Monthly Archives: May 2004

Being very afraid

In my first term at prep school, I was introduced to vingt-et-un. It was the most important and interesting game I had ever discovered, and withiin three weeks I owed an older boy something in the region of 89,000,000 royal … Continue reading Continue reading

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The criminals grow younger every year

My fifteen-year-old nephew by marriage recently pitched up on his grandmother’s doorstep at 1.30am, half drunk and wholly terrified after being chased through the streets by a gang with knives. This is a whole lot younger than I was when … Continue reading Continue reading

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Immortality

Various people, with varying degrees of kindliness, have brought to my attention Francis Wheen’s reading out on the News Quiz the Guardian‘s varied corrections to my profile of Dan Dennett. Ah, well; at least Professor Dennett is now assured of … Continue reading Continue reading

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Why is this news?

From the Guardian last week, some time: a picture of a bald man in spectacles eating a sandwich, captioned: “Michael Howard enjoys a tuna sandwich he made himself at a training centre in Middlesbrough”. Continue reading

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Evidence and Abu Hamza

Abu Hamza is undoubtedly a nasty piece of work. With even less doubt, he is entitled to the protection of the law. We won’t, quite rightly, extradite him to face the death penalty in the USA; we won’t extradite him … Continue reading Continue reading

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By God he was right

Of all the people now entitled to Schadenfreude we should give special consideration to Anatol Lieven. In September 2002 he wrote an article in the LRB, which has been at the back of my mind ever since. His foresight was … Continue reading Continue reading

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notes from A MacIntyre

quick notes from his lecture at the BL last night. It’s an odd thing to notice first about a philosopher, but he is less spectacularly fat than I remember him, though still substantial. When I last interviewed him, in the … Continue reading Continue reading

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An odd choice of verb

Salon reports that Theresa Heinz Kerry has published her tax returns, which show that her income last year was around $5m. This is a rather mind-boggling figure but what really struck me was the headline they put on the story: … Continue reading Continue reading

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traveling philosopher alert

Alasdair MacIntyre is giving a talk at the British Library this evening, and I think I will have to go there. I was for a long time inordinately proud of being the only British journalist to whom he has ever … Continue reading Continue reading

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the littlest lies

Bush falling off his bicycle inspired all the obvious jokes about training wheels — it is a telling comment on his record that these jokes should seem so obvious — but also a quite fascinating lie. The press spokesdroid claimed … Continue reading Continue reading

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