UK Riots, Buddhist Blog Police, And All The Rest…

Like many across England and the world, I have been keeping a close eye on news outlets (and occasionally out my own window) concerning the recent riots here. If you haven’t been paying attention, have a look over at the Guardian Newspaper for several good articles.

The riots did reach Bristol, where I live, but they were isolated to neighborhood a couple miles from mine. You can read the report here. In it they mention that “the first major confrontation took place outside the Jamaica Inn,” and the name rang a bell. This photo is of the Jamaica Inn from July 2nd, when some friends and I attended Bristol’s Carnival celebration.

Where I live now is quite posh, a bit like Georgetown vs DC in general, or Notting Hill in London. The only “disaffected youth” here are the college kids who still want to drink after 3am when clubs begin to shut down.

The news now is mostly about police arresting people, 1200 or so at this point. And as police and media post photos of the looting/looters, some creative genius has come up with this:

Parliament is due to debate the causes of and proper recourse to the riots today. Could be interesting.

Meanwhile, I’ve set up an account at Google+ and have been in a very interesting conversation there regarding Buddhism in the West. The gist of it is that there is a lot of BS floating around these days, especially perhaps in the online world. Some say that we (whoever that may be) need to do a better job of policing the internet to call out said BS. There are good comments there by well known bloggers who in fact have been calling out a lot of teachers and groups. Have a look and join the conversation there if you’d like.

Beyond that, life here has been way too busy – as always – but all in very good ways.

Tomorrow I head to Oxford for a Pali Summer School, which I’m absolutely thrilled about – Buddhist-scholar-nerd-heaven. 🙂 I’m working on two articles, a chapter for my thesis, and training for another half marathon (one month away, exactly). Oh, and I have three books on the shelf that I’ve agreed to review and one more on its way! One of those reviews I hope to post very soon, maybe tonight or tomorrow. I’ll do a ‘shotgun’ blog post soon as well with a little bit of this and that from my studies of late.

UK riots, Buddhist Blog Police, and all the rest…