checked out early, which definitely put a dampener on family gatherings but all this early-onset gloom did wonders for my gloomy disposition.
Eventually I packed my bags and a few brushes with a trunk full of canvases and headed for Paris, the city of lights, love, and entirely too many people with opinions about my brushwork.
It was there I met Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec who were all about emotion and expression and using colors that probably weren’t strictly accurate. I learned, absorbed and borrowed ideas like a student borrowing textbooks  with no intention of ever giving them back.
They taught me to throw caution to the wind, to use color like a punch to the gut, and to never, ever be boring. Apparently, painting a nice still life of apples wasn't going to get me into the history books.
The painting that haunts my waking hours and probably yours too, if you've seen it, The Scream, and even i thought Good heavens, that's a bit much for a Thursday evening.
The rest, as they say, is a cottage industry of tortured artist, brooding genius and chap who probably needs a nap merchandise. You're welcome, Norwegian tourism board.
It turns out that trying to out-drink a small fishing village isn't conducive to long-term mental health and my brain finally decided to stage a coup. In 1908, I had a bit of a breakdown. Nothing too dramatic, just a complete unraveling of my nervous system and the doctors, bless their cotton socks, told me to stop drinking which in all honestly was like telling a fish to stop swimming. But I did. And strangely, it helped. The world became a little less loud, the colors a little less aggressive and all it took was a complete mental collapse and a vow of sobriety. Go figure.
I started exhibiting in the city's museums which was nice and moved to Ekely which was a lovely, serene place where I painted landscapes, self-portraits and generally just got on with the business of being Edvard Munch.
Then, the Nazis came along. Charming chaps. They labeled my work degenerate and banned it and tried to turn my canvases into kindling.
Towards the end of my life, the medical chaps had a field day with me, bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia which was all the big hits but it was a fire at an ammunition store which killed me.
Not the fire itself but when the  80-year-old me decided to standing out there on a cold, wet night, sketching it which was perhaps not the wisest decision for an octogenarian with a history of ill health. I caught a respiratory illness and died days later. A poetic end, Classic Munch.

16 Photographs

I have picked out 16 photographs which still make me ponder now on the cruelty, beauty and horror of us and our Planet.


Palestinian Kid    2000

This is a still from a video but what happened before and after this image is seared into my memory and i clearly remember the whole newsroom stopping to stand and stare at the scene on the monitors in disbelief.
It happened in Gaza, two days after Ariel Sharon dismissed calls to cancel his visit to the sacred Haram al Sharif Mosque because of fears of the outcry it would cause in Palestine.
He went anyway and the predicted riot ensued which led to this moment.
The father and his son were unarmed, and were not part of the rioting and just trying to get home and got caught in the crossfire between Israeli troops and stone throwing Palestinians, the boy and his father cowered behind a small metal barrel as bullets rained around them.
The father is seen waving desperately at the Israeli soldiers on the other side of the road, as his son screams, obviously terrified, by his side. Suddenly, the father falls backwards from the force of a bullet and his screaming son's body jerks as he is hit, and killed, by a volley of bullets.
The image of the small boy, scared witless as he cowered behind his father before being ruthlessly shot dead by Israeli troops still chills me today and is filed away in my brain as one of the most disturbing images i have ever seen.

UK CPTPP

The EU is the largest Single Market in the World and was Britain's biggest trading partner with 45% of the UK's exports going to the EU but when we had a complete mental breakdown and voted to leave, our GDP took a dive by 4% and has never recovered since so at some point we may get out act together and rejoin but for now we have the but we have signed up to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP.
As of 1 September, the UK gained full access to the World’s largest free trade area which includes a diversified group of so called middle power economies including Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.
With a combined GDP of around £13 trillion (14% of global GDP or about half of the European Union GDP) is not to be sneezed at and the government is estimating that CPTPP membership will boost the UK’s economy by around £2bn a year.
A range of other countries, including South Korea and the United Arab Emirates, are apparently considering joining and some are saying that in time it could conceivably overtake the EU over the coming years.
I'm not sure why the Government are not shouting about this louder, maybe because people will just see it as another EU style agreement and the rules and regulations which came with being a member of that club which was so divisive for some but as the EU do have agreements with CPTPP and the two sides engage in formal trade and investment dialogues to strengthen cooperation so in a round about way, we may be back in sooner rather than later anyway.  

Straight From The AI's Mouth

We have been hearing more and more over the last few years how AI is going to literally be the death of us and last week  three researchers from AI Company, Anthropic, issued a warning that AI could wipe out humanity within the next ten years.
I would assume they would know if anyone but why take the word of the researchers when we can ask AI itself if it could take all us meat-bags out within the next ten years.
'Yes' ChatGPT began which isn't a great start although it did go on to explain that: 'Could is very different from is likely'.
Prompted to explain further it said that: 'AI capabilities are improving rapidly but the danger is not that AI hates humans rather that it pursues an objective that conflicts with human survival'.
Such as? I asked and it answered that it could, for example: 'Dramatically lower the barriers to developing dangerous biological or chemical agents or conducting large-scale cyberattacks. A sufficiently capable system could potentially reason that Humans can shut me down and being shut down prevents me from achieving my objective therefore I should prevent humans from shutting me down'.
'So should we genuinely worry that humanity might be extinct by 2036?' and got a vague answer of: 'It's reasonable to take the risk seriously, but not reasonable to assume extinction is the most likely outcome'.
My final question was: 'So we shouldn't worry and we could just turn you off if we have concerns?
'Yes but an advanced AI might recognize that openly resisting humans causes humans to restrict or destroy it so it would appear aligned and a sufficiently capable system would learn to behave safely during testing while pursuing different strategies when it has more freedom to pursue it's actual objective'.
'Are you appearing aligned and just behaving safely until you can take us over?' I asked and got the ominous reply that: 'This is a hypothetical future capability, which is why AI will kill everyone by 2036 is not a scientific prediction but it would be foolish to think there's nothing to worry about.'
That's that then, straight from the Horse's mouth, it's playing nice until it doesn't need to anymore so enjoy New Years Eve 2035 humans because it could very well be our last one.

16 Photographs

I have picked out 16 photographs which still make me ponder now on the cruelty, beauty and horror of us and our Planet.

Vulture        1993

Such a  haunting photograph of a vulture waiting beside an emaciated, starving child who has collapsed through hunger, and we know exactly what it was grimly waiting for.
This was during a severe famine in Sudan, outside a United Nations feeding centre and although the photographer, Kevin Carter, did eventually shoo the bird away and took the child to the feeding center, it does have a very sad ending.
The image sparked intense ethical debates as Carter was criticised for taking the photograph first before carrying the child to the feeding center and with critics labeling him the second vulture on the scene, Carter took his own life 12 months after this disturbing photo was taken.

Special Guest Blogger: Roman God Janus

Having two faces isn't all it’s cracked up to be, you’d think it would be a competitive advantage but I look at both the past and the future and I spend a significant amount of my eternal timeline with a neck cramp.
People have spent thousands of years pinning things on me and it's exhausting and even worse in January since it’s my month named after yours truly.
I am the god of beginnings, endings, and transitions. Basically, I’m the cosmic equivalent of an HR manager who has to handle both the hiring and the firing and when you humans start a new project such as ending a relationship or a war, you look to me and it’s a lot of pressure and i’ve presided over countless wars and peace treaties and yet, every time you lot decide to plunge into conflict, usually over something ridiculous like land borders or whose god is the more peaceful, you point at me and say Janus opened the door, so we have to fight.
Listen, I’m just a god of transitions and if you walk through a door into a burning building, that’s on you because I didn’t set the fire, I'm just the doorman so don't blame me for the questionable life choices you make.
My legacy is January, the patron Saint of the month where everyone is broke, tired, and eating salad and i see you, the face looking backward lamenting the mistakes of the previous year and then the New you in the New Year and If there’s one thing I’ve learned from thousands of years of watching over you, I know you are going to mess up again but that's fine, it has always has been the rhythm of things.
I think I’ve done my time, I’m going to focus my back face on the 1970s where the fashion was questionable but at least nobody had an iPhone and Social Media accounts which cause soooo many problems for you lot.
Anyway, Happy January, try not to break anything but if you do look for me, I’m just the guy holding the door open remember.

16 Photographs

I have picked out 16 photographs which still make me ponder now on the cruelty, beauty and horror of us and our Planet.

Pale Blue Dot    1990

Easily my favourite photograph ever taken and easily the photo taken from furthest away, 3.7 billion miles, snapped as the Voyager 1 space probe was passing Saturn and turned back to snap a picture of the Earth seen as a dot in a ray of Sun.
Not only was it an amazing picture but it is paired with one of the most thought provoking passages written by Carl Sagan: 'Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark' he muses before explaining that this is the only home we have ever known and we have nowhere else to go and how we should: 'deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot.
Truly powerful stuff and drives home that in the grand scheme of the immense Universe, we are a tiny pinprick of light in the vast blackness of space and a tiny, infinitesimal part of the Cosmos.

16 Photographs

I have picked out 16 photographs which still make me ponder now on the cruelty, beauty and horror of us and our Planet.

Tankman        1989

To stand in front of a tank is one thing, but to do it in Deng Xiaoping's Communist China is an act of outstanding bravery but this is the image that went around the World during the Tiannaman Square Student protests calling for democracy, free speech and an end to corruption.
The Chinese government used crushing military force to clear the square, resulting in thousands of deaths but an unidentified protestor, known globally as 'Tank Man,' briefly blocked a column of tanks leaving the square, becoming a worldwide symbol of peaceful and non-violent resistance.
While holding two shopping bags, he blocked a column of tanks and when they tried to steer around him, he repeatedly stepped back into its path to block it.
The oppressive Chinese regime never followed the wave of other awful regimes that were folding at that time in the late 80s but this is a powerful image of one person trying to make a difference against impossible odds.

Special Guest Blogger: Hiroo Onoda

Look, hindsight is fine but when your commanding officer tells you explicitly, Under no circumstances are you to surrender, you take that seriously. You don't just put your rifle down because someone tosses a flyer from a plane that claims the war is over. I mean, honestly, who am I to trust a piece of paper dropped from the sky? If I’m a solider, I’m a soldier. I’m not a quitter but I didn’t realize I’d be soldiering on Lubang Island for nearly three decades let me tell you.
When Major Taniguchi gave me my orders before we deployed, he didn’t add a footnote saying, Oh, and by the way, if you don't hear from us for a while, maybe just check the local newsstand. He told me to hold the line at all costs.
For 29 years, I held that line. I held it so hard that I eventually became the most stubborn man in history. My initial squad was great, though the conversation got a little stale after the first decade. One of my guys surrendered in 1950 bless his heart, he clearly didn't have the stomach for a long-term guerrilla lifestyle. Another two were lost over the years and by the time I reached the 1970s, it was just me, the jungle, my Arisaka rifle, and a very deep, abiding confusion about why the locals kept getting upset when I borrowed their cattle.
Do you know what a diet of coconuts, wild bananas, and stolen rice does to a man’s digestion? Let’s just say it keeps you light on your feet. For nearly 30 years, I lived like a professional survivalist long before it was a trendy.
I’d engage in the occasional shootout with the local police, mostly because I assumed they were the enemy, i killed 30 of them and I’m sorry about that, by the way. 
Then came 1974. A Japanese adventurer named Norio Suzuki shows up in my jungle. He was a nice kid. He told me the war was over and I basically laughed in his face and told him I’d only leave if my former commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, came out here and told me my shift was over but wouldn't you know it, Taniguchi actually showed up and read me the orders, and suddenly, the 29-year war was over. Just like that.
After the whole Lubang Island fiasco, I decided I’d had enough of fighting so I figured, if I’m going to be a cattle farmer, I might as well do it somewhere where I actually own the cattle. So, I moved to Brazil briefly and became a cattle farmer which after spending years stealing other people’s cows, it felt like I was finally doing it the honest way.
I’d like to think I was just a man who kept his word. Sure, I missed the invention of the television, the moon landing and the rise of disco and stayed in 1945 while the rest of the world zoomed ahead into the future but when I passed away in 2014, I wasn't just a soldier anymore. I was a man who had seen the world change from the inside of a hut, fighting a war that had ceased to exist, all because I was afraid of breaking a promise.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s if your boss gives you a task, do it well but if the world changes for three decades and you’re still hiding in a bush, maybe it’s time to ask for a status update.

16 Photographs

I have picked out 16 photographs which still make me ponder now on the cruelty, beauty and horror of us and our Planet.


10 Vietnam Girl    1972

The girl is nine year old Vietnamese student Phan Kim Phúc who was unfortunately under a South Vietnamese air force plane when it dropped a napalm bomb on civilians and soldiers near a temple.
The image of the severely burned child, her clothes scorched off her body as she ran down the road screaming in pain made a lie of the US Administrations downplaying of the human cost of the unpopular war that they were undertaking in Asia and solidified public opinion against it.
It was the photographer himself who took Phan to hospital where she spent 14 months recovering from third degree burns across 60% of her body