Yearly Archives: 2004

A new story

I have started to translate another Selma Lagerlöf story of supernatural malevolence over at the Changeling. It’s not improving, but it is wonderful. Continue reading

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A kist of men’s members

Louise brought this up. Witchcraft, in seventeenth century Scotland, was not an organised professions with certification authorities, Worst Practice committees and the other appurtenances of the modern caring professions. Competence was more informally marked: the witch in this story kept … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in God | 3 Comments

Smoking righteous turkey

Whatever they do for Christmas in San Francisco, (and it probably involves unnatural acts with tofu rather than turkey) Andrew Orlovsky has not held back: Online has always been a promiscuous communications medium: it’s easy to step on and step … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Journalism | 1 Comment

gone down in smoke

My mother in law gave me for Christmas an extraordinary illustration of the evils of heroin. It wasn’t meant like that. But the Grateful Dead movie was the last sustained piece of work Garcia did before he started smoking “Persian … Continue reading Continue reading

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Political correctness gone mad

Today’s Telegraph splashes on the news that the NHS is running out of heroin: Chiron, the firm that supplies the NHS, has suspended production while it tries to sort out problems with the flu vaccine it makes. Apparently the NHS Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Journalism | 3 Comments

A reminiscence of the Thirties

We were talking to Mary Midgley about her schooldays this evening, and she said that in the Thirties, when she was at achool at Downe House, many of the girls kept on their bedside tables photographs which showed their sisters … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Blather | 2 Comments

Orwell retrospective

“When one is making out one’s weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the … Continue reading Continue reading

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O tempora

There are people outside this country who still suppose the Times is a serious paper. For their benefit — and just because it’s fun — here’s something I wrote for the CT this afternoon. The national census data on religion … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in God, Journalism | 6 Comments

just a thought

If they sequenced the DNA of an American student, would she become an example of open source coed? Continue reading

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a rather frightful symmetry

It’s often remarked that to be “pro-life” in the US context correlates quite strongly, among voters, with support for the death penalty. LIfe, it would appear, is sacred from conception until birth. But there is also a curious symmetry between … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments