Monthly Archives: September 2007

God and Life

Posted on September 30, 2007 by acb

Now that I have finished “Peter bloody Conrad(This is a mountain of a book, and anyone who reaches the end without oxygen can feel justly proud)”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2174173,00.html I can return to Oliver Morton’s _Eating the Sun,_ and I was struck yesterday … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 8 Comments

Any Swedes out there?

Posted on September 28, 2007 by acb

According to “Wikipedia’s”:http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandism perfectly fascinating article on Finnishisms in Swedish, both _Semla,_ (a sort of bun) and _dyna_ (a cushion) are Finnishisms in place of more common and “proper” Swedish terms. Yet both words were in everyday use in my … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Sweden | 14 Comments

Bastards and condoms

Posted on September 28, 2007 by acb

It’s not often that you find “Damian Thompson”:http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/sep07/archbishopsdeadlymessage.htm and “PZ Myers”:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/evil_catholic_propaganda.php singing in the same choir but they are both shocked by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Maputo “who has claimed”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7014335.stm not only that condoms don’t prevent AIDS but that … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 6 Comments

Angela Lambert

Posted on September 27, 2007 by acb

My “friend”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2178957,00.html Angela Lambert “died”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2539282.ece early yesterday morning. She had been horribly ill for a long time; had indeed sent a message to all her friends in April saying “Goodbye”, so I was able to tease her about missing a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on Angela Lambert

notes from fishing porn and elsewhere

Posted on September 27, 2007 by acb

* Last summer my friend Christer pressed on me “a book of fishing porn”:http://www.westrin.se/bocker/fjallfiske.htm by Gunnar Westrin, which contains some “wonderful”:http://www.flugfiskeinorden.se/jpg/p27.jpg photographs, though I can’t find any on his web site. I learnt from it some interesting things about grayling; … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Trouty things | 2 Comments

Dawkins and Midgley, from comments

Posted on September 24, 2007 by acb

_Jeremy Ahouse writes:_ Our host points us to Dawkins’ unburying the hatchet in a recent post. Andrew himself admirably covered this episode between Midgley, Dawkins and Mackie ([7], Chapter 5) from the late 70s-early 80s. For fun I reread those … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Science without worms | 2 Comments

Dawkins, Midgley, disfiguring vanity

Posted on September 21, 2007 by acb

I see on Pharyngula that Richard Dawkins has claimed that Mary Midgley “confessed to never reading the Selfish Gene”:http://www.richarddawkins.net/article,1664,Against-the-grain-There-are-questions-that-science-cannot-answer,Mary-Midgley-The-Independent#71923 before reviewing it in _Philosophy._ This is untrue, whether or not he believes it. When he first told it me, in, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Science without worms | 11 Comments

More animals

Posted on September 19, 2007 by acb

Revisiting the walk under the flightpath — for there is at this time of year a stretch of about half a mile of almost continuous blackberry bushes, and it’s a shame that they are not as good as the ones … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on More animals

Rafe Coburn nails citizen journalism

Posted on September 19, 2007 by acb

bq. Yesterday I read that on Friday, President Bush sat down with a group of “milbloggers” to discuss how things are going in Iraq, and more importantly, get his version of the truth out to the public without its being … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Journalism | 3 Comments

Walkies

Posted on September 17, 2007 by acb

We set out yesterday to walk from [“Thaxted”:http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.954819,0.341907&spn=0.004404,0.009956&t=k&z=17&om=1] to [“Chickney Church”:http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.928773,0.288734&spn=0.004406,0.009956&t=k&z=17&om=1] without a map. I got most of the route right, which means there were only two wrong turns — and, in fact, both of them are marked as perfectly … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 2 Comments