June 2007

Philosophers: 2 — Scientists: 0

Last Friday I found myself stuck in a room in a Cambridge college waiting to do a photo job so I took Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations down from a shelf and, as an intellectual dwarf perched on Hindsight the Giant, sneered at it. Certain things he said appear absurd in the light of certain experimental […]

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Ash-ian Babes

The Labour aristocracy does seem to be attracted to “sexually highly charged black women“. Not being one of Jackie Ashley’s admirers, I missed her toe-curling tribute to Diane Abbott in The Guardian—where else?—when it appeared last week, but I caught up with it via Peter Briffa: [Diane Abbott MP] was, and is, a cheerer-upper. She […]

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Bismillah!

Did anyone else hear that BBC news soundbite from a representative of the emergency services reviewing the effects of the sub-tropical storms that hit parts of the UK this week? Amongst other things, he described them as “very, very frightening”. If so, did you manage to resist singing, “Thunderbolt and lightning / Galileo! / Galileo!”? […]

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The Whitney of Witney

British Spin fisks Dave’s “comeback” speech: First up, He keeps on with some horribly mixed metaphor. “then, brick by brick, you build your house. That is the plan I laid out when I became leader of this Party and that is exactly the plan we’ve been following. We started by preparing the ground. We stopped […]

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The PooterGeek Argus Headline Collection: Hove Special

I admit that I have, in the past, given my readers the impression that the more genteel half of Brighton & Hove is a sleepy, geriatric, upper-middle-class, conservative place. Indeed, one resident commented here: After all the effort I’ve put into making Hove sound like the hipper and more cosmopolitan sista of Brighton, you’re making us sound […]

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Totalitarian Political Nanny Statism Gone Mad

Over at Samizdata, California is becoming a “totalitarian” state because an overwhelming majority of the residents of the city of Berkeley voted for comprehensive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and because San Francisco can fine pet owners who don’t feed their pets properly and fortune-tellers who don’t have a licence to practise. Britain is […]

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Free Shoot

If you are having a reasonably smart and public evening party/reception/dinner in the near future and would like it to be captured on film, gratis, then contact me. I want to test out some new flash techniques and don’t want to do so on a paying job. That’s the catch: there could well be a […]

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Geek Rock

Last week, Steve Wright interviewed Paul McCartney on BBC Radio 2. At one point, Wright asked him about his latest single. The track is exactly what you would expect of Lord Macca of Loch Kodak: completely insubstantial and terminally catchy. It’s called Dance Tonight. It’s about how everybody is going to dance tonight—and have a good time, […]

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Reductionism

This civil engineering computer simulation [YouTube video] of one of the September 11 impacts is all the more shocking for being created without factoring in the explosions or heat damage. It also omits the fleeing spectating Jews, holographically concealed missiles, and shaped charges planted in the tower by giant lizards. Scientists and engineers, eh? They’re […]

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Through The Magic Door

I’ve been away for a few days so you’ll have to wait while I catch up with other things before there’s any new content here. When I got back from my travels, I found a mosaic of Labour Deputy Leadership-related letters forming a junk mail welcome mat. Ooh, look: there’s a picture of Peter Hain […]

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Mentally Unstable Man Attempts To Board Popemobile

The 80-year-old Bavarian, who has suffered a number of strokes, believes himself to be God’s representative on Earth and participates daily in what he and his followers claim is a cannibalistic blood ritual, during which they eat the flesh of a centuries-dead carpenter and travelling quack doctor. Officers have returned him to the high-security accommodation […]

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Einstürzende Neubauten

In The Ipcress File, Michael Caine plays Harry Palmer, a British intelligence operative. He is deprived of sleep and exposed to loud repetitive noises by enemy agents trying to break his will, erase his memory, and make him believe that he is a traitor. His defensive mantra in the film—“My name is Harry Palmer”—was, like […]

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Singular Sensation

Foolishly allowing himself to be provoked by the skeptical taunts of Professor Cho the experimentalist, Professor Hawking chooses the annual NASA barbecue as the occasion to collect on one of his bets.

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