Authors Electric

  The Hidden Life of Trees I think this book has blown my mind. I'll give you a quote. Wohlleben is discussing coppiced trees: that is, trees that have been felled, or partially felled, so new trunks sprout from the root. It was commonly done in the past to trees such as hazel and yew, to 'farm' trees by producing a continuous growth of new wood. But how to measure the age of these coppiced trees? Are they as old as the new growth? In which case, they're just a few years old, since coppicing is done roughly every eight to ten years. Or, are these coppiced trees as old as the roots they re-grow from? In which case, they may be hundreds of years old. Peter Wohlleben tells us that scientists investigated this question by: '...researching ancient spruce in Dalarna province in Sweden. The oldest spruce in Dalarna has grown a carpet of flat shrubby growth around its single small trunk. All this growth belongs to one tree, and its roots were tested using carbon 14 dating.....

  Life is absurd.    Be merry. Be free.   This sentiment appears on the cover of How To Be Free and runs throughout the book. It's a most entertaining read. Half the time I agreed with  Hodgkinson's arguments so wholeheartedly, I wanted to cheer. The rest of the time I thought them so crack-brained, I wanted to throw the book across the room. I always enjoy books like this. They make you think . Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler Tom Hodgkinson is the editor of The Idler and the author of How To Be Idle. From page one to the end, he rages against the 'mind-forged manacles' that keep people in jobs they hate in order to pay, often, for things they don't need or even really want. They just think they ought to want them. (In his opinion.) Modern society, he argues, is in all but name, a slave society, but the chains are all 'mind-forged.' It forces people into a rigid system. First it educates them to believe in passing exams and '...