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What happened to all our Common Sense ?

Editor's note: Herewith a reissue of an amusing aside I wrote in 2022 after experiencing a particularly perplexing series of announcements, most of which seemed to defy common sense.......enjoy ! --------------------------------------------------------- Pondering the recent article about the close down of the world’s largest online eBook library  by the US authorities earlier this year led me back to the question asked increasingly often nowadays:   “ Where has all our common sense gone ?” I thought this might be a good opportunity to take a light-hearted 'tongue-in cheek' look at the logic (or lack of it) underlying human behaviour. What is it ? First of all, what is ‘common sense’ – and how do we define it ? To start with, here's a bit of personal history to help 'set the scene'.... I can well remember from my early childhood the frequent exhortations I received from my parents in response to what I thought was perfectly reasonable behaviour: ‘…for g...
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The Iran War: What are Trump’s Options and How Bad Could It Get ?

  Donald Trump has a problem on his hands…and the USA as a nation now has an even bigger one.... Having been persuaded by Netanyahu, and his own White House advisors, that an all-out attack on the Iranian regime and its military wing, the IRGC, was the best solution to the ‘Iranian problem’, Trump was clearly expecting the war to be over in a matter of days. This still seems to be his 'default' position for any campaign he starts, despite the lessons already provided by the Ukraine war and the continued attacks by all 3 of the Iranian proxies in the face of the massive bombing campaigns meted out to all 3 since the October 7th HAMAS attack. All this does beg the question of how closely he is really being kept informed, and who is actually driving US foreign policy... Despite the intense battering his military and the Israelis have administered over a wide area of Iran in the last 5 weeks, and the cumulative and continuing decapitation of the old leadership in targeted Isr...
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Amazon are withdrawing support from their older Kindles on May 20th - Is mine now defunct ?

  Amazon’s Kindle eReaders were ahead of their time when they first emerged in the late noughties, and were the first of the e-ink long battery life specialist readers to hit the mass market. They have amassed a large following of dedicated reader fans since then, and have proven themselves robust and long-lasting devices. They are also the preferred vehicle for reading eBooks, given the probems associated with long-term use of LED screens.  Amazon have been steadily phasing out support to their older devices for the past couple of years, with restrictions on registration for their oldest models, but there has been considerable concern voiced amongst the Kindle fan-base over the recent 'final' announcement   by Amazon that they are withdrawing support from all of their older devices from May 20th. This doesn't in fact cover the whole range of Kindles, but only applies to anything manufactured before 2012. It means that readers will then no longer be able to use their ...
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