Monthly Archives: April 2006

The sight of creationist arses

I had not realised the aggression of modern creationists. They are all over Nature’s newsblog report on Tiktaalik. One of them drew a really awe-inspiring smackdown from Henry Gee. This gained its effectiveness becasue it was theological — a rebuke … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Science without worms | 9 Comments

They may pray but they don’t mean it.

There have been two reactions to the most recent large study of intercessory prayer. Both have missed the point. Atheists have pointed to the fact that it shows no benefits at all for the recipients; believers have said that this … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Science without worms | 3 Comments

A demolition man

I don’t often blog about stuff from American politics, but this speech by Al Franken should be in textbooks of rhetoric. Sorry, I mean it should be on all flash-enabled training solution-facing resources for effective interpersonal communications. Continue reading

Posted in War | 1 Comment

… and one of the stupidsia

Apparently the reason for the intermittent errors that people have been getting on this blog is that Pair doesn’t like mySQL as a backend for MT blogs. Pair support suggests using sqlite instead, a database so fast and simple it … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in nördig | 1 Comment

A tale of the intelligentsia

via Languagehat, a glorious story: Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian author, spent the two worst years of the Terror, 1938-40, when Akhmatova was queing outside the prisons in Leningrad, working on a study of the German novel. It was accepted for … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on A tale of the intelligentsia

John McGahern

If you have not already seen it, John Naughton has a very interesting account of McGahern’s funeral on his blog. I happened to be reading his Memoirs last week, and so learned of his mother’s death the day before I … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on John McGahern

Canon printers do duplex

To round off a week of minor disasters, my ancient HP deskjet broke on Sunday morning. The print head jammed, and when I reached around to see if anything was blocking it, a long strip of plastic came away in … Continue reading

Posted in nördig | 1 Comment