Yearly Archives: 2006

Randoms

Posted on December 20, 2006 by acb

I think the New Scientist has just published its most haunting headline: Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds The Mail’s hatchet job on Tom Butler this morning deserves proper analysis. I particularly like the way that they make it … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Randoms

Not just loopy: fruity too

Posted on December 19, 2006 by acb

How quickly one forgets true lunacy. I was looking for something entirely different when I stumbled across a letter that Conrad Black wrote to the Telegraph, which he then still owned, in the summer of 2003. It is fashionable now … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in War | Comments Off on Not just loopy: fruity too

a thought parked here for later use

Posted on December 19, 2006 by acb

A thought about the dislocation of modern conservatism; in particular about the unfashionability of pessimistic or tragic views of the human condition. These have fallen out of fashion partly because they seem to have no predictive value. Doom has been … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in British politics | 1 Comment

Blowing own trumpet

Posted on December 19, 2006 by acb

It’s a long time since I wrote this obit of Frank Johnson. I wish it had had to wait longer for publication. But it is, I think, quite good. Continue reading →

Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on Blowing own trumpet

Progressives in praise of eugenics

Posted on December 16, 2006 by acb

I have mentioned before here one of my favourite books, An outline for Boys and Girls, which is a left-wing encyclopaedia from the early Thirties, edited by Naomi Mitchison. Since she knew all the smart lefty young people, it is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Science without worms | 6 Comments

On hating computers

Posted on December 15, 2006 by acb

When I got back last night, one of the four fans which seem to be needed to run a quiet computer was making a hidous graunching noise. I really hate that kind of thing when I am trying to work, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in nördig | 2 Comments

Oh Fjuckby!

Posted on December 14, 2006 by acb

A wholly glorious story in this morning’s Svenska Dagbladet. Eleven villagers from the hitherto unremarked settlement of Fjuckby, north of Uppsala, have written to the government petitioning for it to change its name to something less reminiscent of “sex-related activities … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Travel notes | 2 Comments

Thought for the Day

Posted on December 12, 2006 by acb

And in our studio this morning, we have the Bishop of Southwark, with thought for the day. Good morning Tom. “Erm. Thank you, erm. We all have to face questions in life. Some questions fill us with existential horror: ‘Would … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 3 Comments

Thank God Bush will never read it

Posted on December 11, 2006 by acb

Melanie Phillips slips entirely the surly bonds of earth in her latest, which appears to call for a nuclear assault on Syria as well as Iran. How else is one to interpret her demand that the states that are driving … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in War | 1 Comment

The most perfect proof of God

Posted on December 11, 2006 by acb

This is from Anthony Kenny’s book The Unknown God, a collection of essays on the God of the philosophers: Is the ontological argument valid? Professor Timothy Smiley of Cambridge once offered a succinct and trenchant argument in favour of its … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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