insecurely hidden

Posted on December 5, 2002 by acb

There is something delightful about the fact that this illuminating interview with Whit Diffie, though very recent, is accessible only through Google’s cache. I bet they did it to make the libertarians feel better.

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Lord, lord

Posted on December 5, 2002 by acb

Lord, lord, lord, lawdy lord (Blind Will McTell. brokedown angel blues).

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At last

Posted on December 5, 2002 by acb

A “paedophile priest” scandal that can be enjoyed wholeheartedly by pinkos. It has seemd that all the cases of child abuse in the American church were in fact homosexual. Now something much more Swaggertesque has turned up in the files of the Archdiocese of Boston, as reported by the Boston Globe:

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more nutters

Posted on December 4, 2002 by acb

I have been browsing the warhard sites, and as usual end up wondering how they can be writing from or about the same planet as I inhabit. This in particular caught my eye, partly because of its hysterical anti-Europeanism, so that the writer asserts almost simultaneously that European govenements need take no account of the views of their electorates, and that Gerhard Schröder is a very wicked man for appealing to his electorate’s anti-Americanism.

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sticky fragments

Posted on December 3, 2002 by acb

from an exploded bubble: I just had a spam from theStreet.com offering the following books on sale for Christmas …

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Squelching Pinker some more

Posted on December 2, 2002 by acb

I don’t often read Guardian profiles unless I have written them. I sometimes worry that this attitude will spread. But Bernard Williams looked like fun; it was. Very nicely written, and it had two quotes which made him appear entirely sympathetic:

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Squelching Pinker

Posted on December 2, 2002 by acb

The last time I saw Steven Pinker, at the Old Vic, with Ian McEwan, he was so dreadful that words failed me altogether. I’m glad that Louis Menand was not so afflicted, in the New Yorker.

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literary life

Posted on November 30, 2002 by acb

Last night to CB2. We took with us the eight-year-old son of friends, who was disgusted to find that his burger tasted of beef, rather than McDonald

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No redeeming social value

Posted on November 29, 2002 by acb

like it says.

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Copenhagen interpretations 1

Posted on November 25, 2002 by acb

I spent Saturday at a conference in Jesus college, organised by John Cornwell, on the subject of Werner Heisenberg’s war guilt and Michael Frayn’s play “Copenhagen”, which deals with the subject. The day started with a rehearsed reading of the entire play, which only has three actors, playing Heisenberg. Niels Bohr, and his wife, Margarethe Bohr, all talking together in the afterlife. They were absolutely splendid. I sat with them afterwards at lunch and said so. They said they had only had a day and a half of rehearsal, and were still wrestling with some of the pronunciation and the meanings of technical terms. Then one actor leant confidingly towards me and asked “Could you tell me one word I don’t understand. What is a quantum?” So I got to explain “quantum” to Niels Bohr.

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