Author Archive

Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One” video is “masonic”. Oh give me a break.

I’m seeing tweets tagged #freemasonry that allege the video for Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One” contains masonic symbols. So I’ve watched the video looking for squares, compasses, paired columns, plumb rules, twelve inch guages, Jacob’s Ladder, acacia sprigs, symbols of mortality… that kind of stuff, familar to masons worldwide and [ READ MORE ]

Phenomenon or phenomena? A guide for Coast to Coast guests

I listen to quite a lot of the UFO/paranormal internet media, including Coast to Coast, The Paracast and Dreamland and have noticed that there is a real confusion sometimes among guests and presenters about when to say phenomenon, rather than phenomena. Now I suppose it’s risking appearing snarky by pointing out the difference here as I [ READ MORE ]

What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 3

There is no part 3! I’ve abandoned the idea of writing a page by page commentary of The Lost Key’s masonic content as: a) I no longer have the time. b) Now I’m on the middle of the book the masonic content has thinned out. c) I’m not being gripped by the book – it feels shallow and the [ READ MORE ]

Restaurant review: Dragon’s Den Thai & Chinese, Monmouth.

The sort of situation that must present itself to millions on a Saturday night befell our household last night: too tired to cook, too tired to go and buy some food to cook. The obvious answer was a takeaway delivered to our home. Monmouth has many restaurants, most of them in Indian/Bangladeshi. Indeed, I’ve wondered, every [ READ MORE ]

Freemasonry – the world needs a villain

If you are going to comment on freemasonry, drop your prejudices first and assess it rationally[ READ MORE ]

What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 2

Spoiler alert. I’m on to Chapter 6 now. Brown appears to be using this chapter to debunk misunderstandings about Freemasonry. He does this by having the turtle-neck obsessed academic Langdon reminisce about a lecture he once gave to a class of naive students. One he addresses largely successfully is that freemasonry is “ like a super-secret society”, [ READ MORE ]

Recipe: My favourite comfort food: Chicken Liver Risotto

This is a meal I make when I need comfort food. It’s not an authentic Italian-style risotto as it uses Basmati rice and the aim is not to produce the creamy nursery food dish that is the mark of a real risotto. So if that bothers you, call it “Rice and Chicken Livers”. If you [ READ MORE ]

What Dan Brown gets right and what he gets wrong about Freemasonry in “The Lost Symbol”: Part 1

I’m not a big reader of fiction and I’m not a fan of Dan Brown’s books, though he seems like a nice enough chap. The lost Symbol uses Freemasonry as a major element in his latest blockbuster, so an author whose books would otherwise easily escape my interest , has, on this occasion, caught it. Freemasonry, [ READ MORE ]

A functional and elegant makeover for the UGLE website

The United Grand Lodge of England’s website has had a pretty professional-looking redesign. It’s much more accessible to the non-mason and spells out, in a more articulate, eye-catching and , above all, contemporary way, what we are about. [ READ MORE ]

Crop circle aliens are vandals

The silly-season, sorry, crop-circle season story of the man arrested in a crop circle for allegedly firing a shotgun to deter sightseers provoked the following thought: There are those who marvel at the amazing complexity of some of the crop formations and find mathematical and symbolic meaning in them that, they say, is proof that they [ READ MORE ]

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