On 22nd April, 2021[1] I predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine and so break its UN charter commitments and the promise it made in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. So it was no surprise to me to see an armoured column snaking south towards Kiev ten months later. Apparently[2], when […]
Lee Se-dol in 2016. In 2016, AlphaGo, a machine that used large data sets to teach itself how to play Go defeated Lee Se-dol in a contest leading to this young South Korean professional Go champion to retire because, “AI is an entity that cannot be defeated”. So what you ask. Well, Go is a […]
Lt. George W. B. Cairns, 42nd Black WatchMy father served with the Black Watch during World War II and subsequently with the Metropolitan police in London. I remember as I grew from a child to a boy and then a teenager that he took his standing in the community very seriously. This meant that I […]
When I started my ‘Helots’ Tale’ research into the lives of Robert Bright and Mary Ann Goulding or Goulden or Golding, I had only the sketchiest of information about them. My research led me down paths I had not imagined and as the days went by I found the story almost writing itself as the […]
The post Downfall Back Story – Robert Bright, convict! first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.
I lived in the USA for many years – in Boston, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Nashville and Raleigh, North Carolina. And while the closest I got to the deep mid-west and south is Chicago and Nashville, I travelled extensively too, so I think I can make a case for a better understanding of American culture than […]
The post The Breakup of America? first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.
I have started writing my autobiography. Not that I intend publishing, rather I am writing things down because, while my parents and grandparents relayed some of their stories to me, it was by no means a thorough review. I’d like my family to know more about the world I grew up in and how the […]
The post A Different Age first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.
It is impossible for me to write anything at the moment other than as it relates to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All else seems insignificant although I don’t subscribe to the view that because of this all else should be forgiven or forgotten (this morning’s news of a Christmas Eve massacre in Myanmar set […]
The post Putin’s Shattering Glass Bubble first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.
Although the last 77 years have not been free of conflict and the horrors of war and genocide, those of us who have grown up in a western democracy have become used to a privileged lifestyle, to living in peace, benefiting from the steady advance of global trade, innovation and technology in the main. I […]
The post Putin’s War first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.
I reacted with both anger and disgust at the recent brutish harassment of the leader of the UK opposition outside parliament following yet another Boris Johnson lie, this time repeating a right wing conspiracy slur in Parliament (that has been debunked many times) about Sir Kier Starmer’s time as Chief Prosecutor when a serial paedophile […]
The post Inciting the Mob first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.