Monthly Archives: December 2004

A new story

Posted on December 29, 2004 by acb

I have started to translate another Selma Lagerlöf story of supernatural malevolence “over at the Changeling.(a side blog for Swedish ghost stories)”:http://www.darwinwars.com/troll It’s not improving, but it is wonderful. Continue reading →

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on A new story

A kist of men’s members

Posted on December 28, 2004 by acb

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

Posted on December 27, 2004 by acb

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:”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/27/jaron_lanier_futurist_conference/print.html bq. Online has always been a promiscuous communications medium: it’s easy to step on and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Journalism | 1 Comment

gone down in smoke

Posted on December 27, 2004 by acb

My mother in law gave me for Christmas “an extraordinary illustration”:http://dead.net/merchandising/movie_folder/index.html 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

Posted on December 24, 2004 by acb

Today’s _Telegraph_ [“splashes”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/24/ncanc24.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/12/24/ixportaltop.html] 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

Posted on December 19, 2004 by acb

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,”:http://www.downehouse.berks.sch.uk/introduction/index.php 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

Posted on December 16, 2004 by acb

bq. “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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 1 Comment

O tempora

Posted on December 15, 2004 by acb

There are people outside this country who still suppose “the Times”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk 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

Posted on December 15, 2004 by acb

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

Posted on December 15, 2004 by acb

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