A few days ago, John Gray reviewed A C Grayling’s latest book Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century. To my surprise, someone I know linked to the review approvingly. I was surprised because the review is tosh: hysterical, pompous, and so self-fiskingly stupid that it’s not even necessary to read the […]
Whenever someone implies that anti-Semitism isn’t racism, I point out that it’s one of the few examples of discrimination that really is racism (unlike, for example, the invented thoughtcrime “Islamophobia”1 ) because the Ashkenazi Jewish population is as close as you can get scientifically to the common (and deeply flawed) notion of what a “race” is. […]
I hope that, wherever you are, you enjoyed the extra second imposed upon you by the imperialist forces of the dominant scientific-capitalist worldview and that you have a prosperous 2009. As for my year so far, I jogged wearily to the gym this morning, dreading the crowds of resolutioners (though it hasn’t been too bad in […]
This is a neat little article that sketches out why your skin colour doesn’t determine your chance of growing up to become an elite sprinter; but your genetic make-up might: There are no sprinters of note from Asia, even with more than 50 percent of the world’s population, a Confucian and Tao tradition of discipline, […]
A lot of people spend their youth experimenting. As my mother often tells people who really don’t want to know, I spent my youth experimenting: with chemicals, electricity, and the flora and fauna of Birmingham’s green belt. Just like my peers who took part in drug parties, random sexual coupling, and street violence—I suppose I […]
There’s a US marine biologist on BBC Radio 4 talking about the leatherback turtles that she and her team have been tagging. Apparently an adult leatherback grows to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Wikipedia concurs—and also points out that this makes the leatherback only the fourth largest reptile, after some crocodilians. I’m scared now.
PADDY POWER OFFERS ODDS OF 4-1 THAT GOD EXISTS A bookmaker has slashed its odds on proof being found of God’s existence to just 4-1. Since opening its book just two months ago, punters hoping to have their faith rewarded have placed £5,000 with Paddy Power. It began taking bets on the question that has plagued thinkers for […]
Remember that very “English” black-and-white print I made of a café in Hove? This supersaturated colour medium-format slide film shot of another corner café, taken in Argentina, is a nice counterpoint to it; even the angles of the shadows are similar. As the photographer says, the stock it was taken with came out of the freezer. Old […]
And now a post combining football and science: Imagine a robotic David Beckham six times smaller than an amoeba playing with a ‘soccer ball’ no wider than a human hair … with all of the action happening on a field the size of single grain of rice. Yes, it’s “Nanosoccer”: [S]occer nanobots, operated by human players via […]
I like that one of the authors of this US paper describing gene therapy to restore sight in sufferers from a rare form of blindness, itself a refinement of a treatment first given in the UK, is called “Elizabeth Windsor”: “One of the patients said that the dim red light from his alarm clock had gotten […]
Years ago, PooterGeek featured the “Exxxtreme Mini-Bears”, tiny, hardy, beautiful living creatures called tardigrades. Turns out they are even hardier than thought. Some of them can survive being sent into space. The “TARDigrades in Space project is, of course, going by the acronym “TARDIS”. How long before the BBC sues? This is also a lovely phenomenon: […]
King Charles’s brain constricted by tiny skull.
Writing on his blog today, Damian Counsell, who, if he hadn’t been baptised a Catholic, would be 37 234 933rd in line to the thrones of the Commonwealth realms, warned of the dangers to the planet of Genetically Unmodified heads of state. He pointed out that inbred dynasties are susceptible to hereditary disorders like haemophilia and verbal […]
You certainly don’t want to go walking through a field of disoriented, agitated and wet honey bees. – Richard Duplain, vice president of the New Brunswick [Canada] Beekeepers Association Unfortunately for one journalist, not everyone got Mr Duplain’s advice in time, says this story. [Thanks, Sue]
Another “shocking state of our universities today” story has appeared on the BBC news Website. A report from the Quality Assurance Agency says the degree classification system is broken. I smiled when I read this bit: The reports from the QAA raise some worries about the effectiveness of the external examiner system, in which examiners from […]
My last post prompted a reader to send me photos of her tortoiseshell cats. [Thank you!] Such a flow of cat pics is of course unconventional in cat blogging, but it gives me an opportunity to point out that it’s only some of the much rarer male tortoiseshells that are the true chimeras, mixtures from […]
[UPDATE: Edited to use the version of the body text that actually makes some sense with the originally posted title.] I’m not that old, so I’m often puzzled by people who make historical pronouncements in ignorance of recent, relevant history, sometimes history that happened within their lifetimes but not mine. Of course, as Catholic dogma would […]
The “pictures” included a front-page one of the torturer dressed in a pink nurse’s outfit that stopped just above the tops of her black stockings For those of you not up to date with the PooterGeek soap opera, having been made redundant from my first permanent job in science (when the Medical Research Council closed […]
I’m so tired with work I’m starting to have hallucinations. I’d swear Richard Dawkins starts rapping 1 minute and 6 seconds into this YouTube video. (Christopher Hitchens throws shapes from 1:49 or thereabouts.) Go here for the torrent. [via]
NASA ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE ON CENTAURI IV AND ENCOUNTER POPULATION OF HUMANOIDS SO PRIMITIVE THAT THEY STILL HAVE FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS. PANEL OF HISTORIANS VOTES ON MOST HATED FIGURES OF 21ST CENTURY. SADDAM HUSSEIN, CLONED HITLER, HEATHER MILLS-MCCARTNEY TOP POLL. HUMPHREY LYTTELTON FORCED TO STAND DOWN AS PRESENTER OF I’M SORRY I HAVEN’T A CLUE AFTER EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT […]
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Also posted in Academia, Animals, Cambridge, Celebrities, Headlines, History, Iraq, Radio, Science Fiction, The Holy Land, United States
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It’s not a good idea to take a whole slice of brie out of the fridge, allow it to reach room temperature, eat some, and then re-chill it. If you do this enough times, then, by the time you reach the end, you may well have cultured yourself a nice little dose of food poisoning. […]
The beardy-weirdy teacher in this Metacafe video is probably a cinder now, having expired when his garage exploded during his attempt to stage a one-fiftieth-scale re-enactment of the Hindenburg disaster, but I do recommend that you visit the film on the end of that link. It has to have been one of his finest moments, […]
This video not only contains a collection of excellent car-buying advice (which is almost as useful in the UK as in the USA), but a fine lesson in how to use presentation software to support a talk and in how to give a talk that’s no longer than it needs to be.
While I’m away, you might want to read Let’s Be Sensible’s “science” round-up and a couple of posts at Mr E’s place. This one is about a news story that highlights the absurdities of religious schools in England and Wales and this one is about the latest Conservative Party screw-up. When they do get rid of Cameron as […]
Not having a telly, I didn’t catch the latest from Richard Dawkins, but when I visited his Website to look for clips, I saw this photo of him: All I could think of was Michael Mann directing Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in an atheist actioner: [A convertible Ferrari screams through downtown in slow motion, reflections of streetlights […]
Following on from Tim’s comment, according to BBC News online: More young people would take science degrees if they were given a financial incentive, claim industry experts. […but obviously we’d rather the government came up with this financial incentive while we continue to offer those with science degrees less than they are worth, and complain about […]
Beachy Head[click image to enlarge it] I was eating breakfast in an hotel in Cambridge the Saturday morning after I shot that college ball. A tall, intense-looking man with a beard sat down at a table nearby. He pulled a hardback book out of his briefcase and began underlining paragraphs heavily with a soft pencil. […]
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Also posted in Academia, Cambridge, Education, Englishness, Family, Friends, Life, Literature, Photography, PooterGeek, UK, Work
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Damian: [T]he impression I get is that Norm is more forgiving of Eagleton’s errors of reasoning than he should be Norm: Damian leaves an impression about my viewpoints that I feel I have a right to comment on. Damian: I’d happily place a bet with Norm on which of the two of them will be considered worth […]