I’m still quivering like a struck gong. As I was on September 11. I take it personally, I suppose. (Which sounds narcissistic and infantile, but bear with me for a minute.) I love London, and I love New York – both of them. In a very basic, in the bone way, that goes back to childhood and adolescence. Both cities stand to me for freedom – for escape, adventure, independence, self-fashioning, possibilities. (What comes into my head – this is very absurd and hokey, but I’m going to be absurd and hokey today – is that moment in the [absurd and hokey] movie ‘The Electric Horseman’ when Redford is just about to set free his stallion in a hidden valley … Read the rest

Funny. Just last night I turned on the radio for a few minutes and heard Tariq Ali telling Seattle about Iraq, oil, one thing and another. Then he went a bit sarcastic about al-Qaeda – saying it’s a tiny organization, it’s a few thousand people at most, what can it do? Well that’s a fucking stupid question, I thought; it can do a lot; thanks to advanced technology and communications it can do a lot. Then he went on to say (near exact quote) ‘These things don’t happen every day.’ ‘Well it only takes one, Bub!’ I shouted furiously. And that was last night. Two hours before the first bomb went off.

No, these things don’t happen every day. That’s … Read the rest

I’m six thousand miles away but I don’t feel six thousand miles away. Comes of having friends, acquaintances, readers there – not to mention having recently spent time there. Tavistock Square, Russell Square…

Say a word if you have a moment, those of you in London, so that B&W won’t worry about you.… Read the rest

This article raises a great many questions.

Campbell wants a rationalisation of the current abortion laws, so that terminations are available on demand in the first trimester, but available only on urgent medical grounds in later stages of pregnancy…His conviction owes much to advanced ultrasound scanning, a field in which Campbell is the acknowledged leader…

Okay, why.

By demonstrating the advanced physiological development of foetuses, his images reignited the abortion debate last year, when the television programme, Life Before Birth, showed footage of Campbell’s scans, with embryos moving in real time at just 12 weeks, and apparently smiling at 20 weeks.

Moving, and apparently smiling. But…but moving doesn’t necessarily equate to conscious, aware, even sentient moving. And ‘apparently smiling’ … Read the rest

‘X’ in this quotation is science, which has been temporarily re-named for the purpose of an examination of some criticisms of ‘science’:

X is “E-knowledge,” “obtained by logical deduction from firmly established first principles.” The statements in X must be “provable”; X demands “absolute proofs.”…I quite agree that X should be consigned to the flames. But what that has to do with our topic escapes me, given that these attributions scarcely rise to the level of a caricature of rational inquiry (science, etc.), at least as I’m familiar with it.

Take the notion of “E-knowledge,” the sole definition of science presented here. Not even set theory (hence conventional mathematics) satisfies the definition offered. Nothing in the sciences even resembles it.

This week’s Writer’s Choice at Normblog is Nick Cohen on Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman. Don’t miss it.

Although I like to present myself as an open and rational chap, I can remember very few times when I’ve admitted being in the wrong. Not wrong in detail, but wrong in principle. In my experience the politically committed rarely do that. We change imperceptibly and grudgingly, while all the time pretending we haven’t changed at all but merely adapted to altered circumstances.

Hmm. I don’t know – sometimes those ‘wrong in detail’ admissions can add up to ‘wrong in principle’ ones. But that’s a mere quibble.

The only time I realised I was charging up a blind alley was when