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Naming the Erection
10 November 2009
I can exclusively reveal that the Cambridge University Library is to be renamed the Durex Library. The venerable condom maker seized this golden sponsorship opportunity when it was pointed out that the building had been called ‘this magnificent erection‘ at the opening ceremony. In my days under the library’s sinister, threatening shadow it was assumed this had been said by George V. Now, it seems, the words that ensured the Durex deal were spoken by none other than … More
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The Existence of Asperger’s
10 November 2009
Simon Baron-Cohen complains about the possible removal of Asperger’s Syndrome from The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. Asperger’s is not regarded as sufficiently different from classic autism. The APA book defines mental illness for the world and, crucially, for insurance companies. This has always been an alarmingly subjective business. As Baron-Cohen points out, it is not yet possible to define a mental illness in terms of its causes, only in terms … More
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Discuss 13
09 November 2009
‘The universe looks like a put-up job.’
Fred Hoyle -
Design a Building for Me
09 November 2009
Will Alsop has asked me to draw – my drawing is about as good as my skateboarding – a building for an Italian magazine feature of some kind. It has to be a multi-purpose building. I would like suggestions and drawings, but I don’t know if you can put those in comments. Preferably these will not be completely stupid, though somewhat stupid is probably okay.
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Afghanistan 2
09 November 2009
From where I’m sitting, I don’t think it’s possible, honest or meaningful to have an opinion about Afghanistan. It’s not going well, our people are dying in a dubious cause and the Karzai government is corrupt; on the other hand, it sounds like a good idea to kill Taliban and withdrawal would be a regional catastrophe. I could stick a pin in ‘fight on’ or ‘withdraw’ and then get all columnistic about it. But why?
Anyway, I just heard this … More -
Discuss 12
09 November 2009
‘I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson -
How Did New York Get Nicer?
08 November 2009
Simon Heffer sticks to the view that it was Giuliani and Bratton’s zero tolerance strategy that made New York a nicer, safer place. In Freakonomics Levitt and Dubner deny this, saying the drop in crime had already begun, there had already been a police hiring binge, crime was dropping everywhere not just in New York and this – their killer counter-intuitive argument – was a result of the legalisation of abortion. Poor single women started aborting future hoodlums. … More
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Read Nick and Weep
08 November 2009
Great piece by Nick Cohen. He’s absolutely right, MP’s expenses has become a distraction from proper City regulation. I presume health reform is distracting the Americans from the same goal. Nick rightly mentions Larry Summers as one of the Americans standing in the way of bank reform. It is worth noting something Summers said in 1991:
‘Spread the truth – the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.‘
Dolly Parton said it cost … More -
Haneke – Fukuyama
08 November 2009
In The Sunday Times I interview Michael Haneke. I also interview Francis Fukuyama twenty years after his End of History essay appeared – however, I can’t, for the moment, find the link.
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Discuss 11
05 November 2009
‘The concentration on violence – riots, assassinations, uprisings, and civil war – valuable in itself for understanding how such things happen and what might be done to hinder them from happening, as well as for showing to what red hells our sightless souls may stray, gives a misleading picture of religious conflict by representing it in its most pathological forms. There are profounder matters at work than mere unreason, to which, after all, all human enterprises are subject, not just … More
- The X Factor
- Discuss 6
- Gordon the Beijing Duck
- Bernie Madoff
- Discuss 5
- Goats Etc
- Discuss 4
- Miliband’s Generalissimo
- Discuss 3
- Discuss 2
- 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
