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The Invisible Ledger: How Digital Currency Threatens the Last Private Thing You Own

There is something seductive about the promise of digital money. It arrives dressed in the language of progress, efficiency, inclusion, and modernization, as though the ability to hold a coin in your hand were a primitive embarrassment that civilization ought to outgrow. Cryptocurrency evangelists speak of decentralization and freedom from institutional control. Central bankers speak of reduced transaction costs and expanded access to financial services. What neither camp mentions with sufficient urgency is that the digitization of money is, at its operational core, the digitization of permission. And once your ability to buy bread requires permission, you no longer live in a free society. You live in an administered one.

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Unlikely Kindred Spirits: Kripke, Heaney, and Elizabeth I: A Linguistic and Philosophical Analysis

At first glance, the analytic philosophy of Saul Kripke, the dramatic poetry of Seamus Heaney, and the political statecraft of Queen Elizabeth I could not seem more disparate. What could a 20th-century logician, a Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet, and a 16th-century monarch possibly share? Yet, beneath the surface, each grappled with language, identity, and authority in redemptive ways. Each, in their own silo, understood that naming and narrative wield power – whether it’s designating a possible world in logic, naming the unnameable traumas of Irish history, or styling oneself “Virgin Queen” to command a realm. In this exploratory conversation, we’ll sink into Kripke’s revolutionary ideas about reference and necessity, examine Heaney’s dramatic explorations of history and identity, and uncover how Elizabeth I engineered her political identity through language. We’ll reveal subtle connections – the resonances in their treatment of naming, authority, and the notion of necessity – to see how each shaped their world and left a lasting impact on the future. The journey is a thoughtful occupation: part historical detective work, part philosophical reflection, as we uncover lessons and methods from this unlikely trio.

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How Do You Pay It Forward?

“Paying it forward” is one of those feel good buzz phrases, which has been hijacked and commercialised by some large corporations — Starbucks for one with their backing of the “suspended coffee scheme.” The same has happened with the whole industry that used to be individual random acts of kindness, which spawned a book and several reality television shows.

Do not let this taint your view of the people who “pay it forward” every day in small and large ways.

In retrospect, I was brought up, paying it forward. Each advent we would clear out clothes that were too small and toys we had grown out of, which would then be washed and pressed or cleaned in the case of toys and then gifted to local children’s homes so the less fortunate than ourselves would at least have something for Christmas.

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The Tea Party

Yes, I know “The Tea Party” is a beloved term in USA Politics for a Republican Political group — but do you know what? I think you need to remember the rest of the world’s associations with the phrase you have called yourselves and maybe rebrand accordingly.

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What is a Name? Ben and Elizabeth can Tell You!

My wife Elizabeth tells an amusing story from when she was a child. She was in a grocery store with her mother, named Beverly, and when they got to checkout with their groceries there was a bit of a misunderstanding. The woman checking them out was also named Beverly, and this was confusing to Elizabeth. Until that point in time, she had believed that every person had a unique name and that they were the only ones that were allowed to have that name. Her mother later let her know that it was okay for more than one person in the world to have the same name as her.

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