Here’s wishing all who read and write here a Happy …:
I don’t know why this shop near where I live was proclaiming its enthusiasm for 2019 in the particular way that it was, but I made the necessary adjustments.
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In his foreword to Jordan B. Peterson’s Twelve Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos (page xv), Dr Norman Doidge writes:
I was going to leave it at that, but this next bit is worth quoting also, hence what’s between the brackets in the title at the top of this posting:
“With all the moderation I can summon …”. Nice one. How to shout without shouting, so to speak. December 18th, 2018 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The first one is straightforward. The internet threw me a talk by the computer scientist and businessman Stephen Wolfram today. It lasts three minutes 21 seconds and is called “How humans can communicate with aliens”.The subject is one that has so often been used as the basis for fiction that we sometimes forget that when you look up at night, what you see is real. There is a whole universe out there. It might have intelligences in it. Mr Wolfram contends that we might have been seeing evidence of intelligences all the time without realising it. Do you think he is right? And assuming we can talk to them, should we? Alien contact sounds wonderful at first but then becomes terrifying as you think more deeply. The second topic for discussion I want to put forward sounds terrifying at first but then becomes – Well, you tell me what it becomes. There is a very strange final paragraph to Mr Wolfram’s Wikipedia page:
One of my recurring nightmares is that as spy devices get smaller and the computational power available to analyse what they learn gets bigger, someone – or lots of someones – will be able to analyse my life in that sort of detail, down to every keystroke I make. It had never occurred to me to think of it as something I might like to do to myself. Does anyone reading this do anything similar? Would you like to? November 4th, 2018 | 68 comments - (Comments are closed)
Have a great or at least an interesting Beltane, or if you prefer, have a suitably reflective Gulag Remembrance Day May 1st, 2018 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
England’s favourite Roman-Greek dragon slayer grants us licence this day to drink beer and make appropriate Shakespeare quotes. April 23rd, 2018 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here in Britain, Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day have today collided. But down in Australia they threw in winding the clocks back, just to liven things up even more. Here the rule is that April Fool’s Day wind ups can only happen before 12 noon, so this is being posted in a rush to beat the deadline, assuming I have not miscalculated by an hour. No time to think of anything truly funny, but I can still ask. What have been today’s best Easter pranks? I’m sure there are lots of anti-Christian jokes along the lines of: Christ is risen, no he isn’t, gotcha. And last time AFD and Easter Sunday collided, Richard Dawkins converted to Catholicism. But I feel sure that our commentariat can do way better than that, or can at least report on someone doing better. Strange how wind up as in “it’s a (pr) ‘wined’ up”, and wind up as in “put the (pr) ‘winned’ up” – and here’s hoping you made sense of that – are both spelt the same way and mean rather closely related things. English eh? (The government should sort it out. No it shouldn’t. Gotcha. Etc.) April 1st, 2018 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some time towards the end of last year, my niece Roz emailed me to the effect that she was in London, and would I care to meet up with her for some coffee? I was intrigued. Because of our differing political views, Roz and I have had a polite but somewhat distant relationship. She is into feminism and environmentalism. I am into, well …: see all my other postings here. What was going on? Why this meet-up? I knew some unusual game was afoot. But what? We duly met up, and after some further polite chit-chat, what was afoot was revealed. Roz had written a crime novel, called The Devil’s Dice. This book, she said, was in the process of being published, by a real publisher of the sort that you have heard of. I like crime novels, and I like detective dramas on television. And I know how hard it can be to write anything even as long as a longish blog posting (such as this one is (you have been warned)), let alone a book. So, I was impressed. Although she didn’t spell this out, it was clear that Roz was then at the stage of communicating with everyone she could think of who might be able to help her sell this book. Which also impressed me. Good for her. And good for her also, and good for me, that she was content to include me in this process. Later, an advance copy of the book arrived at my home, in a bright gold bubble-wrapped package, together with some chocolate dice, in a little bag made of bright red netting. I read the book, and found it thoroughly absorbing and entertaining. She writes really well.
A quote from the book? Try the dedication:
Roz’s mum, my older sister, was a National Health Service doctor, and her husband was a psychiatric social worker. Short of having parents who were directly involved in the criminal justice machine, like detectives or coroners or forensic pathologists or suchlike, a crime writer couldn’t ask for a better start. March 21st, 2018 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
January 4th, 2018 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 4th, 2017 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Has anyone else been guiltily transfixed by the mystery of Danish inventor Peter Madsen, his now-sunken submarine, and the missing Swedish journalist Kim Wall? I truly do not wish to make light of the fact that a woman is missing, presumed dead, but I was undeniably fascinated by the whole idea of a crowd-sourced, privately built submarine. In any other circumstances I would have been delighted to learn that such a thing existed. Here are some news reports on the story: Danish submarine owner arrested over missing journalist Submarine in missing journalist case sunk on purpose, Danish police say Kim Wall and Danish submarine: What we know and what we don’t Police in Two Countries Searching for Woman Missing Since Sub Sank When commenting, please bear in mind that a criminal investigation is ongoing – and that all should be entitled to the presumption of innocence. August 16th, 2017 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was moved by this story in the Times:
July 27th, 2017 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
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