Monthly Archives: April 2019

Rebellion Extinction

The spontaneous grass-roots occupation of central London last week, in order to force the government to implement drastic climate-change measures by democratic … civil disobedience, immediately reminded me of the equally spontaneous demonstrations of my youth that turned out, in due course, to be orchestrated by highly motivated societal manipulators, with highly ideological agendas.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Learning reality

Our four year old granddaughter had a slight melt-down on Wednesday. She’d been with us for nearly the whole week, and for breakfast enjoyed all kinds of healthy and less healthy cerials. However, just before the relevant meal that morning she conversationally mentioned that the last time she was here, she’d had breakfast that went “pop.” This was rapidly identified as Rice Crispies.

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 2 Comments

Making nature tell our stories

An article in the BBC magazine Radio Times, by David Butler, is an interview with Sir David Attenborough. Butler raises the question about why series like Blue Planet II divert viewers from the wonders of nature by the oft-repeated message about impending ecological disaster and, particularly, climate change.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Newspeak is fundamentally misanthropic

I had a friend at medical school who was an old-school communist, of the “Come the revolution…” variety. He was actually a very nice bloke, and paradoxically his doctrinaire Marxism sat comfortably with a devotion to the Rolling Stones – hardly a icons of pure socialist egalitarianism.

Posted in Politics and sociology | 1 Comment

Science denial

Over at Peaceful Science, I have been labelled by one poster as a “climate change denialist,” which is more interesting for the way the diagnosis – or actually, slogan – is used to foreclose discussion of a factual story I cited, rather than anything else. “Denialism” is one of those many Newspeak words designed specifically as a demonization-label. It’s used primarily of climate change science (where the “science-deniers” are often scientists doing the wrong research or declining to doctor their data to fit the consensus), and of “creationism” so called, where it may label, once more, qualified scientists proposing “the wrong kind of theory,” or those supporting more obviously unlikely … Continue reading

Posted in Politics and sociology, Science | 3 Comments

Transgression after Eden

We have a knife-crime epidemic over here in the UK currently. Of course, media reporting-crazes often appear more significant than the underlying events actually are, and can even escalate the problems they are so keen to highlight. But for whatever reason, there appears to be a significant spate of knife murders currently, by young people involved in street gangs.

Posted in Creation, Politics and sociology, Theology | 2 Comments

Sciense educashun

My eleven year old granddaughter is visiting this week, and is just at the stage of discovering that the i-Phone is a good substitute for looking at the world, thinking etc. Discovering a sat-nav app she was able to confirm that the short-cut we took to avoid the Exeter rush-hour was in fact correct, and to spend the rest of the journey reading off how long it would be before we got home. A shame she missed the views.

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Pay attention

You may or may not have seen the following sports awareness test on YouTube. If not you can check your skills:

Posted in Philosophy, Politics and sociology, Science | Leave a comment