I see towards the end of a comment thread, where only the trolls cavort and gibber in the ruins, two things: that someone is arguing against me on the basis of a wikipedia entry whose only substantive source is an article I wrote myself six years ago; and a sort of apology I somehow missed when it first appeared.
Or, as PZ puts it in another context: Yes. Science has an integrity and dedication to the honest evaluation of the evidence that religion lacks.
Instead of brooding on the mysteries of reason, I went out to spend the afternoon in the grey light of Grafham; sometimes the wind carried a chilly drizzle, too. But it wasn’t really cold unless I was standing in the water, and even then I had the warming pleasure of watching sailors further out capsizing their little racing dinghies. Even in a wet-suit, that’s got to be colder than wading. After two hours of this, I waded ashore for the last time and drove to the harbour, where I caught a fish that had to be folded to fit into my little grayling net. This was a very nice way to celebrate the rod I absent-mindedly bought when I arrived and saw it in the sale bin. It is a Powell LGA 906, that would have been about £450 five years ago, and which I got, spanking new, reduced to £100. In the intervening years, it has not stopped being a first class rod, while other “prestige” fly rods have grown steadly more expensive: £550 is the price of a stockbroker’s trout rod today and it is utterly ludicrous. For that money you should at least expect that the handle be covered in hand-sewn Siberian hamster scrotums.
I’m prepared to bet that in a blind test where the maker’s identification was covered so that the only real criterion was how performance no one could reliably rank modern graphite rods by price. There was a period when synthetic materials were new in which rod manufacuters made fantastic progress. Now they know how to do it and new models are purely a marketing gimmick. Still, I have profited by this to get something really lovely. So I don’t feel entirely suicidal.
The thing these days is to wear two wet suits, I’m told.
And, of course, to plug any orifice which might allow water into your nether regions. Jesus saves, but who would take the chance, eh?