tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33337252012-02-18T19:38:21.362ZBlogosophical InvestigationsCHRIS COOPER'S BLOG - infrequent forays into fun, freedom, fysics and filosophy...
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<br>@ntlworld.comChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.comBlogger761100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1119879457991787592005-06-27T13:32:00.000Z2005-06-27T14:14:10.616ZLate last Friday night I was on a Thameslink train heading north from King's Cross. A young bloke walks down the aisle of the crowded train. Into his mobile he says – not "I'm on the train!" but – "I'm wearing a blue shirt and jeans." The rest of the conversation is lost as he vanishes, in his blue shirt and jeans.Was he having phone sex?---On Saturday, in the public library's reference section: Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com58tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1116709615149798302005-05-21T21:06:00.001Z2005-05-21T22:05:06.426ZLeft-handed wanderingsSorry, no hyperlinks tonight. I'm blogging from the grave - OK, I feel a bit ill - and I haven't got the energy to format this post the way I'd like. Struggling with blogger.com's freaking edit window is much worse than trying to herd cats. When you try corralling kitties, they don't actually mutate, meld, or vanish into the ether. So you'll have to google for the sources ofChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1113903456451403882005-04-19T09:22:00.000Z2005-04-21T10:36:23.130ZNo, I am not obsessedA favourite line from Quatermass and the Pit: when Col. Breen tells Quatermass he should think about the effects on his career before he opposes the militarization of his research projects, Quatermass replies: "I don't have a career; I have my work."I recalled this when I saw this in 'The Roots of Omnology' by Howard Bloom, in the latest Entelechy :“Omnology,” a field for Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1113684680808001842005-04-16T20:50:00.000Z2005-04-17T14:41:27.253ZThe patriarchal boffinFound some comments on the Quatermass recreation at this BBC site. (Am I sounding obsessed?) This one, made ahead of the show, resonated with me:MonkeyboyI'm enormously excited by the prospect of a FAIL SAFE-style restaging of the original scripts as written, but made anxious by the suggestion that the material will be 'adapted and updated' -- Quatermass is a thing very muchChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com107tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1112568051741051322005-04-03T22:07:00.000Z2005-04-03T23:08:48.323ZAn unsuccessful Experiment In the end, BBC4's Quatermass Experiment disappointed. It was brave to air it live - the first live drama on BBC TV in over 20 years, according to the trail - but it just served to remind me how right we were to turn our backs on live TV. There were only a couple of times when actors visibly forgot their lines, but these were enough to cut my disbelief down from its Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1112024043405225142005-03-28T15:30:00.000Z2005-03-31T21:36:54.550ZThis morning Andrew Marr's Start The Week talked about Wells's The First Men In The Moon. One of the guests was China Miéville, who's written the introduction to a new Penguin edition. I learned that Wells had been challenged by Verne over the poor quality of his science. I should think Wells would be well placed to offer the defence that artistic value is more important than scientific Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1111274228790269602005-03-19T23:08:00.000Z2005-03-19T23:32:39.843ZHow best to spend a quarter of a million or moreI drove my daughter down to Royal Holloway (the London University college) yesterday so that she could attend their music department's open day. While she was elsewhere, I spent the time enjoying the glorious springlike weather and the glorious Victorian Gothic folly that is the Founder's Building, while drinking beer and coffee and reading The Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1110921957066538232005-03-15T21:20:00.000Z2005-03-15T22:05:50.460ZSome of my current reading:Paradoxes From A to Z by Michael Clark. Can't recommend it. The discussions are often rushed and muddled. Logic: A Very Short Introduction by Graham Priest. A cracker. It gallops through a lot of sophisticated stuff - modal logic, fuzzy logic, decision theory - in a small space.I don't know why I was in such a logic-loving mood when I got these. Perhaps I was Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1109955703744010742005-03-04T16:31:00.000Z2005-03-04T17:01:43.746Z Bilious? Moi?While viewing this page, I pressed the 'Similar pages' button on my Google toolbar. Among some otherwise perceptive choices, it displayed http://biliousyoungfogey.blogspot.com/. Now what makes it think I'm bilious, a fogey, or young? The site is good to look at if you like pictures of Chinese and Japanese painting and calligraphy and the torsos of hunks. It's good to read if you Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1109936765516437112005-03-04T11:41:00.000Z2005-03-04T11:46:05.516Z Quatermass 2005Perhaps there is a God. Quatermass returns this year.BBC4 is doing some kind of production of The Quatermass Experiment soon. Not a simple rebroadcast – I believe only two episodes of the 1953 original survive. Alarmingly, someone said the new version is to be 'modernized'. Never mind – fingers crossed that it'll keep the spirit of the original, even if it doesn't have a Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1109286065704108792005-02-24T22:59:00.000Z2005-02-24T23:06:38.190ZThis is my last entry on tsunami dreams. Until I think of something else to say, anyway. But I just wanted to add this: in my last entry but one I tried to estimate how many dreams there might be each night that appear to predict anything significant the following day. Let's try to run the process the other way and estimate how many dreams of tsunamis we might have expected to occur by pure Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1109113403803629952005-02-22T22:35:00.000Z2005-02-22T23:17:54.736ZFor all I know, this is as old as the hills, but I heard it for the first time today. Better sit down for this, it's a good one:Q: Who led the Pedants' Revolt?A: Which Tyler---Wet dreamsWhile I was writing Monday's post on predictive dreams I was inspired to type tsunami + prediction into Google. I came up with a huge amount of delicious junk food for the mind. Just one or two items:Fidget Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1109027107341117002005-02-21T23:02:00.000Z2005-02-22T10:16:36.680ZImmensely struck, and probably spookedI rarely dream. Or I rarely remember my dreams. We won't go into the metaphysical puzzler of what the difference might be between those propositions. I used to dream a lot as a kid, and to swap accounts of my dreams with my school friends. Mine were luridly coloured and frequently involved nuclear annihilation. I'm talking about 1960. I believe I could reviveChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1108247653003392632005-02-12T22:25:00.000Z2005-02-22T10:28:36.283ZA significant anniversary It's one year to the day since my last post here. If you want to know what kept me away - well, I can't quite recall right now. If I could, I wouldn't bore you with it anyway. This is a punditblog, not a journalblog. I mention my private life when I can draw some wider point from it. Can I make any general point about an absence from blogging of a year? Let's think. Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1076544696222069832004-02-12T00:11:00.000Z2004-02-12T00:18:27.936Z
A new road-atlas of hell
Wandering in search of Dan Dare trivia, I came across the site of the Professor of Computer Science in the eponymous Department at the University of York. A typical geek, who atypically pumps out a steady stream of mini-reviews of current reading, predominantly SF. The Prof combines this with an impressive number of research papers, too, if January is anything to go byChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1075943678542076162004-02-05T01:14:00.000Z2004-02-05T01:24:20.340Z
The only critique of capitalism that I pay much attention to is the Dilbert strip. When you sign up for free daily delivery, don't forget to subscribe to Scott Adams' newsletter, too.
The opening of the latest one:
I'm a vegetarian, which, as you know, means that I can't lift heavy objects without snapping my spine. I'm secure enough to admit that I'm pale, frail, and I love e-mail. (Hey, I Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1075766783669234892004-02-03T00:06:00.000Z2004-02-03T12:43:29.750Z
Out of the Shadows
"How very appropriate," said Brian Micklethwait when I turned up at a soirée of liberty-lovers last Friday, "that your last blog entry should be headed 'Gaps', considering ... "
Considering that it's been seven months since I wrote it.
I was touched that Brian had noticed. I was even more touched today to get an email from Jackie D of Au Currant , who was charming enoughChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1057051416444624232003-07-01T09:23:00.000Z2003-07-01T09:24:36.850Z
Gaps
So, he's gone. He'd scarcely got back, and now he's off again.
Where he was back from was Glastonbury. Where he's off to is Tokyo. Then Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji. It's the culmination of my son's gap year.
David's travelling with his mate Kes, whose parents are taking them to Heathrow right now. They set off in beautifully calm and laid-back style at 9:30 – just Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-1056533849082818622003-06-25T09:37:00.000Z2003-07-01T09:24:59.323Z
Consciousness-lowering
Stuff that caught my eye the other day:
Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for this reference to Richard Dawkins' latest piece of endarkenment, 'The future looks bright'. Dawkins is a very fine writer who is consistently right, right, right about matters of evolutionary science (well, that's my opinion and it's worth every penny you paid for it) and a brave leader againstChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-954574732003-06-09T09:15:00.000Z2003-06-09T09:15:06.033Z
A suitable case for vigilantes
I haven't been out today – no farther, anyway, than into my back garden to hang out washing that should dry well in the fine day that seems likely. A little later I shall walk the dog. Then I might discover whether there have been any attacks overnight.
The attacks have begun within the last three weeks. Paint is thrown over the low walls of front gardens, or Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-952417042003-06-03T16:03:00.000Z2003-06-04T15:21:23.000Z
A letter in The Times says:
The philosopher A. C. Grayling suggests (T2, May 28) that rather than turning to drugs, religion or therapy to gain greater fulfilment from life, we might more usefully turn to the rich and fascinating tradition of philosophy. Poppycock.
Of course there are those who turn to drugs such as Prozac for a recreational fix. But there are many thousands more who do so Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-947352982003-05-22T13:18:00.000Z2003-05-24T16:45:20.000Z
The Raven and the Crane
World 'losing battle against extinctions' - By Alex Kirby, BBC News Online environment correspondent.
Scareee..! How many species are we losing, Alex?
Well, he's quoting Peter Raven – director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St Louis – who was
delivering the Darwin lecture in London on Wednesday, the eveChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-946772312003-05-21T09:16:00.000Z2003-05-21T09:16:40.256Z
Pinner, here I come
I've just tried working out a route by rail (the car is off-road at present) between Bedford and Pinner for a Monday night. Why the hell should anyone want to be in Pinner (it's a far-flung bit of London, in case you don't know) on a Monday night? Don't ask. But that was my mission, and finding the route illustrated the promise and frustrations of the Net as we know it todayChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-945737622003-05-19T10:29:00.000Z2003-05-19T10:34:52.000Z
I've just stumbled across openDemocracy – following a trail that led me to Roger Scruton's articles therein.
Believing that it is important not to condemn a publication out of hand on the basis of its blurb, I was ready to close my eyes to sentences like
With enough readers and members it will be a true arena for democratic change, for closing the distance between people and power, Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-945301582003-05-18T09:23:00.000Z2003-05-18T09:23:35.196Z
I've just listened to as much of the ineffably self-satisfied Broadcasting House as I could bear this morning. Among other subjects on which it cast darkness was the 'referendums'-versus-'referenda' split. Now, I don't do 'referendums'. Obviously, it's a perfectly legitimate usage: anybody who opposed it as 'incorrect' should be required henceforth to use 'agenda' as a plural. But I find 'Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-944420162003-05-16T10:49:00.000Z2003-05-16T10:49:08.430Z
Will the real paranoids please stand up?
Daniel Drezner on conspiracy theories in US politics in The New Republic:
... it's both instructive and eerie to re-read Richard Hofstadter's classic essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Conservatives have never been fond of the essay, since its chief target is "the Goldwater movement." But Hofstadter was careful to note that the Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-943801272003-05-15T09:21:00.000Z2003-05-15T09:21:41.650Z
Traumatology
A fascinating article in The New Republic by Sally Satel ("author of PC, M.D.--How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine") She reviews Remembering Trauma by Richard J. McNally.
Some snippets:
"Until the mid '90s, debates about trauma and memory were hampered by vitriolic accusations issuing from both sides and by the scarcity of clinically relevant scientific data," Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-943180372003-05-14T08:56:00.000Z2003-05-14T08:56:56.556Z
Funding wars
A brief news summary from PhysicsWeb:
Could neutrinos destroy nuclear weapons? (May 13)
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/5/7
Physicists at the KEK laboratory in Japan and the University of Hawaii
have proposed a "futuristic but not necessarily impossible technology"
that would use an ultra-high energy neutrino beam to destroy nuclear
weapons. However, the Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-943177692003-05-14T08:47:00.000Z2003-05-14T08:47:03.860Z
Nice quote from Jonathan Rauch in Reason Online in an article titled 'Reverse Course: Bush Didn't Squander the World's Sympathy. He Spent It.':
Reform will take years, decades even, and it will mean different things in different countries. In Iraq, it meant force. In Syria, it means hostile prodding; in Saudi Arabia, friendly prodding. It means setting a subversive example for Iran, creating Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-942541142003-05-13T08:46:00.000Z2003-05-13T08:53:43.000Z
A newly discovered maven
Just discovered Jan Freeman in the Boston Globe – a usage buff. She defines the theme of her latest column thus:
While this column has been preoccupied with topics like war, pestilence, and gluttony, the pronunciation complaints –Iraq-related and otherwise – have been piling up.
Topics include the pronunciations of 'Hopi', 'cache', 'jubilant' (they have trouble with Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-941920372003-05-12T08:27:00.000Z2003-05-12T08:32:04.000Z
Yesterday I rashly suggested doing something that Sue had mentioned as an abstract necessity the day before: cleaning out the garden pond. How easy it is to speak without understanding the meaning of our words!
We dug our pond many years ago. In three dimensions it is the shape of an ice-cream cone, and not much bigger, and it is lined with thick black plastic sheeting. It had half vanished Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-941437712003-05-11T10:52:00.000Z2003-05-11T11:15:23.000Z
I was reading William James on the subject of habit yesterday, and became interested to know what he had to say about the position of blacks in America.
This is the Internet: no sooner asked than answered. I immediately found James's address on the dedication in 1897 of the Shaw Monument in Boston. Robert Gould Shaw was the commander (white, of course) of the black Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-940956222003-05-10T07:02:00.000Z2003-05-10T07:10:49.000Z
Wars come and go
I got out of bed just now and told Sue that it must be six months since I last wrote a blog entry. But it's not: it's less than three. Will I spoil my reputation if I rush in with an entry now?
A war has come and gone since the last entry. On 28 March I posted to the Libertarian Alliance forum a strongly pro-war essay on Islam, terrorism and the West, by an old college friendChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-898988842003-02-28T13:16:00.000Z2003-03-02T00:05:08.000Z
A guaranteed gambling system from a man you can trust ...
... and you really can trust him when it's Julian Simon. The late great free-market economist has a treasury of his writings on the Web. These include not only the second edition of The Ultimate Resource, but also the almost-complete draft of The Science and Art of Thinking Well in Science, Business, the Arts, and Love. It's yet anotherChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-888584272003-02-10T17:09:00.000Z2003-02-10T17:09:38.946Z
Oh no! Not a solution!
A press release from the Institute of Physics, guaranteed to upset environmentalists. It's about a technological fix that might distract us from the serious business of creating a sustainable zero-growth hair-shirt economy:
Nanotechnology could save the ozone layer
For further information, please contact: Joanne Aslett, The Institute of Physics, joanne.aslett@iop.orgChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-887004842003-02-07T11:49:00.000Z2003-02-10T17:10:21.000Z
Is the space junk theory just space junk?
Interesting story on the Columbia disaster investigation from Steve Milloy in his FoxNews column:
NASA is reconsidering whether tank foam debris caused the Columbia disaster. That’s quite a shift from days earlier when the foam was the "leading candidate" -- an explanation that quickly became embarrassing. … Until 1997, Columbia’s external fuel tanksChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-873810662003-01-14T00:47:00.000Z2003-01-14T07:48:06.000Z
The fondue and the philosopher
In Waterstone’s with half an hour to kill the other day, I browsed in Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel. I was enthralled by the vast tracts of quotation from the likes of Flaubert, Wordsworth and Ruskin. I came away moderately keen to read the book, and greatly wanting to read Flaubert. Of the true de Botton I as yet know little.
Searching on the Net, I find Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-859706702002-12-14T00:53:00.000Z2002-12-18T14:36:51.000Z
Games aren’t life and death – they’re much more important than that …
I’ve just discovered Herb Gintis. I suppose I should have noticed his name before now, given the long time that I’ve been staring glazed-eyed at the torrent of stuff that comes out on the evol-psych mailing list, to which he frequently contibutes. He’s Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and is Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-850617472002-11-25T17:11:00.000Z2002-11-25T18:16:05.000Z
A city of poets
Seen on the New York Press Music Listings of a few weeks back: (I peruse them daily, hem-hem):
Galileo Galilei had alliterate parents…
It's awful ... nevertheless it does move me (and that's even more awful, in case you hadn't noticed).
In case you're wondering what Galileo is doing there, it goes on to say:
…and now, thanks to Philip Glass, his own opera!; BAM Opera House,Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-848421232002-11-21T00:29:00.000Z2002-11-21T00:29:38.710Z
How to afford solar energy: give up using electricity
I never tire of calculations about solar energy. They are a guaranteed corrective to environmentalist blather. Here’s a fine one at the splendid HowStuffWorks site:
Question
How many solar cells would I need in order to provide all of the electricity that my house needs?
Lots of number-juggling leads to the crux:
… From our Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-844660142002-11-13T10:46:00.000Z2002-11-13T10:46:31.996Z
Beneath the flag
An amazing quote:
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the
press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of
speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the
freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who
serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag who
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-826314932002-10-07T11:10:00.000Z2002-10-07T11:26:24.000Z
Chickenhawks
If you have a distaste for war and the political classes, and you don't mind swallowing your propaganda whole from US Democrats, you could do worse than visit the Chickenhawks database, run by the New Hampshire Gazette. This lists
public persons - generally male - who (1) tend to advocate, or are fervent supporters of those who advocate, military solutions to political problems, Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-825353442002-10-04T22:37:00.000Z2002-10-04T23:50:11.000Z
Designer disability
Under the heading Will deaf lesbians be a libertarian vanguard for human genetic modification?, I recently posted the following press release to the Libertarian Alliance Forum :
Deaf lesbians, "designer disability," and the future of medicine
Julian Savulescu
With the completion of the human genome project, the genetic basis of
disease is becoming better
understood. Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-822673692002-09-29T11:22:00.000Z2002-10-02T22:16:28.000Z
VHS v Betamax
It's a constantly made objection to the free market that large companies can force inferior products onto consumers just by using the power of their size and the benefits of economies of scale. VHS won over Betamax when, it’s said, there was either nothing to choose between the systems or Betamax was actually better. The QWERTY keyboard, an attempt to speed up the primitive Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-818641672002-09-20T10:05:00.000Z2002-09-20T10:05:32.903Z
An interesting legal decision in the battle between Amerindians and US government agencies over the Kennewick Man remains. Justice Jelderks' ruling seems cool, rigorous, and above the pressures of interest-groups clamour.
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-797695722002-08-03T10:03:00.000Z2002-08-03T10:04:52.000ZA marvellous new British Library site for scholarly versions of Darwin's writings:
Despite an impressive proliferation of Darwin texts on the internet, almost all exclude essential bibliographical information such as edition, publisher, place of publication, etc. Page numbers are nowhere to be seen. These factors vastly reduce the usefulness of these texts as they cannot be easily cited. It is Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-792969152002-07-23T10:44:00.000Z2002-07-24T22:23:56.000Z
Scab Pride
I posted the following to the Libertarian Alliance Forum today:
Some years ago, when I worked as a non-unionized employee in publishing companies, I was told more than once that I was benefiting from the union chapel's efforts in negotiating the annual in-house pay increases. At the time I couldn't see through this, and felt duly guilty, while taking the money.
It was only much Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-790817182002-07-17T22:19:00.000Z2002-07-17T22:40:32.000Z
Just because you're a technophobe, it doesn't mean your computer isn't out to get you
Even by my standards it's been an excessive time since the last entry. I put myself off-line for over a week when I carried out my long-planned campaign to reinstall Windows. Reinstallation might be a simple act of digital cleansing that computing geeks do twice a week without turning a hair, but it made me Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-781268762002-06-24T10:19:00.000Z2002-06-24T10:28:09.000Z
There is no truth in the rumours that ...
Anyone who didn't know that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is in trouble would have been alerted by the opening sentences of this press release:
... Following the meeting [the CERN] Council issued this statement:
Confidence in CERN – in its management, in its ability to deliver, and in its future – was the key theme of the Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-780256782002-06-21T14:27:00.000Z2002-06-21T14:27:26.693Z
Tomatoes just got better
A team of scientists has developed a tomato that contains as much as three and a half times more of the cancer-fighting antioxidant lycopene.
This good news comes in 57 varieties:
Another wrinkle is that when it comes to lycopene in tomatoes, cooked tomato sauces are more effective than raw tomatoes.
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-780235432002-06-21T13:26:00.000Z2002-06-21T13:57:38.000Z
Steven Milloy has an item about the 30th anniversary of the criminal US ban on DDT, which has had such dire consequences for millions who will never be known to the do-gooders who preened themselves on this victory.
DDT use has virtually disappeared. Many countries blindly followed the U.S. ban or succumbed to activist pressure.
But there are other battles still to be fought in this war.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-776919292002-06-13T10:16:00.000Z2002-06-13T11:22:20.000Z
This is adapted from some posts that I've made today to the Libertarian Alliance Forum:
________________________________________________________________________
Forwarded from Premise Checker on the Upstream mailing list:
Steyn on Atta's loan application
"His one great insight into Western culture was his
assumption that he could get a government grant to take out the Pentagon."
Blackly Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-771763632002-05-31T08:18:00.000Z2002-06-06T09:01:26.000Z
Clean out those old factoids
I've instituted a new group of links at the left: Data Hygiene, for sites providing useful clutter therapy for the brain.
The Statistical Assessment Service in Washington puts out a newsletter (print and online) that assesses the statistical basis for the latest media flaps. One snippet from the latest issue:
… While previous studies have claimed to find a Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-770812762002-05-28T22:59:00.000Z2002-05-28T22:59:45.346Z
After writing the previous piece, I became curious to know whether Roger Scruton has compromised sufficiently with the modern age to establish a Website. Has he just. http://www.rogerscruton.com/ is a major enterprise.
If you explore it, you'll find he turns an honest bob or two from Horsell's Morsels, "Britain's fastest-growing post-modern rural consultancy." It offers no end of good stuff,Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-770794352002-05-28T22:00:00.000Z2002-05-28T22:00:58.566Z
The New Statesman came through the door today. It's not mine, of course. My son takes it, having been persuaded by his mother to have a subscription as a gift. The deed was done when my back was turned. I'd rather it had been Loaded or NME or The Oldie.
The cover story: 'Laptop Fascists', by John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. It seemed from the title toChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-767354632002-05-19T22:56:00.000Z2002-05-19T23:02:41.000Z
This is a nice surprise: a blast in defence of free speech from an unpromising-sounding source: the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism. This page, by Marek Kohn and dating from 1999, discusses racial theorizing, including that of the wild-eyed maverick psychologist Chris Brand. It ends:
Brand was to have discussed `Race, Intelligence and Censorship' at Edinburgh's Cyberia Café with Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-766740142002-05-17T22:02:00.000Z2002-05-17T22:02:47.950Z
In Bedford public library a display describes the rooftop solar-panel installation that helps out with the building's electricity needs. It says the peak output on a sunny day would be about 333 watts. A digital screen shows that on this day of hazy sunshine, the output is fluctuating around 167 watts. The caption says you can view the panels if you go up to the third floor. I go up. There it isChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-766513482002-05-17T08:23:00.000Z2002-05-17T08:31:13.000Z
Just got waylaid by a virtual man with a clipboard. The Philosophers' Magazine is doing a poll, and I thought I'd tell 'em what they wanted to know. Anyone can do it. It has 10 simple questions, and like all polls, it requires you to choose from among a few knee-jerk responses, and no shilly-shallying with nuanced positions and reasoned qualifications.
For example: do you "Strongly Disagree, Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-766362072002-05-16T22:26:00.000Z2002-05-16T22:26:04.030Z
Following up the fuller debate between Lomborg and Scientific American, I find the bias of SA more egregious than I'd realized. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who formed the magazine's lynch party included John P. Holdren. I mentioned earlier Julian Simon's bet as to whether certain metals would fall or rise in price in the ten years to 1990.One of the three environmentalists who lost Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-763983672002-05-10T15:18:00.000Z2002-05-10T15:37:29.000Z
Scientific American: tribune of the liberal-Democrat-voting people
When Bjørn Lomborg published his Skeptical Environmentalist, Scientific American felt it had a duty to defend the public from the heretic. So it published an eleven-page rebuttal. Now it's allowed Lomborg a one-page reply - with even this capped with a rejoinder from John Rennie, editor-in-chief. The text is below.
I don't Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-762666402002-05-07T16:35:00.000Z2002-05-07T22:15:32.000Z
New! Improved! Now with permalinks!
Thanks, Patrick. I can honestly urge all my readers to get over to his blog and find out how enthralling Compulsory Purchase Orders can be.
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-759789982002-04-29T22:43:00.000Z2002-04-29T23:39:24.000Z
Last Friday I went to one of "Brian's last Fridays". Brian is Brian Micklethwait. I've mentioned him before, but this time is going to be different, because standards are going to improve all round in this blog from now on, and so I'm going to explain who he is. Brian is, of course, a giant of the mighty UK Libertarian Alliance. He regularly posts on Libertarian Samizdata, and he hosts meetings Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-758889742002-04-27T09:41:00.000Z2002-04-27T09:47:45.000Z
[Written on 18/04/2002 3:04 pm]
I'm in that same Woolworth's cafe again. You see that it's a haven for writers, artists and intellectuals, a Deux Magots of Bedford town centre. Though as far as I can judge from looking at my fellow customers, an undiscovered one.
Perhaps because they stop doing chips at 2:30.
More from Grayling's The Meaning of Things (see previous posts).
"... for Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-758887952002-04-27T09:28:00.000Z2002-04-27T09:38:10.000Z
[Written on Sunday 14 April 1:16 pm]
I'm writing this in the Old Market Inn, next to the Cathedral Close in Winchester. I'm here on a nostalgic day trip, leaving my wife and family carless in Bedford. I tried the Old Coach House, opposite the Guildhall, but walked out when I found it was dominated by a TV screen showing motor sport. When I came into this pub, I didn't notice the piped music. Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-753573742002-04-13T11:26:00.000Z2002-04-13T11:59:46.000Z
David Friedman's site is a gold-mine. David is the son of the better-known Milton, and carries his dad's freedom project to lengths that the old boy might find disconcerting.
My attention was caught by what he describes as his latest project (though I imagine he dreams up several new projects every week), The Journal of Interesting Economics:
" …. It consists of a page of links to webbedChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-753573102002-04-13T11:20:00.000Z2002-04-13T11:56:54.000ZPosted to the LA Forum today:
---
Paul Staines wrote:
> Does anyone seriously think that the imperial system
is easier to understand than the metric system?
I think 'ease of understanding' is mostly a matter of familiarity.
> If you were starting from scratch would you design a
system where sub-units were sometime 1/12,
sometimes 1/14 and sometimes 1/16 of a unit? Or
possibly a multiple of Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-752987932002-04-11T21:17:00.000Z2002-04-11T21:17:53.636Z
I'm reading A C Grayling 's The Meaning of Things (Weidenfeld, 2001). I was attracted by the title, and I knew his name from Radio 4's discouragingly titled weekly think-in The Moral Maze. I must have been more than usually somnolent during his contributions, because I had no clear picture of his attitudes. I got the book and found that it's a collection of articles based on contributions to TheChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-110632682002-03-24T11:27:00.000Z2002-03-24T11:36:10.000Z
I try to ensure that my speaking and writing are politically correct. Since my politics are completely different from those of most of the people I meet, it means that my usages are very different from those of 'PC'.
---
I like my dictionaries old-fashioned. They help to build plenty of inertia into my usage of words. They defend me against would-be populist linguists and usage pundits who Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-110128792002-03-22T18:21:00.000Z2002-03-23T10:13:58.000ZChris Cooper as a pundit on the stock market: what a jest!
Posted today to the LA Forum:
___
[CC] I dare say the list is bored with this topic by now, but having just noticed
this post from Patrick [Crozier], which I'd inexplicably missed, I feel I should
respond as best I can. Which is strictly amateurishly (my wife will tell
anyone who's interested that my free advice about getting rich is Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-107571902002-03-15T09:08:00.000Z2002-03-15T09:08:26.920ZThe saga continues. Today's posting to the LA Forum:
I wrote:
> And the whole voodoo practice spreads the notion that
> there's such a thing as having the skill to beat the market.
And Patrick Crozier wrote:
> Well, Warren Buffett seems to have been doing it rather well for about 30
years now. He even managed to avoid the whole dotcom hysteria.
'dot.com hysteria' was a vice of people whoChrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-107387282002-03-14T19:12:00.000Z2002-03-14T19:12:09.133ZAnother post to the LA Forum:
____
Boris Kuperschmidt wrote:
There's a classic stock market advice scam. It goes like this: You take 512
randomly chosen suckers and send each of
them a mail message making a "free prediction" about the market. You tell
256 of them that the market will rise during the next week, and the other
256 that it will fall. It'll do one or the other.
Whichever it does, Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-106913762002-03-13T13:29:00.000Z2002-03-13T13:29:35.386ZPosted this today on the Libertarian Alliance Forum:
I've just heard Madsen Pirie on the 'Today' programme, talking about African
economic development. He mentioned the African countries' desire for debt to
be 'forgiven' and implied that he agreed with that. He's right, of course.
Western governments were guilty of colluding with the Third World's
kleptocrats and genocides in pouring money down Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-104482302002-03-06T13:41:00.000Z2002-03-06T13:53:20.000ZDoes global warming worry you? Then worry some more - there's no limit to the harm it can do. Barmy link of the day:
Global Warming and the Meltdown of the Inner Core
Temperature increases on the surface of Earth are amplified 15 times at the Earth's core. Meltdown of the core could lead to a gigantic atomic explosion.
http://sci-e-research.com/geophysics.html Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-104435472002-03-06T09:11:00.000Z2002-03-06T09:18:12.000Z"We have more sex education than ever before; we have more teenage / extramarital / unwanted pregnancies than ever before. So sex education isn't working."
However, we're having more sex than ever before. So I'm pretty sure pregnancies per sex act are fewer than ever before. Hence, the cost/benefit ratio has moved in the right direction.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-103634252002-03-04T13:18:00.000Z2002-03-04T13:18:21.620ZI've just been listening to Paxman's Monday morning show. One of his guests was an author called, I think, Gaby Woods, who's written a book about automata, called 'Living Dolls'. The famous 19th-century chess-playing Turk came up. The other guests expressed amazement that (as they supposed) no-one had ever realized that a chess-player must be concealed in the mechanism. The author had nothing to Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3333725.post-101195952002-02-25T23:26:00.000Z2002-02-25T23:33:43.000Z"The greatest pleasure in life is to begin" - said somebody. So, without any fanfare, I'll begin.
---
The other day the UK Libertarian Alliance put out a doughty defence of a householder who had killed a burglar and then been detained by police for two days. The man reported that the intruder had held a knife to his wife's throat.
I'd better not make any comment on this specific case: I Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06962414397196709843noreply@blogger.com0