Monthly Archives: April 2005

Shelter from the storms

Where in Europe would you want to live, if there were no oil and no Gulf Stream? Of the three really huge catastrophes impending in the next century, it seems improbable that we can avoid more than one or two. … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Blather | 6 Comments

civilisation at last

Google print appears to be out of beta. It knows about grayling flies, a lot about entelechies, less about rhodomontades but not, really, much about Puck of Pook’s Hill at all. This last search an interesting example of failed OCR, Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Net stories | 2 Comments

Foreign accents

My son Felix, who is half Swedish, speaks three regional dialects of English fluently — RP, or BBC English, which is what we speak at home; Essex/Estuary, which is what the aboriginals of Saffron Walden spoke when he worked in … Continue reading Continue reading

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In favour of Ratzinger

There is a long and interesting piece by Uta Ranke-Heinemann, a feminist German theologian sacked for admitting she couldn’t believe in the Virgin Birth, up here. She was a colleague of his in Munich after the war, when they were … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in God | 2 Comments

The antipodes of knowledge

Do women with asymmetrical ears lack empathy? Trying to find out what Robert Trivers was up to these days, I discovered this account of his research in Jamaica. The first article based on the research has appeared in the journal … Continue reading Continue reading

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Pope Benedict

A faithful reader why I hadn’t blogged on the subject. After two Guardian pieces and one on Opendemocracy.org, I didn’t really feel I had anything to say. But now I have read through the papers I skipped all weekend, I … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in God | 1 Comment

A perfect hotel

The Arundell Arms in Lifton is the best country hotel in Britain. It has one imperfection: the shower in our room was psychotic, cycling unnervingly between freezing and scalding. But I like even that: if the showers had been perfect … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Travel notes | 1 Comment

Gone Fishing

I’m off to see old friends and meet new trout around the West Country for the next few days. I thought I’d leave you (below the fold) with a piece about news and fiction, lifted from a Church Times column. Continue reading

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OOo down the drain?

In the Australian Computerworld article about there being not enough developers of OOo/Star Office, Ken Foskey is quoted as saying there are now 50 people working on the program for Sun in Germany, ten for Novell, and only four independent … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in OOo | 3 Comments

A new cosmology

It’s chocolates all the way up, I tell you. Beyond the horizon there is nothing but chocolates, stacked out to infinity, and what we see is really the lid of the box. (A less compressed proof is here ) Continue reading

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on A new cosmology