Born on this day in 1462, in Florence, the marvelous Piero di Cosimo. Here, his amazing and wild Perseus Freeing Andromeda. A+ dragon but really everything about this painting is great.

The five teenagers convicted of writing racial graffiti were sentenced to read 12 books, including The Colour Purple, and To Kill a Mockingbird. They also had to write essays on each and write a 2500-word essay on racial hatred. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/16/s...

Will you therefore tell me (by letter, if it is not possible to do so by word of mouth), that you are ready to take your share in manifesting in a practical manner your indignation at the betrayal of our cause. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/i...

This is a minimalist poem of only 32 words—and simple words at that. It’s witty, erotic, and paradoxical. acairnofpoems.com/2025/12/31/t...

Belief in progress is dying. The belief began only with the Enlightenment and is largely a Western phenomenon. The dying of the belief may underly much of our current distress, and it’s dying presents a particular problem for medicine. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/m...

The forward violet thus did I chide: Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love’s breath? acairnofpoems.com/2025/12/30/t...

I recommend strongly that you listen to or read Rutger Bregman's fine 2025 Reith lectures, but if you don't have the time or inclination here is a distillation of them in a four-minute read. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/h...

“[A love affair with a dog is] “A very complete love for a dog that you cannot have with any other human. They stand next to you, they’re living, they’re warm, their heart beats, they clearly have feelings....” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/c...

Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How should we live? What is sacred? richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2025/12/29/r...

“The continent’s DNA seems to allow people to live calmly with each other only as long as the memory of the last bout of bloodletting survives.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/a...

“Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer; and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to distinguish between the Deity and the Drains.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/11/f...

Arrival of some eager shepherds. Lifting their hats, as shepherds wil do. Ukrainian icon, 17th century.

Making money: “The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game, and we knock each other down oftener at playing that than at playing football, or any other roughest sport, and it is absolutely without purpose." richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/f...

My memories of Doug Altman at the BMJ hanging committee. www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Nativity, by Melchior Broederlam, 1390s. Patterns on fabrics are wonderful! Now Joseph is tearing up his stockings to make swaddling for Baby J. Good parenting!

As we look South and East we see miles of empty hills. Who would think that there could be so much emptiness in the most crowded part of the third most crowded country in the world? richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/t...

“A prison cell as an ideal place to learn to know yourself, to search realistically and regularly the process of your own mind and feelings." richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/05/n...

Friedman described the three non-linear processes that are currently most influencing the machine, how things work: the market; nature; and Moore’s Law. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/04/f...

That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/g...

Mother searching her daughter's head for lice. Dog plotting its escape. By Pieter de Hooch, who was born on this day in 1629.

"If I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/h...

In the NHS 10 year health plan for England, the word genomics occurs 51 times, AI 107 times, and digital 122 times, but continuity only 4 times in the entire 171 pages. The title of the plan is Fit for the Future but in our view, it is anything but. www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Some of these redactions are almost like modern art

“Reading is being the arm and being the axe and being the skull; reading is giving yourself up, not holding yourself at a distance and jeering.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/28/j...

Kurtz, like May, set out on his journey up the Congo River with high morals, eloquence, a love of poetry, and remarkable talents only to lose all moral compass and do the most despicable things to the local people in his obsessive pursuit of ivory. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/26/r...

"Firearm deaths are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S." "As of December 14, the U.S. has had 391 mass shootings—more than the number of days in the year—for the seventh consecutive year." Preventable madness. yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/mass-shoot...

I liked what Virginia Woolf said about the writing of Dostoevsky: ‘Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading.’ richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/h...

The full Christmas issue of The BMJ is coming! To get us in the festive mood we asked comedian @michaelspicer.bsky.social to have a look at last year's issue and respond. Inspired by this article on the hidden health risks of Disney princesses 👸 bmj.com/content/387/... #BMJChristmas

This is absolutely vital We are completely unprepared for the climate chaos that is coming Please sign now and share

Criminals, almost without exception, succumb at the moment of the crime to a weakening of the faculties of reason and will, which are replaced, in stark contrast, by thoughtlessness of a childish and quite extraordinary kind... richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/25/q...

How proud he is, or how he is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes yoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything and through everything. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2025/12/13/a...

Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, Away, and still away, it rolls and roars, Fierce and rapid, smooth and certain.... acairnofpoems.com/2025/12/13/t...

I may have my criticisms of modern medicine, but anaesthesia—which has improved considerably during my lifetime—is an unmixed blessing. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/a...

The optimists have never, in the half century of climate anxiety we’ve already endured, been right. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/20/c...

Annunciation, in a charming Flemish domestic-ecclesiastical interior, 1480. By Aelbrecht Bouts, whose day is today.

Lizzie Humphries, after walking from New York to Florida for her honeymoon 1911 undertook to walk 48 000 miles around the world in four years with her husband. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/19/d...

How doth the little busy Bee Improve each shining Hour, And gather Honey all the day From every opening Flower! acairnofpoems.com/2025/12/09/4...

“Some of the doctors were essentially reasonable men, [but] alas, not many.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/s...

It’s described in the introduction as part medical case study, part romance, and part Bildungsroman, which I thought a good description. richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/4...

“With a noir gusto, Addonizio’s passionate monologues draw you into the boudoir of narrative and keep you there until she’s finished. Her sleekly told story-meditations are both terribly familiar and wonderfully intense.” richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/b...