~~~ In late 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an elementary school in rural California received warning of an imminent nuclear attack. As the yellow light flashed on their control panel, the administration tried to establish whether this was a fault or a test. Unable to get confirmation, they had to […]

‘Little Fugitive’ is a vérité style independent feature feature film shot in New York and Coney Island in the early fifties. I wasn’t aware of it until recently, but I probably should have been. It won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was a key influence on the French New Wave and […]

‘The Astrologer who Fell into a Well’ is a mean-spirited anecdote that demonstrates a common sense truth: you need to look where you are going, otherwise you may trip and fall. It goes like this: An astrologer went walking at night to study the stars. He fell down a deep well. A passer-by answered his […]

Fables are used to make a point. A moral demonstrated by a short narrative. But the narrative does not prove the point but merely provides an illustration of it, an example more easily remembered, one that may lend some substance and colour to our arguments. The art of rhetoric. The Panchatantra is full of dialogues […]

‘The Rule of the Lion’ or ‘The Monkey and the Lion’s Breath’ is a little-known fable attributed to Aesop. A critique of power and the folly of our attempts to pander to it. It goes something like this: The lion makes himself king of the beasts but seeks to be known as fair and just. […]