Well now really. I can’t just leave this sort of thing sitting there unopposed. It would be a dereliction of duty. I like jokes and provocations as well as the next person, but there is a limit. There are some things up with which I shall not put, to paraphrase Winny.

Or is the objection that he lacks self-knowledge; he should realise he isn’t very bright – if he isn’t – and, therefore, not have stood for the presidency? If so, let’s have a reality check here. Bloggers are hardly paragons of self-knowledge…And, anyway, since when does a lack of self-knowledge justify the kind of opprobrium levelled at Bush?

What have bloggers got to do with anything? Is that the … Read the rest

If I don’t dislike George Bush as much as the next guy, I certainly dislike him enough to have stayed up all night on US election night, worrying about chads, and hoping for a Gore victory.

But what I don’t get is how come he gets so much flak for supposedly not being very bright? If it’s true, how exactly is it his fault? Is it okay, then, to attack the intellectually challenged simply because they are intellectually challenged (Madeleine Bunting notwithstanding)?

Or is the objection that he lacks self-knowledge; he should realise he isn’t very bright – if he isn’t – and, therefore, not have stood for the presidency? If so, let’s have a reality check here. Bloggers are … Read the rest

Thought for the day. It’s from Meera Nanda’s Prophets Facing Backward again. I may even have quoted this particular passage before – but if I don’t remember, you won’t either, and nobody ever reads old N&Cs, so it doesn’t matter. And anyway this is worth quoting often. It’s from the Preface, page xii.

Having grown up in a provincial town in Northern India, I considered my education in science a source of personal enlightenment. Natural science, especially molecular biology, had given me a whole different perspective on the underlying cosmology of the religious and cultural traditions I was raised in. Science gave me good reasons to say a principled ‘No!’ to many of my inherited beliefs about God, nature, women,

I’m laughing maniacally again – and it’s Norm who’s made me laugh again. With his entry for the name the pseuds contest. Prof Ursula LeTofu Thinberry and Dr Doug D. Void. Yep, I like those very much.

There is also José’s entry: ‘Judith Lucelia Etchegaray’ and ‘Jacques Alain Babha-De Ritta’. I like those very much too. The competition for that copy of Of Grammatology is going to be fierce. Except from my colleague, of course; his silly suggestion I just pass over in silence.

Norm also made me laugh with his deeply profound ruminations on the meaning of the ‘cartoon’ and what its referent really really is.

I was wondering whether one might deconstruct the notion that the cartoon represents

This story is interesting in more than one way.

Prof Southall accused Stephen Clark, a solicitor, of smothering his two babies on the basis of a 50-minute Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on the case…The paediatrician said Mr Clark was a double murderer “beyond reasonable doubt”, although he had not read any of the papers in the case, spoken to the parents or seen post mortem reports.

Beyond reasonable doubt – because he watched Clark on TV. Hmm.

Prof Southall refused to apologise and repeated the allegation during the disciplinary hearing. Denis McDevitt, the chairman of the GMC panel, said he was “extremely concerned” by Prof Southall’s actions. “Your view was a theory, which was, however, not presented as a theory