Category Archives: Blather

(it’s been a long day) First, someone has written a script to count the number of times the word “Nazi” appears on the front page of Melanie Phillips’s web site. Now all we need do is graph it over time, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

For a really jarring post-modern experience, you want to read this while listening to this. They are both improbable translations of the same song. If you click on the second link in an open-plan office, you will probably lose your … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Jeremy Henty asked in comments what was the God and Darwin conference. It’s at the British Academy, on Friday this week, and it is sold out. In fact, it was someone in the comments here who told me about it, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The man whose idea of fun is picking through slug shit to find what they’ve been eating. With his son. The Peter McKay column in the Mail claims — I can’t find this anywhere online — that the in-house beauticians … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There is an aerated letter in the Independent today from a Lib Dem spokesman in the Guardian complaining that the Finnish government is buying French nuclear reactors. This only makes sense, the writer says, because of huge state subsidies on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

If anyone reading this thinks they are having lunch with me on Tuesday 18th, could they make themselves known? I seem to have a blank appointment in my diary then — at least an appointment with a comma. It may … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’ve just thought of this: sort your music alphabetically by the first letter of the artist. Now choose one letter to take to your desert island. Without much thought, I vote, from my collection, for “R” Rachmaninov, Sergei Randolph, Robert … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Supper with Michael Ruse on Monday evening, at which I did not shine, since I had a cold whose unpleasantness, fortunately, was almost entirely internal. Got back about quarter to midnight; spent the next day in bed, reading variously To … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I was brought up to suppose that Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato — not that this led me to learn enough Greek to read him. But Hume had the taste to write in English; and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This is odd: for silly reasons, nothing must pass my lips but water until 11.30 today, and, while hunger without exercise is largely a matter of routine, and I don’t miss breakfast at all, the lack of caffeine is gnawing … Continue reading → Continue reading →