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Brazil
16 November 2009
I watched the Brazil match. I know, I know, it was an England second team and we ‘held’ them to 1-0, but even so. Brazil were not just better, they were fundamentally better. Looking back, they’ve always been fundamentally better. It doesn’t matter if the manager’s not so good or the team is not quite their best, they play football in an entirely different and more effective way. This has been true for at least fifty years. How … More
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The Dinner Party at the End of the World
16 November 2009
I lead a sheltered life. I had no idea, for example, that the world will end in 2012. Happily Roland Emmerich is on the case. It’s all down to the Mayan Long Count calendar apparently. Or, maybe, it’s due to the approach of the planet Nibiru. NASA has issued a detailed refutation, but, of course, this clear evidence of a cover-up only confirms the impending apocalypse. The Institute for Human Continuity disguises … More
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Fukuyama and Sports Bras
15 November 2009
For reasons that are unclear my articles are appearing sporadically or late on the Sunday Times web site. Last week’s Fukuyama is now here. This week I explain the place sports bras are playing in David Cameron’s election strategy but it doesn’t seem to be up yet
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Two More Reasons Why It Is Necessary to Love America
13 November 2009
1)Frank Fairfield – check out these three vids.
2)Stanley Cavell – especially when he writes about Fred Astaire.
‘From the pas de deux of the men, Astaire moves into a trance-like solo, quasi-dancing, quasi-singing in which his realization that he has found his way (back) to dancing strikes him as having found his feet again, as having re-found his body, and his ecstasy is such that when, in his twirling or reeling through the arcade, he comes across a coin-operated … More -
Discuss 15
12 November 2009
‘… the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’
Albert Einstein -
On Not Being a Gentleman
12 November 2009
At the end of his column in the Telegraph, Toby Young tells the story of a man named Bill who gained a poor degree at Brasenose College, Oxford, and was classified by the university’s appointments committee as ‘not quite‘ meaning ‘not quite a gentleman’. The Bill in question was William Golding who went on to become Brasenose’s only ever winner of the Nobel prize. Would the then commitee have changed its mind knowing he was to win the Nobel? … More
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Thiepval
11 November 2009
I wept watching the two minute silence at 11am. I always do. There is something about the First World War that makes my hot tears spurt. Some years ago I visited the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. I went in touristy/aesthete mode – ‘Lutyens, good, sometimes great architect. I ought to check this one out.’ That didn’t last the length of time it took me to get out of the … More
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Discuss 14
11 November 2009
‘Florensky saw a relationship between the naming of ‘God’ and the naming of sets in set theory: both God and sets were made real by their naming. In fact, the ‘set of all sets’ might be God himself.’
Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor -
Freakonomics and Professor Nutt
11 November 2009
Being, in general, unable to listen to myself on radio, I didn’t hear last night’s Night Waves. As a result, I don’t know how much of the conversation I recorded earlier with Steve ‘Freakonomics’ Levitt was broadcast. Anyway, the first thing I did was pick him up on a line in Superfreakonomics – ‘Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work – whereas economics represents how it actually does … More
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Brown’s Condolences
10 November 2009
As Nige says, the condolence letter unpleasantness makes one feel sorry for Gordo. Keep this up and he’ll win the election on a pity vote. It does prove my own point about the ability of the media to make any war other than the most explicitly defensive almost impossible to conduct. This has been an issue ever since Vietnam, of course. During the Falklands, we dealt with it by imposing ruthless media control. This would now be … More
- For PZ Myers
- Comment Moderation On
- Discuss 10
- Attaining Recoherence
- Discuss 9
- Spam Attack
- Discuss 8
- Discuss 7
- In Treatment
- Citizen Kane
- Melvyn Bragg: The Mark of the Mother
- The Future According to Google
- Osborne’s Tears for Thatcher
- Tom Waits: Growling Through the Grain
- Bedford Park: The Enchanted Suburb
- The New Ritual of Dying in Public
- Museums: The Price of Free
- Rage Against the Machines
- Mohsin Hamid: Help for the Dislocated Self
- Tony Versus the Philistines
