Archibald MacLeish said: "To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together... on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold":
20 November 2014
The Blue Marble
I like to collect pictures of the "blue marble".
Archibald MacLeish said: "To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together... on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold":
Archibald MacLeish said: "To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together... on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold":
27 May 2014
Political Correctness
How about this for a neat definition?
"Political correctness is an insidious combination of prissy self-censorship and gratuitous bum-kissing".
Nuff said...
"Political correctness is an insidious combination of prissy self-censorship and gratuitous bum-kissing".
Nuff said...
15 November 2013
Two Classic Quotes
1. The most satisfying refutation is one that not only shows why your opponent is wrong, but why he thinks he is right. (Edward Ockham)
2. I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. (Blaise Pascal)
2. I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter. (Blaise Pascal)
13 October 2013
Two Poems About the Dead
1. In Flanders Fields (John McCrae):
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
2. If Death Is Kind (Sara Teasdale):
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending,
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long, gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
2. If Death Is Kind (Sara Teasdale):
Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending,
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long, gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
04 September 2012
Dear Diary
Her diary and his diary on the same day...
HER DIARY:
Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much. I asked him what was wrong; he said, 'Nothing'. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.
On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior - I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too'. When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent.
Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About fifteen minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep - I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.
HIS DIARY:
Motorbike won't start... can't figure out why.
HER DIARY:
Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it. Conversation wasn't flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn't say much. I asked him what was wrong; he said, 'Nothing'. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn't upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.
On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior - I don't know why he didn't say, 'I love you, too'. When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent.
Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About fifteen minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep - I cried. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster.
HIS DIARY:
Motorbike won't start... can't figure out why.
02 September 2012
27 August 2012
A Warm Virtual Cave?
Peter Beaumont, writing in the Guardian:
"All of which leads to an inevitable question - whether our new developing public discourse, largely mediated online, has made our conversation more open, democratic and accountable? Or, instead, more fragmented and poisonous? Among the pessimists has been the U.S. academic Cass Sunstein, who was early in proposing a more dystopian picture of how debate was being shaped online, noting a fundamental contradiction. 'New technologies', Sunstein has suggested, 'including the internet, make it easier for people to hear the opinions of like-minded but otherwise isolated others'.
Sunstein noted that while the internet was efficient in bringing together virtual communities of interest, it also encouraged participants 'to isolate themselves from competing views... [creating a] breeding ground for polarisation, potentially dangerous for both democracy and social peace. In other words, virtual communities, unlike physical communities that are under constant pressure to compromise, are at risk of a tendency to organise around confirmatory bias."
Read Beaumont's article here.
A fair point. I know some bloggers who read widely and make a point of recording the views of their opponents in a fair and even-handed way, but the Web makes it so easy to retreat into a warm virtual cave with people who think and feel like you do. The saving grace here is that blog comments at least allow people to debate various issues (even if the level of debate is often shrill and sometimes sub-literate).
"All of which leads to an inevitable question - whether our new developing public discourse, largely mediated online, has made our conversation more open, democratic and accountable? Or, instead, more fragmented and poisonous? Among the pessimists has been the U.S. academic Cass Sunstein, who was early in proposing a more dystopian picture of how debate was being shaped online, noting a fundamental contradiction. 'New technologies', Sunstein has suggested, 'including the internet, make it easier for people to hear the opinions of like-minded but otherwise isolated others'.
Sunstein noted that while the internet was efficient in bringing together virtual communities of interest, it also encouraged participants 'to isolate themselves from competing views... [creating a] breeding ground for polarisation, potentially dangerous for both democracy and social peace. In other words, virtual communities, unlike physical communities that are under constant pressure to compromise, are at risk of a tendency to organise around confirmatory bias."
Read Beaumont's article here.
A fair point. I know some bloggers who read widely and make a point of recording the views of their opponents in a fair and even-handed way, but the Web makes it so easy to retreat into a warm virtual cave with people who think and feel like you do. The saving grace here is that blog comments at least allow people to debate various issues (even if the level of debate is often shrill and sometimes sub-literate).
24 August 2012
The Clergy Project
The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former clergy who do not hold supernatural beliefs... The project's goal is to support members as they move beyond faith.
The Clergy Project was made possible through a donation from The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
The website of the Clergy Project is available here.
The Clergy Project was made possible through a donation from The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
The website of the Clergy Project is available here.
15 August 2012
Rand versus Tolkien
Brian Leiter at "Leiter Reports" (14 August 2012) has posted a picture that compares Ayn Rand and J.R.R. Tolkien (the picture is based on a comment made more than two years ago by John Rogers at the "Monkey Kung Fu" blog).
You can view the picture here.
You can view the picture here.
26 July 2012
The Leftwing Sellout
Christopher Hitchens, writing in his book Hitch-22:
"As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as 'anticlimax' began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself. People began to intone the words 'The Personal Is Political'. At the instant I first heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was — cliché is arguably forgivable here — very bad news. From now on, it would be enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic 'preference', to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or to ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: 'Speaking as a...'. Then could follow any self-loving description.
I will have to say this much for the old 'hard' Left: we earned our claim to speak and intervene by right of experience and sacrifice and work. It would never have done for any of us to stand up and say that our sex or sexuality or pigmentation or disability were qualifications in themselves. There are many ways of dating the moment when the Left lost or — I would prefer to say — discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time that I was to see the sellout conducted so cheaply..."
"As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as 'anticlimax' began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself. People began to intone the words 'The Personal Is Political'. At the instant I first heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was — cliché is arguably forgivable here — very bad news. From now on, it would be enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic 'preference', to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or to ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: 'Speaking as a...'. Then could follow any self-loving description.
I will have to say this much for the old 'hard' Left: we earned our claim to speak and intervene by right of experience and sacrifice and work. It would never have done for any of us to stand up and say that our sex or sexuality or pigmentation or disability were qualifications in themselves. There are many ways of dating the moment when the Left lost or — I would prefer to say — discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time that I was to see the sellout conducted so cheaply..."
07 July 2012
The Higgs Boson in Context
The Higgs boson was discovered a few days ago. I read a number of news reports about it, but I soon realised that I needed to know a bit more about bosons in particular and particle physics in general.
Here is my somewhat amateurish attempt to do just that.
Here is my somewhat amateurish attempt to do just that.
15 June 2012
03 March 2012
You Must Also Be Right
Many conspiracy theorists and pseudoscientists (and some New Agers as well) like to see themselves as the noble Galileo, standing courageously against powerful institutions which are arrogant, complacent, and closed-minded.
However, as Robert Park said: "Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough to be persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right."
09 October 2011
Changing the World?
My favorite story about Steve Jobs (1955-2011):
The year was 1983. Apple needed a new CEO. Jobs went all out to persuade John Sculley (president of Pepsi Cola) to become the CEO of Apple. Jobs turned his reality-distorting gaze on the hapless Sculley and said to him: "Do you want to sell sugar water to adolescents for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?" Sculley accepted the job.
In early 1984, the legendary Apple Macintosh was released. Less than two years later, Jobs was banished from Apple, only to be recalled twelve years later to save "an insanely great computer company that had gone insane" (in the words of Michael S. Malone).
I have never bought or used anything made by Apple, but I have met many of its bright-eyed devotees. Perhaps Jobs is saying to me: "Do you want to stay as you are for the rest of your life, or do you want to buy some shiny toys that are a bit more expensive than they should be?"
Some pics of the young Jobs (Jobs at school, Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Jobs and John Sculley).
08 October 2011
23 September 2011
20 September 2011
The Power of Soccer
John Sweeney of the BBC:
I'm an old war reporter and I owe a debt of honour to football. I can't remember how many times I've been up to my neck in shit in some awful place with a lunatic threatening to put TNT up my nose and an AK up my bum and I've said: "Manchester United" and everybody starts talking about Eric Cantona versus Wayne Rooney and then the beers are opened. I've been all round the world and seen people do terrible things to each other, but football is a beautiful thing and it converts the passions of war and tribalism into a game and at the end somebody loses but, fingers crossed, nobody dies.
A thank you to football for its part in helping along world peace. Oh, bugger, I'm sounding like Miss World now.
30 July 2011
03 July 2011
Understanding Lefties
Some people (confusingly) use the word "liberal" as a synonym for "lefty" (leftwinger). But many self-declared liberals are not lefties at all; indeed, many liberals regard lefties as deluded clowns.
The other day I saw this brief account on the Web of what a "lefty" allegedly stands for. Do you think it is spot on? On the right track, but could be tightened up? Mostly unfair? (Please let me have your comments.) Here goes:
The West is despicable. America is trash. But let's be soft on African thugs and militant Muslims. Let's constantly portray the Third World in a positive light (but secretly get down on our knees every morning and thank our stars that we are living in a gated community in California and not some God-forsaken hovel in Somalia). Let's insult capitalism while often reaping the rewards of capitalism. Let's see the normal family as distorted and fascist (but bend over backwards to accommodate every conceivable form of weird sexuality). Let's be soft on violent yobbos (because it's not their fault, poor darlings), but if a teacher puts her arm around a child, arrest the bitch and charge her with assault.
Let's fawn over anybody's attempt to protect and value their "identity", but if a White man says he is proud to be White, then dismiss him as neo-Nazi scum. Let's gurgle with delight at the customs of the various ethnic communities (no matter how blatant or outlandish), but if somebody wants to put up a small Christmas tree in the corner of their office, they should be treated like dirt. Let's sneer at classical art but see dried urine on a toffee paper as an avant-garde cultural statement. Let's deconstruct and undermine all "absolutes", except (of course) the self-evident and eternally valid absolute that conservatives are evil.
The other day I saw this brief account on the Web of what a "lefty" allegedly stands for. Do you think it is spot on? On the right track, but could be tightened up? Mostly unfair? (Please let me have your comments.) Here goes:
The West is despicable. America is trash. But let's be soft on African thugs and militant Muslims. Let's constantly portray the Third World in a positive light (but secretly get down on our knees every morning and thank our stars that we are living in a gated community in California and not some God-forsaken hovel in Somalia). Let's insult capitalism while often reaping the rewards of capitalism. Let's see the normal family as distorted and fascist (but bend over backwards to accommodate every conceivable form of weird sexuality). Let's be soft on violent yobbos (because it's not their fault, poor darlings), but if a teacher puts her arm around a child, arrest the bitch and charge her with assault.
Let's fawn over anybody's attempt to protect and value their "identity", but if a White man says he is proud to be White, then dismiss him as neo-Nazi scum. Let's gurgle with delight at the customs of the various ethnic communities (no matter how blatant or outlandish), but if somebody wants to put up a small Christmas tree in the corner of their office, they should be treated like dirt. Let's sneer at classical art but see dried urine on a toffee paper as an avant-garde cultural statement. Let's deconstruct and undermine all "absolutes", except (of course) the self-evident and eternally valid absolute that conservatives are evil.
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