Something interesting here from the Guardian. I’m not entirely sure (well not sure at all really) what to make of it, because I’ve heard George Monbiot say very silly things, and I’ve read very sensible things in spiked. That’s why we link to spiked now and then, and once at their invitation re-published an article of theirs. A good article it was, too. But then again, as I’ve said before, the free market agenda is not my agenda, and I’m not particularly eager to assist the agenda of people who want the market to decide all disputes in its own interest.

But I also don’t want such thoughts to inhibit me from linking to articles I think are good … Read the rest

There was an “article in the Guardian last week about requests from doctors who worked with Andrew Wakefield, the scientist whose research prompted the MMR controversy, not to show the program.

A former colleague of the scientist at the centre of the row claims the programme will endanger children’s lives by fostering doubts about the triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella…One of the doctors who has worked with Dr Wakefield wrote to Jane Lighting, Five’s chief executive, asking her not to transmit it. The doctor, a co-author of the original Lancet paper that provoked the controversy, says in the letter that the film is undeniably good drama, but it unacceptably and dangerously blurs the border between truth and

There’s been a mildly interesting, or interesting in parts, discussion at Crooked Timber about more obscure (or relatively obscure, slightly obscure, not really obscure but not on any of those Top 100 lists either) favourite books. I got in early with Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, and it’s had more seconds than any other choice that I’ve noticed. Three, plus a link to a quotation on Terry Teachout’s blog, which I’ve just added to Quotations and will also offer up here. It is so generally apposite.

With her brightest students Miss Batterson was always on terms of uneasy, disappointed admiration; their work never seemed to be helping their development as much as the work of the stupider

I thought this was quite interesting too. Just exactly what I thought, when I heard that bit of dialogue the other day.

A number of senior doctors have boycotted a debate to be shown after Channel Five’s drama documentary on Andrew Wakefield, because they say it is biased and emotive in its portrayal of the scientist behind alleged links between the MMR vaccination and autism…David Elliman, consultant community paediatrician at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, said: “The film is very, very partial. It’s very much this one man against the medical establishment, who is the only man who listens to children and to parents – paediatricians don’t and GPs don’t.

Exactly. And it’s so tediously familiar – Lorenzo’s stinking Oil … Read the rest

Well all right, if you can’t imprison and confine and repress women by putting them in purdah, or making them wear bags whenever they go outside, or slicing their genitals off, or smashing their feet, or whipping them with car antennas if they show a bit of hair or wrist – well hell, just get serious and stab them to death. That’ll teach them! I mean they’ve got a hell of a nerve thinking they get to go outside on their own, haven’t they. Who do they think they are? Adults? Responsible human beings like other people? Of course they’re not! They should be safely inside their houses, preferably in their kitchens, doing what women are supposed to be doing.… Read the rest